"Fifth Freedom helps people organize at the grassroots level so they can work together to solve their disability related problems"
Partners in Policymaking news
Fifth Freedom congratulates all the Partners in Policymaking graduates who have been recently recognized for their disability advocacy work!Douglas Schmidt
ACT Team Coordinator
Fifth Freedom Network
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Fifth Freedom would like to congratulate Kim Mettache, Kathy Cortopassi, Linda Muckway, Dee Ann Hart, and all the other Partners in Policymaking graduates who have been recently recognized for their disability advocacy work!
Back in March, the Hammond Disability Commission held its Mayor’s Awareness Breakfast, where two Partners in Policymaking members won awards. Kim Mettache was given the Individual Adults award. Kim is a graduate of the 2007 class, the founder and president of ALDA Northwest Indiana (Association of Late Deafened Adults), and a chapter leader of the Hearing Loss Association of Northwest Indiana. Kathy Cortopassi was given the Business award for her work aiding the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing through her CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) business. Kathy is an honorary partner.
Last month, Linda Muckway was given the Delaware County United Way Advocates Award for her work in transportation. Linda is a graduate of the 1995 class.
Finally, Dee Ann Hart has been asked to represent the disability community on Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s Help America Vote committee. Dee Ann is a graduate of the 1996 class and a member of the Indiana Council on Independent Living.
Again, congratulations to them all!
For information about Partners in Policymaking, visit http://www.partnersinpolicymaking.com .
Rally for Rail
Hundreds call for return of passenger rail service to Fort WayneDouglas Schmidt
ACT Team Coordinator
Fifth Freedom Network
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Even though a train has not stopped there for nearly twenty years, on Friday, April 3, more than 800 people gathered at the Baker Street Train Station. The crowd assembled there to join their voices in a call for the return of passenger rail service to Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne has been without passenger rail service for years, but if local advocates have their way, the trains may come rolling back.
The message of the rally was clear: rail service is important, especially to people with disabilities, but bringing it back will be challenging.
Fort Wayne Passenger Rail Service History
The Ohio and Indiana Railroad extended its line to Fort Wayne in 1851, but Fort Wayne’s first engine car was delivered by canal boat in 1854. Two years later, the consolidated Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad Company had more than 550 miles of track, with the city of Fort Wayne at a vital juncture. In addition to its waterways, Fort Wayne’s position on the Pennsylvania line in particular made it an important commercial hub.
By 1900, there were a dozen lines, including the Nickel Plate, the New York Central, the Wabash, and many others, operating more than 200 trains.
Fort Wayne was serviced by various companies and lines until Amtrak took over in 1971. One hundred and thirty years after it began, Fort Wayne’s rail service ended in 1990, when Amtrak moved its service from Fort Wayne’s Baker Street Station 30 miles north to Waterloo.
Sheri Caveda, Fifth Freedom’s Executive Director, knows what a vital issue public transportation is to people with disabilities. “Whenever we survey our members, over 80 percent of them say that they need public transportation to get to work, see their friends and family, and just participate in everyday life. Without accessible public transportation, some people with disabilities may end up isolated.”
Passenger trains are particularly useful to people with disabilities. Trains have greater space to move than airplanes or busses, especially in the bathrooms. This is a big plus for people who use wheelchairs or walkers. Also, trains often feature special accessibility features like wheelchair lifts. Amtrak even offers discounted fairs to people with disabilities.
A high-speed rail service would have additional benefits. The Northeast Indiana Passenger Rail Association (NIPRA), the local advocacy group that organized the rally, believes that passenger rail service in Fort Wayne would also help the environment, reduce highway congestion, and improve the economy. Indeed, the Indiana Department of Transportation has estimated that high-speed rail service would create 4,500 jobs in the state.
As the rally opened, the audience chanted “Rail means freedom, rail means jobs.” The people spoke, and lawmakers and industry representatives were there to listen.
Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry welcomed the crowd. He said, “My friends, Indiana needs to be a part of creating a more robust transportation system for our residents… The [rail] funding from the stimulus package should be right here in the city of Fort Wayne.” He later added, “I look forward to being able to board a train in downtown Fort Wayne, but only if we take action and take action now.”
