[Photos: Gavin Newsom at SF City Hal ADA event, Olimpais booth at ADA event, Nonsite: Eleni Stecopoulos peeking over laptop, Taylor Brady, Petra Kuppers in 2nd from last picture. Michael Cross, Lesley Ann Selcer and David Wolach in last.]
Pre: Talk at Nonsite with poets, led by David Wolach. His hospital poem practice in which he uses poems to mitigate his experience of being in and out of that institution and even sometimes, in communication with others who are having to be patient. David had us form a circuit around the lovely studio table, in which everyone felt the pulse of the person on our right and then immediately followed with writing that David had given us a prompt for. List, he said, what it would take for you to give up your proprietary self--or at least that is how I took it, for a better idea, go to Nonsite,org. What I couldn't write, fear of bodily functions. Also, how troubling it is becoming that my work-work (job) is about the rhetoric and funding of making disabled people, myself included, more employable. Because our society places value on thing that work/produce. Without voice or words. Because I value myself only when I work (which often means I don't work ((write or move--no time for body work)).
The: Facilitated huge event at SF City Hall on behalf of LightHouse along with Independent Living Resource Center SF, Mayor's Office on Disability and others. Newsom spoke--good time to diffrentiate himself from the current Guvna (oddly, Gavin had a Southern accent yesterday). Quote from Newsom, "Not everyone needs to be in an institution". People cheered wildly for Ammiano, who told a funny story about French toast--i.e. give us real stuff our souls can feed on. Neil Marcus sung the body electric Laura Hershey style and my other art peeps were there keeping it real for me, Axis Dance and Olimpias.
Post: listened to the podcast of Forum from yesterday in which Michael Krasny did an hour in honor of the ADA anniversary with Judy Heumman and Sid Wolinski. I think it was sort of horrible--Judy especially, had very little time to speak. I mean here she is, historic 504 demonstrator and wheelchair user, now DC advisor on disability and international affairs and Krasny, 10 minutes in, is opening up the conversation to people calling the show to complain about too many disabled parking placards and about how costly and litigious the ADA is. Again, there was an emphasis on a social prescription as to how we should treat and enable (i.e. employ) "the disabled" as (Krasny kept saying) instead of a close look at the vital, radical lives within disability culture. And no one likes social prescription, the why of how we should doby "the disabled", instead of the who they/we are, the real cultural value....
Highlights: Meeting Ledya Restrepo--an older Hispanic woman, wheel chair user, who is a peer mentor for the City of San Francisco, disabled city employees; meeting Kenzi, a cool African American guy who uses a wheel chair, paints with his mouth and sells his work upwards of a hundred dollars, very nice stuff, contact me if you want to be hooked up with him; Neil Marcus doing the body electric in velvety fuscia after Newsom left the stage, forming a circuit on Sunday between Rob Halpern and Denise Leto.
