Denton Organizers Are Honoring Disabled Pride Month with Events Throughout July

While June celebrations of LGBTQ+ Pride have become more prominent, few outside of the disability community may know that July is Disability Pride Month.

Disability Pride began as a single-day celebration on July 26, 1990, to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It has since expanded into month-long recognition across the nation. Here in North Texas, Denton is hosting a series of events throughout the month to uplift, support and celebrate the disabled community.

Kat Waddell and Emily Cavender, Denton’s self-proclaimed “Accessibility Karens,” have worked together to form Denton Disabled Pride by planning the majority of the July events.

Starting Friday, July 11, The Artists’ Grove, a multi-use space, will have a Disability Pride art gallery on view through the end of the month. Visitors can expect a variety of artistic pieces and forms of expression housed within the Grove’s queer-owned tattoo parlor and art gallery. To celebrate the exhibition’s opening, The Bearded Monk will offer a spoken word and poetry open mic beginning at 7:00 p.m. The event will also be live-streamed with closed captions on Denton Disabled Pride’s Instagram.

The following evening, the Invisibly Visible Fashion Show will showcase 12 of Cavender’s wearable pieces at Bramblitt’s Yellow Dog Art Bar & Gallery, a craft cocktail and mocktail bar owned by blind muralist John Bramblitt. Cavender, a fiber artist and recent UNT graduate living with multiple disabilities, has been designing the collection for over a year. She hopes the fashion show will help audience members better understand invisible disabilities.

“I’m really grateful that I have art,” she tells us. “It says things that aren’t always understood abstractly.”

According to the Invisible Disabilities Association, these types of disabilities are “a physical, mental or neurological condition that is not visible from the outside, yet can limit or challenge a person’s movements, senses, or activities."

“Making all these pieces wearable is for the sole purpose of visualizing and making these disabilities, these feelings [and] this pain, understandable,” Cavender says. 

With accessibility in mind, ASL interpretation will be a part of the show, and Cavender is hoping to provide a livestream option so viewers can enjoy a front-row seat from home.

Events will also offer opportunities to share the struggles of living in a largely inaccessible world. The Thunder & Lightning Poetry Collective, which uplifts disabled queer and disabled BIPOC creatives, is hosting a virtual open mic on Sunday, July 13, at 6:00 pm. For Thunder & Lightning founder Valois Vera, Disability Pride provides moments “to reflect, to celebrate, to mourn and to be with one another.” He believes that providing spaces for vulnerability and authenticity empowers people to share their stories to create a rich experience for both the performers and the audience.

“It’s empowerment," he says. "It’s being your true and authentic self.”

At birth, doctors estimated he would only live to be about 5 years old due to the severity of his disabilities. Now 57, Vera knows that his poetry will be a legacy left behind to document his life. Vera isn't alone in that experience. Many individuals with disabilities must often confront their mortality and plan for end-of-life care at a younger age than those without disabilities.

“Poetry will outlast everyone,” Vera says, as he describes the experience of “living on borrowed time.”

What's more, Waddell and Cavender’s final event of the month is a virtual worship called Disabled End of Life, a discussion that will take place on Wednesday, July 23. Britna Savarese, also known as The Dallas Death Doula, will lead the workshop to help individuals plan their ideal death with advance care planning, emotional support, holistic comfort care and more.

Updates and details for this month's events can be found on Denton Disabled Pride's Instagram.