100 Women We Love: Mia Mingus

Mia Mingus might be the first self-described "queer, physically disabled, Korean, transracial and transnational adoptee" to be invited to the White House. On May 6, she and 14 other Asian-American and Pacific Islander women were honored as Champions of Change; "ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world." "Out" being the operative word, in Mingus’s case. For years, she worked for reproductive justice, queer liberation, racial justice and transformative justice to end child sexual abuse. She was named a "30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30" by Angry Asian Man in 2009, and one of the "Forty Under 40" by The Advocate in 2010. However, when she, a queer, physically disabled woman, sought to address ableism, Mingus was met by silence. "I would ask, 'What about disabled parents…disabled women of color?'" she recalls, "And more often than not, there were no answers or just blank stares." So, Mingus added fighting for disability justice to her long list of jobs, which includes writer, organizer and core member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collaborative (BATJC). She currently travels the country giving speeches and workshops to support her writing and work with the BATJC. -DN