Understanding and Transforming the Medical Industrial Complex: Climate and Disability Justice Edition
Spring Political Education Series 2026
April 9th - May 14th, Weekly on Thursdays
5p - 7p PT | 7p - 9p CT | 8p - 10p ET
Sliding Scale: $195 - $350 (scholarships available)
No one turned away for lack of funds
Series Overview
Join us for the Health Justice Commons' Spring Political Education Series starting April 9th, 2026!
This series focuses on the intersections of ableism, medical racism, and environmental racism and their entanglements with the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) as well as rising national and global authoritarianism. It explores the historic and ongoing connections of big pharma with corporate polluters and legacies of eugenics, ecocide and genocide across the globe.
The series also examines how the MIC itself underpins, perpetuates, and profits from the climate crisis and the illnesses it claims to ‘cure’. You do not have to have taken our Fall Series to enroll in and benefit from our Spring Series, we’ll provide resources to catch you up! If you are a prior participant considering joining us again, please do. This series will feature new content and curriculum.
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The Medical Industrial Complex is historically rooted in and has ongoingly been used to deploy far right agendas. Under Trump 2.0, our communities are facing an unprecedented advance of authoritarianism and ableism that further weaponizes so-called healthcare. Trans healthcare for both youth and adults is being increasingly criminalized and/or withheld. Major insurers, such as Blue Cross New Mexico, the state’s biggest insurer, are no longer covering any gender affirming care.
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Movement together with what we refer to as the Big Brutal Bill have resulted in the gutting of healthcare services and research. Any research with the word ‘gender’ in proposals, an $11.4 bil grant for COVID-19 research, and $11 bil in mental healthcare funding and among recent cuts; Medicaid will loose $1 Trillion over the next 10 years. Nearly half of CDC public health databases, such as real-time vaccination rate trackers, are no longer being updated. Ecocide and health are inextricably connected; under Trump rollbacks to environmental protections that are so sweeping in scope, the EPA is rapidly becoming merely a ‘symbolic husk’, according to Matt Tejada of the National Resource Defense Council.
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Even though it is scary, now is a time to turn towards one another, dream boldly, build our communities’ capacity, summon new coalitions, and continue to demand and build the world we deserve.
HJC’s Spring Pol Ed Series brings together disabled communities and leaders with healthcare workers, healers, birth workers, med and nursing students, climate justice organizers, artists, academics, and compassionate dreamers to learn together, build power and resistance, get new concepts and tools, and be better prepared for action. If this resonates for you, please join us. Our doors and hearts are open and you are essential to our communities in these times!
Image Description: A red graphic of a wheelchair user with their left fist raised in the air and a loudspeaker in their right hand.
Health Justice Commons’ work centers three main approaches to understand and critique the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) historically and currently:
An intersectional social justice lens with a deep grounding in and commitment to Disability and Climate Justice
An abolitionist mindset to healthcare and healing
A peoples’ science lens. Learn more about people’s science here.
Series Details
Image Description: An illustration by artist Olly Costello. Big white letters on a navy blue background read: “The Future is Mutual Aid.” Under, above, and around the letters are illustrations of people reaching out and toward each other, holding each other and lifting each other up. They are all wearing bright, colorful clothes. Shooting stars glow in the background.
WHEN: Starts Thursday April 9th and runs through May 14th (Six Consecutive Thursdays). The time is the same for each Thursday session: 5p - 7p PT | 7p - 9p CT | 8p - 10p ET.
WHERE: Online via Zoom. Attend from anywhere!
COST: $195 - $350 (scholarships available). No one turned away for lack of funds. If you are able, please consider using the 'cover fees’ option for your enrollment contribution, as Givebutter detracts credit card fees (like all online payment platforms). We are a small, disabled/crip, and member-run organization, so whatever you can give supports the participation of others with less access to funds.
SCHOLARSHIP: Full and partial scholarships are available based on participant needs. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. You can request a scholarship on the enrollment form here.
ACCESS INFO: All sessions will provide ASL, interpretation between English and Spanish, and live closed captioning. All sessions will be recorded (with participant permission) for the use of participants.
OPTIONAL ACTION LABS: You can participate in up to three Action Labs! Tuesday evenings, 5 - 6:30p PT | 7 - 8:30p CT | 8 - 9:30 ET. Dates: 4/14, 4/28 and 5/12. These optional sessions will be times for solidarity, sharing, reflecting on series learning and exploring potential strategies - no actions or extra work are required or expected!
