🌱 You Belong
How Elders and Disabled People Build the Future With Us
Let’s say this out loud:
Being disabled is not a deficit.
Being old is not a liability.
You are not a burden.
You are the bones of the village.
You do not have to “keep up” with the fastest. You do not have to “get better” to be worthy. You do not have to prove your productivity to earn rest, safety, or home.
And if anyone told you otherwise — they lied.
Because our movements die without you.
And our communities fall apart without your anchoring presence.
🌿 If You Are Disabled
You may not be able to dig trenches.
But you see things others miss.
You may not speak in a way others expect.
But your perception is deeper than language.
You may have pain, fatigue, or mobility shifts.
But you know how to pace — and we need that now more than ever.
Here’s how your presence contributes:
🛠️ Designing accessible systems from the ground up — not as an afterthought.
🧭 Sensing danger early, because your body knows the margins and the signals most people overlook.
📚 Teaching care, interdependence, and patience to those who’ve only known grind culture.
🧶 Crafting, coding, organizing, remembering, documenting — often from bed, often with quiet magic.
💌 Holding space for those who are breaking. You see them. Because you’ve broken and rebuilt too.
You slow down time. You remind us that the earth spins just fine without rush.
🍂 If You Are an Elder
You carry stories.
You carry grief we haven’t earned yet.
You carry a body that’s adapted, adjusted, and survived.
You know survival recipes others will think they invented.
And even if the State sees you as a cost on a spreadsheet, we don’t.
We see you as an infrastructure of memory.
Here’s how you lead us:
🧭 Warning when we’re repeating mistakes.
🔥 Blessing us when we resist systems you once couldn’t.
📜 Transmitting oral histories of resistance, healing, migration, and survival.
🪨 Grounding younger people who are spinning out in panic or novelty.
✊🏾 Showing up in radical ways, even if it’s through presence alone.
You don’t need to farm, or march, or debate on a stage.
You being here is enough. You’ve earned rest and relevance.
💡 Let’s Flip the Script
Capitalism says: “If you can’t produce, you’re worthless.”
Ableism says: “If you’re different, you’re broken.”
Ageism says: “If you’re not young, you’re obsolete.”
We say: Lies. All of it.
In Freedom Village — and in any liberation-centered space worth building — we don’t want to just accommodate you. We want to be shaped by you.
We want you in the circle. In the decision-making. In the design process. In the healing rooms. In the joyful chaos of imperfect community.
🛠️ How You Can Contribute, Right Now
These are just a few of the ways elders and disabled folks are already helping build our sanctuary:
Hosting quiet story hours for children in the evenings.
Sharing medicinal knowledge from a chair in the shade.
Sewing patches onto jackets and mending gear with care.
Designing sensory-friendly spaces from lived experience.
Listening to the people no one else listens to.
Reminding us of when it’s time to pause, grieve, or celebrate.
Some days, you’ll do a lot.
Some days, you’ll just exist.
Both are enough.
📣 To Those Feeling Left Behind
If you’ve been told:
“You’re too sick to matter.”
“You’re too old to fight.”
“You’re too broken to build.”
Let me tell you the truth:
You are the revolution’s compass.
Without you, we wander. With you, we root.
If you are disabled, you are welcome.
If you are aging, you are needed.
If you are both — you are sacred.
🧡 In deep gratitude,
Carmen