Jane Shi and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

When we wrote last month “How long can we keep this up? Are we going to be doing this forever?” we never thought it might mean we, Jane and Leah, would be asked to keep Crips for eSims for Gaza going without our cherished friend, older sister, auntie. Alice Wong.

Jane texted Leah at midnight EST asking, TW for news of a death in the community; can I share?, hidden by the spoiler function on Signal. Leah was about to go to sleep on day 11 of healing from a hip replacement surgery, but said, yes, but please tell me it’s not Alice. It was.

We are heartbroken, in shock, and devastated. Coming on the heels of so many disabled deaths this past year or more (because what is time)—Patty Berne, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, jes sasche, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Peta Pottinger, Leslie Lee III, and more, it’s as Imani Barbarin says in her tribute to Alice on TikTok: “It’s really profoundly hard watching disabled people die over and over and over again who mattered to the disability community. Alice Wong wasn’t just a disability advocate, she was someone that took other disabled people along for the ride. . . .she’s one of the very few people I could say I know what my future could look like as a disabled person.”  Jane is feeling confused because didn’t Alice email her thirteen days ago?! Leah is feeling brain fucked because back in June Alice and them were texting about Patty Berne’s death and talking about how they needed a group of surviving disability justice organizers and artists over fifty. And now here we are.

 We are also autistic “OK WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” about it all.

It is so important that Alice is honored and remembered. And we believe Alice would also want us to have time to fall apart, to grieve, to keen and wail.

Alice was the crip aunt and big sister of our triad. She loved us. She sent us gifts of fancy Korean tea and handwritten postcards and books and zines and stickers of bears, spoons, cats, and mushrooms. She texted us about how our cats were doing, asked Jane for advice about getting her first tattoo, and texted Leah a photo of Alice holding a koala named Stacey and telling Leah their surgery would go well on hip replacement day, a week and change before Alice died. She was the framework, the bulwark—the person with big dreams and a big life who built a big framework for disabled ideas and organizing. Leah thinks of her as the person in the movement with the most executive function. Jane thinks of her as a fellow foodie and fellow “graphic design in my passion” meme-schemer, shitposter extraordinaire who introduced her to the coolest, most badass disabled QTIBIPOC cuties across the world. Leah didn’t want to write for anyone but Alice for the last eight years. Jane feels the same way. 

Alice was also one of the first disabled people with a big platform who came out unquestioningly as pro-Palestinian liberation and against the escalated genocide in Gaza in 2023. She did not give a fuck who had something to say about it—and plenty of people did; she faced enormous pushback. Even/and because of, being in the middle of adapting and surviving her life-changing medical crisis in 2022, she put it all on the line for Gaza.

Alice cared about us as writers, as organizers, as people who have dreams for a better world just like she did. She wanted us to thrive. She saw us as we wanted ourselves seen: as people who did things, as people who had things to say, and as people with a world to change, and new worlds to create. She gave us space to be mad writers and mad organizers in long stretches of time, deadline- and pressure-free, when life gets hard, and ample space to come back when we get up again. We were always invited back on the ride. We were never disposable to her. We all could make mistakes and grow and blossom, together.

We were part of a constellation of disabled writers and organizers building and creating together, learning about each other across disability, neurodivergent, mad experiences, and so on. A constellation of disabled oracles, cyborgs, shapeshifters, and troublemakers that watched over each other just as we stuck it to the ableist world beyond.

This “connective tissue” of care is how Crips for eSims for Gaza came about in the first place: we launched our project exactly when we did, and not a moment sooner, on Christmas Day 2023, because of the space and care that she gave to each of us. 

Alice’s friend Sandy Ho, Steven Thrasher, and many others point out how funny Alice was and we firmly agree. We are so sad that she couldn’t read this hilarious parody obit from NYT pitchbot, created upon the request of Steven (because Alice also loved the account):

We wish Alice were here editing this Google doc with us, the way we wrote everything we wrote for Crips together in late night crip google docs over multiple time zones, telling Jane which of her title ideas are her favourite, adding in her own paragraphs and one-liners, approving Leah using the f word, linking a definition so everyone knows where to find more information on a person or an unfamiliar concept. We wish her cats, Bert and Ernie, could spend decades more with their beloved mum, as the most spoiled feline anti-monarchy princes in all the animal kingdom. We wish we all had more days, and late nights, with Alice.

