Peer Advocate Spotlight: Maya Scott-Chung

Name: Maya Morya Selkie Scott (aka Maya Scott-Chung)

Pronouns: them/them, she/her and MerPurr:-)

How did you get involved with SDA?

I have a friend Estelle who I went to the San Francisco State University Masters in Public Health Program (SFSU MPH) program over 20 years ago who used to work with SDA- and she reached out to me as an organizer about 8 years ago in 2016. I started joining demonstrations against ICE and deportations, disability justice #Power To Live campaigns in 2018-2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic 

I met former ED Jessica Lehman through my friend India Harville, who is a beloved disability justice organizer, dancer and artist

While I have always felt like a unicorn, I didn’t always know I was disabled. I was born in 1966 with a rare congenital heart “defect” (CHD) called right sided aortic arch with a vascular ring, which significantly impacts my ability to breathe, swallow, walk and move. While I have struggled breathing, lifting, doing sports and other physical activities- I wasn’t diagnosed with this condition until 2017 when I was 51 years old. I already considered myself a part of  disabled.communities as someone navigated undiagnosed learning disabilities and

Why did you decide to become a peer advocate? 

I was recruited to apply to be a pure advocate in fall 2021. I had been very involved in SDA survival schools online. My daughter and I needed to flee domestic violence in the height of the COVID pandemic.

I navigated the domestic violence shelter system in a donated power wheelchair living on less than $300/week with Worker’s Compensation

Being a part of SDA’s Survival School, classes on technology and social

I have been part of “Disability Justice League, Bay Area (@djl_ba) …, a multiracial, fat, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent & chronically ill group practicing intersectional disability justice in action & engagement.

SDA members and staff have helped me to learn how to fight to get wheelchair accessible 

What do you like most about being a peer advocate? 

I love the other peer advocates and learn a lot from them. I am passionate about community health education, social justice organizing and community care- and a lot of people in my communities were already calling, texting, emailing, facebook private messaging me asking me for help with accessible housing, finding mobility devices, medical navigation for fat, queer, disabled and low income people. I have an opportunity to meet with staff from a number of Bay Area organizations, serving multiple marginalized and low income, disabled and senior people. I’ve been able to help myself and a number of beloved people in my community as a result of the information, connections, and resources I know about. I often call myself and my “crip creative community care comrades”
Mixed magical creatures– being from communities that are historically oppressed, repressed, suppressed (and often depressed) in navigating barriers and discrimination also gives us brilliance, creativity, experience and magic that many folks can learn and benefit from.

What do you like to do outside of your work with SDA? 

I love to go dancing in my wheelchair, and to teach and participate in making up and learning mixed ability dance with disabled youth and elders. I’m part of a lot of queer & trans drag and burlesque.communities and performed with House of Chaos. I am a founding member of Shapeshifters Community Theater, an LGBTQI+ mixed ability improvisational ritual dance company I love swimming in oceans, rivers, pools with flippers and gloves, and am studying Aguahara aquatic bodywork and water dance and excited to work with elders, fat, disabled and low income folks who often can’t access bodywork and aquatic therapies. I have an amazing extended family of wild wonderful artists and organizers and am learning to garden, be a self taught kitchen witch and snuggling with my kittie familiar Kiki. 

I am really excited, proud and grateful to be a part of the first LGBTQIA+ family and disability justice centered cohort of On The Verge Leadership program that will be in hybrid hosted at the Ed Roberts Center in Berkeley, and co-sponsored by the Bay Area LGBTQ+ family group Our Family Coalition. A close chosen family and I, who are both multiply disabled low income nonbinary queer parent organizers really pushed to have this training be hybrid, to use smart screens“A Verger is a participant of the program On The Verge. A Verger is an emerging leader, in other words, a person who has yet to fully reach their potential as a leader within their community and/or organization because of internal and/or external conditions. On The Verge considers anyone working in the nonprofit or public sector who has not gone through formal leadership development, no matter what age or positional authority, a good candidate to be a Verger.”… On The Move (OTM) is dedicated to developing non-traditional leaders to address the most pressing and critical educational, social, health and economic inequities in our community. Beginning in 2004 OTM has lead the place-based leadership development program known as On The Verge (OTV) using unique strategies to support leadership in the nonprofit and public sectors.”

I am a cofounder and active member of a disability justice centered palestine solidarity group, and we work closely with Anti police terror project (APTP), Ability Now

I am grateful to the community and camaraderie, learning, laughter, shared struggles and solidarities of the many folks who have been part of Senior and Disability Action in the last seven years.