Transcripts For SFGTV 20140512 : vimarsana.com

On given there are many bart stations in San Francisco. But every person who ive experienced with has come to take a look at it who uses a wheelchair, everyone has walked away saying the same thing. Wow, i knew that there was a problem because everyone was upset about it. I had no idea how bad it was until i actually tried to use it using my wheelchair. So, weve got to keep up the fight and weve got to let bart know this is important to us. Okay. Roland, do you mind if i give out your phone number and website address to the audience . Yeah, [speaker not understood]. Thank you. So, rolands phone number at work is area code 41554 362 22 ~. You can email him at roland, roland at ilrcsf. Org. And the organizations website address is www. Ilrcsf. Org. And if you want events, you just add back slash events to that address and youll get to the events page. Thank you. Youre welcome. Are there any other councilmember questions for ms. Lorenz . Staff . Through the chair, carla johnson. Jessie, i just wanted to thank you for coming today to speak to the council and for letting us know not only about the good work that youve always been doing, but also about some of the things that are coming up in the future. And certainly the bart action is a very important thing that we want everybody to know about so that they can put in their comment and hopefully change the direction that train is running. Umhm. Thanks, carla. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Youre welcome. I have Public Comments on this item. Jerry grace. Thank you, jessie. You did a great job. I know you a long time. But anyway, i think, jessie, you forgot one small thing, about may 21st. Its at the metro rally march coming up. 3 00 or 4 oclock in the afternoon. If you get in touch with jessie, people want to go, get on the bus and get down to central metro to our rally and well give you lunch and well go up there to talk to people up there in the capital and talk to them what they want to know, whats going on in your life and whats going on in your life. And please talk to jessie excuse me. [speaker not understood] i will be there and people dont know who i am, im jerry grace. Another thing. About you left out the www. Bart. Org. Again, www. Bart. Org. That way you can get in touch with anna, somebody i know at bart. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Yes. How will you make it on your own the city is awfully big and, girl, your city so all alone well, you got the skills to make it you got the chance, go out and take it love is all around no need to waste it and i know that youre gonna wake up you might just make it after all oh, city hall you might just make it after all city hall applause okay. Hello, my name is larry juicy edmonds, and i would like to say to lrc i hope that maybe we can advertise in the central city newspaper because this i know the work theyve done and i love what she talked. I feel there is someone who [speaker not understood]. You felt wonderful with this young lady speaking on our behalf. But i think many of us in sros, we dont know it exists. It would be so great if we could have them put in a community calendar, too, in San Francisco. And my other thing is because a lot of us go through a lot of different [speaker not understood] being disabled. We dont have a right that were victims. I think this would be another great agency to work people were talking about how people were taking people with disabilitys money. They were getting sign up for people to leave you alone. Property managers, sometimes they dont really we put a note to our tenants, sro tenants, somebody go to case manager. Case manager sometimes has to be able to do their job. I think being a person with disabilities, that we really should have more visibility and make the country better and with the speech from the president. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, america, i have never been more hopeful than i have tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there. [speaker not understood] keep it with me because [speaker not understood] at church. He told us about [speaker not understood] thats why theyre together. We cannot have a thriving wall street while main street suffers. He youll like all of these. ~ i may not have won your vote tonight, but i hear your voices. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So, we want Disability Council to be like our president. We want the Mayors Office of disability to really be for people who have disabilities in the city. Like i say, the independent resource center, i understand youre going to be moving soon. We can get closer so i hope to see in the future more access to irlc with the Mayors Office of disability supporting us all in this great city of San Francisco where we know we can, we found a cure to aids. [speaker not understood]. We can do this for the small amount of people who still resides in San Francisco. Thank you. Took my three minutes. And we are now taking a 10minute break. Please stand by; meeting in recess ere on item number 5 on the agenda. Therefore, we are moving on to the Longmore Institute of disability and ada silver anniversary. Catherine kudlick, director of the paul k. Longmore institute on disability. [inaudible]. Hello, yes . There we go. Anyway, good afternoon, everybody. I am cathy kudlick. I am director of the paul k. Longmore institute on disability at San Francisco state. Just to give you a brief overview, i know not a lot of you knew paul and worked with paul. He was in this room many times. And the Longmore Institute of San Francisco State University is kind of a it brings together advocacy, academics, culture, and the whole point of it is to get people in