From My friends at DAN

I don't usually post other peoples writing but Dan are trying to spread the word about this action, so please read on:

The Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) is once again taking
action against Birmingham City Council (BCC) on Monday 14th September for
the rights of disabled people in Birmingham and everywhere to life,
liberty and the choice and control over our own lives that most
non-disabled people take for granted, but which we can be denied at the
whim of a local authority.

BCC promised to work with DAN towards establishing genuine independent
living for disabled people in Birmingham after our last action in March
(see report at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/425854.html) won us
a meeting with Peter Hay (Director of Health and Social Care) and other
Council officials, but has not delivered on that promise, and 6 months
later there has been no apparent change in BCC's treatment of disabled
people.

Yesterday (30th August 2009), a disabled service user and DAN supporter,
for whom members of Birmingham DAN had been advocating in the "social
care" system, died in hospital in Birmingham following BCC's refusal, only
a few weeks before, to provide him with any care or support to live
independently.

Disabled people in Birmingham are still being refused assessments for
direct payments to employ Personal Assistants (which is breaking the legal
obligation of all Local Authorities under the 1990 Community Care Act),
being told by social workers that they do not have any needs or being
bullied by council officials into signing agreements they do not want to
sign, simply to save the council money.
Other disabled people are still homeless, living in totally inaccessible
housing, trapped against their will in nursing homes where they have no
choice and control over their own lives, or living in total social
isolation and disgustingly filthy conditions, not because of a lack of
funding for accessible housing and social support services, but because of
the absence of the political will to use council funding for those
purposes.

How many more disabled people will have to die and how many more lives
will be put at risk before BCC gives us our human rights?

The action on September 14th will start at 1pm and will be in Birmingham
city centre. For further information contact Steve on 07931 421947 or
soulrebel@riseup.net or Tom on 07816 275985 or tomcomdan@hotmail.co.uk.

Please forward this message to as many disabled people (or anyone else who
you think may be interested in taking part in the action) as possible.

FREE OUR PEOPLE!

Steve Graby, Birmingham DAN

Abbeyfeale to Athens to Albury via Stratford UA & Newham!

It's often easy to say "I'm very busy at the moment" but my carbon footprint over the last 2 months could easily have been mistaken for the footprint left by a sizable Yettie with extra foot growth issues. Stratford seems a distant memory, but going to the home of the bard to perform Equality Street at UK Youths national Youth work conference was some highlight.

The team performed well, despite British rail making the challenges of travel even more challenging. The performance went down very well and was even seen as being a bit 'controversial'? I'm not sure it really was but my guess is that this is because of our starting point being that Inclusion = All Means All, no ifs, buts, or might have beens (cue for a song).

The band has been extremely busy, starting off with a gig with our furry womble friend Haydon at Hyde Park, despite the mightiest of early morning thunder storms, the sun came out for Rockinpaddy in the Park. Then off on a small-scale tour of Ireland, playing around the wild west, including my cousins wedding in Adare and two gigs in our hometown of abbeyfeale. Any time playing at home is special, but our acoustic set in 'Jacks -The Corner house' had to be up there. A few Guinness's were sunk & Roland & Dave made their Irish debut's with Rockinpaddy. It was a very quick trip in the sense that because we were playing, we were busy, but we tried our best to recapture the peace and serenity that 6 blokes sharing a country house full of brandy, can have. The Rock & Roll moment of the tour, apart from the wedding, fixing the water filled stage roofing, feasting in Leens hotel or listening to the sad death of MJ on the radio as we returned from a gig, had to be drinking Brandy at breakfast as dad wanted to clear the cupboards out!

After Abbeyfeale I squeezed in a a few CIL meetings, a session in Camberley and a music workshop before heading off to Athens to help lead the music element of a European Performing Arts Seminar. I have to admit working self employed, I was nervous about pulling this one off, but i worked with a brilliant team and together we had an amazing experience, definitely a moment of moments. The participants, particularly the young woman and girls of Amalion made the whole event a special, fun and creative experience and the quality of work in the final show was absolutely amazing.

