I bungled a presentation. Bungle is a too forgiving description. A more accurate one is "unfit for what the moment required." I joined the Zoom session confident in the value of my life experience. It was a meeting of a college's student disability group. So I began, before any conversation or checking in with the audience, by reading from the essay "Old Polio."
I read about an elementary school bus driver teaching me to climb the steps so I wouldn't have to go to the "handicapped school." I told stories about my sullen defiance against people who wanted to limit my access to education before we had any legal rights to one. We were tough, I said. Rehab centers made doors extra heavy to prepare us for the world. We were the John Waynes of the disability movement, I bragged. Basically, I was showing off to these young people online with me.
Then I opened the conversation. The business major specializing in human resources for disabled workers, the neurobiologist, the graduate student researching women's compliance with medical treatments, the other scientists, the recent graduate working in city planning—their life plans were in turmoil what with research funding slashed, ethics challenged, and rescinded job offers. Faculty advisors told them they needed to "pivot" but had no guidance on a direction. And their school's disability resource office had told them, a group of disabled students, not to use the words "diversity" or "inclusion" in their meetings.
Most of my friends who worked in the academic world are, just in time, retired, but I knew. From news reports. In theory. Outrage at a distance. But the young, stressed voices on Zoom shredded my composure and my responses—so sorry, that's intense, how are you doing, what's next for you, so sorry, fuck, so sorry, fuck, so sorry—were clumsy and stiff. The stiffness was to keep from crying. How would that help anyone? A university professor I know calls them the "not-old disabled people" and worries for them.
My activism has never included or understood these young people. I do know they grew up in a world of school shootings and trainings where faculty are quietly told to sacrifice their disabled students and through a COVID lockdown that used the emergency as an excuse to also sacrifice their education if not their lives. These days, in this crisis, people my age fight the way we did in the seventies and eighties—we are a loud, sign-waving mix of the anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, pro-abortion, disability rights, veteran queer liberation, seasoned environmental, accomplished nonviolence, and immigrant rights activists.
These not-old disabled people on the Zoom call with me had an education inclusive in ways I could never have imagined. I was out of college, and these students' parents might not have been born yet when what became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) passed and the 504 sit-In led to its enforcement. This right to a "free, appropriate, public education for all children with disabilities in the least restrictive environment" was emphatically federally enforced and funded throughout two generations until the Inauguration ten weeks ago. Even in the grainy Zoom images of their faces, I could see the stress of the sudden falling away of rights and opportunities and expectations. I couldn't help. My life experience, that I had thought so instructive, seemed to have little value in this moment. Maybe later, but not yet.
It helped that one of them spoke of "malicious compliance." The phrase has a lovely edge of evil slyness. I looked it up. It's not a new form of passive-aggressive resistance. Enslaved people did (and do) all sorts of pacing and sabotage to make their enslavers lose money. The phrase malicious compliance comes more out of the corporate world. It's also an economically disruptive technique used by workers. There's no set definition except that you damage the power structure at some level. And you do this by the exact following of a command, order, regulation, or statute in a way that undermines the intent.
For instance, the banning of the words "diversity" and "inclusion." But there were concepts we used before those words became coded within government documents, laws, and academia. Some of them—belonging, leaving no one out, a mosaic, comprehensive, all together, being considerate, and basic justice—might slip past the algorithms and gum up the intent of the ban. Not forever, but for a while. This is the satisfying pettiness of malicious compliance.
So I'm not worried as much about these young people. Passive-aggressive resistance hasn't been my style, but it works. And it might become the most effective way to survive and perhaps to make change for those who will be in this for the next generations.
Audio Version:
wow... strong. I am in touch with several young public health (mid career) adults. It is frightening and clearly more so for those on your zoom. Powerful. thank you