@meganL@mas.to
@meganL@mas.to avatar

meganL

@meganL@mas.to

Disabled Masters student @ UC Davis. Speaker on Accessibility in Higher Ed/Cycling/Plant Science. Speaker on carob.

#Accessibility #Botany #Cycling #SciComm #NoBot #NoBridge

Most of my posts are not asking for advice so please don't offer it unsolicited. When I'm asking for advice, I usually ask quite explicitly.

Banner = 2 UC Access Now buttons, with a seal that's a parody of the University of California's. It says "Let There Be Access > ADA" Profile = HG Peters drawing of Wonder Woman

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

meganL, to accessibility
@meganL@mas.to avatar

🧵 Even before I formed @ucaccessnow, I persisted through campus channels trying to get them to acknowledge that cycle racks ALSO have to be accessible, not car parking spaces. After months of brick walls with UC and my union, I got a meeting with the head of UC Davis TAPS, who

@fedibikes @disability @bikenite #UCAccessNow #Accessibility #Cycling #CycleParkingAudit

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

UC fights you, drags its feet, buries credit for the enormously hard work you put into fighting them and working for justice...

BUT KEEP FIGHTING

This is not the equitable solution they should have adopted, but I guarantee you they would never have installed this had I not spent years fighting them in every venue I could think of.

They bury credit because they don't want you to know fighting gets results!

Unbury that credit. 10/?

https://bikinginla.com/2020/07/28/enough-a-fight-for-handicap-access-and-inclusive-bicycling-at-uc-davis-and-the-university-of-california-system/

@fedibikes @disability @bikenite

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Make sure to keep @ucaccessnow 's name & work alive. Unbury the credit.

Make sure people know that fighting back works better than staying passive and silent. University of California does not want you to know that.

Ableists do not want you to know that. Car-centrists do not want you to know that. 11/?

@fedibikes @disability @bikenite

ShaulaEvans, to random
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

If you are an informed, intelligent, compassionate, in-any-way-science-literate person, how are you coping with living through these times? What's helping?

No snark, please. I'm interested in sincere, practical answers.

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@ShaulaEvans It's not easy because I don't have much of a social support network in general - if you do have one, lean on them for moral support because of course it can be depressing.

But what I do is what I've always done: as much as I have $ and other resources to do. Even now I'm not hopeless - we could turn this thing around if we all worked on it. And even if folks don't work on it, I'd rather be part of the solution than the problem.

I feel better taking action.

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@ShaulaEvans So being politically active, changing my own lifestyle, helping others as they change theirs. Not just on the defensive, but go on the offensive - work for positive sustainable things that give you joy - carbon is fixed by plants so if you like gardening, look into which native plants provide the most habitat and are suitable for where you can plant things. Tend those. Observe your local biodiversity increasing as a result.

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@ShaulaEvans Work on the big picture stuff that goes after corporations and the rich because they're creating the most GHGs, but also tend to your local community and build fun community with your family of choice. Reach out to the most vulnerable members of your community homeless, disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, etc. to work with them on inclusive climate resiliance plans you can implement now.

clive, (edited ) to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar

People of Mastodon!

I'm researching the growth of ebikes ...

... in cities around the US

I've talked to many people who love them!

But also want to include the perspective of folks who have concerns ...

... i.e. about the speed and weight of ebikes in accidents with pedestrians or other cyclists, and the like

If anyone has thoughts they wanna share, ping me! I'm all ears: clive@clivethompson.net

Pass this along if you know anyone else with perspective they want to share

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@clive I am very much pro-e-bike and use them myself (cycled "acoustically" for years before I got osteoarthritis in the knees).

My concern is that car-centrists have looked at California's e-bike definitions and created what is essentially an electric Vespa without the regulations & training a Vespa driver would be subject to.

This stokes ire against cyclists & increases crackdowns on all e-cycle riders instead of drivers.

https://mas.to/@meganL/112306655028645630

meganL, to cycling
@meganL@mas.to avatar

I often see abled urbanists leaping on the words of any disabled person who says that they can get along without a car, but not being as eager to boost efforts of disabled people pointing out inaccessible infrastructure that often prevents them from dumping cars.

Don't be that person - be as willing to boost (and work for) calls for accessibility as you are to boost disabled people who happen to cycle.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tyPf-0Cc69I

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Both abled car-centrists and abled urbanists use disabled people as a cudgel in arguments. Emphasis on "use".

Make your movement accessible, then when disabled ppl are involved - listen. Then get active on problems disabled ppl identify.

We cannot equitably drastically reduce personal motor vehicle use (as we need to) without prioritizing making public transit, train, and cycle infrastructure fully accessible in ways that allow for disabled people to get around independently

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@AccordionBruce Yup. I love history so it was hard at first for me to see the ire of disabled people who get left out because it's "historical", but history buffs don't insist on admission rates based on even worse historical racism & sexism than we have now, for example. They don't insist on killing some of your kids because in the past we had high infant mortality.

So they have to get off their high horses and stop preserving inequitable infrastructure in the name of it being "historical".

