An upcoming literature magazine celebrating our lives and experiences as disabled people, in all the forms that comes in. https://cripplepunksoliloquies.wordpress.com/
Cripplepunk Soliloquies is an upcoming literature magazine centered on the disabled experience. It is inspired by the cripplepunk movement, which began on tumblr in 2014 by Tai Trewhella (aka user @crpl-pnk ).
All of our artists and most of our team are disabled and our goal is both to represent our experiences honestly and accessibly for as many people as possible. The art and writing in this project show the whole spectrum of what makes up disabled life, pain and beauty in one place. We are raising money to cover the costs of publishing. This will be our first edition, and we are planning on releasing in the spring of 2027. Our fundraiser is housed on Ko-fi at this address: https://ko-fi.com/cripplepunksoliloquies
Thank you so much for your support. We're so excited to make this dream a reality.
"Clearly I wasn't talking about disabled people-" yeah part of the problem is that the existence of disabled people just isn't considered in your worldview like that's the problem we're criticizing not a get out of jail free card
Cripplepunk Soliloquies is an upcoming literature magazine centered on the disabled experience. It is inspired by the cripplepunk movement, which began on tumblr in 2014 by Tai Trewhella (aka user @crpl-pnk ).
All of our artists and most of our team are disabled and our goal is both to represent our experiences honestly and accessibly for as many people as possible. The art and writing in this project show the whole spectrum of what makes up disabled life, pain and beauty in one place. We are raising money to cover the costs of publishing. This will be our first edition, and we are planning on releasing in the spring of 2027. Our fundraiser is housed on Ko-fi at this address: https://ko-fi.com/cripplepunksoliloquies
Thank you so much for your support. We're so excited to make this dream a reality.
one of the most frustrating things about being disabled and chronically ill is that everyone around you is allowed to be worried or scared for you. but the second you yourself say you’re worried or scared, suddenly it’s “you can’t be so negative, think positively, you might be totally fine in five years”
but i have to placate everyone when they’re telling me multiple times a day that they’re scared for my health??
Hi, I'm Olivia / Oli! I am a neurodivergent, physically-abled person who's thrilled to be part of this team. Most of my experience is in writing, having majored English & minored in Creative Writing. I am also a self taught artist with a focus on character design. I am slowly working on a novel series where one of my protagonists is a wheelchair user. I am really excited to be part of this team and to help wherever I can.
I’m Crowe, a queer and disabled artist. I have been an artist of some variety all my life, and worked on many projects.
I’m a massive enthusiast of nature and the macabre. Processing grief through art is a major part of my body of work- much of that grief relating to disability and the disabled lived experience.
I’m here for the philosophical and visually represented aspects of expressing the disabled experience through this litmag.
Hello and happy disability pride month!
I’m Aiden and this magazine is my brainchild! Cripplepunk is near and dear to my heart, and for me this project is a love letter to both cripplepunk and to my late love who introduced me to the movement in the first place. As with many disabled creators, my art and writing have been heavily imbued with my experiences with disability and chronic illness. It helps me to cope, to process, and to connect to others.
Aiden (they/he)
this is a found object sculpture i made about my service dog’s early retirement. i have failed many times just trying to find the words, so for now, the art will have to speak for itself.
what i will say is that my service dog is alright. the physical issues causing his retirement are mine, not his. he is in good health and, thankfully, gets to stay with me.
i won’t pretend that everything is okay. i am still mourning the future i had planned for us. but i am grateful that i am in a position where i can make the decision that is best for me and my dog.
We are Nebula, a DeafBlind and disabled DID system. We are an artist, and are slowly figuring out how to create art that honours our changing experience and perception of the world. We are super excited to be involved with Cripplepunk Soliloquies, and are working behind the scenes to ensure everything is accessible to our fellow blind & deafblind creatives.
no, i understand the only way out is through, i know this and i am very familiar with the concept and i have forced myself through and through and through and through, like an arrow to an apple; like a bird to the air. i push myself through mesh and sieve and stormdrain.
i am saying this thing is like stone to me. i am saying i have taken a pickaxe and a plow and a chisel and a spoon to it and i have made no dent or scratch in the surface. i have pushed and pushed, sisyphus beside me, and still my skin gave before the stone could.
i am telling you if there is a passage i do not see or some kind of clever way to thwart this enemy i'll take it. i've been up down and sideways of it, i've whispered to it and cajoled it and sang to it. i have tended to it like a kitten and i've kicked it to the curb. i have exhausted all available avenues and approaches as are available to me. i'll do whatever stupid fetch quest or answer the riddles three. i am standing here and every part of my body hurts and the stone is unmoved. please. if you know how to resolve this, i'm begging you.
I am a neurodivergent, mostly physically-abled person who suffers chronic migraines and other minor pains. I am here to help with admin tasks and tech consultancy, including (but not necessarily limited to) screen reader accessibility and the digital proofing process. The project sorta fell into my lap through a mutual connection to Aiden, who directly asked for my help for my technological expertise.
Cripplepunk Soliloquies is an upcoming literature magazine centered on the disabled experience. It is inspired by the cripplepunk movement, which began on tumblr in 2014 by Tai Trewhella (aka user @crpl-pnk ).
