EASTERSEALS DISABILITY FILM CHALLENGE

CHECK OUT AND SUPPORT ANNA PAKMAN’S

“SOCIAL FITNESS” MOCKUMENTARY

Social Fitness

Anna Pakman, my new friend and a disabled filmmaker, has released a very short film about pandemic life. The film, created for Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, features a cast that includes 70% performers with disabilities.

“SOCIAL FITNESS” is a mockumentary on the shared experience of quarantine, finding humor in the commonalities of pandemic life culture. The cast and crew behind the film represent diverse communities with disabilities, including Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Autism, Mental Illness, Epilepsy, PTSD, Limb Difference, ADHD, traumatic brain injury, and Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), alongside committed non-disabled allies.

I checked out an advance media screening. I love the skewed sense of humor, because quirky appeals to me. The inclusion of people who are both talented on-screen and diverse, gets huge bonus points.

The material that follows is taken from the press release about the short and the Easterseals support of disability and diversity.

With COVID-19 restrictions limiting in-person filmmaking, the team took advantage of advanced editing technology and the Zoom video conferencing platform to bring together talent from New York, New Jersey, California, and Florida in one seamless remote production.

The Easterseals Disability Film Challenge is a filmmaking contest that challenges filmmakers to produce original films in just five days (March 16-21, 2021) and gives new voices within the industry an opportunity to write and produce short films that challenge the limited representation of disabilities in the media by telling stories to showcase disability in its many forms.

Although people with disabilities are 20% of the U.S. population, a Ruderman Family Foundation study found that only 2% of characters on Primetime TV have disabilities, with only 5% of those authentically cast with disabled actors. The team behind Annatated Productions shares Easterseals’ goal to elevate this through high-quality entertaining content and create a better pipeline for disabled artists to showcase their talent to the industry.

The film’s producer, writer and director, Anna Pakman said, “Growing up with a physical disability, I rarely saw myself represented in front of or behind the camera. Making my own content has allowed me to rewrite that narrative by creating roles that defy the typical disability tropes used by Hollywood. I am grateful to Easterseals for giving us this platform to show audiences around the world what we can do.”

Pakman, who uses a wheelchair for mobility, added “People with disabilities tend to be masters of adaptability from years spent learning how to navigate inaccessible spaces, so it felt especially poignant to look back at a time when the whole world had to learn how to adapt to an unexpected situation that changed the course of everyone’s daily lives and find the humor in the ‘new normal.’”

Pakman will be joined by a powerhouse cast featuring internationally renowned comedienne Maysoon Zayid (General Hospital, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan), Bree Klauser (Audible Original Phreaks, Apple TV’s SEE), Anita Hollander (National Chair, SAG-AFTRA Performers with Disabilities Committee, Law & Order, FBI: Most Wanted), Liz Simons (Broad City), Eric Stafford (The Blacklist, Alpha House), BJ Lange (Jimmy Kimmel LIVE!), Shashi Bangera (Sesame Street, Kelly & Cal), Mary von Aue, Josey Miller, and Sylvia Longmire.

The production team also includes editor Liz Pritchard (A&E’s The Employables, ADA30 Lead on Celebration of Disability Arts, Culture, Education and Pride), advertising industry veteran Jd Michaels of Michaels.Adams, and Stefanie Parish. 

Here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awnB9jUGOig

Anna Pakman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awnB9jUGOig

TALKING TRASH…AND ABANDONED HOUSES PLUS VACANT LOTS IN SHENANDOAH

ON LET’S TALK MIAMI PODCAST WITH CAMILA CEBALLOS

Rules should force absentee owners to restore abandoned houses to original code-compliant condition. Those who do illegal demolition should be ordered to rent restored units as affordable for 5 years.

I am gratified to have talked about activism in the historic Shenandoah neighborhood of Little Havana for more than a half hour with podcaster Camila Ceballos.

I was proud to be her end of the year, final program.

We chatted about the city needing to do a better job of cleaning up, securing and redeveloping abandoned houses and vacant lots.

We differentiated between owner-occupied homes, with elderly or poor residents who do not have the ability or money to keep their roofs, windows and lots in perfect shape – vs. absentee owner speculators who often do illegal demolition then walk away from their unsafe structures.

