Stacey Park Milbern: Google honors disability rights activist on her 35th birthday!

Happy Birthday Stacey Park Milbern!

Google doodle on May 19, 2022, to remember Stacey Park Milbernto, a Korean-American disability rights activist. She was born on May 20, 1987. In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, today’s Doodle—illustrated by San Francisco, CA-based guest artist, Art Twink—celebrates Stacey Park Milbern’s legacy on what would be her 35th birthday.

Stacey Park Milbern was a queer, Korean-American disability justice activist, who co-founded the disability justice movement and dedicated her life to advocating for marginalized communities.

Stacey Park Milbern was born in U.S. Army Hospital in Seoul with congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD). She grew up in Fort Bragg, North Carolina in a military family, as her father was in the United States Army and her mother was Korean.

Stacey Park Milbern began her service as a leader for disability justice at the age of 16. After noticing a lack of advocacy for disabled LGBTQ+ and people of color, she teamed up with other activists in 2005 to coin disability justice—a framework dedicated to ensuring the perspectives of traditionally marginalized groups within the disabled community weren’t left out of the fight for disability rights.

At the age of 24, Milbern moved to the Bay Area, California, where she worked tirelessly to organize, write, and speak for the movement and became Director of Programs at the Center of Independent Living.  In 2014, Milbern was appointed to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities and served as an advisor to the national administration. Stacey Park Milbern earned a master of business administration degree from Mills College in 2015.

“I want to leave a legacy of disabled people knowing we are powerful and beautiful because of who we are, not despite of it." - Stacey Park Milbern

In early March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread to the Bay Area, Milbern and four friends constituting the Disability Justice Culture Club distributed homemade disease-prevention kits, including hand sanitizer, disinfectant, and respirators, to residents of Oakland homeless encampments. She raised concerns for the well-being of the community and its most vulnerable members.

Stacey Park Milbern died in a Stanford hospital on her thirty-third birthday, May 19, 2020, due to surgical complications.

From advocating for national legislation to building community through the Disability Justice Culture Club—Stacey Milbern always dreamed big and lived up to her values. Happy 35th birthday, Stacey Park Milbern!

Source: Google doodles, Wikipedia

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