NLM Special Topic- Arizona Bridge to Independant Living

I feel I have learned a lot over the course of this class in the way of awareness of the diversity of people across all boundaries, class, culture, abilities, etc. When I went back and looked at the objectives of the lectures and assignments, I feel like they were appropriately designed to give us, as students, the opportunity to research, explore, and experience the related issues which are keys to the development of inclusive communities. When I looked back over my notes pick which lecture or topic I wanted to focus on for this assignment, the one that stood out to me the most was the panel of guests that Amina brought from Arizona’s Bridge to Independent Living.

I think this presentation was so impactful because it was able to put names and faces to the kind of diversity of needs we had been discussing in class. It is simple to talk about the thoughts and feelings of the broad and ambiguous, “people with disabilities” culture. However being able to hear Kerri, George, Eric, Wayne, and even Wayne’s wife Anne speak about their thoughts and feelings regarding a specific disability that they live with every day, or their struggles with the uninformed people they deal with routinely, it just put all of our theory into context.

And what I loved about the discussion was the variety of the responses to each question. I appreciated that Eric, when asked about the hardest thing about his disability, shared he struggles to be understood by people because of his speech impediment and that he’s not dumb, it just takes him a long time to get his thoughts out…but that he works at a sports arena where he encounters thousands of people a night in a loud, chaotic environment every night. I love that! I guess I assumed that people with disabilities would choose the path of least resistance and a guy like Eric would work at some quiet office building, something more conducive to his “situation”. Or that George, when met with an ignorant woman at the zoo, would choose to take the challenge of informing her of how “dangerous” he and his wheelchair really are by challenging her son to a race. The problems with my assumptions of people, disability or not, is that I often end up short changing someone.

I even liked that Wayne, apparently a new member to the panel, was able to be honest and say that he “couldn’t think of one good thing about having a disability” but then talk about how loving and supportive his wife is. It was honest, it was harsh, but it was a beautiful moment that couldn’t be scripted out or felt with the same kind of emotion if it were read from a text book.

I think this applies to inclusive communities because it exemplifies the benefits of having people with different experiences and perspectives, as apposed to a typical, insulated community to which, sadly, most of us belong to. I didn’t write down who shared this, but someone shared a quote from Temple Granden that says, “I am not less than, I am different.” This is the value I took away from this lecture that will apply to jobs I have in the future, working in Non Profits. Wanting to help people can only take a person so far. Truly helping someone involves understanding who they are and the value they bring to a community, regardless of whether or not their value is typically celebrated in the mainstream society. Amina brought this point home with her insistence for us to relay what we heard the panelists saying, rather then having us say what we thought about what they said. I think her point was in saying, what is the value that these individuals have brought to you today? What have you heard about who these people are? It is important for us to see all individuals, regardless of whether they have the same culture as us, ability as us, or look like us, as having value for our communities, not just as stories of inspiration, but as human beings with knowledge, from their differing experiences and perspectives, that we all benefit from.