If you’re not yet engaged in mutual aid communities in which you are gaining something as you also help other deaf people and other disabled people now is the time.

In our diverse groups, we often think that commonalities override differences. Our deafness is more important than our racial diversity. This is only partly true.

It is important to move beyond our commonalities and to value the differences within and across our communities.

Valuing how we are the same and how we are different is an important mechanism that leads to solidarity. Solidarity is the idea that we are a coherent group because of our similarities and our differences. We are deaf and disabled people who are multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, multimodal.

Deaf and disabled solidarity should be central moving forward in a strange new time, where in the US and across the world, we are once again facing the specter of fascism.

Our major enemies are audism and ableism and those who propel these ideologies, whether intentionally, accidentally, or with malice. While true, we are also concerned about all the other major systems of oppression that create harm separate from audism and ableism, but often connect to it. Racism, xenophobia, homophobia/transphobia, misogyny/misandry, linguisticism, and more. While our enemy ideologies have built a coherent system of coordinated oppression, which is called a hegemony, we need to devise community-based solutions that are able to undermine and destroy hegemony.

We should not engage with political sectarianism, however. It is critical that we understand that the differences that exist within communities and across sub communities, matter. Far from being a weakness, our differences are our strength.

While it is usually thought that commonalities are the source of community, it is the differences that exist alongside our commonalities that in fact create our community—a collaborative potential for work and life, in which each person is contributing something that matters to them, and at the macro-scale and given a critical mass, while we all contribute what we can we create our own coherence.

Differences between deaf and disabled communities, likewise matter. We should not pretend that disability and deaf experiences are the same thing. They differ, even if they share some overarching themes.

As we build a counter-fascist movement, we can be effective coalition-builders across our differences, with the recognition that our similarities also contribute strength and shared purpose to solve the issues arising in the contemporary political field we are enmeshed in.

If you are not yet engaged in mutual aid communities or networks, start now. This entails that we are able to work as a common movement working in solidarity by recognizing shared goals, shared methods and shared purposes meanwhile, not only accepting and tolerating but embracing the many differences within our diverse communities. Mutual aid networks should start small and grow slowly. The first thing you can do is reach out to your people; check in with them, see what they are doing, what they are experiencing, feeling, or thinking. Ask genuine questions about what they need, and if you can, help. Likewise, explain to them what you are doing, thinking, feeling, or experiencing. Talk about what you need, too. There is a high likelihood that within the networks you are already engaged in, there are people who can help you with your problems, and likewise, you can help them solve theirs.

The diversity and inherent differences within our deaf communities is important to understand and recognize. For instance, deaf and queer communities differ in important ways from deaf and Indigenous communities; deaf and indigenous community needs may differ from the needs of Blackdeaf communities, whose needs again may differ based on geography and local political climate.

However, last we be misunderstood, there are far more differences than similarities. And both are sources of strength that can unite us, working toward common purposes. That which divides us internally can be a source of strength, as it creates a space where actual diversity exists. Both similarities and differences across communities are what give us our most potent forms of power.

Now is the time for unabashed socio-political radicalism in deaf communities, in disabled communities. Not only should we strive for radical aspirational politics, for some distant future, but we can and should apply socio-political radicalism in the broad strategies and tactics that we employ in our day to day lives.

One of the most important things we can do today—right now—is simple. Reach out to people in our communities. In the face of fear in the face of hegemonic fascism, we must not despair.

Instead, let us project an ethos of optimism and inspiration. Let us laugh at the danger, let us smile as we work in shared purpose. Now is the time.

Join left hands with us.