Expanded Disability Pride Festival returns

Tani Diakite and the Afrofunkstars perform at the 2013 Disability Pride Festival. They will play the event this year, which has expanded to two stages (Photo: Cheryl Schiltz)

Disability Pride Madison is holding a Disability Pride Festival to show, amongst other things, that stage ramps must accommodate both music speakers and wheelchairs.

Madison’s second annual Disability Pride Festival is scheduled for July 26 from noon to 5 p.m. at Brittingham Park, commemorating the 24th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disability Pride Madison invites community members with and without disabilities to attend the event, which will have two stages showcasing local performers and speakers with disabilities.

According to Disability Pride Madison’s President Kate Moran, the festival’s mission is to create a movement that cuts across various individual disability movements and to showcase the talents of people with disabilities.

“I think that what our festival does is focus on how society disables people,” Moran said, who has been personally involved in disability culture for years. “It shows how there’s lots of people finding ways in between the limitations to lead very, very meaningful lives.

Blaise Morrison, a volunteer from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education Department, said the main hope of the festival is to raise awareness for the disability community, which he described as the largest disenfranchised population.

Festival attendees watch a performance at the 2013 Disability Pride Festival. The 2014 event is Saturday at Brittingham Park (Photo: Cheryl Cheryl Schiltz)

“Often times they’re excluded from when we talk about including people of different races, genders, ethnicities, sexual preferences,” he said. “The idea behind this is really to show pride in people of all abilities and to promote awareness about how people with disabilities have been disenfranchised and the day to day barriers, including accessibility barriers, employment barriers, barriers to health care they face. And to showcase the variety of talents and abilities that are often missed.”

Several musical artists, including rapper Lewis Elder, the hip-hop group the Figureheads, and the VSA Choir of Madison, will perform at the festival.

According to Moran, there is no shortage of performers with disabilities. There is, however, a shortage of stage equipment that meet ADA standards. For the second year, the organization has found it difficult to get a stage ramp that accommodates wheelchairs.

“One of the most telling things about that is that both years we have had almost had to shut it down because we couldn’t find ramps for the stages,” she said. “Most of the tiame when you’re talking about a ramp associated with a stage, it’s to help the stage techs get the speakers up and down, and that’s not to the ADA code, meaning that it’s too steep for people in wheelchairs to use it. Just the fact that there’s no thought to getting stages ramped in towns, that just shows that everybody expects people with disabilities not to perform.”

This year, the new mobility equipment vendor Mobility 101 was able to provide a ramp, allowing the show to expand to a second stage.

“I hope most of all people have a good time,” said Moran. “But I also think it’s really important that we start building an audience for all kinds of performers.”

In addition to the musical performances, UW-Madison’s Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education Department will offer free adaptive yoga, mindfulness meditation, massage therapy, and general wellness information. Morrison said  mental health and wellbeing is often missed in the disability community because the primary disability is the main focus.

“If someone’s in a wheelchair, someone has a visual impairment, the other areas of wellness such as psychological wellbeing and spiritual well-being are often ignored. So we’re trying to emphasize the importance of that,” he said.

The festival’s date falls on the 24th anniversary of the passing of the ADA, an important piece of civil rights legislation for those with disabilities mandating equal treatment in areas such as employment, education and health.

Only thirty percent of those with disabilities are employed, compared to seventy percent of those without, making the disability community an underutilized source of labor, said Morrison.

“As someone who comes from a vocational rehabilitation background, there are so many benefits to having people with disabilities involved in your business or organization, including the different perspectives they can offer,” he said.

Morrison believes the festival can help bring awareness to the disability community’s progress and the progress yet to be made, and highlighted the civil rights component of the movement.

“Because the disability community has a lot to offer the world in terms of innovations, technology, arts, and based on some very arbitrary discriminatory policies, and implicit attitudes that most of us have whether we’re willing to admit it or not, there’s a disadvantage,” Morrison said. “And so promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities I think is a way to help not only bring more awareness but then to effectively change social policies so that we do live in a community and a society that values all its members.”

Moran noted that the Disability Pride movement has been taking off in the past ten years, with celebrations in areas ranging from Chicago to South Korea. She said, “It’s happening all over the place and it’s really great.”

Without volunteers, the Disability Pride Festival would not have been possible, said Moran. As a volunteer organization, any help is welcome.

Both Moran and Morrison encourage community members to get involved. Those interested can contact Morrison at bmmorrison@wisc.edu call (608) 770-4537, or just show up ready to help. “It’s not too late to show up at the park that morning,” Moran said.