Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown

Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown is an internationally recognized advocate, community organizer, community builder, and scholar-activist whose work addresses interpersonal, corporate, and state violence targeting disabled people at intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. They have worked for over 15 years as a committed advocate, community organizer, and policy expert at the nexus of disability rights and disability justice (these are not the same), and have run for public office in Maryland. Current research projects include disability justice interventions against carceral technology and expansion of medical-legal carceral states; disability and race in transnational and transracial adoption; and decolonizing clinical literature on obsessive-compulsive disorder. Disability Justice and abolition are their political homes as an organizer; as a feminist critical legal studies scholar, they work in critical race and disability theory and in science and technology studies.

Brown is assistant teaching professor of disability studies at Georgetown University, where they have developed original courses focused on crip/mad/queer narratives, the neurodiversity movement, disability law and policy, and disability and critical race theory. They are also founding Executive Director of The Autistic People of Color Fund, which is a trans, BIPOC, and disabled-led organization advocating for disability, racial, and economic justice with a focus on mutual aid, generative economies, and just transition. For the past several years, Brown has also been creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot, a cultural project celebrating disabled people of color's wisdom and being.

Brown serves as treasurer and past president of the Disability Rights Bar Association, the Disability Justice Committee's representative to the National Lawyers Guild board, and board member of Disability Power Bloc. Recently, they were appointed to serve as a Commissioner on the Maryland Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs. Formerly, Brown led the only policy and advocacy project in the United States focused on disability rights, algorithmic harm, and technology justice for several years. They co-authored a recent research and policy report on labor, disability rights, and emerging tech in the workplace. Other recent publications appear in FUTURE/PRESENT: Arts in a Changing America, Disability Studies Quarterly, Autism in Adulthood, and Disability Visibility Project.

Brown's work has been recognized in Amplifier’s We The Future Campaign, as well as in multiple documentaries and media projects, including I Identify As Me (People of Color Productions), American Renegades (PBS), The Ride Ahead and My Disability Roadmap(LikeRightNow Films), and Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests (HBO Max). They are a past Georgetown Gender+ Justice Initiative Fellow and a Justice Catalyst Fellow at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.