Mia Mingus

Mia Mingus is a writer, educator, and community organizer who focuses on issues of disability justice. She is noted for introducing the concept of and coining the term "access intimacy" and urges disability studies and activism to centralize the experiences of marginalized people within disability organizing.

Mingus' approach to disability justice focuses on dismantling privilege; “We don’t want to simply join the ranks of the privileged; we want to dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them” (Mingus, 2011, para. 5)

Mia Mingus is especially well-known for her work on 'collective access.' Collective access emphasizes how disability interacts with other aspects of an individual's identities, making disability justice activism necessarily intertwined with antiracist, feminist, reproductive justice, queer, and prison abolitionist activism. Emphasizing solidarity between movements, collective access focuses on community-supported access and mutual independence instead of individualized specific accommodations.

Mingus has given many keynote addresses at national events, including: the Femmes of Color Symposium in Oakland, CA in 2011, Queer and Asian conference in 2013, and Disability Intersectionality Summit in 2018.

Accolades

Mingus received the 2008 Creating Change award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In 2010, she was featured in The Advocate's Forty Under 40. In 2013, she was honored as one of fifteen API women's Champion of Change by President Barack Obama.