I started acting in college. As part of my Communications major at Oglethorpe University (in Atlanta), I had to take a theatre class.  I immediately fell in love.  My professor Troy Dwyer was very encouraging and didn’t treat me any differently because I was in a wheelchair.  He cast me in my first play Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and from then on I was either acting in a production or working behind the scenes – stage managing, ushering, or selling tickets. While in college I also learned about Full Radius Dance, which is a physically integrated (including both dancers with and without disabilities) professional modern dance company.  I auditioned for them and was accepted into their company.  I danced with them for over five years.  It was an incredible experience.

My Gimpy Life is loosely based on my life and the awkward situations I encounter being an actress with a disability in Hollywood. I became disabled when I was 14 years old. I was in a car accident, broke my back and suffered from a spinal cord injury.  One of the biggest adjustments I had to make (besides obviously the physical one) was the way society now interacted with me.  Over night I became a minority and I starting finding myself in crazy situations that at times could be really frustrating but then at the same time really comical.   I’ve always wanted to give a voice to my perspective. I was inspired to go the web series route because of my involvement in Felicia Day’s hit web series The Guild.  I told Felicia about my idea and she was very encouraging and suggested I collaborate with an awesome comedy writer named Gabe Uhr – we met and immediately hit it off.

Most of what you see on the show is from my own life or was at least inspired by something that happened to me.  Gabe and I start with these real stories, mix and match them and then slightly embellish.  Yes, I’ve had experiences that we specifically are putting into the show.  The scene in the trailer of the guy coming up to me asking if I can have sex was one of them.

One of the biggest goals for performers with disabilities is to be considered for characters that are not disability specific.  There’s no reason we can’t play the mother, the teacher, the lawyer, the criminal, etc… because these are people we are or could potentially be in real life.  We are so much more than the disability. Being an actor with a disability doesn’t entitle you to play a disabled part.  I believe the best actor for that part (whether disabled or not) should get the role.  My biggest gripe is when casting directors/producers don’t even audition disabled actors for a disabled part.  There are so many talented actors with disabilities out there that want and deserve to work.

First and foremost my goal is to produce great material that entertains. At the same time it’s rewarding to give voice to a perspective that is rarely heard in the entertainment industry.  Knowing that my show has the potential to change peoples’ minds about disability or at least get them thinking about it was definitely a motivating factor for me creating the show.

My Gimpy Life will premiere online on Tuesday, June 12th on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/MyGimpyLife   New episodes will come out on Tuesdays. In the meantime keep up with the show on our Facebook page for updates and other cool things we are up to. And definitely subscribe to our youtube channel.

A night of film, music
and spoken word*
presented by

Disability Art & Culture Project

Saturday, March 10th 6:30-9:00pm
at Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont Ave.

Bring cash for our “Baskets of Love”
raffle and silent auction!

Tickets $15 at the door

For more information and accommodations contact
503-238-0723 or disabilityartculture@gmail.com

*Adult content

Audio Description and American Sign Language provided
Space is ADA accessible
Please be scent free

Performers include Bill Alton, a spoken-word performer who was nominated for a Pushcart Price in 2010, and Shanna Germain, an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute who has also garnered a Pushcart nomination, the Rauxa Prize for Erotic Poetry and the C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship. Also appearing is singer Jana Losey, who appeared in “Squonk,” a “multimedia frolic” (The New York Times) on Broadway in 2000, and Caitlin, a.k.a Lulu of http://whereslulu.com, who is a disabled woman, disability advocate, and blogger who sees Where’s Lulu as an opportunity to raise the standards of accessibility in everyday mainstream culture.

The evening includes “Baskets of Love” raffle and silent auction items, including massage gift certificates, local arts and crafts, tickets to Portland-area performing arts events, wine and chocolates. Please bring cash for the “Baskets of Love.”

Proceeds will support the fifth Disability Pride Art and Culture Festival from April 20-28. The festival brings together dancers, performance artists and visual artists for live performances and short films to reveal the distinctive aesthetic of disability art and to provide the public with an alternative view of the lives of people with disabilities.

Don’t miss this utterly rare chance to mingle with Where’s Lulu’s very own co-founder. Plus, who doesn’t love spoken word that requires an adult content warning?

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] charged Bank of America Corp. on Monday with discriminating against three disabled borrowers in Michigan and Wisconsin…

Bank of America imposed “unnecessary and burdensome requirements” on borrowers who relied on disability income to qualify for their home loans, the government said. The bank also required some disabled borrowers to provide statements from their doctors to get loans, according to the government.

The maximum amount that HUD can make them pay is $65,000 (for a third violation within seven years), a mere drop in the bucket for a company that made $2 billion last quarter.

More at Huffington Post.

From Al Jazeera:

“We aren’t asking for any favours from the government,” said Luis Felipe Leigue, one of the leaders of the disabled group, which numbers 46,000 across the country.

“We are asking for what rightly belongs to us. We are asking them to approve the law that we drafted and they are not doing it. We want to make it to Murillo Square [the parliament square], a place that belongs to all Bolivians, and they won’t let us.”

The government of Evo Morales offered a one-time subsidy equal to $145, which would’ve gone into effect the day before they arrived in La Paz. The leaders of the disabled movement rejected the low-ball offer, which would have kept them way below the poverty line. Eventually, they made it to the plaza, where five of the protesters are currently on hunger strike.