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"Together is the only way forward, and this series brought us together. I felt connected for the first time in a long time, and the information and resources provided has also introduced me to other mutual aid networks, change-makers, and creatives."
— Zo, former Spring Series 2025 participant
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What you’ll learn
The settler-colonialist roots of the MIC and its ongoing complicity with genocide, eugenics, intersectional oppression and racialized / gendered medical ableism, all of which continue to be entangled with and reinforce settler-colonialist violence.
The role of medical ableism, racialized ableism, environmental racism and classism in intensifying COVID-19 pandemic denialism.
The toxicity, medical ableism, and violence of prisons and other institutions of confinement connected to the MIC.
Environmental Racism: From Gaza, Palestine to Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, to Indigenous Tribal Land, Bhopal, India, and Flint, MI.
Exploring settler-colonialist ecocide, environmental toxicology and the neurobiology of intergenerational harm.
Contested Bodies / Contested Illnesses: What they reveal about the MIC’s complicity with corporate polluters, climate crisis and disease causation.
Contested toxins: the hidden history of big pharma and its entanglement with big agro, the global war machine, imperialism, eugenics and genocide.
Ways forward to decolonize healthcare. Tools for disrupting and transforming the MIC, and incubating alternatives that you can practice in your own life, work, and communities including the Disability Justice framework and 10 principles.
Image Description: A red graphic of three fists raised in the air with a sense of strength and power.
Facilitators
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Rise (they/them) is a queer, Black, disabled writer, poet, and artist living on Potowatomi Land (Chicago). They are a Trauma and Disability Justice facilitator. They are also a meditation facilitator and Birth / Abortion / Grief & Loss Care Worker. Rise is deeply invested in disability justice, access, centering wellness for Black queer folk, trauma education, and rest. When they are not doing the most, they are daydreaming and hanging with their support pup, Jelly Ferocious.
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Jimena Lucero (she/her) is a writer, actor, & cultural worker living on Lenape / Canarsie land in New York City. She has several years of experience in publishing, arts, and non-profit organizations. Jimena was a 2019-2020 Emerge-Surface-Be fellow at the Poetry Project. Her work engages with decolonial feminism, trans liberation, and disability justice. She spends her free time reading, making music, and taking photographs of flowers she sees on her walks.
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Mordecai Cohen Ettinger (they/them) has over 30 years experience as a multi-sector social justice organizer, scholar, and educator. Mordecai is the Senior Development Advisor of Sins Invalid and the Founding Director of Health Justice Commons. Mordecai has served as adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies since 2014.
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Michelle Mascarenhas (they/she) is a queer mama/auntie/auntifa working to build permanently organized community amidst rising technofascism and systems collapse. Through 15+ years with Movement Generation and Climate Justice Alliance as political home, they have facilitated political education and strategic alignment spaces for a just transition. In her spare time, she also kayaks, learns land, and nurtures her squad of world building mamas, aunties, and queer fam.
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Lujain (she/her) is based in Oakland and has been a member leader of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC) since late 2017. AROC organizes to fight for racial and economic justice and the dignity and liberation of our Arab and Muslim communities. Over the past decade, Lujain has worked with environmental justice organizations, such as Communities for a Better Environment and the Asian Pacific Environment, to improve air quality and public health and hold major polluters accountable. Most recently, Lujain supported the Polluters Pay campaign in Richmond, which led to a $550 million settlement from Chevron. Lujain is an alumna of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health's Master of Public Health program in Global Health & Environment, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science & Management and minors in Professional Writing, and Middle East & South Asia Studies from UC Davis. Outside of organizing, Lujain works at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and is a part of the 2025-2027 Emerging Women of Color Fellowship program through the LeaderSpring Center.
Guest Panelists
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Jen Deerinwater is a bisexual, Two-Spirit, multiply-disabled, citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and an award-winning journalist and organizer who covers the myriad of issues hir communities face with an intersectional lens. Jen is the founding executive director of Crushing Colonialism and a 2019 New Economies Reporting Project and a 2020 Disability Futures fellow.
Jen is a contributor to Truthout and hir work has been featured in a wide range of publications, including Bitch, Rewire.News, and New Now Next. Jen’s writing is included in the anthologies Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty First Century, We Organize to Change Everything: Fighting for Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice, Property Will Cost Us the Earth: Direct Action and the Future of the Global Climate Movement, and Crip Authorship: Disability as Method. Jen is also hard at work on two books, including Sacred and Subversive (Jessica Kingsley Publishers), a 2SLGTBTQIA+ anthology on faith and spirituality.