Lima, Ohio Mayor David Berger also spoke at the rally. He said that the people of Lima “…Absolutely depend on the citizens of Fort Wayne and Northeast Indiana to motivate your legislators and the state of Indiana to do what needs to be done to quickly, responsibly… bring high-speed passenger rail to our communities.”
Derrick James, Amtrak senior government affairs officer, encouraged the crowd in their efforts. “If the enthusiasm here is any measure, any guide to whether we’re going to get passenger rail service back in Fort Wayne, I’m saying we’ll get it.” As the rally and Fifth Freedom’s research have made clear, there are thousands of Hoosiers who hope he’s right.
If you would like to contact Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels with your opinion about rail service, you can do so using the email Web form here: Contact the Governor. For more information on The Northeast Indiana Passenger Rail Association, see their blog: Visit the blog by clicking here .
Exploring the accessible world
A travel writer and disability advocate creates the first hotel booking site specifically for people with disabilitiesDouglas Schmidt
ACT Team Coordinator
Fifth Freedom Network
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Disability advocate and writer Craig Grimes has spent his life traveling the world. He has written about exploring France, Spain, Barcelona, and other destinations, relating his experiences using a wheelchair in over a dozen countries. His work has appeared in Forward, Motability Lifestyle Magazine, Disability Now, Able, the Nica Times, and other publications. In February, Grimes launched the first hotel booking site specifically for people with disabilities, Accessible.travel.
Grimes calls the site a "Travelocity for disabled travelers." Accessible.travel allows users to search for accessible hotels by city, price, and level of accessibility, and book a room online. Users can also book airport transfers in accessible vehicles. (Note that the site does not end in “.com,” but instead ends in “.travel.” .Travel is a seldom-used top-level domain, a travel-specific alternative to .com, .net, or .org.)
In his introduction on the Accessible.travel blog, he explains that hotel Web sites may claim that a hotel is accessible, but “they don’t give us any details of what that actually means. Frequently, the people… don’t actually have a clue about what we need. Neither do they give us enough information or photos about the facilities so that we can make a decision for ourselves, they just assume that they know best and they are usually wrong.” Accessible.travel aims to solve this problem with a wealth of information about each city and hotel.
There are detailed maps of each city. Most of the hotels available on the site have photos and thorough reviews which explain the accessibility features available to visitors, such as the type of doors and door widths, whether or not the hotel has ramps, and the dimensions of each room, including the clearance under the sinks and height of the furniture.
The site is currently a work in progress, but it should be a useful resource to anyone with a disability looking to travel. As of this writing, the site offers nine destinations: Melbourne, Athens, Barcelona, Oslo, Prague, Paris, Vienna, San Francisco, and Cape Town. As the site attracts more users, more destinations will be added. Grimes is working on expanding into India, with New Delhi, Mumbai, and Kerala first on his list. Currently, San Francisco is the only American city on the site, but New York City, Miami, Chicago, Boston, and L.A. will be added soon. Grimes hopes to add a new city each month.
The site also features its own chat room, a blog, and social networking community. The members of the social networking community have contributed a significant amount of the information on the site, for which they are paid commissions.
Again, the site is just starting, but it is growing quickly. Your visit, even without a purchase, will help it earn ad revenue and grow a little faster.
For more information, visit http://accessible.travel or any of Craig Grimes’ other Web sites:
How's Your News?
MTV’s latest offering is a news show with cast with disabilitiesDouglas Schmidt
ACT Team Coordinator
Fifth Freedom Network
Email Doug
2-17-09
Earlier this month, MTV launched a new news program called “How’s Your News?” What makes the show different from the other news shows on the air are its producers – South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone – and its correspondents, a group of energetic reporters with disabilities.
Those of you familiar with South Park may be concerned that How’s Your News? will be a similar show – loud, crass, and offensive. In fact, even Parker and Stone were worried at first. In a press tour last month, Stone told reporters that “Trey and I were a little concerned in the beginning. We weren't concerned about being associated with them. We were worried about them being associated with us."
