Solidarity and Intersectional Readings

As plural activists, our work has intersects with three vital frameworks: Disability Justice, Mad Pride, and Neurodiversity. Having an understanding of these movements, key principles, and how systems of oppression act upon disabled and mentally ill bodies (along with anyone else they consider abnormal) gives us the foundation for understanding what we're up against as plurals and the tools to intelligently craft our own spaces. The resources listed below are non-exhaustive, and often span the intersections of disability, mental health, and neurodiversity.

Disability Justice:

• Original Disability Justice Working Draft

• Principles of Disability Justice

• Mia Mingus

• Sins Invalid

• ProjectLETs - Disability Justice Resources

• Sick Woman Theory

Disability Justice Books

-Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
-Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
-Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability
-The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (not DJ specifically, but an important piece of history)

Mad Pride

• The Ex-Patients’ Movement: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

• History of Institutionalization and MH in the US

• Vermont Psychiatric Survivors - What is Sanism?

• Icarus Project

• Toronto Mad Pride

• Mad Covid

• Asylum Magazine

• Hearing Voices Network

Mad Pride Books

-Mad Matters
-Madness, Violence, and Power: A Critical Collection
-Searching for a Rose Garden: Challenging Psychiatry, Fostering Mad Studies
-Madness, Distress and the Politics of Disablement
-Psychiatry Disrupted: Theorizing Resistance and Crafting the (r)evolution
-Anatomy of an Epidemic

Neurodiversity / Other Resources

• Neurodiversity - Nick Walker

• Lydia Brown's Website - Autistic Hoya

• Depathologization & Neurodiversity

• The Future (and the Past) of Autism Advocacy

• Spoon Theory

Book: All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism

If you have to be stingy with your solidarity/history, the first 3 links and/or the first book on each topic are a little more salient than the rest. But all the disability justice material and the mad pride books are very important - giving a solid read through everything is always the best.

History of Plural Activism

A brief, non-exhaustive covering of plural history and what's been going on in the movement.

The use of the word plural has been traced back to the late 1990's, originating simultaneously from a couple systems.

Symbols

Plural Pride Symbol

Created by ouregaiya in October 2011

• History of Plural Pride Symbol

Plural Pride Symbol

Repainted by Emmengard in April 2019

• Meaning of Colors

Ampersand

& Plural Symbol: Use dating back to March 2000
Art by Emmengard 2018

• History of the Ampersand

Pride Days and Weeks!

Current Plural Activists & Organizations

Plural Organizations and Nonprofits

• The Plural Association

• First Person Plural

• The Dissociative Initiative

• An Infinite Mind

• Beauty After Bruises

Plural Conferences

• Plural Positivity World Conference

• An Infinite Mind Conference

• Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference (large plural gathering held yearly)

• EntitlDID to life

• Ivory Garden

Current Plural Activists and Advocates

How to Get Involved

Create.
Writing, art, comics, youtube, podcasts, social media posts, and poetry are all mediums to document and share our plural existence, as well as connect with community members who understand us. Creating not only helps raise awareness for singlets, but it connects our community together and enriches our culture!

Speak About Your Experiences.
This one's a little trickier, especially if y'all haven't experience with public speaking before. Raising awareness through speaking is incredibly powerful - whether it's presentations/workshops at a conference, classroom presentations, community dialogues, or at an open mic night. You can also go through NAMI (?) which helps to train you as a speaker on mental health issues if you don't feel ready to start by yourselves.
And then finally, speaking about your experience just to those close to you is another incredibly powerful way to raise awareness and fight stigma! Being open about plurality can change minds and expose potentially hundreds of people to the idea, which does much more than you'd think. But make sure you do this safely and comfortably, if at all!

Facilitate In-Person Spaces.
Currently, our community is dispersed, isolated, mostly online and hiding in the closet. Building in-person community spaces is not only an extraordinary experience for those that attend, it allows our community to gather in meaningful ways many of us never have the chance to. It's quite literally life-changing. Plural spaces can be small gatherings at a coffee shop, meetings/groups at a local community center, or a breakout room at a tangentially related (or unrelated!) conference! This also gives our community momentum if we want to protest or take direct action in the future.
The Crisses have written a bit about creating plural safe spaces here

Engage with the Activists and Organizations Mentioned.
Engage with plural activists! Give TPA some feedback through their feedback form. Send anyone a message. Show up to the Redwoods group zoom calls, or the Plural Association's plural activist calls! Follow each other on social media and engage when plurals talk about things they're working on. Come to the (free) Philadelphia Trans Wellness Plural Caucus if you can!
Dream with us about what you want an accepting society to look like. There's so much work to be done, and the more hands on deck the easier and faster it will be. (Plus, when we all talk with each other, it's so much easier to come up with projects! The next big step is building plural safe spaces in non-plural organizations.)

**Fundraise. **
Whether you're out and can talk about your experiences or have to masquerade as a concerned singlet, raising funds for the organizations doing critical work in our community can make a huge difference. Money (especially from singlets) means that activists can give more time to the work they do, can help put together in-person events, and can support plurals in the community financially.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.
Living your life to the fullest extent, focusing on your happieness and your health as a plural system is a radical act. Our plural existance, our love, our joy defies what is normal. If you have the capacity to do nothing else on this list, care for yourself and your immediate community. Plural activism exists so that our community can survive and thrive and live and love and be happy - and that includes you. Cultivating your happiness is activism. Checking in on a close plural friend is activism.
And it's some of the most meaningful work we do.

• Crisses Plural Activism Talk