Marta Russell was an American writer and disability rights activist.
Career
Russell grew up in the Mississippi Delta, attended the Memphis College of Art, and moved to Los Angeles, California in her early 20s to pursue a career in cinematic visual effects. Her identity as a writer and journalist emerged as her disability progressed, and as she became more involved with disability rights groups such as ADAPT. Russell has one daughter named Georgia Scheele.
Politics
Her political views, which she described as "left, not liberal," informed her writing on topics such as healthcare, the prison-industrial complex, physician-assisted suicide, poverty, ableism, and the Americans with Disabilities Acting of 1990. In addition to writing for New Mobility and the Monthly Review, Russell contributed articles to numerous scholarly and policy journals such as the Journal of Disability Policy Studies and the Socialist Register as well as print and online newspapers such as The Los Angeles Daily News.
Views
Her book, Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract published in 1998 by Common Courage Press analyzes the relationship between disability, social Darwinism, and economic austerity under capitalism.