Personal life
Mingus self-describes as a "physically disabled, queer Korean transracial and transnational adoptee" and a survivor of child sexual abuse. All of these identities are integral to her work as an activist.Childhood
Mingus was born in Korea and adopted by white parents when she was an infant. She was raised on the island ofEducation
Mingus attended school in the Virgin Islands until she was 17 years old. She then attended Agnes Scott College, an all-women's school in Decatur, Georgia, where she earned her degree in Women's Studies. While volunteering at the National Human for Rights Education Center in high school, Mingus was introduced toCareer
Early career
After graduation, Mingus began her career by working at a feminist bookstore in Atlanta, Charis Books & More. Through Charis, Mingus found an activist community, including a group called Queer Girls, which threw house parties specifically for queer women of color. Later, Mingus worked at Georgians for Choice, an organization associated with the National Abortion Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL). Later, Mingus was accepted to a reproductive justice fellowship in Chicago. She later became the co-director at Georgians for Choice. Mingus also served on the board of SPARK: Reproductive Justice NOW as the co-founder and co-leader. Mingus was a part of numerous national coalitions such as Causes in Common, which focused on achieving reproductive rights, health, and justice work for the LGBTQ+ community. She was also a part of the Access Project, NILNY, CLPP(Civil Liberties and Public Policy), and more. Mingus built a partnership with the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative TJC between SPARK and CWPE, and also Project South.Current career
Mia Mingus's work focuses on disability justice as a means of liberation. Mingus founded the Living Bridges Project, which focuses on listening to people's responses regarding child sexual abuse. The goal of this project is to offer support and resources to survivors. Similarly, Mingus is the cofounder and core member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC), which also collects such child sexual abuse stories and further creates transformative justice responses that promote healing and accountability. Currently, Mingus has a popular blog titled ''Leaving Evidence'', where she focuses on different social justice issues. Her articles have been showcased in numerous magazines and publications.Known for
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" (Mingus, 2011, para. 5) 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.Kumbier, A., & Starkey, J. (2016). Access is not problem solving: Disability justice and libraries. Library Trends, 64(3), 468-491. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1353/lib.2016.0004 Emphasizing solidarity between movements, collective access focuses on community-supported access and mutual independence instead of individualized specific accommodations. Mingus believes that ensuring access or participation for disabled people is not considered justice, but rather people must transform their subjective realities at the core of their humanity to ensure community. Mingus preaches the idea that a focus on exclusion causes people to lose focus on inclusion. A key element of Mingus's work is her embrace of interdependence. She believes that people needed to rid the myth of independence as interdependency is what forms communities. This concept can be further broken down into the term "access intimacy". Access intimacy is a concept that Mingus formulated as she believed that people can understand and be there for each other, which will provide an unexpected amount of comfort. Mingus believed that the disabled community was missing access intimacy.Accomplishments
* (2008) Creating Change award,References
External links