2026 February New York Virtual Event

Please join the New York State Co-Chairs, Vince Chang and Adrienne Koch, for a virtual presentation by Alana Ackerman, ABF Research Professor.

“Crip Images Against the Disabling of Asylum: Lessons from Two Protests at the Broadview Detention Center in Illinois”

In this presentation, Professor Ackerman will reflect on preliminary research she has begun related to the “disabling of asylum” by the current US administration. The presentation will focus on a set of photographs and videos recorded during two protests in Fall 2025 outside of Broadview Detention Center in Illinois. These recordings were taken in the context of “Operation Midway Blitz,” an ongoing militarized attack by the US government against migrant, refugee, and related racialized communities in the Chicago area, part of a broader project of white nationalism and a “thickening” borderlands condition (Rosas 2006). These recordings are “crip” in that they center disability and disablement, and they challenge the status quo of state power. Professor Ackerman will argue that crip images, and crip protesting, represent one way to witness and confront contemporary state violence.