This analysis looks at individualized education program (IEPs) for disabled students of color in US policy contexts as sites where culturally sustaining, equity-driven disability justice modes of relational micropolitics can be enacted. We center on family-driven political subjectivities, looking at power “concessions” by teachers and administrators which align with disability advocates and disability membership organizations as catalysts to enact relational social justice via co-creative collaboration in IEP goal setting and implementation. Using frame analysis, we examine strategic, dialectical and dialogical dynamics of situational interdependence among actors whose roles seem antagonistic but which converge through interdependent modes of collaborative complementarity toward inclusive equity. Our strategic hope is that, even in recalcitrant situations, one can enact spheres of transformative agency for oppressed and subaltern groups through interdependent movement building grounded on tacit alliances with key actors in the oppressing side who consciously opt for defecting exclusionary ways of relating.

Keywords: Change-making micropolitics, relational interdependence, critical disability studies in education, inclusive equity, decolonial culturally sustaining pedagogies.