conversation that might not otherwise be in conversation and to change attitudes about disability. So, through cultural initiatives, through academic programs, through basically changing peoples minds. And the idea here is that you take Something Like culture and you get people to think about disability as a form of experience on a par with race, gender, social class, all the things we care about. If you can get people to think about disability differently and disabled people differently, then they will change their attitudes about employment, employing people with disabilities, or with service provision, all of these things. So, all of our programs with designed to do that, kind of that work. And were eager, were delighted to be here and hopefully working through some good partnerships with the Mayors Council on disability and with other groups in the city. Just briefly, a couple of our other projects besides the one that i will talk about at length, one of them is the super Fest International disability Film Festival which we will be having on november 2nd at the Jewish Community Jewish Contemporary Museum in downtown San Francisco and it will be a daylong Film Festival that we will show film shorts, doing the judging shortly. Were going to partnership with the San Francisco light house for the blind to run a Film Festival which is always amusing to people, but part of that is to think about what it really means to deliver films, to make films, to talk about films, and that theyre not just visual. There are sound elements. Theres conversation elements and theres all sorts of things that people care about. So, thats one of our initiatives. Another initiative that we will be exploring down the road is relationships between disability and aging as a cultural phenomena, what can people with Disabilities Teach older citizens as they age. There are a number of partnerships. What im here to talk to you about today is an exhibit that were putting together at San Francisco state, but it will be at the ed roberts campus in berkeley, and its called patient no more, and its a play on words. The idea is patient no more, people with disabilities securing civil rights and theres a play on patient, as in medical patient that people with disabilities are not just medical patients a jessie lorenz, the previous speaker made clear. And the notion is also to think about being impatient. That is, were not going to put up with garbage any more. And were focusing for the 25th anniversary of the americans with disabilities act on the 504 demonstrations in 1977 in San Francisco on the Federal Building. Briefly, for those of you that dont know the story, in 1977 about 100 people with disabilities came together at the Federal Building right, kind of a block or so from here. They came together and they were frustrated because the newly elected Carter Administration had refused to sign the 504 law that had already been passed, all it was waiting for was a signature so that it could be implemented. And the people with disabilities were tired of being pushed aside, saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, well sign it or its got to go on full review, weve got to do this, oh, just a minute, just a minute. And people just got fed up. So, they occupied the Federal Building for 25 days. Its the longest occupation of the Federal Building in u. S. History and there were people with a wide variety of, wide variety of people with disabilities. You had blind people. You had quadriplegics. You had deaf people. You had people with cognitive disabilities. You had people from different races, social classes, different experiences of disability, different experiences of activism. And they had never worked together before in such a way. For 25 days these people were in a building together, right two blocks from here, and they created an environment where they could have the conversations around disability and disability awareness, but also about activism, how to change hearts, how to change minds about what should happen. And you had amazing conversations happening, but not, you know, most americans and most people in the area are not familiar with this history. Even people in the Disability Community are not familiar with it. And the reason were focusing on it is well, theres two main reasons. One, it has a direct link to the americans with disabilities act because this 504, section 504 that they did succeed in getting the government to sign into law is the basis of much of the americans with disabilities act. Its at the core of the americans with disacts act. So, we wouldnt have the ada in the way that we have it today. The other thing thats amazing about it is that its a bay area phenomena. It really shows how the bay area was active and the unique features about the bay area and the bay area history. There were 11, i think 10 or 11 Federal Buildings that were either occupied or people protested in front of them across the country. Everywhere else, they were starved out. New york, washington, whatever, the police came in or the people in the community refused to help them. In the bay area, what was amazing is you had this coalition of community groups, of politicians, of people that really cared about disability rights. Or if they didnt care, they learned to care. And this was partly because of activism of the disability rights, the organizers at the protest. They had sewn seed all over the community and the bay area. So, you had this amazing phenomena where youd have like the black panthers, ~ safeway, mcdonalds, glide memorial church. All these mazing bay area institutions contributing to the protest in some way, bringing in, in the case of the black panthers, they brought in hot food. They brought in politicians had