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 folks. Over her existence, this pioneer within the incapacity justice motion additionally advocated for honest remedy of folks of colour, those that are transgender and gender-nonconforming, and folks with out housing.
As a part of its Asian Pacific American Heritage Month birthday party, Google is honoring the Korean American activist with a Doodle on Thursday — Milbern’s thirty fifth birthday and the second one anniversary of her dying. Thursday could also be International Accessibility Consciousness Day, which promotes virtual accessibility and inclusion for folks with all disabilities.
Milbern was once born in 1987 with congenital muscular dystrophy at a US Military health center in Seoul to a white father and Korean mom. Rising up, she embraced and celebrated components of her identification that stood out in an evangelical Christian circle of relatives in North Carolina, particularly her sexuality.
She penned poetry and wrote about incapacity problems on a non-public weblog during which she described herself as “simply your on a regular basis queer disabled corean lady dwelling within the south.” She may stroll as a tender lady however ultimately started the usage of a wheelchair, which resulted in her greater incapacity consciousness and activism.
Milbern started serving on incapacity rights commissions whilst in her teenagers and was once instrumental in serving to go a North Carolina legislation in 2007 requiring that incapacity historical past curriculum study in faculties. She criticized Jerry Lewis’ annual muscular dystrophy telethon as categorizing “disabled folks as not anything greater than the items of pity.”
At 24, she moved to the San Francisco Bay House, a area central to the incapacity rights motion. She endured to be energetic within the motion, with a different center of attention on securing well being take care of folks with disabilities. In 2017, she protested proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federally funded program that equipped in-home attendants and allowed her to continue to exist her personal.
When Pacific Gasoline & Electrical close down energy to hundreds of houses based on the 2019 California wildfires, Milbern helped release a grassroots marketing campaign to offer vital assist to folks with disabilities suffering from the blackouts equivalent to sharing crowdsourced survival knowledge and making connections to rides and housing. In early 2020, because the coronavirus pandemic ramped up, she was once understanding of her Oakland domestic with the Incapacity Justice Tradition Membership, a company she helped create, to distribute home made disease-prevention kits to the homeless.
Whilst operating at the kits, Milbern realized that surgical procedure to take away her fast-growing kidney most cancers have been postponed because of shelter-in-place orders. She died 3 months later, on her thirty third birthday, on account of surgical headaches.
