Category: Sourced From The Soil: Updates & Upcoming Events

If you’re not already caught up, now is the perfect time to press play on Disability Inclusion Required! Hosted monthly by Justice, the most recent episode of the show features an extraordinary conversation with Cara Page and Erica Woodland, co-authors of Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care & Safety.

The conversation explores the principles of healing justice and its connections to disability justice, highlighting the importance of collective care and the need to challenge individualistic and curative models of care that perpetuate harm and oppression. Cara, Erica and Justice discuss how care practices observed by communities of color have been criminalized, and they provide examples of how funders can intervene to support collective trauma transformation.

Listen in as they also address the challenges of adopting an anti-capitalist practice within the philanthropic sector and the deep connections between anti-blackness, the medical industrial complex, and the prison industrial complex. Together they dream of a future where healing can find interdependence, focus on freedom, transform oppression, and free our hearts and minds. 

Click Here to Listen Now!

The Black Lives Matter  Reference Handbook Is Out And It Includes A Personal Essay from Justice 

This multifaceted reference handbook surveys the history, development, leadership, and priorities of Black Lives Matter (BLM), including the group’s efforts to raise public awareness of police violence in communities of color.

Beginning with the infamous incidents of police brutality that spurred the creation and growth of BLM, this book goes on to profile leading and influential activists and organizations, such as the NAACP, movement co-founder Alicia Garza, and civil rights activist and athlete Colin Kaepernick.

A broad range of personal essays explore the persistent problems of police violence and racial discrimination in America.

Click here to purchase the handbook

Read Justice’s Contributed Essay Here

SeededGround, the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies & June Kailes recently released The Roadmap: Making Transit Evacuations Real for People with Disabilities!

Buckle up, the Roadmap boldly positions people with disabilities in the driver seat! Throughout this new  informative resource, you will discover creative emergency approaches and eyewitness accounts from some of the nation’s leading thinkers, attorneys, advocates and researchers. The Roadmap is for anyone ready to explore new routes for equitable evacuations. It is written in honor of the progress people with disabilities have led and in hope of the dignified future we all deserve.

The Roadmap includes a  clear view of the current landscape of inclusive evacuations. It reviews current data concerns and assesses pervasive problems peppered throughout evacuation plans/practices. Readers will find extensive examples from Think Tank attendees regarding considerations that are consistently absent or insufficient within emergency evacuation plans.

Click here to download an accessible PDF of the roadmap.

Explore the new Portraits & Portals website to check out all of the artwork premiered this summer! The series will also ideally be on display via a pop-up exhibition near you next year!

This artistic initiative was designed to illustrate the impact of disasters and crises on people of color with disabilities. The project paired 9 disabled artists/creatives of color with 9 disabled disaster survivors of color to amplify issues at the intersection of Disaster Justice, Disability Justice and Racial Justice issues. Together, their creative collaborations transform lived experiences into works of art, including visual art, poetry, and music.

Our people deserve to live into a future framed by the truth of what we’ve endured and the joy of what we’re brave enough to imagine.

Sign up to host the exhibit at your college or in your community/city during the 2026 mobile exhibition.

Greetings Everyone,

This message serves as a formal invitation  to the World Premiere of Portraits & Portals on August 27^th from  2:00pm-4:00pm EST! SeededGround & The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies welcome you to join us for this stunning virtual showcase of disabled talent and truth-telling about the impact of disasters on people of color with disabilities.

Registration

You can click here to register.

Description

Portraits & Portals is an artistic initiative designed to illustrate the impact of disasters and crises on people of color with disabilities. The project paired 9 disabled artists/creatives of color with 9 disabled disaster survivors of color to amplify issues at the intersection of Disaster Justice, Disability Justice and Racial Justice issues. Together, their creative collaborations transform lived experiences into works of art, including visual art, poetry, and music.

Now the time has arrived for us to virtually gather as we reveal final artworks, engage with the storytellers/artists behind each piece and to share creative space with Crip community.

Help Us Spread The Word

You can help us promote the premiere by posting about the event via social media or by passing on this email to others who might also wish to attend. You can click here to access our Media Toolkit with several pre-designed social media posts along with relevant alt text. 

Accommodations

This event will have the following language access provided:

– American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation

– Spanish interpretation

– French interpretation

– Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) captioning in English

For additional accommodations, email Priya@disasterstrategies.org by 8/13.