showers brought in. So, it was possible for it to happen because the local political people really cared and really started to get it about disability. And because the disability activists themselves were incredibly articulate about what they wanted, what their goals were, what needed to happen, and how people could help. So, its this wonderful moment in history with a wonderful model of how this can happen. And, so, were highlighting it. One of our goals, the most important one is to highlight some of the stories that people dont know about the protest, how active people of color were in the protest. Thats been kind of left out of some of the conversations, how organized and exciting some of the conversations were in this room. And were working with students and faculty at San Francisco state. This is how we kind of save a little money or, you know, work with the resources we have. Were working with journalism students and faculty and history students and faculty. Theyre doing oral histories. Theyre going out into the community and talking to people that have never been talked to before about their experiences of this protest. Were getting incredible stories. Its just going to be absolutely amazing. And then were also working with students from design and industry at San Francisco state. Theyre designing prototypes for the exhibit stations and what they will look like and the fonts. Were building in multiple funds of access from the beginning. Its not just oh, we have to make this accessible to blind people after its over. Its more, what does it mean to construct an exhibit so that you understand it, multiple groups of people are going to come in and access the exhibit in multiple ways. So, its a really exciting and very kind of collaborative exercise. We would like from the Mayors Commission i come asking about three things and from the community in general, too. The first one is for you to help spread the word about the project to all sectors of the community. Were looking for people that might have contacts, people that worked in the Federal Building. If you know he anyone that was involved in the protest or might have stuff related to the protest, ~ spread the word to all of those people and let them know were looking for information and were still looking for some people to interview and theres a few people that we still havent been able to find. And unfortunately, many are passing away, too. So, thats one thing. We want you to help us publicize it. Two, wed like to have the exhibit somewhere there is a traveling portion of the exhibit. Wed like to have the exhibit somewhere in downtown San Francisco, maybe perhaps in city hall somewhere to celebrate San Franciscos legacy or, you know, to get that kind of rolling so that theres conversations with the community that will have programming and things like that. But we want were looking for a space to do that. And then third, we dont have a number you can text for money or anything, but we do have we do have financial needs also. So, if anybody knows anyone who has recently won a lot owe ticket and youre looking to know what to do with the winnings, more seriously, if you have any kind of partnerships, groups that youve worked with in the city, either individual, possible donors that are more culturally inclined that want to support something that really celebrates San Francisco and a really unique feature San Francisco at that, or if you have any corporate contacts, things like that, that would be really helpful to us. We now have enough to do the exhibit at a minimum you know, it will be a good exhibit no matter what, but every amount of money we get now will make it really that much more dynamic, that much more accessible, and that much more really interactive and really put a mark on the world about this issue and disability rights and Exciting Technology and kind of bringing together all the forces that make San Francisco so unique and so interesting. So, were really, really excited. If anybody wants to get involved volunteering or anything, talk to me. I brought some literature. Carla asked me if it was in an accessible format and i immediately said no. Unfortunately i didnt have access to the braille printer this morning when i was collecting all the stuff. The one accessibility feature in it is kind of funny, is that there is a its stapled on the left side on or the right side on some of them so that if youre lefthanded its easier to open. Thats what my student intern said when he photocopied it backwards. [laughter] [speaker not understood]. We do have lots of information. All of this information is actually online. The email or the web address is www whatever,. ,. , whatever, Longmore Institute. So, thats Longmore Institute,. Sf, sfu,. Edu. I have cards and come see me and ill spell it better. Or maybe it can reflect somewhere on the record. Thats all i have to say formally. Im really excited and i look forward to whatever kind of partnerships we can find in this. And im open to any questions or comments and things like that. Thank you for your presentation. I have councilmember roland wong. This brainstorming where you may put the exhibit, the main library may be a possibility. Either wherever you can talk about service there. Thats a great idea. Yeah, thank you. I cant think of any others, but im sure theres many places you can set up your exhibit. Absolutely. And we will have one at San Francisco state, of course, too, but wed like to have something downtown because San Francisco state is way on the edge. Right. Thats a good ways, too. Okay. Councilmember derek zarda. Thank you so much for coming here today. Im a huge fan of the Longmore Institute, ever since attending its inauguration. And i was just curious, for those in the