This six part webinar series brings together activists and organisers—disabled and non-disabled—to share tools, strategies, and reflections for organising under authoritarian conditions.
Across the world, activists are facing escalating threats from authoritarian and repressive governments. Disability movements are not exempt. Disabled organisers, particularly those engaged in cross-movement work or advocating for structural change, are being defunded, discredited, and subjected to increasing scrutiny. While authoritarian threats are now expanding globally, they are not new. Activists in the global South and among marginalised communities—many of them disabled, racialised, or criminalised—have long worked under hostile conditions. And they’ve developed a rich set of tools to navigate, resist, and rebuild.
Join us to learn from those on the frontlines—and to build collective tools for resistance.
Session One: The Authoritarian Blueprint in Action: How States Are Targeting Activism
20 August 2025, 5 pm CEST
The first session of this series explores the specific tactics used by authoritarian regimes to repress civil society and activism—such as criminalisation, surveillance, anti-NGO legislation, and smear campaigns—as well as the disability-specific threats faced by organisers.
Session Two: Operating in an Age of Surveillance: Building Security Practices
3 September 2025, 5 pm CEST
This session of the series explores key surveillance risks and basic digital security practices, including disability-specific challenges, such as the use of accessible tools and travel considerations.
Session Three: Funding Futures: Rethinking Current Models and Finding Alternatives
17 September 2025, 5 pm CEST
The third session of this series examines current funding structures, their limits, and vulnerabilities, including the role of intermediaries, funding cuts, and restrictions on foreign funding.
Session Four: Re-thinking How We Come Together: Building Diverse Structures of Organising
1 October 2025, 5 pm CEST
This session focuses on how formal organisations can be vulnerable to state repression and power imbalances. We will look at alternative ways of organising—like informal collectives and coalitions—and discuss practices such as collective leadership, rotating roles, and horizontal decision-making.
Session Five: Solidarity in the Face of Authoritarianism: What Cross-movement Activism Demands
15 October 2025, 5 pm CEST
This session explores the challenges of, and the tools needed for cross-movement solidarities which are respectful of and protect activists with heightened/differential risks.
Session Six: Holding Each Other: Care, Trust, and Community During Crisis
29 October 2025, 5 pm CET
This final session closes our series by reflecting on the impacts of fear, isolation, burnout, and despair that arise from working under hostile conditions. It explores ways to build and maintain spaces rooted in care, connection, and trust, even when fear and caution are necessary.
International sign and Spanish-English interpretation as well as real-time English captioning will be provided. The sessions will be recorded and made available online.
Register here!
(Poster designed by Silvestre Barragán)
Mad Thinking 
One response to “Disability Activism Under Pressure: Resistance and Resilience in Authoritarian Contexts”
[…] that vein, Mad Thinking is launching a series of webinars for disability activists focussed on building resistance and resilience in authoritarian contexts. […]
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