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Quote by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

“I want to start to dream about what transformative justice looks like when someone who causes harm is disabled. I want there to be something - anything - that isn't ableist written about the intersections of neurodivergence or psych disabilities and being someone who's caused harm. Right now, if someone talks about how our psych disabilities or neurodiversity are intertwined in some way with how we've caused harm, either people fall into apologism: "they have psych disabilities, you can't blame them," or we're seen as monsters: "they have THAT disorder, they're toxic, stay away from them." Mostly, it's the latter, and the ableist demonization of people with psych disabilities as killers and monsters leaves no room for us to really talk about what happens when we are Mad and might cause harm. I want something else. I want anti-ableist forms of accountability that don't throw disabled people who cause harm under the bus, into every stereotype about "crazed autistic"/"psychotic"/"multiple personalities abusive killers." Instead, I want us to create accountability recommendations that are accessible to our disabilities and neurodivergence.”

Quote by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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“A long mile southeast of the village of Glenarm, on the Antrim Coast Road, in the province of Ulster, there stands by the sea a monument to grief. . . .It is a natural formation of stacked limestone boulders, something like an archway, with a large aperture near its center. A local landmark, it's known as the Madman's Window. This is the story I have heard: Long ago, a woman died at sea, in the waters onto which the window gives view. There was a man who loved her, who would not accept that she was dead. From the day she went missing until his own death, he gazed through that stony window every day, hoping he would catch sight of her out there on the sea, alive, alive and calling for him. And when he saw her, he would jump into those cold waters, and bring her back to shore, back to him. It was against reason, an act of wishful thinking. An act of grief wanting to be something other than grief. There were many deaths at sea in this part of the world. Everyone else knew that the woman he loved was dead, and they believed he had gone mad. If he was a madman, it is because loss had led him to despair. It is because without the one he loved, he could not be whole, could not even imagine it. Because grief, I know can drive us mad.”

“Faced with growing dissent, he turned the boat around, heading back the way they had come. One marine began to go mad, laughing hysterically, until he slumped over in silence, dead. Another man died shortly after, and then another. Their bodies were tossed into the sea. It took the surviving party close to two weeks to retrace its path, only to then realize that they had found the strait [of Magellan] all along. Now they had to start east all over again.”