Down to the Struts

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! We have a very special episode on Qudsiya’s first mother’s day as a mom. Down to the Struts collaborated with the ladies of Babies Down, Bottles Up, a podcast about blind parenting featured in our feed last week. Qudsiya, Josselyn, Kisha, and Terrin had a fascinating conversation over their favorite beverages about how the law treats disabled parents,...

We’re back with the final installment of our mini series featuring some fabulous disability podcasts that the team has been enjoying lately. Here at Down to the Struts, we explore disability, design, and intersectionality, including the multitude of identities each of us holds and how they shape—and are shaped by—the world around us. A new identity for Qudsiya showed up when she became a parent wi...

We’re back with the second installment of our mini series featuring a small selection of other must-listen disability podcasts. This week, we’re exploring a new aspect of disability culture from our friends at Proud stutter. Proud Stutter is a podcast about changing how we understand and talk about stuttering. In this episode, host Maya Chupkov chats with Ina Lalich, a San Francisco-raised, multil...

We’re back in your feeds for another mini series. This time, we’ll be featuring three other disability podcasts that are must-listens. First up is Crip Crap. Crip Crap was established in late 2021 as a container for producing and advancing disability media. It was created by Kennedy Healy, a white, fat, queer crip Writer and media maker, and Justin Cooper, a Black visual artist and disability advo...

We’re wrapping up our Immigration Mini Series with some brand new content, brought to you by our friends from Unseen. In January 2026, Qudsiya joined forces once more With Unseen’s impact campaign to conduct a know your rights presentation specifically for disabled immigrants, so they can understand and assert their rights during encounters with ICE. This episode of the Unseen podcast includes vit...

The targeting and exclusion of disabled immigrants in the U.S. is not new. It is a centuries old system rooted in ableism, racism, xenophobia, and eugenics. In honor of disability pride month during July of 2025, we broadcast this powerful audio essay by disability activist and blind educator, Conchita Hernandez Legorreta, about how disability and immigration affected her and her family’s lives. M...

In this fourth installment of our Immigration Mini Series, we’re revisiting Qudsiya’s conversation with Set Hernandez, creator of the award winning documentary film "unseen," and the film’s protagonist, Pedro. Despite the headlines about mass deportation and ICE’s draconian enforcement practices, and the many conversations among advocates and policymakers about the need to reform our bro...

This week, our immigration mini series takes a slightly different angle on the relationship between disability and immigration. We as a country have  spent the last year grappling with the Trump administration’s hateful and xenophobic rhetoric about immigrants, who have been framed as dangerous criminals and burdens on American society. But it’s important to remember that immigrants have been, and...

In the next installment of our immigration mini series, we’re rebroadcasting the episode, “Empowering disabled refugees,” with Mustafa Rfat from Season 6. Since coming into office, the Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement, strangled the asylum process, set the lowest refugee admissions cap ever, issued travel bans for immigrants coming from dozens of countries, and eliminated vi...

As the Trump administration Continues to unleash Immigration officers into our communities from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, to murder and terrorize undocumented people and citizens alike, we wanted to highlight the specific dangers that disabled immigrants face, and the disabling impacts of ICE enforcement and detention in this very special mini series on the intersection of immigration and disabi...

After Alice's passing late last week, we wanted to reshare Qudsiya's conversation with her. Alice Wong was a disabled activist, author and podcaster behind “Disability Visibility,” and the first person Qudsiya reached out to for advice on podcasting. In their conversation, Alice tells Qudsiya what she’s learned about the visibility of the disabled experience in media and culture, and her d...

To wrap up our 10th season, we’re delighted to share the second part of Qudsiya’s conversation with Blind Birder extraordinaire, Jerry Berrier. In the second half of their chat, Jerry introduced Qudsiya to the vast diversity of birdsong, including particular birds he enjoys listening to in his local area in Massachusetts, plus lots of fun facts about birds and their behavior. He also shared severa...

This Disability Pride Month isn’t just about celebrating the disability community: it marks a season of resistance. Our very existence is under threat, from drastic cuts to the social safety net, to vile attacks on the autistic community, a full-on assault on transgender lives, and the terrorizing of immigrants. But this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that those who face oppressio...