We talked about the need for swifter action to push the hands of investors who trash core neighborhoods, encouraging blight, squatters while discourage healthy investment from young families and others who would otherwise move into the neighborhood and become rooted in it.

View the podcast here:                          

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHOOoetlIh8&feature=youtu.be 

I feel that these lots could be built with properly-scaled affordable housing. Abandoned houses could be rehabbed to become attainable rental properties for workforce housing.

As a longtime advocate for people with disabilities, I noted that less than one percent of housing in Miami is move-in ready for a person who uses a wheelchair for mobility. So, a good chunk of the infill housing on these blighted lots should be build accessible.

We also discussed research that has shown upwards of half of the people of Miami pay more than half their total income toward housing – a totally unsustainable housing gap, because the average family should pay no more than one third of its income on housing.

Camila Ceballos, host of Let's Talk Miami Podcast

We also touched on my Twitter storm and TV interviews underscoring the blight caused by illegal dumping in Miami’s older, core neighborhoods.

We agreed that whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent or other – maintaining quality of life in a decent, diverse, mixed-income neighborhood is important to you.

There is no political bias – red or blue – when you work to punish both speculators who destroy dozens of viable lots in a neighborhood and fly by night contractors who illegally dump trash on side alleys and on vacant lots.

I support my elected officials – being a public servant for the City of Miami was one of the most satisfying jobs of my long career – but I expect them to never hide behind excuses of process…while always leaping in to cut red tape to help the little guy.

Happy Holidays.

If you want to play Santa for working class Miami, then share this blog item and the link to the podcast with your elected officials, neighbors and friends. 

Alternate link to podcast:

https://anchor.fm/miamitalkspolitics/episodes/Abandoned-Lots-in-the-Heart-of-Miami-enrrpg 

Your tireless advocate for urban living with HoneyBear the Siamese rescue cat

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 11)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

Could planners’ tweets, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog and professional/academic article posts address wheelchair users? 

Could they dedicate a few lines about how multimodal mobility, public transit, safe crosswalks, calmed traffic and wide/curbless sidewalks greatly increase access to jobs, education, recreation, aging-in-place, health care, civic space, the arts and shopping for people with disabilities?

Until they do so, their idealistic designs (pretending) to embrace and accommodate all are anything but inclusive.

 

 

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 10)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

There is a wise and brutally frank saying in the disability community: Nothing about us without us. 

It clearly means that if there are no people with disabilities at the table, no planning with them in mind, nothing good will come out of the well-meaning, but insultingly-paternal plans and processes that exclude them.

Could the vast majority of town planners invest all of five minutes to drag and drop a few people with disabilities into documents marketing allegedly inclusive design?

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 9)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

Curious, I went online. I found tons of people with disability clip art.

(Getty Images and Verizon Media even teamed up to create The Disability Collection.) 

Diverse image of people with disabilities could readily be dropped onto the wide sidewalk, safe street crossing, bus stop, walking trail and every other pedestrian-friendly drawing in master plans.

I go back to reviewing hundreds of fresh, post-pandemic streetscapes (often called complete streets or inclusive design.) 

I note, by no coincidence or accident, people of every diversity—except disability—in these slick images.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 8)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

In these enlightened times, we (thankfully, correctly, appropriately) see a diverse tapestry of people in media. 

Talk five minutes to a planner and he or she will tell you they are the most diverse and enlightened of the many practitioners that shape the built environment. 

As such, I wouldn’t expect to see a sample street section or civic space—with dozens of people enjoying the new human-focused design—and all of them are 30-year-old white males.

And I never do. 

Planners know (whether it is based on truly embracing all, or simply understanding they better market to all) to embrace ethnic diversity in those little mock-up, computer clip art human beings moving about their imagined new towns.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 7)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

It’s a shame. Most pedestrian-focused design, supported with premium public transit and multimodal mobility—could create a near utopia for people with disabilities. 

But though they are a prime consumer, people with mobility disabilities clearly do not merit even one moment in the vision of these ableist, arrogant designers.

This is the same mindset that for decades, meant greeting cards, TV ads and catalogues were virtually devoid of anyone who remotely looked Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, etc. 

