Artie Vierkant

To honor Alice—and all our disability ancestors—is to keep building that connective tissue she described. To love fiercely, politically, on purpose. To ensure the filaments they left behind continue to glow in us, and through us, long after the world has forgotten their names. We won’t.

Alice helped us see that legacy as ballast. A grounding force. A reminder that none of us are doing this alone, and none of us ever were. The future we fight for is stitched together with the lessons and loves of those who came before.

Disability ancestors aren’t gone; they accompany us. In our organizing, in mutual aid, in the awkward joy of surviving another day that wasn’t designed for us. They’re in every access met, every gentle reminder to slow down, every firm refusal to abandon one another.

Her work was a reminder that memory is not passive. It’s an active practice of tending to the filaments she described—those blazing threads that glow warm with the people who shaped us. To tend them is to extend them. To extend them is to refuse the isolation the system relies on.

When we talk about disability ancestors, we’re not talking about some distant, abstract lineage. We’re talking about people who fought, organized, wrote, dreamed, and survived alongside us. People who left us tools, strategies, jokes, tenderness, and a politic were responsible for carrying forward.

In disability communities, grief isn’t episodic. It’s cumulative. It layers. It reverberates. We lose people who should’ve had decades more time—because the world is engineered to wear us down. And yet, in that same world, disabled people keep building life with one another anyway.

Alice Wong taught us that disabled people don’t just leave memories behind—they leave infrastructure. Lineages of care. Methods of collectivity, survival. She named the connective tissue that holds our communities together, even across death, even across the losses that come too fast and too often.

Alice Wong, disability activist and luminary, dies at 51 - The Sick Times Alice Wong platformed and uplifted people with Long COVID in her final chapter as a lifelong disability advocate and storyteller.

"Alice supported and took many people with Long COVID under her wing — I was honored to call her a colleague and friend."

@mileswgriffis.bsky.social in @thesicktimes.org's obituary for the great Alice Wong: thesicktimes.org/2025/11/15/a...

May her memory be for a revolution. May it deepen our commitments. May her example sharpen our politics. May her life remind us that disability justice is a practice of transforming the world through collective care, accountability, creativity, defiance and imagination.

Alice leaves behind a body of work that will continue to shape movements for decades. But more importantly, she leaves behind communities and relationships she helped build and nurture—relations that will carry her clarity, her defiance, and her tenderness forward.

Alice Wong’s legacy is the political horizon she helped articulate. A horizon where disabled knowledge is central, and care is a shared commitment. She taught us to name grief & rage without collapsing under them, to celebrate disabled brilliance without ignoring the material conditions shaping life

Losing Alice feels like the ground shifting beneath us—I'm devastated—but to have known & shared even part of this life with her was an honor. She was one of the most fearless, generous & visionary disability activists. It’s impossible to measure how much she shifted the world—I feel it everywhere.

Just an incalculable loss from which we won’t soon recover.

Alice was the best of us and I hope we all do (or keep doing) the kind of good work that burnishes her memory.

Fuck ableism. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

Oh, my god. This is such a loss. Alice was a wonderful person who did so much to advance the cause of disability justice. The world is a much better place because she was here.

Alice Wong on Instagram: "ID: Yellow background with black text "This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing. Hi everyone, it ... 423 likes, 73 comments - alicatsamurai on November 14, 2025: "ID: Yellow background with black text "This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the t...

I don’t want to formulate words yet, but my friend Alice Wong, @sfdirewolf.bsky.social of the Disability Visibility Project, has passed.

Here are the words she left behind:
www.instagram.com/p/DREMDNBjnq...

I’m heartbroken at the loss of Leslie & for YB who he loved deeply & fiercely. For seven years, I had the privilege of knowing him—his mind, his humor, his boundless creativity, & unflinching political clarity. The world is immeasurably poorer without his voice. All gfm will cover funeral & expenses

I donate to this project monthly. If you are in a position to do so, please monetarily support trans lives.

Louisiana’s Medicaid program stopped covering trans care. So Trans Income Project stepped in to become the defacto “payer” for that care at one key clinic in the state. Today we hear how and why the project came to be:

An Oral History of Trans Income Project w/ Natalie Rupp (11/13/25) To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice speaks with Natalie Rupp of Trans Income Project about their work providin

"Mutual aid is embedded in the life work of almost every marginalized community [...] We know that the power of government has never and will never be used to support those folks without power" @deathpanel.bsky.social soundcloud.com/deathpanel/a...

An Oral History of Trans Income Project w/ Natalie Rupp (11/13/25) To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice speaks with Natalie Rupp of Trans Income Project about their work providin

In our latest, we speak with the director of Trans Income Project about their work providing material support to trans people in Louisiana and how they’re trying to fill the gaps created by the federal government’s attacks on trans coverage under Medicaid

soundcloud.com/deathpanel/a...

Will be weighing in on the ACA debacle when we can but today’s show feels quite topical: a liberal party rushes to the right, abandons its base and its own interests, and puts care in jeopardy for the people whose health is already most harmed by capitalism

Teaser - The Past and Future of the NHS w/ Red Medicine (11/10/25) Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/143208719 Beatrice is joined by Sam Kelly of the Red Medicine to discuss how the politics o

First 25min here:

soundcloud.com/deathpanel/t...

The Past and Future of the NHS w/ Red Medicine (11/10/25) | The Death Panel Get more from The Death Panel on Patreon

In our latest, we discuss the fate of the NHS since the neoliberal turn and the Labour party’s dismal 10 year plan to turn the NHS into “an engine for economic growth” and “the most AI enabled care system the world” with special guest @medicinered.bsky.social

www.patreon.com/posts/143208...

I got to talk with two of the smartest people I know -- @reallandsend.bsky.social and @city.bsky.social -- about BORN IN FLAMES. Check out the latest @deathpanel.bsky.social here

Born in Flames w/ Bench Ansfield (11/03/25) | The Death Panel Get more from The Death Panel on Patreon

In our latest, we speak with @benchansfield.bsky.social about “riot prone areas,” moral hazard, how landlords burned the Bronx in the 1970s, and their new book Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

www.patreon.com/posts/142681697

No Opinion w/ Lara Sheehi & Sophie Lewis (11/06/25) To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod Beatrice and Tracy speak with Lara Sheehi and Sophie Lewis about the role of cultur

In our latest, @reallandsend.bsky.social & @city.bsky.social are joined by Lara Sheehi & @reproutopia.bsky.social of @wawog.bsky.social to discuss withholding cultural production and why they organized a boycott to refuse to write for New York Times Opinion

on.soundcloud.com/DgEAPtszHsiR...

On the hit podcast @deathpanel.bsky.social, @benchansfield.bsky.social discusses their new book, *Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.*

I think there's a lot of people on bsky today that weren't ready to learn that "conservative feminism" exists.

Luckily I listen to the Death Panel and already knew about it so I didn't need to sit down when I saw that headline.

Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City

Find Bench’s book, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, here:

bookshop.org/a/118130/978...

Teaser - Born in Flames w/ Bench Ansfield (11/03/25) Subscribe on Patreon and hear this week's full patron-exclusive episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/142681697 Beatrice and Tracy speak with Bench Ansfield about their new book charting the ri

First ~20min here:

soundcloud.com/deathpanel/t...