To know Alice over the decade+ of DVP was to watch someone brilliant and progressive become steadily more radical. Leah remembers when Alice would say “I don’t know if I’m radical enough to be a part of disability justice” in the early days of knowing each other, but it became clear that Alice was pretty goddamn disability justice. The stances she took against successive U.S. federal governments as they consistently abandoned disabled/high-risk people were clear. So was her opposition to U.S. militarism. She spread the word about the expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying in so-called Canada as a threat of eugenics legislating poor disabled people to death. She pursued strategies of both building and sustaining her own disabled media empire through DVP and self-publishing, and through publishing in mainstream media—aiming for maximum distribution and access while refusing to sacrifice or water down her politics or voice.

Her radicalism was nowhere more apparent than in her commitment to a free Palestine and her understanding of Palestinian liberation and the liberation of all people struggling to survive war, occupation, colonization and genocide as at the heart of disability justice. She published disabled Palestinian writers, created the Palestine x Disability Justice syllabus and used her creative shitposting skills to make memes like the one above. With her #DisabledRage project with Finnegan Shannon, she didn’t hesitate to include “ISRAEL IS KILLING AND DISABLING PALESTINIANS EVERY DAY #DISABLED RAGE” in her posters.

Some people may have sometimes initially viewed Alice as a nice Asian disabled lady, a respectable figure of inspiration porn. Alice was nothing of the sort. She was clear—and became more and more brave and vulnerable about sharing — how she was a true weirdo freak who loved pleasure unapologetically, an Asian disabled radical and someone who was not there to make people feel better or go along with the okie doke. Alice was also keenly interested in what younger disabled people have to say, making us her teachers just as we learned from her. She knew, as she wrote in her speculative obituary, “Future Notice,” at the end of Year of the Tiger, that the work long-term was for “the next generation of disabled cyborgs” and oracles, and many more, to come along to bring change to the world as she has. 

One of the things that meant the most to us was viewing Gaza Funds tweet after her passing: 

“We are reading al fati7a on the soul of our dear Alice, who will be written into the history of our liberation for her work in keeping our people connected over the last 2 years of genocide. It was an honor to experience your time on earth, ya Alice.” 

Alice was so proud of our project. Every time Jane sent her new milestones and gratitude pouring in from Palestinians on the ground and in diaspora, she would respond with a jubilant, “AWESOME!” Just two weeks ago, Alice beamed her appreciation at how Crips for eSims for Gaza utilized our respective skills and gifts so beautifully and has been able to keep things going so smoothly for this long, despite it all. How we did any of it at all was because of Alice, because Alice believed in us and our work, because she believed in the power of collective action and disabled mutual aid. 

It was an honor and a gift to be able to be her friends, her loved ones, her comrades, to dream this big dream together. There is a huge hole in our hearts where she was. We want another universe where she got to live to die at 96 as she wrote in her memoir—living on the moon and being in an all-Asian disabled punk band. With the “abolition of carceral institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons.” With a free Palestine where Wifi runs on Palestinian-made technology.

Well, we’re all going to have to make that happen still, with Alice looking over us—set list direction and all—always and forever. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” We won’t. 

From Alice Wong’s “Future Notice” in Year of the Tiger,

“Instead of flowers, donations can be made to your local animal shelter, food bank, library, or mutual-aid collective.

1. Donate to Alice’s family to keep her legacy going
2. Donate to Crips for eSims for Gaza in honor of Alice 

Just in the last few weeks, the three of us were exchanging texts on our group Signal chat about how we had to document how we made Crips for eSims over the last two years—the internal moments, realizations, big challenges and learnings we had along the way and how we managed to work together for two years with zero internal drama and a lot of amazing blooming of our work and our connections to Palestine. Alice was enthusiastic about this idea. In her honour, we vow to make this happen to the best of our abilities. Stay tuned. 

In grief and solidarity,

Jane and Leah 

P.S. Please image-describe your photos of Alice when you share them! Do not misattribute quotes that someone else wrote to Alice! Actually mask up like she wanted us to, the pandemic is ongoing. Take care of yourselves. Free Palestine, Sudan, Congo and your block!