Crip Coffee Break: Know Your Rights
Date / Time
February 5, 2025
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Categories
The Disability Cultural Center’s Crip Coffee Break is a chill and comfy space to meet people and take a break. Come as you are! We’ll put on a pot of coffee and we will have snacks as well as tea and hot chocolate. Different meetings have different ways for us to hang out together, but we’ll let the conversation be guided by what’s going on in our lives or what’s on our minds. This is an intentional space for people with disabilities (and people thinking through their relationship to disability identity) to build community.
Wednesdays at 3 p.m.
- Feb. 4: Know Your Rights: Our Rights, ICE and Community Care
- Feb. 12: Conversation Hour: Dating While Disabled
- Feb. 19: Get Crafty: Origami and Wishing Stars
- Feb. 26: Make Your Own Fidget (supplies provided)
Audience note: Crip Coffee Break is an intentional space for people who are disabled or who are exploring their own relationship to disability identity. We define disability and disability experience broadly to include any kind of body or mind that doesn’t fit into cultural norms about what a body and mind should be and do. This can include physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, psychological disabilities and/or mental health conditions, traumatic brain injury, chronic illness and chronic pain. It can include Crohn’s disease, dyslexia and neurodivergence. We welcome those in our community who think they may have a disability but aren’t sure. Whether you have an official diagnosis or not, this space is yours.
We ask that people without disabilities respect that this is an intentional space for disabled people to build community with one another.
Wondering about the word “crip”? “Crip” is a reclaiming of the insult “cripple.” As UIC professor Carrie Sandahl explains, it “has expanded to include not only those with physical impairments, but those with sensory or mental impairments as well.” It is, to quote writer Eli Clare, a “cousin” to the term “queer:” “words to shock, words to infuse with pride and self-love, words to resist internalized hatred, words to help forge a politics.” We’re using “crip” here as an invitation to community, one built around questioning ableist norms, sharing our lived experiences and cross-disability solidarity.
Covid safety: UIC does not require masking, but we are still masking in our spaces as an accessibility measure for chronically ill/immunocompromised people and those living interdependently with them. Please wear a mask! We’ll have extras on hand. (If masking conflicts with your access needs, please get in touch. We can work something out.) People may be sipping or eating and then replacing their masks. Zoom is another Covid-cautious option. See Zoom information below.
Access information: Some of these gatherings will have CART captions, but not all. Please reach out to the Disability Cultural Center to learn more. The center is located on the 2nd floor, which is accessible by elevator. We use fragrance-free products in the center, but UIC is not a fragrance-free campus. To maintain a low-fragrance environment, please refrain from wearing scents to our events. Let us know about any other access requests at dcc@uic.edu or 312-355-7050.
Zoom information:
Topic: DCC Zoom (Virtual Hangout Space)
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 871 5466 0022
Passcode: V94zKhvp