Empowerment!

I was a little nervous about my participation in the ADA events I participated in on Monday, the event that I wrote about in my last post. I figured I'd be okay five minutes that's hardly anything in presentation time almost just enough say your name little bit about yourself flash a smile and basically sit down. Besides, this was old hat, I knew these people at work with these people often on my whole career here in Utah so essentially they were old friends so this would be easy.

I don't know why I had not put this together before the event but what I was rolling into was a PR production for the C A T committee. I have some very strong issues with the C a T committee I will not go into here. The committee meets once a month and supposedly deals with consumers with disabilities who have issues with the transit authority or questions are considerations regarding disability. In fact I served on this committee for a number of years before I realized that by doing so I was a pawn of the authority. Anyway, that is fodder for another blog. I was there and I was going to be good. So, I waited outside for the conclusion of that meeting. I was pleased when one of my colleagues from the local disability showed up and who was also on the program. Andrew, is significantly disabled, is a good thinker. He works for the local disability Law Center as a consumer advocate. He does a great job in fact, I've often felt he does not get the support he deserves for the work he does but that's Andrew's business not mine.

By the time our program was to begin the area was crowded with a number of folks with disabilities and I again realized that 9/10 of this program was a photo op for the Authority. At this juncture I just wanted to do my presentation on leave. There was to be a third presenter, another longtime advocate for accessible transportation, who also has a significant disability but she didn't show up but still, surprises me. This was to be a panel discussion which would've been a lot of fun because it turned out to be Andrew was good to his five minutes I was going to my five minutes and that would be that. Andrew had a pressing engagement so I agreed to let him go first. As I said Andrew is extremely bright and knows his business the other side of that nice however is Andrew can be gregarious. He was but he said great things, he briefly outline the national agendas and some feelings about where the disability movement was today. He really covered all the essential stuff the black and white stuff I just had to add the color. And I did.

But I presents I rarely write anything down, I like to speak off-the-cuff and they usually do okay depending on the group to the subject matter and how much sugar I have ingested. I spoke from a position personal knowledge/experience. I spoke to how I became an empowered user of public transit. How I have done the job of advocate for increased access to public transit in the community as just a job until one day when I was without transportation meaning I no longer had transportation, meaning I was totally reliant on the system. Spoke of how one while sitting on the side of the road a U T A bus stopped and asked for going to ride.I talked about how I was sitting in my manual chair and I just looked at the driver and said “can I ride your bus?” And he said “if you could do on my bus you can ride my bus” and with that I crawled onto my first bus in this changed my life, up until then my job is transit coordinator was just that a job now was a crusade. Public transit was a right that everyone had everyone should be able to ride the bus. The only thing that would've made the presentation better would've been a black choir humming the Have him of Republic.

I voice like working with Andrew is fun to bounce off of you can really set a good stage. I forgot how well I do some this kind of work I'm glad I had a chance again to do some something beneficial. I did good and I'm finding out that is harder and harder to do.