The big companies were ready and willing to make a buck off minorities. But show them as end users of carefully managed brands? 

Heaven forbid! 

The world isn’t ready for it

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 6)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

It is painfully evident that virtually all of these gifted planners and designers have decided wheelchair users

—and those who move about using crutches, walkers and other assistive mobility devices—do not merit one percent of their images or even one line in their 1,000-word design essay. 

Apparently, all the people with disabilities have died or been sent off to Mars in their depictions of a brave, new, pedestrian-as-king world. 

Or maybe they are still being forced to stay home, as if the ADA never existed.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 5)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

Those who earn their bread have reacted to this and are positioning themselves to be the shepherds of the new walkable utopia. 

Good for them. You could fill (social distancing observed, of course) a giant stadium with planners patting themselves on the back for creating “inclusive places for all.”

I read their lengthy, gushing posts about their human-scaled master plans.

I gaze at dozens of vivid images of people-centric placemaking.

Then my enthusiasm melts to anger.

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 4)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

Installing outdoor lifts doesn’t make a place genuinely inclusive.

Outdoor lifts are quickly obsolete, often don’t work, and don’t hold up well in the elements.

Both this lift and the one below are broken 90% of the time. 

COVID has created this situation as a matter of staying alive. 

The reaction to coronavirus has reduced air pollution and emphasized walking, biking and getting around via assistive mobility devices such as wheelchairs and scooters

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 3)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

Could their tweets, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog and professional/academic article posts address wheelchair users? 

Could they dedicate a few lines about how multimodal mobility, public transit, safe crosswalks, calmed traffic and wide/curbless sidewalks—

greatly increase access to jobs, education, recreation, aging-in-place, health care, civic space, the arts and shopping for people with disabilities?

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 2)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

I really do appreciate how much they are seeing fewer cars on the road and re-imagining wide sidewalks, safe crosswalks, calmed traffic and streets being more for the people than the automobile.

But if they love including everyone so much, you’d think the vast majority of town planners could invest all of five minutes to drag and drop a few people with disabilities into documents marketing allegedly inclusive design?

WHEN INCLUSIVE DESIGN...ISN'T (PART 1)

TOWN PLANNING MUST SERVE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES 

I love urban design. As a part of the extended disability community (my wife has used a wheelchair for mobility for four decades and is a brilliant Americans with Disabilities Act compliance professional), could it please love me back?

I even love all 100 drawings per day posted by urban designers, traffic engineers, town planners and architects that show how inclusive streets and sidewalks can be. 

I really appreciate that they are angling so hard to cash in on the post-pandemic new world order—or at least design of its streets and streetscapes.

OK, that was snarky.

HARD TO CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE DAY

WHEN BIGOTRY, RACISM AND ABLEISM ARE RUINING AND ENDING

THE LIVES OF PEOPLE OF COLOR AND PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

I think I live in the wrong world.

I don’t feel like American lives up to all the fireworks, bunting and revelry meant to celebrate good things symbolized by Independence Day.

Anger, hate, bullying, bigotry -- seems like at least half the "leaders" who impact my daily life trade in it.Some veiled, most not so much. It takes a lot out of me.

It physically sickens me when someone is made to feel 2nd (is there a 10th?) class...simply for being a person of color, a person with a disability.

I question if I will live long enough to truly live in an America that values equity and true equal opportunity.

When traveling, to say I'm from the USA brings the sting of shame from living in nation where the a president who fans the flames of white supremacy daily and never apologized for mocking a person's disability on TV.

Though we are a democracy, the U.S. has never truly had a level playing field for all.

Even in our best decades, this nation has not been truly inclusive.

In my first four decades, I at least embraced the hope that each generation was standing on the shoulders of the previous -- trying to make things better, trying to create fair play.

Now, the past several, I feel like the racists, the bigots, the bullies, the outright murders and destroyers -- have kicked the good efforts out from under us.

In terms of an America that embraces diversity and has a place at the table for all -- how many decades will it take to rebuild?

How much blood, how many tears must be shed till we are where we need to be...when we weren't even close to being where we should be BEFORE this regression into hate, racism, ableism?