Some of Alice Wong’s final words were that she was “honored to be your ancestor.” Those words hold a weight that is almost difficult to touch for me. These words are heavy with history, love, rebellion, and the quiet certainty of someone who believed her work would continue long after her final breath.
Even without meeting her in person, Alice shaped my life, my advocacy, and my understanding of what disability justice can and must be. She rearranged the way many of us saw ourselves. Through her books, storytelling, and relentless activism, she didn’t just speak truth to power—she built spaces where disabled people could speak for ourselves and each other. She made our stories visible. She made us impossible to ignore.
Alice Wong was a disability oracle. A visionary. A cultural architect.
She taught us that access isn’t an afterthought—it’s a birthright.
She showed us that storytelling is liberation work.
She reminded us that disability community is not a niche; it is a natural part of the human expression..
A loss this large changes the air
When someone like Alice transitions, the disability movement doesn’t just mourn—we shift. We reorient ourselves. We ask new questions:
- How do we honor an ancestor who gave us so much?
- How do we protect what she built without holding it still?
- How do we step into the future she dreamed of?
Alice gave us the answers in her work, her leadership, and the way she lived. We honor her by continuing the fight. By nurturing community care. By refusing erasure. By insisting that disabled people, in all our diversity, belong everywhere decisions are made.
We are the next generation she spoke about
Alice Wong didn’t build a movement for admiration; she built it for succession. She believed in us, those she knew and those she never met, like me. She believed that new leaders, new storytellers, new organizers would rise. She made plans for her future work. She believed that the disability community is strongest when we understand ourselves as part of a long continuum of resistance.
She has now joined that continuum as an ancestor. And, that means it’s our turn.
Now is the time to step up
Not someday. Not when the world feels more ready. Not when we think we know enough or feel brave enough. Now.
We honor Alice Wong by carrying her work forward. Not set up like a museum piece, behind a velvet rope and glass frame. We honor her:
• by telling our stories with the same unapologetic clarity she modeled
• by building coalitions that center those most often pushed aside
• by advocating for policies that reflect lived reality
• by demanding accessibility not as accommodation, but as justice and a matter of regular human life
• by uplifting disabled people; Black people, Indigenous people, immigrants, elders, queer and trans folks, and everyone she fought to make visible.
We honor her by refusing to shrink. We honor her by creating new works; of art, music, writings, dance, protest. We honor her by organizing, locally and nationally. We honor her by imagining a future, real and tangible, enough to match her vision. We honor her by moving into position to become an ancestor when it is our time.
Alice Wong is now an ancestor of our movement but she didn’t leave us empty. She leaves us with her words, her blueprints, her boldness, her humor, her defiance, her tenderness, and her community. She leaves us with the responsibility to build, to disrupt, to heal, and to transform. Most importantly, she leaves us with each other. May we become the leaders she believed we could be. May we rise with the courage she lived with so beautifully. May we move together, loud, proud, and unapologetically disabled toward a world that reflects the dreams she dared to speak out loud.
Rest in power, Alice Wong. We will carry your legacy forward.
Nothing About Us Without ALL of Us.
Judith Wilson Brown
