Attendee Engagement Committee

Written by Alex C. Lange and Wilson Okello, 2025 Attendee Engagement Committee Co-Chairs

If, indeed, the “moral arc of the universe bends,” it is not by alchemy, algorithm, or accident; not by wishful thinking nor a will weak to accountability. It does not bend by unremembering or misreading the long genealogy of world-making. The bend is neither predictable nor the consequence of statements or reputations. Where “power concedes nothing without demand,” bending demands patience, pulling and prodding, mapping, and the momentum of memory. It is the repercussion of resourcefulness and refusal—the illogical outcome of methodical, slow, conscientious, labored, and laboring breaths of elders and youth, cultural workers, artists, activists, and researchers. Bending is a project of specificity, vigilance, and a deep commitment to care—care as living tenderness and attunement; care as connectivity and regard; care as the responsibility of accompaniment.

We take seriously what “bending” requires—not the collective fictions and postures of a few designated to rescue the many, but an otherwise praxis that places value in trans-generational, trans-historical, trans-disciplinary, and trans-national (di)vestments from singular interests toward something worthy to be called justice. For too long, in ASHE and beyond, the labor of bending structural, epistemic, and ethical terrain—calling forth otherwise social and political horizons—has been thrust upon the few. This overreliance has caused harm to many communities, not least of all Black women.

Whereas bending, as method, is a praxis of being, doing, and living, we invite attendees to consider how creativity, as both act and process, can orient our collective energies toward the ongoing formation of an association that might justly anchor and buoy scholarship and praxis in the present moment and into the future.

We wish to continue to acknowledge the hard work of ASHE scholars to center values of inclusion, equity, and organizational justice. As we explore who we are as a scholarly organization, we ask you to consider what it means to engage meaningfully in the ASHE community. In particular, we acknowledge the work of the 2023 ASHE Conference Accessibility Committee and the 2020-2022 CEP Accessibility and Equity/Inclusion Sub-Committee to create the Access (Un)Statement, which can be accessed online at ashe.ws/disability-justice for your continued reflection.