ABSTRACT
On 11 May 2011, an estimated 8,000 demonstrators took to London's streets to protest proposed cuts to the nation's Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Inaugurating the United Kingdom's 'Hardest Hit Movement', marchers and activists warned that such austerity measures would put disabled people's lives, along with their ability to live independently, at risk. Undeniably, the United Kingdom was not the only site for disability activism, which, in the aftermath of financial crises, banking fraud, and exorbitant debt, was increasingly fixed to threats inherent in proposed governmental austerity measures. In particular, the Coalition government's fiscal amendments to the DLA would incontrovertibly affect the lives of 3.6 million individuals. People are incredibly proud of the various chapters collected, as they are certain the perspectives enrich and complicate the largely western cannon of disability studies theories and literature. Initially, people wanted to host a brief conference on the challenges that disability presents to human rights and humanitarianism.