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Dãnia Davy (she/her) is the attorney-author-activist founder of Land & Liberation, LLC, a consultancy promoting liberatory relationships between humans, natural and financial resources, and land. To help farmers, land stewards and their communities of support navigate the challenges of the current political climate, she created the WTF?! (We’re the Future), through which she distributes a weekly newsletter, maintains an educational website, and hosts educational webinars. She stewards the Village Farmer Fund to equitably resource the local, mutual aid economies of small-scale farmers across the United States. She recently rematriated to Jamaica where she is working to promote and preserve afro-indigenous sacred wisdom, ecological stewardship, and access to sacred sites in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.
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Yomi Sachiko Young (she/her) is a mama, beloved daughter, disability justice dreamer and social justice evangelist / organizer driven by the promise of liberation for all bodyminds. Originally from the Bronx, NY, Yomi makes physical home on unceded Ohlone land aka Oakland, CA and political home at Shelterwood Collective, a 900-acre Queer, Black, Indigenous and Disabled-led forest and cultural space based on unceded Southern Pomo and Kashia territory, above what is now called the Russian River. Yomi is a former print journalist who once served as Executive Director of the landmark Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, CA, the nation's founding advocacy organization run by and for people with disabilities. She now works in healthcare leading a civil rights compliance efforts for a large, integrated health system.
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Tyson Sampson (they/them/he/him) is an Eastern Band Cherokee Indian (ᎠᏳᏫᏯ ᎨᏯᏔᎯᎤᏁᏉᎳᏗᏍᎩ). Tyson organizes their relations to document culturally sensitive life-ways to prepare the next wave of Traditional Ecological Resiliency. The collective is referred to as the Bigwitch Indian Wisdom Initiative. Their project is rooted in Cherokee cultural knowledge and values. Tyson’s group has been working together to learn and share Cherokee plant knowledge over many decades.
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“This series truly embodied an accessible, intersectional, and decolonial praxis that has filled my spirit with ways to practice an abolitionist politic and reimagine healing for everyone, in all expressions of life ... Spaces like this nourish the collective power needed to rise against the Medical Industrial Complex, confront settler-colonial ecocide, and build divest–reinvest frameworks that hold space for racialized and gendered ableism. The settler-colonial ruling class may control the food, the land, and the soil that sustains us—but if we continue to cultivate truly liberatory spaces like this series, our spirits may yet dare to dream and build a kinder world.”
— Sabrina, former Spring Series 2025 participant
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What you’ll receive
Curated readings on topics presented to further your understanding of the MIC.
An English transcript for each session. Spanish transcripts are available upon request.
The opportunity to participate in up to 3 Action Labs. These optional sessions will be times for solidarity, sharing, reflecting on series learning and exploring potential strategies - no actions or extra work are required or expected!
An extensive syllabus containing up to date and historical, intersectional and multimedia resources collected over 10 years to equip you with an expansive understanding of the MIC.
Video and audio recordings in English and Spanish of each session with embedded live captions in English and ASL.
Live community discussion space for participants to process and reflect together on what they’ve learned, and to share further resources.
FAQ
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This series is designed to deliver extensive information and resources on the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) for anyone interested in developing an in-depth understanding of its history, how it functions, its entanglements with other industries, such as Big Pharma, corporate polluters, and the prison system, and paths forward for transformation and creating alternatives.
This includes, but is not limited to, all of us impacted by the MIC – disabled, sick, neurodivergent and chronically ill people – and those of us who work within the MIC, adjacent to it, or are healers and healthcare workers such as anyone that is an Activist / Organizer, Therapist, Social Worker, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Mental Health Worker/ Practitioner, Healer, Curandera/x, Energy Worker, Acupuncturist, Herbalist, Midwife, Ayurvedic Doctor, Nurse, Nurse Practitioner, Physician, Physician's Assistant, Medical Student.
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All the sessions are recorded, so attending live is not necessary.
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Work exchanges and partial to full scholarships are available based on participant needs. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. You can request a work exchange or scholarship on the enrollment form!
Submit Enrollment Fee
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"It was amazing! The opportunity to learn valuable history tied to the current MIC that I had never heard of before and would never receive in academia was enough of a benefit to take this course. But I also got to spend time with other disabled folks in the community lab, be part of a community of people who care about each other and the planet, and learn from disability justice activists that are doing amazing work! I couldn't have asked for more."
— Jayden, former Spring Series 2025 participant