community who maybe have some ideas around some cultural projects to further promote, you know, the disability culture, possibly starting up their own little group and trying to Seek Partnership with your organization, is that something you would be open to . Yeah, sure, im always open to everything and would love to talk to people about their ideas. The one, the one thing thats just to know at the moment were two staff people. So, were trying our best to do what we can and its great. And i love ideas. I love talking to people. And, you know, if we find a really good synergy, lets go for it, yeah. I cant promise to everybody everything, but i am open and excited about whatever we can do together. That would be great. You know, thats one of the wonderful things about being in San Francisco and having groups. But yeah, definitely talk to me, see me, come by. We left one other thing off to say about the institute. We have a Beautiful Library that started with paul longmores books, you know, we inherited a lot of his stuff when he passed away and started with his amazing disability book collection. And i added a lot of mine. The assistant director emilie betiks added some of her. Then people started hearing about us having this library. So, theyre donating it. So, we have some amazing collections of stuff there. Unfortunately, we dont have the ability to check it out yet because we cant come to your house and do what the Library Might do to get it come to the institute and sit down and consult the books there. Thats wonderful. But yes, new york city thank you, derek . Yes, thank you. Thank you. Any other councilmember comments, questions . ~ i just wanted to say that im embarrassed because i didnt know that the cradle of the disability activist movement was San Francisco. So, i found that isnt that the coolest thing ever . Like many other things, the Environmental Movement and so many other things. But so, thats exciting and i want to thank you for bringing that piece of history back to our attention and doing this exhibit. Yeah he, well, thank you. And, yeah, if anybody has any ideas ~ or anything or know people, like i said, thats great. Yeah, and spread the word because thats really going to make it a difference. One other thing ill say to get it on your calendar, you can go to the independent center for independent living here in San Francisco on july 26th, 2014, but save july 26th, 2015 to come to the opening of our exhibit. Well have a big gala opening at the ed roberts campus. But well spread word around big time before then, so. Carla . Through the chair, carla johnson. Thank you so much for coming today to tell us about the work that youre doing and also about this very special project with the 504. Many of the councilmembers may remember ken stein, our longtime staff person at the Mayors Office on disability and he was one of the people that was there in 1977 and was also one of those really important vocal advocates in the community who has shared his story in the film that you can see by just googling 504, history of 504, i think is what the name is. The film is called the power of 504. Right. Right. I really enjoyed watching that fitv. ~ film. Yes, and other films we found combing the archives, we have an amazing film that came from the glbt archives. Theres footage in there, the disability rights people that were active in it, havent seen so, theres a lot of different stuff were uncovering and the power of 504 film is great because it gives the complete overview of the project. And, so, this is our starting point and [speaker not understood], hes one of our advisors. Were working closely with him. And speaking of the anniversary of the ada, our office for years actually organized the anniversary celebration here at city hall and our Deputy Director Joanna Fraguli is one of the wonderful ones, too. I remember seeing paul at our last one and it was just such a, you know, a precious moment to have been able to hear paul speak. So yes, it was on youtube. Its beautiful. It really is. Its another thing i encourage people, you know, to search and to listen to. So, were delighted that youre carrying on the legacy out at San Francisco state. Its a hotbed of activism out there and were just happy to have you as a partner. Thank you, thank you. One more comment. The chair again, this is Joanna Fraguli. And i have a question for you. I know that the 504 is an important local legacy that we will never live down, right . Im wondering if you are going to include in your exhibit other things that led to the ada signing, like the capital parole. The capital parole is one of those forms of activism that gets such little play, and yet it was started with a previous director, executive director of the Independent Living Center in berkeley. Umhm. So, im wondering if there are going to be tieins to the exhibit. Yes, thats a good point. Thank you for letting me clarify that. I dont want to make it seem like the bay area brought us the ada. Obviously, yeah, theres other and that moment brought us to ada. Theres other moments of activism that came before and then after as well, such as the transit strikes, which it would be interesting for people to remember now with the bart stuff. But the capital crawl, were going to have a panel were kind of hashing out the stories now. But one of the panels will deal with the sort of activism and other things that led to 504 and that complemented 504. So, you know, were not going to just let people walk away thinking, you know, that was it. But, yeah, thank you for letting me giving me the excuse to say that, yeah. And also, because i know when you and i spoke privately a few moments ago, we talked about the intersections of race and gender in the Disability Community. Umhm