Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown (they/them) is an internationally recognized advocate, community organizer, scholar-activist, and movement builder whose work addresses interpersonal, corporate, and state violence against disabled people at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nationality. With over 15 years of experience in advocacy, organizing, and policy expertise at the nexus of disability rights and disability justice—two distinct but interconnected frameworks—they have also run for public office in Maryland. Their current research explores disability justice interventions against carceral technology and the expansion of medical-legal carceral states, disability and race in transnational and transracial adoption, and decolonizing clinical literature on obsessive-compulsive disorder. As an organizer, their political homes are disability justice and abolition; as a feminist critical legal scholar, their work engages critical race and disability theory, as well as science and technology studies.

Ly Xīnzhèn is an assistant teaching professor of disability studies at Georgetown University, where they have developed original courses on crip/mad/queer narratives, the neurodiversity movement, disability law and policy, and disability and critical race theory. They are also the founding Executive Director of The Autistic People of Color Fund, a trans-, BIPOC-, and disabled-led organization advancing disability, racial, and economic justice through mutual aid, generative economies, and just transition. In addition, they have spent several years creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot, a cultural project celebrating the wisdom and lived experiences of disabled people of color.

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

Their work has been recognized by Amplifier’s We The Future Campaign and featured 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.

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