All of our artists and most of our team are disabled and our goal is both to represent our experiences honestly and accessibly for as many people as possible. The art and writing in this project show the whole spectrum of what makes up disabled life, pain and beauty in one place. We are raising money to cover the costs of publishing. This will be our first edition, and we are planning on releasing in the spring of 2027. Our fundraiser is housed on Ko-fi at this address: https://ko-fi.com/cripplepunksoliloquies
Thank you so much for your support. We're so excited to make this dream a reality.
The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.
They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.
Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.
The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.
The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.
By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.
According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.
The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.
Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.
Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.
The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.
She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.
She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.
They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.
The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.
The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.
Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.
In 1977, the government cut the phones. They expected the disability rights 504 sit-in to collapse. It didn't.
The building had no accessible beds. The hot water was shut off. The doors were chained from the outside.
San Francisco in the 1970s was a city built exclusively for the able-bodied. Transit buses had no lifts. Sidewalks had no curb cuts. A wheelchair user could not cross a street independently without finding a driveway. A blind person could not read a public document. A deaf person could not call for an ambulance. Kitty Cone parked her chair inside the regional office of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on a Tuesday. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were actively deteriorating.
She brought file folders, a thick notebook, and an empty bladder.
She had learned logistics in the anti-war movement. She knew how to move people, and she knew how to feed them.
The stakes were housed in a single unsigned document in Washington, D.C. If HEW Secretary Joseph Califano did not sign the operational regulations for Section 504, the law remained a ghost. A state university could legally reject a paraplegic student citing fire hazards. A city hospital could legally refuse to hire a nurse who walked with a cane.
Joseph Califano was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. A cabinet member. Harvard Law graduate. Former aide to Lyndon Johnson. He controlled a budget of billions. He had the full weight of the federal government. On April 5, more than one hundred and fifty people crossed the federal threshold. They arrived with guide dogs, metal crutches, and white canes. They did not shout. They simply took the elevators to the fourth floor, entered the regional director's office, and stayed. Simultaneous protests began in Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, and Washington D.C. Within days, those occupations would starve out and collapse.
San Francisco did not.
Kitty unpacked her notebook. She knew bodies broke down without structural support. At the time, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was already four years old. Section 504 was a single paragraph banning discrimination by any agency receiving federal funds. But as records from the National Archives demonstrate, a law without enforcement guidelines is functionally invisible. The federal government stalled the signing for forty-eight months, citing the financial burden of retrofitting American infrastructure.
The bureaucratic logic was purely economic. Blueprints required money. Elevators carried a heavy cost. The administration drafted a plan to rewrite the rules entirely. They proposed "separate but equal" facilities. Funding a segregated classroom in a basement was significantly cheaper than widening the doors at the local elementary school. The people on the fourth floor demanded the original regulations. No loopholes. No separate facilities.
On day three, the federal guards escalated the pressure. They locked the exterior doors. They stopped allowing outside medical attendants into the building. They shut off the hot water. They disabled the public payphones. The government assumed medical vulnerability would do their eviction work for them. They waited for the bodies to fail. Kitty Cone mapped the survival of one hundred and fifty people on a yellow legal pad. She established a refrigeration system for insulin using a smuggled mini-fridge. When seizure medications ran low, she coordinated rationing protocols with nurses on the outside. She scheduled shifts for personal care attendants, matching those who could lift with those who needed to be turned. The air inside the federal offices grew thick. The smell of unwashed bodies and overflowing portable toilets hung in the narrow hallways. Several protesters developed deep, bleeding bedsores from sleeping on the industrial linoleum.
When the federal guards cut the phone lines, they assumed the communication blackout would break the organizers' morale. The deaf protesters simply moved to the fourth-floor windows. They used sign language to dictate press releases to supporters standing on the plaza below. The supporters translated th signs and handed the statements directly to the local news.
The federal blockade leaked. The Black Panther Party bypassed the guards to deliver hot ribs and fried chicken, publicly stating that disabled liberation was directly tied to Black liberation. The Mayor of San Francisco smuggled in air mattresses and portable shower heads. When the government refused to send representatives to negotiate, the United States Congress held a field hearing inside the occupied building. Representatives George Miller and Phillip Burton sat at a folding table while protesters testified from their sleeping bags.
Kitty stayed on the floor. Her breathing grew increasingly shallow. Her muscles ached continuously from the lack of a proper mattress. She tracked the dwindling supply of sterile catheters.
They cut the phone lines to isolate them. The deaf organizers just signed out the windows. On April 28, Secretary Califano surrendered. He signed the Section 504 regulations exactly as written, discarding the segregated loopholes. The ink dried on a Thursday. It took twenty-four days of sleeping on a federal floor to force the pen. The San Francisco sit-in remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in United States history. Kitty Cone packed up her notebook. The law went into effect. The ramps were poured. The doors were widened. The buses installed lifts.
Kitty Cone packed up her notebook. The law went into effect. The ramps were poured. The doors were widened. The buses installed lifts. She died in 2015. The San Francisco HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. Today, a person in a wheelchair can roll through the front doors of any federal courthouse in the country, take the elevator to the correct floor, and file a legal grievance if the ramp outside is blocked. The paper is signed. The concrete is poured. The elevator still breaks on Tuesdays.
Cripplepunk Soliloquies @cripplepunksoliloquies - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
