ABOUT US.
PDX DISABLED SUPPORT
Our Philosophy
Abolition through care work is not a binary, but a collaborative and emergent community process. We are creating a multi-way street where everyone gets their needs met harmoniously with how their life naturally functions.
Within PDS, care workers, including disabled people, are both givers and receivers of care.
The focus within each community care pod is on the disabled person but, for instance, if a delivery care worker is going to the store to get Rx’s for disabled people in their pod, they may also pick up Rx’s for other care workers or themselves. Each pod will discuss and mutually agrees on the types of collaborative support they want to create. Joining hubs involves both receiving or giving to them, and sometimes one or the other.
How care workers engage with the program changes with the person’s needs and health.
Disability is a spectrum.
This spectrum is impacted by each person’s identity, disproportionately affecting race while also impacted by gender, class, housing status, documentation status, ect, and changes as a person’s needs and abilities do.
Checking In.
We ask that those engaged in this program assess and frequently check in with themselves to see where they fall on that spectrum and sign up for what is appropriate for their needs and abilities as well as communicate to the group if that changes.
Our History.
This work has been done for generations and continues to be shared by marginalized people everywhere. Mia Mingus, a disability justice activist from the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, organized many of these existing practices into a pod model which she published in 2016, and which has heavily influenced this program.
PDX Disabled Support came to fruition during the Coronavirus pandemic.
And through the Portland Community Action Network (PDXCAN). The initial idea and infrastructure began years ago through an organizer in Glitter Squadron PDX in 2016, but lacked support. As collaboration grew, we formed an independent group, PDX Disabled Support. We started as a group of mostly white, disabled, trans and queer, housed organizers. We will always aim to be more inclusive and center BIPOC and homeless people, who are especially targeted through various systems of the prison industrial complex.
Our Work.
PDX Disabled Support builds community and support networks for both disabled people and care workers through a network of hubs and care pods. We recognize marginalized people create their own systems of care work, as the state and institutionalized systems within the prison industrial complex are inaccessible.
Institutionalized racism occurs in private houses, care settings and hospitals.
Accessing care or medical needs often places black and brown people into systems of institutionalized racism and increased police interactions. All of this has been intensified during the Coronavirus crisis and intensifies further when intersected with being trans, queer, unhoused, undocumented, formerly incarcerated, and/or disabled/with psychiatric labels, etc.
Joining care work is a radical act.
We are creating new systems outside of the state’s broken ones. “Care” in capitalism oppresses disabled people, exploiting them as a commodity and discarding those they consume. Care work is made invisible and devalued. That is not the reality of this work.
This is vital work we are proud of.
We’re committed to building long-lasting relationships with community members, upholding principles of disability, racial and trans justice, and providing tools for accountability within the community. This includes building support structures to take the place of calling the police and not participating in mandatory reporting.
Accessibility.
We are currently offering translations in Spanish, French and Russian but hope to expand these options soon. The beauty of our system is that it isn’t rooted in the state or bureaucracy and is anti-capitalistic. We’re fluid and not binary in our organizing structure which facilitates changing and growth based on changing needs.