We are very sad that Stacey Park died. Stacey died after surgery on May 19th, 2020. It was her 33rd birthday.
Stacey was from North Carolina. She was a part of the North Carolina Statewide Independent Living Council (SILC). She was an American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) intern in the past. She moved to the Bay Area in 2010. She was a big part of disability activism there. She helped to create the Disability Justice Culture Club. Disability Justice Culture Club helps disabled people and other marginalized people during emergencies. She helped people when PG&E shut off the power in a lot of parts of the Bay Area in 2019. She also helped people during the spread of COVID-19 that is happening right now. Stacey advocated for people who were treated differently because of things like the color of their skin, the country they came from, who they were sexually attracted to, and their gender. Stacey loved to work on disability justice because she was a queer disabled woman of color.
Stacey was a leader in the National Youth Leadership Network, which doesn’t exist anymore. A lot of young disabled activists learned from Stacey. She won NCIL’s Diana Viets Memorial Award in 2006. She led outreach activities for the movie Crip Camp with Andraéa LaVant. Andraea is also a disabled woman of color.
Stacey told organizations how to help disabled people who aren’t privileged in a lot of ways. She helped a lot of organizations, including NCIL. We’ve done a lot of work in the past few months trying to make sure disabled people of color feel welcomed in NCIL. We couldn’t have done that without Stacey.
A lot of people in the disability community will miss Stacey. NCIL will miss Stacey too. We are thinking of everyone who learned from Stacey’s life and work.
