Patty Berne

Patricia "Patty" Berne (January 21, 1967 – May 29, 2025) was an American writer, performance artist, director, and disability justice organizer. Berne was founding member of the disability justice movement and framework,

Biography Berne was born in 1967 in San Francisco to Sugako Berne, a Japanese immigrant, and Maurice Berne, a Haitian immigrant. Berne had three sisters, Chieko Therese Tomasulo, Simone Billings, and Mary Bow. Berne used they/she pronouns and identified as queer.

Berne began college aged 16 at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined Students Against Intervention in Central America. Berne joined protests on campus and was arrested at one. Their charges were soon dismissed, which Berne took issue with, as it was due to the court being inaccessible to wheelchair users. Using the discriminatory dismissal, Berne was able to get the charges dismissed for every protester.

Career

Disability Justice Movement Berne focused on arts-based disability justice advocacy and resistance work. The disability justice movement was pioneered by Berne along with other advocates – Mia Mingus, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Eli Clare, Sebastian Margaret, Stacey Milbern, and the Disability Justice Collective – in California in the early 2000s. They wanted to build a cross-movement and intersectional disability movement, correcting the white-centric gaze and single-issue focus of the earlier Disability rights movement.

Berne later explained why disability justice was important and how it differed from disability rights for the Disability Visibility Project:

As well as defining and outlining the second wave of disability advocacy, Berne introduced the idea and framework of disability justice to future leaders of the movement, including Alice Wong. Berne identified 10 core principles of disability justice in 2016:

Intersectionality; Leadership by People and Communities most Impacted; Anti-Capitalism Politics; Cross-Movement Solidarity; Disabled people are Whole; Sustainability; Cross-Disability Solidarity; Interdependence; Collective Access(ibility); and Collective Intersectional Liberation.

For Berne, disability justice also required decolonizating the body and language justice.

Art and Advocacy In 2005, Berne co-founded Sins Invalid with Leroy F. Moore Jr. Berne would later serve as the Executive Director and Artistic Director of "a disability justice-based movement building and performance project" led by disabled people of color. Berne directed 11 shows at Sins Invalid. A central question in much of Berne's work at Sins Invalid surrounded eroticism (cripping sex) Sins Invalid have also had campaigns on Language Justice is Disability Justice, Disability Justice is Climate Justice, Reproductive Justice is Disability Justice, and advocating against the prison industrial complex and police violence.

Berne was also 2020 Ford Foundation Disability Futures Fellow. In 2009, Berne was awarded the Empress I Jose Sarria Award for Uncommon Leadership by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Berne was a long-time board member of San Francisco Women Against Rape. Berne also served on the founding boards of the Elders of Peacock Rebellion and Health Justice Commons. |role-1=Co-Producer|role-2-year=July 13, 2014|role-2-title=Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement|role-2-notes=Documentary|role-2-source= |role-2=Cast (as Self)|role-3-year=2021|role-3-title=Loving With Three Hearts / Amar con tres corazones|role-3-notes=Documentary, 39 min, in English, Spanish, ASL|role-3-source= |role-3=Co-Producer

Awards