SeededGround began working with the Movement for Black Lives in the fall of 2024. For nearly a year our teams collaborated to lovingly weave Liberatory Access throughout all of M4BL’s 10^th Anniversary Commemorative Events. Check out Justice’s remarks about the power of Black people with disabilities on July 26^th during the commemorative ceremony in Cleaveland Ohio.  

SeededGround has join forces with the Disability & Philanthropy Forum (DPF) to soon facilitate a learning institute on Climate Change & Disability Justice. Slated for November, this institute will bring together leaders in the climate and disability justice space.  

The 2-day convening will focus on three key areas:

1. The impact of climate change and the work of disabled activists to mitigate it.
2. The future of disability-inclusive climate justice work and how to build resilience.
3. What philanthropy can do to support the disability community in fighting climate change.

~As defined by the DPF coordinating team.

Click here to learn more about the institute and how to get involved.

SeededGround is so proud to release EMprints, a new series with over 20 free Disaster Justice themed coloring pages, activity pages & journal pages!

Justice curated EMprints because preparedness doesn’t need to be petrifying. Fear is real, but so is our fortitude. Come color, journal and get activated!

We are all living through concurrent crises right now. Crises that are incredibly stressful, so we created something beautiful to help our people engage emergencies from positions of collective power and possibility. The series is intentionally composed of illustrations and contributions from disabled artists and advocates.

In EMprints, people of color with disabilities are the central motivation behind every coloring page, activity page  and journal page. We refuse to be relegated to the margins of emergency management.

Despite how often it is said post-disaster, our communities have never been “blank pages” or “blank slates”. Our neighborhoods and our people have always been valuable, vibrant, visionary and bursting with color.

Pass On the Pages!
Please help us promote this new resource to our people. Adapt any of the messaging above to share via social media posts. Don’t forget to tag @JusticeShorter1 on X, Justine Justice Shorter on LinkedIn  and be sure to use the hashtag EMprints! Or, print and pass along the pages. Each downloadable page includes a QR code that leads back to the entire online series.

Keep This Work Going
You can also sign up directly on the EMprints page to financially sponsor future editions. This project is a love offering and was fully produced with no external funding. To keep it going, we will need your support.

 Justice is so excited to present at Get Free: A Black Feminist Reunion in New Orleans! Justice will lead a workshop session titled Unpacking the Black feminist disability justice framework on Friday June 6, 2025.

The workshop will be a part of the Consciousness Building track at the Intro Level. The Consciousness building track focuses on content that helps to develop and deepen the Black feminist analysis, critical thinking of selves, society, and community. This nerd out track helps participants to get into the canon of Black feminist terms, definitions, and more. The Intro Level is designed for new learners, early activists, and curious individuals who want to understand the fundamentals.

What is Get Free?  

“In 1973, the historic National Black Women’s Organization conference was a turning point toward unapologetic Black feminist organizing and movement building. Over 50 years later, in the tradition of Black feminist organizers before us, Black Feminist Future calls Black feminists from across the country to Get Free: A Black Feminist Reunion in New Orleans, LA. Get Free is the largest Black feminist convening in the US and is a space for our people to joyfully connect, build skills, and raise consciousness.”

~As excerpted from the event website.

Click here to learn more about this incredible gathering! While you’re there, explore and support Black Feminist Future, the powerful organizational force  behind Get Free!

After months of meticulous preparation, this February SeededGround successfully facilitated two  national Think Tank sessions on making transit evacuations real for people with disabilities. Coordinated in collaboration with the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies and June Isaacson Kailes, sessions were comprised of over 20 seasoned  experts in disability policy, emergency management, transportation and urban planning. And we didn’t stop there! A remarkable new 21-page Roadmap has resulted from these rich and robust discussions.

Personally authored by Justice Shorter, the Roadmap is a stunning summary of reflections, report outs and recommendations. Over 200 pages of transcribed material/ nine hours of cumulative recorded discussions with nearly two dozen participants, were rigorously analyzed, synthesized and summarized to create this new resource. Navigational notes, which are context clues provided by session attendees, are also embedded throughout for greater clarity and comprehension.

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to our Stay Posted page to receive an alert as soon as the roadmap is released!