“And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable… is also the source of our greatest strength” -Audre Lorde
Mia Mingus is a queer physically disabled woman of color, korean transracial and transnational adoptee writer, organizer and community builder. She was raised in St. Croix, USVI, lived 12 years in Atlanta, Georgia and currently lives in Oakland, California. Through her work on disability justice, reproductive justice, queer liberation, and transformative justice; she recognizes the urgency and barriers for oppressed communities to work together and build alliances for liberation. She believes in building community and queer family, healing and transformation. She knows that love, care and how we treat each other (including ourselves) are political. She loves fried foods, bulldog puppies and the ocean.
As her work for liberation evolves and deepens, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence.
Mia is currently working at generationFIVE, an organization working to end child sexual abuse within five generations. At gen5, she is working to create transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse that do not rely on the state (i.e. police, prisons, the criminal legal system) and actively cultivate community safety, resiliency and healing. She was a co-founder and Co-Director of SPARK Reproductive Justice Now, in Atlanta, GA for 6 years. She was a member of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative for 4 years. In 2010, she was part of Creating Collective Access in Detroit to create collective access for disabled and sick activists attending the Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum. For more than a week, she and 23 disabled/sick people and non-disabled comrades collectively worked to create cross-disability accessible space. She is part of the on-going experiential project, To the Other Side of Dreaming, documenting her journey through letters and videos.
Mia was a 2005 New Voices Fellow, was named one of the Advocate’s 40 Under 40 in 2010, one of the 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30 in 2009 by Angry Asian Man, and one of Campus Pride’s Top 25 LGBT Favorite speakers for their 2009 and 2010 HOT LIST. Mia was honored with the 2008 Creating Change Award by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a community activist award for her “dedication and steadfast activism” in 2007 by ZAMI.
Mia has spoken at countless campuses, conferences, and events some of which include:
The Gender and Sexuality Plenary for the first United States Social Forum, the Ms. Foundation, the National Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Alliance conference, Northern Illinois University, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change Conference, the 2009 Pride Week Keynote at UC Davis, the 19th Annual UCLGBTQIA Western Regional Conference, SisterSong’s Let’s Talk About Sex National Conference, the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Third Annual Women of Color Conference, the Making Money Making Change Conference, the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault‘s Campus Winter 2010 Training and Technical Assistance Institute, the 2010 Midwest Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Ally College Conference (MBLGTACC) conference, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Guilford College, UC Riverside, the Regional Sexual and Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Conference, the Femme of Color Symposium, University of New Hampshire, and CLPP’s From Abortion Rights to Social Justice conference.
