Chicago Disability Day of Mourning Vigil 2025: Mourn the Dead, Fight for the Living

Please join us on Friday, Feb. 28, for the Chicago Disability Day of Mourning Vigil. Our theme for this year is Mourn the Dead, Fight for the Living.

Every year, communities across the country and around the world join together for the Disability Day of Mourning, a community vigil that honors the lives of people with disabilities killed by their families and caregivers. The disability community comes together in remembrance, to share hope for the future and to offer support.
Friday, Feb. 28
5-7 p.m.

In-person vigil at the UIC Disability Cultural Center, Room 231 Behavioral Sciences Building, 1007 W. Harrison St. Online vigil via Zoom.

Nondisabled allies, family members and friends are welcome to join.

Event flow (what to expect):

• Welcome and background about the Disability Day of Mourning.
• Reading the names for 2024-25: people with disabilities who were killed by their caregivers, people with disabilities who have been killed by the police and disability community members who passed away.
• Time for attendees to share thoughts, reflections, poems, etc.
• Plugging in to the fight: Access Living’s organizing efforts and other ways to get involved.

COVID-19 safety and accessibility:
UIC does not require masking, but we are still masking in our spaces and at our events to make them more accessible for chronically ill/immunocompromised folks and people who live with them. If it’s accessible for you, please wear a mask! We’ll have extras on hand.

The vigil will be held in the UIC DCC, which is on the 2nd floor and accessible by elevator. The building has men’s, women’s and all-gender bathrooms with stalls that have grab bars but are not large. There is a large, single-user ADA restroom on the first floor of the building.
We will offer a separate quiet space for decompressing as needed.
We will have CART captions and ASL. The ASL interpreter will be on site with a dedicated camera logged into Zoom.

The DCC uses fragrance-free cleaning supplies, but UIC is not a fragrance-free campus. Please refrain from wearing scented products, such as scented lotion, perfume and cologne.

If you have other access requests or questions, email dcc@uic.edu.

This event is a collaboration between the Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition, the UIC Disability Cultural Center, the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at Northwestern University, Access Living, the Coalition of Autistic and Neurodivergent Students, the UIC Institute on Disability and Human Development, and the Autism Society of Greater Chicago.