Mia Mingus


Mia Mingus is an American writer, educator, and community organizer who focuses on issues of disability justice. She is noted for introducing the concept of and coining the term "access intimacy" and urges disability studies and activism to centralize the experiences of marginalized people within disability organizing.

Career

Mingus' approach to disability justice focuses on dismantling privilege; “We don’t want to simply join the ranks of the privileged; we want to dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them”
She is especially well-known for her work on 'collective access.' Collective access emphasizes how disability interacts with other aspects of an individual's identities, making disability justice activism necessarily intertwined with anti-racist, feminist, reproductive justice, queer, and prison abolitionist activism. Emphasizing solidarity between movements, collective access focuses on community-supported access and mutual independence instead of individualized specific accommodations.
Mingus has given many keynote addresses at national events, including: the Femmes of Color Symposium in Oakland, CA in 2011, Queer and Asian conference in 2013, and Disability Intersectionality Summit in 2018.

Accolades

Mingus was born in Korea and adopted as an infant. She is a transracial adoptee, raised by white parents and raised on St. Croix. Mingus is queer.