Laura Rifkin was born on October 17, 1958 in New York City, New York. Laura grew up in a Jewish household on the Lower East Side in a multicultural working- and lower-middle-class community full of artists and activists. Her father worked as a bank teller and union organizer, and was affectionately known as the “Mayor of the Lower East Side.”

In high school, as Laura was coming to terms with liking girls, a rumor started that she was gay. She was never ashamed, instead feeling inspired by the budding lesbian feminist movement. At 16, Laura began college and entered an unhealthy relationship with a 30-year-old man. After ending the relationship a year later, she bought a one-way bus ticket to California and kissed a 24-year-old lesbian bartender she met on the ride. On that same fateful bus ride, she was also approached by a woman canvassing for a high-profile lesbian custody case. Upon arriving in California, Laura promptly moved into a lesbian household with the bartender in Marin County, and dove into the world of local canvassing for lesbian rights.

While in college, Laura was in an accident that gave her a lifelong disability and had to drop out of school. She eventually settled down in Oakland and lived in Operation Concern, where she connected with a multicultural community of lesbians and a budding disabled lesbian support group. Laura finished her undergrad and then earned a PhD in social work and counseling, ultimately landing in a professorship at SF State.

Outside of university, Laura was a social organizing leader, artist, and educator. Among other impressive accomplishments, she collaborated with Jill Lessing to create a special needs area for the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Parade. They built an area that included umbrellas and cots, wheelchair friendly toilets, hand-drawn signs, and food, all run by comprehensively trained safety monitors, and implemented barricaded corridors and paratransit systems throughout the parade. It was so well-received that their special needs model became institutionalized as part of the parade. Laura also helped found the Wry Crips, the first disabled women’s theater company in the Bay Area, and was an early member of AXIS Dance Company, a dance troupe integrating able-bodied and disabled dancers.

While teaching at SF State, Laura was in another accident. The new extreme, chronic pain on top of her existing disability led her to retire early from teaching. Suddenly not knowing what to do with herself, Laura created the Fabulous/Activist Bay Area Lesbians with Disabilities: A Storytelling Project (Fabled Asp), which documented forty years of Bay Area disabled lesbian history. Through Fabled Asp, Laura declared 2010 “The Year of Honoring Lesbians with Disabilities.” That year, she pushed mayors and city councils around the Bay Area to promote honoring disabled lesbians; partnered with the Queer Women of Color Media Project (QWOCMAP) to document intergenerational stories; worked with the Dyke March to craft the theme “honoring dykes with disabilities”; and collaborated with the GLBT Historical Society and the San Francisco Public Library to exhibit artwork honoring disabled lesbians, working with the GLBT Historical Society’s resident artist EG Kreton on her project Lineage which connected living participants with the stories of those in the archive who had passed away. 2010 was a fabulous success.

Laura’s advocacy and artistic exploration continue to this day. She’s studied dance and mixed media, and has petitioned the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC) to lower the age of entry to 50 for disabled lesbians. Proudly identifying as a disabled Jewish lesbian, Laura provides rich reflections on everything from her experiences navigating non-monogamy to the importance of including disabled lesbian feminist voices in all social justice movements.