(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — When participants in the 2024 Chicago Disability Pride Parade march through downtown this weekend, many will do so with a heavy heart — due to the passing of longtime disability activist Justin Cooper.
Cooper died on July 9, less than two weeks before what would’ve been his 42nd birthday and only 11 days before the 21st Chicago Disability Pride Parade, which he helped organize.
The Chicago native worked with Access Living, a local nonprofit that provides services and advocacy for people with disabilities, for nearly nine years. That’s where he met Candace Coleman, a community strategist specialist at Access Living, who told WBBM that Cooper spent his energy on much more than advocacy and activism.
“If he wasn’t advocating, then he was creating art,” Coleman said. “If he wasn’t creating art, then he was doing Comic-Con. If wasn’t doing Comic-Con, then he was a foodie. If he wasn’t a foodie, then he was partying. He was an all-around person.”
Access Living’s Bridget Hayman said Cooper, who was born with Becker Muscular Dystrophy, was a mentor in the nonprofit’s Disability Justice Mentoring Collective. He was also a member of the organization’s Advance Your Leadership Power (AYLP) community organizing group.
It was with the AYLP that he, over nine years, helped push Illinois lawmakers to pass the Community Emergency Services and Supports Act (CESSA) in 2021, which requires 911 to coordinate with mental health services in response to mental health crises.
Coleman recalled an instance when the AYLP was debating whether advocating for CESSA was worth the effort, with several people feeling fatigued after years of work.
“Justin, really strongly, was like ‘No, we’re not stopping. We’re going to keep going. This is very important,’” Coleman said. “I just remember that being the standout moment, like, OK, if Justin says we’ve got to keep going, we’re not stopping.”
Cooper’s work as an artist overlapped with his work as an activist and as a parade organizer. In 2018, he took his passion for filmmaking and created the “ Wheelchair Chronicles ,” an autobiographical piece in which Cooper discussed, among other things, the intersectionality of being Black and disabled.
“Justin poured his heart out in all that he did,” Coleman said. “He was very vulnerable and very honest through his art, his documentary, and he embodied disability pride.”
At the time of his passing, Cooper was serving as the Disability Pride Parade committee president.
Fellow parade organizer W.A. Thomasson told WBBM that Cooper would be posthumously honored with the Van Hyck Award at this year’s parade. The award is given out each year to one activist at the Disability Pride Parade.
Thomasson added that a number of parade participants would be wearing t-shirts with Cooper’s silhouette.
Cooper was an only child, Coleman said. He is survived by his mother, as well as several aunts and uncles. A GoFundMe has been launched to help his family cover the costs of his funeral, burial and any other memorial costs.
Said Coleman: “You know you really made an impact if people, even after learning that you passed away, still showed up to gather anyway just to be near the people that loved you — and you. That’s very impactful.”
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