We have a few more surprises in store for you this season, including this very special, two-part bonus episode. Qudsiya sat down with Jerry Berrier. Jerry is a member of  Birdability.org , an organization dedicated to making birding accessible to all. He is also a member of the Bay State Council of the Blind. Jerry and Qudsiya explored the world of blind birding, chatted about Jerry’s work to deve...

For our season finale, we'll travel across continents for Qudsiya’s conversation with Priti Salian, a journalist, media consultant, and trainer based in Bengaluru, India. Priti’s work focuses on gender equality, disability, and inclusion through the lens of human rights and solutions based journalism. She is the creator of the acclaimed newsletter  Reframing Disability . Priti and Qudsiya disc...

Over the last few episodes, we've talked about disability rights, history, the law, and intersectional movement building. Today we're going to dive into another important aspect of the disability experience—disability culture. We'll listen in on Qudsiya’s conversation with Dagny Brown and Mika Weissbuch, two of the three co-directors of the San Francisco Disability Cultural Center, or...

This episode explores how disability justice relates to the ongoing pursuit of justice for transgender communities, who are increasingly under threat in the US and many other countries. We'll listen in on Qudsiya’s conversation with Ericka Dixon and Sebastian Margaret of the Transgender Law Center's  Disability Project . They discuss how we can build cross movement solidarity between trans...

This week, Qudsiya speaks with Professor Jamelia Morgan, an award-winning and acclaimed scholar and teacher at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she also directs the  Center for Racial and Disability Justice . Professor Morgan's work focuses on the intersection of race, gender, disability, and criminal law and punishment. Qudsiya and Jamelia talked about her personal path to study...

Qudsiya sits down with Joe Shapiro, investigative correspondent for National Public Radio. Joe was one of the first journalists to cover the disability civil rights movement and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In this episode, Qudsiya and Joe talk about how Joe came to cover disability issues, his observations about how the movement has evolved over time, and his perspectives o...

Welcome to Season 10 of Down to the Struts! To kick things off, Qudsiya sits down with the indomitable Chai Feldblum. Chai is a civil rights advocate and scholar. For nearly four decades, Chai has fought for the rights of LGBTQ and disability communities through legislative advocacy, teaching, scholarship, government service, and much more. She played an integral role in the drafting of the Americ...

Season 10 of Down to the Struts is headed your way. Qudsiya give listeners a sneak peek at the voices of the journalists, activists, scholars, and creators who will lead us in a deep dive into disability history and culture this season. We’re in double digits y’all! Make sure you’re subscribed and tuned in on April 29 for our first episode. Visit our website⁠ ⁠for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ transcripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ .⁠⁠⁠...

We’ve reached the end of the road—no pun intended—with our final listener favorite from season 9, featuring Anna Zivarts, author of the exceptional book, “When Driving Is Not An Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency.” This one resonated with many of you who, like Qudsiya, cannot drive a car. As we shockingly learned from Anna in this episode, this is the case for a whopping 31 out of 100 Ameri...

We’ve arrived at our penultimate listener favorite from season 8. We called this one “Access: A love Story.” It was magical for Qudsiya to revisit the unforgettable day that she and her partner, also a Down to the Struts alum, Sean Collins, promised to love each other for the rest of their lives. They’ve been married for nearly two years now, and they’ve had their fair share of adventures since. B...

Here’s your favorite from Season 7. Qudsiya is a huge history nerd, and she had a blast unpacking blind history with Andrew Leland, author of the award-winning memoir,  The Country of the Blind . Andrew and Qudsiya explored blind culture, blind politics, and their own relationships with blindness. It was a great conversation—thanks to all of you for giving us a chance to revisit it. Visit our webs...

We’re recasting this listener favorite from Season 6. Qudsiya loves this conversation with human rights lawyer and disability justice champion, Haben Girma—author of the acclaimed memoir, “Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.” Haben and Qudsiya talked about the concept of empowered interdependence. This is the idea that we all deserve to have access to the tools to define our own...