Via Sunny Dreamer:
(The clip is totally visual– thanks to Day for pointing this out about youtube videos. Basically is a french commercial that shows a city where having a disability is the norm…i.e. There is a man with an umbrella who has to scrunch down to use a public phone, a woman who goes to a hotel and the check-in person only signs, a library where all the books are in braille, and images of disabled people staring at nondisabled people.)
Reminds me of a poem I wrote last year:
the place i love to call home
disabled people roam the beaches and streets
not combing through trash or holding up signs for food
but with the freedom and power to do whatever they want to do.
the concept of self-determination is so innate here
that no one is alarmed by the masses of Disabled people just sitting around naked
rarely is disability the standard for beauty
and this is finally a place to be free.
here at our island,
interpreters are for people who aren’t fluent in ASL,
words like lame, dumb, and insane are used in positive affirmation,
and notions of group homes and employment discrimination are so foreign that only scholars can barely grasp the concepts of them…
this island i call home is a safe place,
free of judgment
everyone is welcome—
just know that disabled people will be on the movie screens,
kissing other disabled people
and doing disabled things
so don’t come if you’re not down with that…
this island is the place i love to call home
when the real world gets unbearable
or when i don’t have the patience
to deal with all the political bullshit
of my beloved community.
Kara is hosting a lovely disability carnival this month titled IF!
7 Comments
October 27, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Hey thanks for leaving a comment. I appreciate it. I loved the video too, couldn’t help but grin at it myself. Nice, thought-provoking poem, btw…
October 28, 2007 at 2:07 am
That reminds me of the youtube videos from Britain’s disability comm. They’re VERY similiar, with a longer plot.
October 28, 2007 at 3:11 am
I love that France advertises that while lawyers in America find ways to get people out of abiding by the ADA!
I love your poem. Some of it sounds like an ADAPT Action!
October 31, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Great poem!
I wrote about that French ad a while back. Link here. It seems to be a favorite for a lot of people since I’ve had quite a few emails over the past couple years asking where it is in my archives.
November 3, 2007 at 2:47 am
i am curious. is it just sentimental? or would you really want a place that made the non-disabled feel out of place? a sort of reverse discrimination. i’m guessing not. don’t get me wrong, i can totally see how this commercial feels good, but having been in Europe for years, i can’t quite see it through idyllic eyes.
perhaps what is so appealing is to get the Other to empathize (not sympathize)? so perhaps awareness courses like one which ages people and helps them empathize with the elderly is a better tactic? what do you think of that type of activity?
November 7, 2007 at 7:41 pm
ahhh, LAP, some reason your comments keep going to my spam folder and it’s annoying because they’re always really good ones!
no, i don’t want anyone to feel out of place. for me the commercial is great because it shows what life is like for disabled people, kind of like a “wear our shoes” for a day but done in a way that is effective in getting the point across about inaccessibility and ableism.
speaking of “wearing shoes” or whatever the phrase is, i’m really admantly opposed to any kind of simulation because when people finish them, instead of knowing about oppression or ableism, they think of the physical aspect and go “glad i don’t have to deal with that!” (which is totally against what the simulation was for in the first place.) if you have a disability, you learn to adapt things—it’s impossible to get the whole experience by riding in a wheelchair or using a cane for a day. thanks for the link, i never have heard of simulations regarding older people.
But for more info, Big Noise has a really good blog post on simulations here: http://mybignoise.blogspot.com/2007/10/disability-simulations-need-to-be.html
July 22, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Nitpick: It’s not an hotel, it’s a bank. She wants to open an account.
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