The show was born over ten years ago at Camp Jabberwocky, a sleepover camp for people with disabilities in Massachusetts, near Martha’s Vineyard. The camp is over 55 years old, begun back in 1953 as a tiny, one-week retreat for children with cerebral palsy. By the time How’s Your News? began, the camp had expanded to a 14-acre site serving over 100 children and adults.
In 1998, Arthur Bradford, the co-director of the camp, was teaching a video class at the camp. Bradford and the class decided to create and film their own news show. Bradford and the class gave a tape of their favorite interviews to their family and friends. The tape was copied, passed into new hands, and copied again, until a copy ended up on the desk of Stone and Parker.
Stone and Parker produced a documentary with some of the reporters and, later, a feature film. This film was shown on HBO and at film festivals, and is currently available on DVD. During the 2004 election, the How’s Your News? crew filmed a documentary about their trips to the Republican and Democrat national conventions. Finally, earlier this month, it came to MTV.
(Interestingly, Stone and Parker were discovered in a similar way. A FOX exec saw a cartoon they made in film school and hired them to make him a new cartoon to use as a video Christmas card. The Christmas cartoon was copied and exchanged on the Internet, which led to the duo being asked to create a series for Comedy Central.)
For more information about Camp Jabberwocky, visit the camp Web site or email Info@campjabberwocky.org .
However, according to several interviews, Parker and Stone will be staying “hands-off”, leaving creative control to the show’s creator and the correspondents. While the show is presented as a comedy, the audience is laughing with – not at – the cast.
In a review, Tom Shales of the Washington Post wrote that the show is “a chance to look through someone else’s eyes and see the world in ways you’ve never seen it before. It could be part of a course in the humanities.” (Article)
Tom Roston of PBS wrote that “This show could be revolutionary in how it creates greater familiarity with people usually kept outside of the frame.” (Article )
How’s Your News? features interviews with celebrities from the worlds of television, film, and music. In the first episode, reporter Robert Bird interviews talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and comedienne/actress Sarah Silverman.
Perhaps the most interesting and substantive portions of the show are when one the reporters stops people on the street to ask them questions. During the first episode, reporter Susan Harrington stops people to discuss marijuana legalization. Being stopped with a sudden, serious question takes people off guard, and the results are often very humorous. Writing on the show’s Web site, Harrington said, “When I hear the audience laugh I think ‘yes, I nailed it!’ I’d like to say most definitely that people with disabilities have a sense of humor too.”
The cast of How’s Your News? includes:
- Susan Harrington, 41, who has interviewed Diane Sawyer, Peter Jennings, Sylvester Stallone, Senator John Edwards, rock band The Plain White Ts, and many more. She is vision impaired and has cerebral dysgenesis.
- Robert Bird, 51, who has interviewed Senator John McCain, Al Franken, Sarah Silverman, and Jimmy Kimmel. He has Down Syndrome.
- Sean Costello, 38, has interviewed Senator Hillary Clinton. He has also been to the Special Olympics, competing in basketball and weightlifting. He has Down Syndrome.
- Larry Perry, 60, has interviewed Michael Moore, Newt Gingrich, Senator Hillary Clinton and comedian Bill Hader. He has cerebral palsy.
- Jeremy Vest, 21, has interviewed Ben Affleck, Miley Cyrus, Howard Dean, Jimmy Kimmel, rapper Salt, and professional wrestler “Mankind”. Vest is a drummer, and during interviews with rock bands, makes a special point to meet his fellow drummers. He has Williams Syndrome.
- Lucas Wahl, 23, has covered the Roller Derby in Austin, Texas and a pirate convention in New Orleans. He has Williams Syndrome.
- Brendan Lemieux, 21, has interviewed professional skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, and investigated the rap scene in New Orleans. He has Williams Syndrome.
Visit the show’s Web site and watch some clips of the series: Videos
If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you can visit the show’s page at MTV.com and watch the premiere: Premiere episode
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