Collective Work with AmplifyMN

I spent the Spring 2026 semester crossing campus on crutches and claiming the single, wobbly handicap desk in the front corner of my public affairs class. After dislocating my knee and undergoing surgery, I suddenly felt a more intimate connection to the course, which focused on disability and the environment. 

It was in this class that two guest speakers from the collective, AmplifyMN, helped us dig deeper into Disability Justice. Developed by queer disabled women of color, Disability Justice understands ableism as intertwined with other forms of oppression (like racism and classism), and its intersectional analysis pushes the traditional bounds of single-issue disability rights activism. 

The guest speakers from AmplifyMN explained how ableism – not disability – is the biggest challenge for disabled folks, and they gave me new ways to understand how and why my world became so much more difficult to navigate on crutches. So when I realized AmplifyMN was one of the organizations participating in the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub’s Grounded Knowledge Summer Internship Program, I jumped at the chance to apply. 

Unlike traditional academic training, this internship allowed me to embed myself in community work. Moving beyond theory, I gained a greater understanding of how Disability Justice is experienced and practiced by disabled folks here in Minnesota. This summer with AmplifyMN, I was able to participate in the work of the collective – including attending meetings, helping build out founding documents, and contributing to AmplifyMN’s first grant application after their previous Hub residency.

A New Way of Working

Working with AmplifyMN was much different from my previous work and schooling experience because AmplifyMN works differently than other organizations I have been a part of. The collective strives to live out the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, as developed by the collective, Sins Invalid. For example, they practice the principle of collective access by working together to meet each others’ access needs. Virtual meetings with shifting facilitators, asynchronous work, and events planned with accessibility in mind are just some of the ways AmplifyMN works toward collective access. AmplifyMN also honors the Disability Justice principle of interdependence; they are non-hierarchical and use a consensus decision-making model that leaves no one behind. 

These practices help the collective work through shifting capacity; folks can step up or back as needed. For example, when I had my second surgery for my knee, the collective was so supportive. They encouraged me to advocate for my needs and work at a pace that allowed me to heal. This experience with shifting capacity helped me understand the importance of the communications plan, the creation of which was a major part of my work for the internship. The plan outlines communications practices and key messages to help frame the work of the collective for different audiences. It can serve as a living document to keep communications from the collective consistent and values-aligned – even as the collective grows and different people move in and out of the work according to their capacities. 

Visions for a Liberatory World

I also conducted surveys and met individually with members, learning about what Disability Justice means to them and what visions they had for AmplifyMN’s future. This envisioning is powerful. As one disabled narrator and artist involved in a joint oral history project between the Minnesota Historical Society and AmplifyMN observed (as passed to me through an AmplifyMN member), there is real power in bringing something into existence that has never existed before. This power to create something new is the same power we need to envision and build the liberatory world of our dreams.

 The visions I heard for AmplifyMN’s future were as diverse as its membership, but this does not mean that the collective’s mission or vision are unclear. Instead, this heterogeneity reflects a greater question in transformative work: How do we organize across differences? AmplifyMN has shown me that there is no single or easy way to do this. Sometimes people have conflicting access needs or different ideas about the scope of a project. This internship gave me insight into how we might work through these tensions. Because, as was shared with me at the University’s Engaged Scholars Summer Institute I attended as part of the internship program, if you think community-based, participatory work is easy, then you are doing it wrong.

Leadership from Those Most Impacted

The work of the collective is ongoing work, not toward a fixed destination but toward a more inclusive and just way of relating to one another and to the community. AmplifyMN moves intentionally at the speed of trust, and working with the collective through this internship has given me insight into how I might practice community engagement in my own research. This was one of my main goals coming into the internship because of my background as a first generation student. My family encouraged me to pursue higher education to expand my job opportunities, but they hold a great distrust toward academia and do not see its value beyond resume building. I am grateful for the chance this internship gave me to practice co-creation, so that I can work to change the way academia engages the public. 

After a second surgery, I am now en route to a full recovery. I may lose the crutches, but I will not lose all that I learned from the Grounded Knowledge internship with AmplifyMN this summer. I hope to bring some of the practices and values of the collective into my other work, both managing undergraduate researchers at the CREATE Initiative and in my community organizing outside the University. 

I am so incredibly thankful to the folks at The Hub and the folks of AmplifyMN for welcoming and supporting me. As we dream together of a more liberatory world, we must look to the Disability Justice principle of leadership of the most impacted. Disabled folks, especially those multiply marginalized, must be everywhere, in everything. They need to be in the futures we imagine and strive to create; in fact, they need to be leading the way.