The Guardian has a longer piece on the poverty that disabled people in Bolivia face.

Photo via Blottr.

Sins Invalid is “a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Our performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. Conceived and led by disabled people of color, we develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities.”

They’re making a movie! We all need this. Let’s support their Kickstarter, shall we?

Since its inception in 2003, RIPPD’s mission has been to end the criminalization of mental illness through an abolitionist framework. Our push to abolish prisons is informed by our own experiences of inequality, oppression, and violence within the prison and mental health industrial complexes. We need to focus on real alternatives that disregard the prison industrial complex and other systems that are modeled after it (i.e. psychiatric hospitals) and develop true community-based solutions. In the case of individuals who are psychiatrically labeled, these alternatives mean access to holistic health and mental health care in a safe and inviting environment. Not a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but places of recovery where people are self-determined to seek meaningful care.

It’s free for the downloading.

Judge George Daniels ruled that “meaningful access” to NYC taxis is a must.

“It is clear…that less than 2% of the city’s fleet being wheelchair accessible, resulting in the unavailability of taxi transportation and significantly increased waiting times for disabled persons who require wheelchairs, is not meaningful access. In fact, during oral argument, [the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission] conceded that its regulations do not provide meaningful access to individual who require wheelchairs. It must do so… Meaningful access for the disabled to public transportation services is not a utopian goal or political promise, it is a basic civil right. Title II [of the Americans with Disabilities Act, prohibiting discrimination against disabled people] requires immediate and full compliance.”

Until the city comes up with a “comprehensive plan” for cab accessibility, it will only be allowed to issue new medallions (fancy word for licenses) for wheelchair-accessible taxis.

And this won’t stop at NYC. As United Spinal argued before the legal victory, “this fight reaches far beyond the city’s front lines. If NYC creates an equitable system of accessible public transportation then other cities both small and large will follow.”

via Rolling Rains

What was the first song you ever wrote, and what inspired it?

I’m very new to writing songs and I think my first song (If you can call it a song…it was more like a poem) was “Krip-Hop.” I call myself a poet but I always loved music and realized that many poets like Gil Scott-Heron, Jill Scott, Ursula Rucker and many more have started as poets and became singers. I mean Hip-Hop is really poetry if you drop the music.

It can be a pain in the ass dealing with the oppression that comes with being disabled. Does being both black *and* disabled complicate things at all?

For me it’s just who I am but the oppression in both communities against each other is still shocking. Fuck, it is 2012 and still there is racism in the disabled community and ableism in the people of color community. A lack of coming together and very little knowledge, visibility in the mainstream of the history, art, music and other contributions of people of color with disabilities is just mind-blowing. However recently there are projects around this country and world are doing their best to change this lack of knowledge but I wish we could all come together. The system we live under keeps us apart and competing each other and that is very sad.

How’d you get involved with [disabled performance artists' group] Sins Invalid? 

Sins Invalid was started by a group of friend, Patty Berne, Todd Herman, Amanda Coslor and I back in 2004. Patty Berne and I, both people of color with disabilities, were out at a beautiful dance event and we both turned to each other and asked why don’t we see ourselves as disabled people of color with strong politics on the San Francisco Bay Area’s performance stage. [We carry out our cultural work with an] intersectional framework of holding all identities of people who were left out of the disability rights movement.

Who are some hip-hop artists you’re listening to, and who are some disabled artists you’re into right now?

Most Hip-Hop artists I listen to are more political artists like Queen Latifah, Sista Souljah, Public Enemy, Missy Elliot, MF GRIMM, Immortal Technique, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Bambu, Sugar Hill Gang, Brother Ali, Brown Buffalo. I’m loving my Krip-Hop peeps like Kounterclockwise, Preechman, Wheelchair Sports Camp, Miss Money, Fezo and the list goes on. I just wish I could find more disabled women in Hip-Hop.

What are you working on now, yourself?

Trying to write a book on Krip-Hop Nation. Writing for Poor Magazine and IDEAL Magazine.

And what are you working on with Krip Hop Nation?

We are putting out a CD on police brutality/profiling against people with disabilities and a film documentary on this topic. We also working on a film documentary on the late Joe Capers who changed the sounds of early Hip-Hop in Oakland, CA. Lastly, Krip-Hop Nation is a part of Neli Latson’s cultural movement to free him from [unjust] incarceration because of profiling. Neli is a Black young man with autism who is locked up for just sitting on a library lawn and protecting himself from abusive police. Krip-Hop Nation and Martin Vale has teamed up to do a CD for Neli of all types of music from nondisabled and disabled musicians. Krip-Hop Nation will be at University of Washington in Seattle on February 10 and 11. Big news is we might be attending the Paralympics in London and returning to DADA Festival in Liverpool, UK all in the late Summer or early Fall of 2012 and a lot more.

PS. RIP HEAVY D

A poet friend, Vanessa Huang, has a good guide for making events accessible to people with chemical sensitivities: a place for all of us.

In related news, Vanessa’s also raising money via Kickstarter to put towards supporting herself while she finishes her first poetry collection, quiet of chorus. Video below.