By ALICIA WALLACE

DISABILITY Justice Advocate, Founder of Disability Visibility Project, and writer Alice Wong died at the age of 51 on November 15. A MacArthur Genius Award-winner, Alice was known for her brilliant ways of presenting current realities and possibilities, fierce advocacy, openness about her life, and wonderful sense of humour.

Alice was born with muscular dystrophy. She used a powered wheelchair and assistive breathing device, and she openly shared her experiences in medical care settings, having home care, and the importance of care networks populated by people who listen.

“Care is not a checklist of tasks and responsibilities,” she said. “Care is a shared value and actions operating in a larger political context within a hyper-capitalist, racist, ableist society that devalues certain types of labour and bodies.”

Alice Wong wrote Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life (2022), and she edited Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (2020) and Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire (2024).

Alice was generous in her engagement through her published work and her social media presence. She was quick to not only offer commentary on and guidance through the COVID-19 pandemic, recognizing it as a mass disabling event, but to support people with long COVID in navigating their new realities. Her writing in Teen Vogue felt not only personal to her, but to the people reading. It was a conversation.

In October 2022, Teen Vogue published an excerpt from Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life. In it, Alice emphasized the importance of self-acceptance and community, and she did so in a way that implicitly aligned with her position on institutions—that we should all try to be free of them, and instead lean on our communities and experience the highest form of care at home.

“Growing up and becoming more comfortable in our own skin is a tough, nonlinear process. I am still working on myself as I imagine you are, too,” she wrote. “In the midst of your challenges and searches, I hope you are taking time to find joy in the world. Building and nurturing relationships gives me joy. It might take a while, but you will eventually find people who have your back whether they have the same disability or come from the same culture or not. And maybe there aren’t any solutions or immediate answers to the questions you’re asking. All we can do is discover what or who makes us happy now.”

It was and is a message for young people, for people going through transitions, for people with disabilities, and for people who are learning how to be themselves.

Alice founded the Disability Visibility Project (disabilityvisibilityproject.com), which is an online community that centres and amplifies disability media and culture. She believed that “disabled narratives matter and that they belong to us.” Her goal was to “build online spaces for people to share, organize, and connect,” and to “organize and facilitate events, give presentations, and participate on panels.”

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Next week Tuesday is the first day of the Global 16 Days Campaign, also known as 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. As with many days, weeks, and months, it has been co-opted by various groups, including multilateral entities, whose related activities ignore the roots of the campaign, which are in feminist organizing. It is up to those of us who know better to do better, moving beyond the symbolic orange t-shirts and pins to undertake the change-making work that must be done year-round.

Tuesday, November 25 is also International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (IDEVAW). It is a day to acknowledge that women disproportionately experience gender-based violence. It is not a time for what-aboutism. It is not a time to wring hands about other groups of people and their particular experiences. It is a day to face reality: women experience gender-based violence at an alarming rate, worldwide, in the Caribbean, and in The Bahamas.

The report on the The Bahamas Women’s Health Survey was completed in 2022, and it has yet to be released. At a media briefing, some of the data was shared. One in every four women reported that they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence. More than one in every five women who survived physical and/or sexual violence did not talk to anyone about it. Sixty-five per cent of survivors of physical violence said it was severe (punched, hit with an object, dragged, choked, burned, threatened with a weapon).

Women are experiencing violence at high rates and high levels of severity. Many of them are not reporting to the police or seeking help elsewhere. They are suffering in silence, often hiding the horrific truth. We have built an environment that is unsafe for women in many ways. Violence has been normalized--survivors are often blamed for the violence they experienced-- and it does not seem beneficial to report or even share what is happening with others.

We do not lack awareness. There are data and there are stories that let us know what is happening all around us, and that it does not just happen to certain “kinds” of women. We all know and love women who have experienced gender-based violence, and there are many among us who have not been deemed “safe people,” who would listen and offer support.

The approach to the issue of violence against women is ineffective. It does not centre the needs of survivors. It does not focus on eliminating stereotypes and systems that produce violence. It does not make use of available data to build coordinated reporting and care systems. It does not reach young people with critical information about consent, bodily autonomy, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, nonviolent communication, or healthy relationships. It does not leverage international human rights mechanisms and the available resources to support systemic change.

As International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women approaches, find ways to:

•  Let people know that you are against violence and you are prepared to support women who have experienced violence.

•  Engage with your Member of Parliament or any candidate or party that wants your vote, applying pressure for them to articulate a plan to end gender-based violence against women.

•  Talk to the young people in your life about healthy relationships, red flags in relationships, consent, and nonviolent communication.

•  Pressure the current government administration to publish the report on The Bahamas Women’s Health Survey and to implement the comprehensive care model.

•  Push back against harmful gender stereotypes whenever and wherever you see them, including at home, in the workplace, and in social settings.

Recommendations

1.    Genocide Bad by Sim Kern. Publisher notes: “Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda in 10 unapologetic essays. Drawing connections between Biblical promises and exploding pagers, medieval dress codes and modern-day apartheid, Kern sketches a sweeping history of imperialism with a characteristic blend of far-ranging research, pop-culture insights, and scathing humour.” Feminist Book Club, hosted by Equality Bahamas and Poinciana Paper Press is reading Genocide Bad this month, and meeting to discuss it on Wednesday, November 19 at 6pm. Register: tiny.cc/fbc2025 

2.    Global 16 Days Campaign. This campaign, to focus on ending gender-based violence, begins on November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) and December 10 (Human Rights Day). Equality Bahamas is hosting its annual series of events during the campaign, and the full lineup is available at Lu.ma/16days25.

Events include a discussion about memory and reparations with The Bahamas National Reparations Committee Chair Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean on November 26 at 6pm, the screening of “Two Faced: Gender Inequality in The Bahamas” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas on November 27 at 6pm, and an erasure poetry workshop with Sonia Farmer at Poinciana Paper Press on Parkgate Road on December 6 at 9:30am. All events are free and open to the public.