Stacey Park Milbern, who died two years in the past on her thirty third birthday, is remembered as a dynamic chief with a knack for organizing individuals. Over her life, this pioneer within the incapacity justice motion additionally advocated for honest therapy of individuals of coloration, those that are transgender and gender-nonconforming, and folks with out housing.
As a part of its Asian Pacific American Heritage Month celebration, Google is honoring the Korean American activist with a Doodle on Thursday — Milbern’s thirty fifth birthday and the second anniversary of her loss of life. Thursday can also be International Accessibility Consciousness Day, which promotes digital accessibility and inclusion for individuals with all disabilities.
Milbern was born in 1987 with congenital muscular dystrophy at a US Military hospital in Seoul to a white father and Korean mom. Rising up, she embraced and celebrated parts of her id that stood out in an evangelical Christian household in North Carolina, particularly her sexuality.
She penned poetry and wrote about incapacity points on a private weblog through which she described herself as “simply your on a regular basis queer disabled corean lady residing within the south.” She might stroll as a younger lady however ultimately started utilizing a wheelchair, which led to her elevated incapacity consciousness and activism.
Milbern started serving on incapacity rights commissions whereas in her teenagers and was instrumental in serving to cross a North Carolina regulation in 2007 requiring that incapacity historical past curriculum be taught in faculties. She criticized Jerry Lewis’ annual muscular dystrophy telethon as categorizing “disabled individuals as nothing greater than the objects of pity.”
At 24, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Space, a area central to the incapacity rights motion. She continued to be energetic within the motion, with a particular give attention to securing well being look after individuals with disabilities. In 2017, she protested proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federally funded program that offered in-home attendants and allowed her to reside on her personal.
When Pacific Fuel & Electrical shut down energy to 1000’s of properties in response to the 2019 California wildfires, Milbern helped launch a grassroots marketing campaign to supply crucial assist to individuals with disabilities affected by the blackouts corresponding to sharing crowdsourced survival data and making connections to rides and housing. In early 2020, because the coronavirus pandemic ramped up, she was understanding of her Oakland dwelling with the Incapacity Justice Tradition Membership, a corporation she helped create, to distribute selfmade disease-prevention kits to the homeless.
Whereas engaged on the kits, Milbern realized that surgical procedure to take away her fast-growing kidney most cancers had been postponed as a result of shelter-in-place orders. She died three months later, on her thirty third birthday, on account of surgical problems.
