“Disability Justice is Key to Supporting Victims and Survivors”
Monday, February 21, 2022
1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the virtual training “Disability Justice is Key to Supporting Victims and Survivors” presented by advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist and writer, Lydia X.Z. Brown.
Disabled people's lives and communities are marked by constant trauma and the specter of violence. The disability justice movement has arisen from and in response to trauma and everyday crisis. From electric shock torture to forced sterilization, from filicide to state violence, from abuses under law and in medicine to high rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault, our communities have fought for decades against dehumanization. The Disability Justice framework invites us to reconsider what we have been taught about disability and disabled people, and to learn from disabled people's wisdom and dreams of a world without violence. By focusing on access and care, Disability Justice offers us new ways of building community, offering support, and building a better future. In this session, participants will learn about the history of the disability justice movement, and how its principles can better inform support for victims and survivors.
Presenter: Lydia X.Z. Brown
Lydia X. Z. Brown is an abolitionist disability justice advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. They are Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability, as well as Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Lydia is also adjunct lecturer and core faculty in Georgetown University’s Disability Studies Program, and adjunct professorial lecturer in the American Studies program at American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies. They serve as a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, chairperson of the ABA Civil Rights & Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, board co-president of the Disability Rights Bar Association, and representative for the Disability Justice Committee to the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee. Lydia founded the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color's Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, and they are creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot.
Previously, Lydia worked on disability rights and algorithmic fairness at Georgetown Law's Institute for Tech Law and Policy, served as Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and worked at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network as a member of the national policy team. They are former Chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, Visiting Lecturer at Tufts University, Holley Law Fellow at the National LGBTQ Task Force, and Patricia Morrissey Disability Policy Fellow at the Institute for Educational Leadership. In 2015, Lydia was named to Pacific Standard's 30 Top Thinkers Under 30 list, and to Mic's list of 50 impactful leaders, cultural influencers, and breakthrough innovators. In 2018, NBC featured them as one of 26 Asian Pacific American breakthrough leaders for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and Amplifier featured them as part of the We The Future campaign for youth activism. Most recently, Lydia was named to Gold House Foundation's A100 list of the most impactful Asians in America for 2020 and them.'s Now List 2021 honoring LGBTQ+ visionaries. Their work appears in numerous scholarly and community publications, and they have received many awards for their work, including from the Obama White House, the Society for Disability Studies, the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Washington Peace Center, the Disability Policy Consortium, and the National Council on Independent Living. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.
Participant Registration and Cost: This training webinar is free. Participants need to register in advance for the training. Please visit here to register.