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

It really is another aspect of systemic the way that media and caretakers have elevated the genuine challenges abled caretakers have into now being something that gets more attention than the needs of disabled people.

It really is remarkable how abled people can always make disability, inaccessibility, even systemic ableism all about themselves.

(venting in rxn to the umpteenth media Q about how ppl can support caretakers that skipped entirely over how ppl can support disabled ppl)

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2rKOiMc8h8

meganL, to music
@meganL@mas.to avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtdLk-78MUA

meganL, to Hockey
@meganL@mas.to avatar

For the hockey fans among my followers who might be interested in how para ice hockey is played. https://www.youtube.com/live/pADjgUltWH8?si=naKICkkNL1UaP8Go&t=134 #Hockey #Sports #Disability

meganL, to disability
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Lots of folks think blindness is only 100% not being able to see anything.

That is incorrect.

Blind folks have been saying this all along, but in case you want this from the medical perspective...

In what is sadly common - this video from an ophthalmologist is not fully accessible. It should have an audio description option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY4mveKppdw

ahimsa_pdx, to oregon
@ahimsa_pdx@disabled.social avatar

"Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office swears in its first ‘comfort dog’ "

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2024/05/multnomah-county-sheriffs-office-swears-in-its-first-comfort-dog.html

Burton is an 85-pound, 3-year-old long-haired German Shepherd. Across his furry black and brown back, he wears a harness that reads, “Please pet,” and at his ceremony, many in attendance did just that.

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@ahimsa_pdx This is a copaganda story. They know a lot of folks love dogs and they use that fact to repair their deserved reputation for injustice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copaganda

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

I wish there were a concierge I could contact who'd locate an affordable old MacOS internet-capable system with MacSpeech or Dragon Naturally Speaking and various other apps on it.

With each update, I get less enamored and it's not just Apple that's fucking up. I feel like I could be content just going back to what I used to use if it weren't for website bloat.

I'm so tired of what a shitty sellout job our legislators and DoJ leaders have done of protecting the public interest.

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Well, I guess the good news is that more rank 'n' file workers at UC Davis finally believe what @ucaccessnow and others were sharing all along - UC UAW leadership is anti-democratic and has its own agenda (which sometimes dovetails with UC admin agenda).

I hope they don't just react in the short-term but realize that until we can kick the Admin Caucus out of UAW, we will have to continue fighting. #Union #Labor

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

I wish podcasters and vloggers would do a better job of vetting advertisers that come to them. For instance, I hate to see Dr. Glaucomflecken shilling for two different AI products now.

TexasObserver, to Texas
@TexasObserver@texasobserver.social avatar

Today's top story: “Active Clubs can best be understood as modern-day skinheads, as they often engage in the same networks, activities, and ideologies.”

Working with @Bellingcat, Special Investigative Correspondent @stevanzetti exposed this North organization and its leader, who tried but failed to hide his identity. https://www.texasobserver.org/rhett-murry-loftis-white-nationalist-active-club?utm_campaign=mastodon

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@TexasObserver @Bellingcat @stevanzetti That seems a little misleading in that there were/are anti-fascist anti-racist skinheads.

It's more accurate to say that "Active Clubs" are ways fascists can organize with plausible denial.

ai6yr, to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

The Hill: $395 pineapple being sold at Southern California produce store https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4674926-395-pineapple-being-sold-at-southern-california-produce-store/

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@ai6yr An interesting journalism story would be to do a deep dive on pineapple colonialism and pineapple symbolism in the West. This pineapple and the fact that it's Dole responsible for it, would not stand out in that context. There's a long backstory. Many writings on it, but this is a short read as a start. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-housewarming-pineapple-symbol

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Column: Inside the effort by two Beverly Hills billionaires to kill a state law protecting farmworkers

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-05-16/inside-the-effort-by-two-beverly-hills-billionaires-to-kill-a-state-law-protecting-farm-workers

https://archive.is/wRB1y

meganL, to cycling
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Calbike has another call to action for CA residents (if you aren't a CA resident, please boost it to reach someone who is):

https://www.calbike.org/our_initiatives/streets_for_everyone/complete_streets/ @bikenite

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

Rather than boosting a screenshot of a social media post of someone else talking about but not linking to an artist's work, I've looked up the artist and the work and am linking you to more details.

It is from Yale itself, so you should of course read it critically. But it has more detail and context that is important to Kaphar's transformative work.

https://britishart.yale.edu/new-light-group-portrait-elihu-yale-his-family-and-enslaved-child

https://www.kapharstudio.com/

meganL, to random
@meganL@mas.to avatar

My top-performing post on LinkedIn:

#Labor

meganL,
@meganL@mas.to avatar

@msquebanh Yes. This is why I get angry at people who think they're doing disabled people in the US a favor by supporting the law that allows "sheltered workplaces" where disabled people get paid less than US minimum wage.

I've had folks I know online who have disabled relatives get really angry at me over my stance on sheltered workshops. But those corps are like that "lucky I even hire gimps" and taking every advantage.

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