Important Dates in the Month of July

July 18th is Nelson Mandela International Day.

July 26th is National Disability Independence Day.

According to the Nelson Mandela Foundation website, “Nelson Mandela International Day was launched in recognition of Nelson Mandela’s birthday on 18 July 2009 via unanimous decision of the UN General Assembly. It was inspired by a call Nelson Mandela made a year earlier, for the next generation to take on the burden of leadership in addressing the world’s social injustices when he said that ‘it is in your hands now.’ It is more than a celebration of Madiba’s life and legacy; it is a global movement to honour his life’s work and to change the world for the better.”

National Disability Independence Day is a day to celebrate the anniversary of the 1990 signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I thought of Ijeoma Oluo’s words in So You Want to Talk About Race as I reflected on the chapter “What is intersectionality and why do I need it?” Oluo wrote, “How do our social justice efforts so often fail to help the most vulnerable in our populations? This is primarily a result of unexamined privilege. Because of how rarely our privilege is examined, even our social justice movements will tend to focus on the most privileged and most well represented people within those groups. Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men, disability rights groups will tend to prioritize the needs of disabled white men. Imagine where this leaves a disabled Latinx trans woman on any group’s priority list.”

I am committed to learning, financially supporting activists, advocates, authors, and educators who challenge and broaden the narrative, and dismantling systems of oppression under their leadership

#July #July18 #NelsonMandelaInternationalDay #MandelaDay #NelsonMandela #ActionAgainstPoverty #July26 #NationalDisabilityIndependenceDay #intersectionality #intersectionalitymatters #intersectionalityisessential #socialjustice #enddiscrimination #dismantleALLsystemsofoppression #research #support #love #loveyourneighbor #everyneighbor #humanity #dignity #empathy #equality #action #seekjustice #restorativejustice #transformativejustice #justice #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative