(TW for violence against the disabled.)

I was in Sweden when the news broke about the brutal murder of 19 disabled people in Sagamihara, Japan. I was without internet for much of my time, and so my reaction has been on a delayed schedule. (Still don’t know what happened? The media has been quiet. Here are news articles. Serious TW for all: BBC Coverage New York Times Coverage )

Until this morning, all I could feel was a numbness, a chill to my spine. The hackles on the back of my neck raised every time I saw a photo of their killer’s face.

Sagamihara terrified me into silence, because I couldn’t find the words to say why it frightens me.

I will not write his name here, because the names of the dead are also not being given, and I will not give him an identity when their deaths are only known by their number.

He murdered disabled people, and yet for the last week and a half, my twitter timeline has only seen my fellow disabled people mourn their loss. Only those able bodied persons who are intrinsically attached to my community have been speaking out, have been as horrified as those of us who live with canes, and wheelchairs.

19 deaths.

19.

No words.

Is it because you believe 19 disabled bodies don’t matter? Is it because you secretly believe that a disabled life is worth less than an abled one?

I expect better from my activist circles. I expect better from my liberal, progressive, supposedly ally friends and communities.

The silence isn’t deafening. I’m drowning in it. It is swallowing me, and others, and we see your silence as a condemnation of our own lives.

Start talking about our lives mattering. Start talking about our voices, our contributions, the things that make our lives beautiful and worthy. Because right now all I see are a whole lot of people not acknowledging the horror of a person who walked into a home for disabled people, where he used to work, and stabbed them because he believed that a revolution needs to take place and the disabled must be euthanized.

This isn’t “crazy talk”, this isn’t “the ravings of a madman”, this is the logic of a murderer who believed what he did to his victims was right, and good, and what society needed to become better.

Because we do not contribute to the world in his eyes. We are black holes of productivity to him, not worthy of living our best lives.

And so he took them from 19 people.

Because they were disabled.

Don’t let this stand.  Call this what it was, a hate crime, and stand against it as you would any other.  Let me hear you. Make them hear you.

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