don’t underestimate Ming

Don’t underestimate Ming.  Don’t misunderstand this brilliant, caring person.  Just because Ming is humble and disabled, please don’t ignore their generous helpfulness.  Don’t let self-aggrandizing, big ego people throw off your sense of what great is.

Quiet, calm caring is the real greatness in this world, supporting others and making a better world.  If you have a hard time perceiving it, please re-calibrate your perception.

what Ming does

Yesterday Ming and I were socializing with Ming’s old friend.  They go back decades.  The friend is curious about what Ming has been up to.

I said how Ming serves on two boards, and Ming’s also part of a POC focus group that advises Eugene, Oregon on how to plan the coming years.  Ming serves Food Not Bombs sometimes, scooping food that I cook at home.  Ming does street medics work and helps underserved people with medical needs at share fairs, often homeless people.

“Wow, I’m glad you two are together!” the friend said.

“So I can explain?” I asked.

“Yeah!” the friend said.

“Oh, this isn’t hype.  I’m just telling the truth,” I said.  “I’m actually low-balling what Ming does.”

social

I remembered how Ming also helps run the radical mental health collective.  I think it’ll be nine years in May.  At City Hall Ming speaks up about transgender queer needs, and Ming supports protesters at demonstrations with water and first aid.  We dream up Disabled Resilience Permaculture.  And Ming has been working on their death zine for a long time.  Ming helps me organize the fat, transqueer, disabled ecstatic dance.

We interdepend.  I keep Ming fed, watered, stimulated, and very loved.  Meanwhile, Ming helps me in a thousand ways.

“I guess being on social security allows you to do all this,” Ming’s friend said.

Wow, millions of people are on social security.  But I don’t know anyone who does what Ming does for community and for a better world.

money and power

Is it normal, to work a paying job and focus on making money?  Yes, it’s pretty normal.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Let’s dream up something better than chronic stress, exploiting Parent Earth, and a world of people too busy–overworked and underpaid–to consistently be there for their loved ones. 

Ming is there not only for loved ones, but helping strangers and community almost every day.

I dream of universal income; all of us would be free to follow our morals rather than chasing dollars.  What a just world we could make, if money wasn’t at the center.

Or let’s just ditch money entirely.  I know it’s a big dream, but I’m ready.

power

Ming’s work on the two boards Ming serves on–it’s not pointless meetings.  Ming is disabled, POC, non-binary transgender queer, and low income.  So Ming can speak up about their personal experiences, needs, and world view.  But they’re giving voice to the needs of countless people who never will serve on a board.

I mean that Ming is serving as themselves, but we must admit, Ming’s low income POC-ness in a sea of white people with power is super important.  Ming’s non-binary transgender queerness shines in a sea of comfortable cis-het people.  Of course Ming can’t speak for all disabled, transqueer, POC, and low income people–there’s so much variety.  But Ming present and trying is amazing.

If the board listens to Ming, they can make decisions that will improve the lives of the people with the least amount of power.  That’s exactly what we need.  Abled, cis-het white people taking care of themselves is the norm.  Ming can help those people consider the needs of the most vulnerable.  That’s crucial for justice.

don’t underestimate Ming

I wish more people would see the meaning of Ming’s unpaid hard work.  It’s not that Ming has been handed inheritance, white privilege, or an abled body.  Ming is an anarchist for a reason.  The system doesn’t work, and we don’t have the luxury to pretend it does.  Ming has been dealt a non-winning hand.

Yet what little Ming has, they choose to share.  The two hours of productive awake time Ming has in a day, they chose to spend with their old friend at Sunshine Natural Foods in Grant’s Pass.  We ate delicious salad and shared information and togetherness.

But we’re on a trip.  That means I was driving almost the whole way to Eureka as Ming dozed.  On a twistyturney road, stuck behind an RV that was towing a tractor, I was frustrated by how abled people often have no idea what our life is really like.

“I wish you could explain that the amount of energy your friend had when they were the sickest they’ve ever been in their life, is the amount of energy you have to work with in a day,” I said to Ming while Ming was briefly awake.

Disability means you see us at the most productive two hours of our day.  What you don’t see are the other 22 hours, spent much less functional to not functional, recovering the energy we spent seeing you.

thank you

Thank you for considering that Ming is so much more than you might believe.  And please consider that other people who don’t toot their own horn might be giving all they have for a better world as well.

Don’t underestimate Ming because you love Ming and should be alert to their wonderfulness, attuned to their worth.  Don’t underestimate Ming because underestimating them means you’re missing out on whole aspects of who they are.

Mostly don’t underestimate Ming because they could become your hero.  You could see Ming’s hard work and follow their example for making a better world of care where

• a houseless person’s painful, infected wound is tended, so they can sleep and don’t lose a limb
• an unpopular opinion is expressed at a board meeting, and the needs of low income people are considered for years to come
• a dehydrated protester does’t collapse and hit their head, thanks to Ming handing them water
• in 30 years, someone marginalized will be treated with dignity thanks to a local law Ming spoke up about
• a disabled person is able to dance as they are, at a fat, transqueer, disabled dance where they are expressly welcome and wanted
• someone who’s been labeled “severely, chronically mentally ill” is listened to respectfully and learns that there’s nothing wrong with them
• a hungry person who lives on the street eats delicious warm food and understands that their culture has not abandoned them

Don’t underestimate Ming because the work of love is the most important work of all.