Sarah Jama is building a world where every BODY can thrive!

Jama’s supporters include youth; queer folk; climate advocates; ODSP recipient; seniors; local, provincial and federal politicians; and people from across the country.

Sarah Jama Says her lived experience ignited her passion for community engagement, disability justice and activism.

The 28-year-old, NDP candidate in the Hamilton Centre byelection is poised to replace NDP MPP Andrea Horvath who held the seat for 18 years.

Hamilton (aka the Hammer and Steeltown) is a working-class city but it’s also an arts and culture mecca for creatives. Unfortunately, the influx of Toronto artists played a significant role in the rapid gentrification of affordable neighbourhoods that drove housing prices into the stratosphere.

Jama, who was born with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair for mobility, works tirelessly to remove barriers and increase accessibility to buildings, services, and human rights.

She explained that as an ableist society, we police people with disabilities instead of letting them have personal and political agency to ensure they thrive in community.

Jama told Small Change that we really don’t teach variously abled people to ask questions.

“Where do you go when the services in place don’t work for you? Disabled people are the largest minority in the world, also the most silent, because they don’t see themselves as political,” shared Jama.

Instead, Jama wants to build a world where every body can thrive.

Kojo Damptey, former Executive Director at Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, told Small Change, “She [Jama] has the engagement and activism we need to see. Even when what she is working on has nothing to do with meeting her own needs. “

Damptey pointed out that as a Black disabled woman, Jama faces a lot of challenges including overt racism, ableism, and misogyny.

Challenges and opposition may come from elected officials in Hamilton or across the country and these same people often try to undermine Jama’s work.

Never the less, Jama remains centered and focused on making sure all unheard voices get space, agency and included in discussions. Think immigrants, Muslims, and women.

She is not afraid of exposing accessibility, racism, hate, fascism, and Islamophobia within the city she loves. Then, getting down to work with community to make sure the necessary changes are made in the right way, for the right reasons, and with the desired outcomes.

Jama grew up in Etobicoke. She chose Hamilton to be her home after graduating from McMaster University with a degree in Social Sciences.

She really appreciated the fact that disable persons using devices ride Hamilton public transit for free because that meant for the first time in her life, Jama had real independence.

That free transit might have something to do with the fact that Hamilton has the highest proportion of disabled people which earned it the nickname ‘Scooterville.’

Jama was Lead Organizer for the Hamilton Community Benefits Network (HCBN) whose mandate is to create real change including decent work, inclusionary housing and community-driven investment in the people of Hamilton.

She left that role to co-found Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO) in 2018, working to remove barriers embedded within existing systems.

In order for Hamilton to have a just recovery, Jama wants to make sure all Hamiltonians benefit from the design and construction of the much awaited, and debated, Light Rail Transit (LRT) project.

Those benefits must embrace the environment, Indigenous arts, housing, jobs for locals, and accessibility from concept to completion.

The LRT project has already forced people out of affordable rental homes. Those homes were then demolished leaving the evicted floundering in a rental market that had literally gone berserk.

Over 6,000 people are on the waitlist for city housing in Hamilton. This is not due to a shortage of housing per se, but a sign of just how unaffordable market rents have become.

Jama works with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), as well as Environment Hamilton, to hold city council accountable for passing strong inclusionary zoning policy and affordable housing provisions along the LRT route and surrounding corridors.

Housing is such a monumental issue, that Jama co-founded Hamilton Encampment Support Network (HESN) in 2021. She wants an end to evictions and tear downs of encampments which only serve to hide the housing problem rather than providing viable alternatives and long-term solutions.

Acknowledging that housing is a human right, Jama advocates for free, safe, accessible, adequate, permanent shelter as an alternative to criminalizing and mistreating unhoused Hamiltonians.

During the pandemic, Jama created the Care Mongering Hamilton Project that fed 10,000 families from the DJNO as well as students. Over 200 volunteers came together to make this happen.

In December 2020, when vaccines became available, Jama asked Hamilton Public Health to collect data to inform the vaccine rollout.

That initiative led to a vaccine clinic that prioritized Black, racialized, and other vulnerable Hamiltonians. At the time, Nova Scotia was the only other province in Canada with a targeted clinic like this.

Over 47 per cent of people contracting COVID in Hamilton were from racialized, newcomer, elderly and vulnerable populations.

Jama helped book appointments until funding came through to hire staff. Between April 2021 and March 2022, over 16,000 Hamiltonians were vaccinated.

Jama has been vocal about Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). She makes sure the discussion includes the potential impacts for Black, racialized and disabled folk.

The fact that Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) provides a monthly income of a mere $1,169 to cover rent and all necessities of life has had some recipients applying for MAiD citing abject poverty as the reason for ending their lives.

Ideally, an individual spends 30 per cent of their monthly income on rent. For ODSP recipients that would be $351. In a city where the average one-bedroom rents for about $1,700 that’s not even a possibility.

And, should two people decide to share a one or two-bedroom apartment to save money, then ODSP claws back some of the $351 that is allotted for rent.

Jama has a unique take on long-term care as well. Instead of replacing private, for-profit long-term care (LTC) in Ontario with not-for-profit LTC or a national plan, she would like to see LTC decarceration.

The abolition of LTC would end profiteering off of older people. LTC would be replaced with communities where disable elders and people thrive with the assistance of properly funded home and palliative care as well as through the proper funding of assistive devices.

Jama is also in favour of a guaranteed livable income; affordable accessible housing; and universal heath care that does not include a privatization component – period.

Last March Jama was awarded a 2022 Women of Distinction Award for Community Leadership. That spring she taught Introduction to Disability Justice through McMaster University.

Jama’s supporters include youth; queer folk; climate advocates; ODSP recipient; seniors; local, provincial and federal politicians; and people from across the country.

Her list of speaking engagements include, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants; the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario; the Broadbent Institute; Ontario Federation of Labour; the Service Employees International Union; Sexual Assault Centre for the Greater Hamilton Area (SASHA); the Elect More Women Conference; Canadian Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Harassment in Higher Education; the Progress Summit in Alberta; Wellington Water Watchers; and is a past Hancock Lecturer.

Jama wants everyone to, “Exercise your political agency and create the world we want to live in.”

Check out her platform here.

Listen to my May 2022 interview with the NDP Hamilton Centre candidate here.