Good evening everyone, I am Lateef McLeod, a grad student in the anthropology and social change

doctoral program at California Institute for Inteneral Studies and the Vice President of the

lead committee for the International Society for Augmented of an Alternative Communication.

I am a black man with a button up shirt, beard and a fade. I am here today to address the issue

of COVID-19 and disability justice. If you give it preliminary look at both of these subjects,

you would say that the two was pulling society in two opposite directions. There is COVID-19,

a ruthless and deadly pandemic, who is mercilessly killing our loved ones, especially our disabled

folks, poor and black and brown people of color that in our communities. The virus is revealing how

stark and harsh our hierarchies are in this society and the hardlessness in which our society deals

with the most vulnerable in society. Then there is disability justice, which is a practice that

advocates for a community where those that the society marginalized are the center of our movements.

Through the words of Alice Wong, disability justice professes that access is love and is advocating

for a world in which everyone has what they need to live is sustainable and full of filled life in a

community that they choose. Now if you just blipstack the news in the last month, you have seen how

hard this country has handled the COVID-19 crisis in the last month. Currently, there is still a

lack of testing to determine who has the virus in need medical care. There are medical providers who

are caring for the sick without proper personal protection equipment, PPE. There are people with

disabilities who are in danger of being denied care because doctors might prioritize the care

of enabled body people over them. People with complex communication needs that they had before COVID-19

or because COVID-19 are having child care providers so that they could help direct their care.

Also, in this country, there is not a unified message among our governmental leadership as to whether to

open back up the country or to keep the shelter and place ordinances intact, which leaves Americans

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