The picture heading this blog was taken from the roof garden of our hotel where we stayed for a few days after the seminar to chill out in Athens. the garden overlooked the Acropolis (still not finished!), where each morning Barry & I would sit drinking strawberry iced water, ooh it was lovely. The city of Athens was busy and hot, any blank space was covered in graffiti, some good, some not so good. what amazed me was for an Olympic city, the access, apart from the brilliant Metro, was so inaccessible. Dropped curbs were rough and inconsistent and it made me realise the efforts the team went through to make the seminar venue as accessible as it was.

I think the nerves actually spurred me on and thanks to our workshop participants we created some great original material which reflected the good time we had. I made some very good friends out there, particularly my 2 co-facilitators and a number of individuals who have stayed in touch since my return.

My time out there re-enforced the importance of music in influencing change and also the need to develop young disabled people as leaders. The experience got me questioning the impact we had and I felt there was more potential from this event to grow and touch elements of change desperately needed in Europe for the inclusion and equality movement.

On my return it was straight into a second equality & inclusion session with Newham youth Service who are on the journey. Finally a small acoustic set at the Albury Festival rounded up a very busy period. I have to say I had hoped for more in the Ferret race but at least we had a bigger dressing room than the little fury creatures!

An amazing few months and I'd like to thank my PA's & family for supporting me through this busy time, if I'm busy then they too are busy! Most of all thanks to all who joined us in Hyde Park, Stratford, Newham, Camberley, Merton, Abbeyfeale, Adare, Albury & Athens. There's more to come over the next few months, not to mention the party of all party's my 75th birthday (Well that's how I feel today anyway)! Now what does my house look like again?

While I have the chance.

I'm glad the greens did well in the recent elections, the only party with a strong social model of disability policy, which is desperately needed. Sorry I don't believe the argument that those voting BNP were doing it as a protest, there were at least another 10 parties on my ballet paper that could have been voted for that weren't racist, narrow minded bigots, so why choose BNP for a protest?

Rant over, very busy at the moment so apologise if this blog is more like a list than a reflective diary. Currently working with Orpheus 'Breakthrough Media Group' developing the second Independent Living Podcast (visit www.orpheus.org.uk & click on news to listen to te first), Disability Initiative in Camberley delivering a Decision making Accredited programme. Equality Street Cabaret received rave revues in Stratford as part of UK Youths 2b or not 2B national youth work conference.

I had a great night with Newham Youth Service exploring their inclusive practice and CIL discussions in Merton have moved to a snails pace as we have reached the 'money stage' of development, suddenly the brakes have been eased on and we await progress. The band and my music work generally, is very, very, very, busy and I'm very pleased and grateful considering we are in a recession. We had a great time with Haydon the Womble at Hyde Park (click on pictures of main site) and we are now rehearsing hard for a small-scale tour in Ireland and then a number of workshops in Greece as part of an exciting European Performing Arts Seminar. 'It's My Money' should be completed soon & I hear from some of the gang who participated in last years Starting Out programme are doing well in their transitions.

So haven't got much time to mention that I'm slowly learning new film editing skills (visit rockin news to see my homage to AFC's promotion) we've got new calfs being born back at home, new rockinpaddy T-shirts are on the way & you can pre order by dropping me an email on the main site) AFC have gone up for the second season and that my garden is in desperate need of some tlc, off to rehearsals, I'll try and blog in between Ireland & Greece or just after....if I survive

Thank you Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal sadly died on 2nd May 2009. I had the privilege to have learnt directly from him and the world is a poorer place now. The day before he died he spent the day in a solidarity vigil with workers.

The reason for blogging today is because I spent the day in Bethnal Green celebrating & remembering his life in true Boalian style. We even had identified the global moment for silence wrongly (5 hours ahead/behind) but carried on with the moment as it was. It was the moment.

What was amazing was that Augusto made a global difference and yet too few people know of his work. The Guardian had done a piece and a few radio shows mentioned his passing, and yet his books will be in the majority, if not all universities. His techniques and methods are being used to transform realities all over the world.

Earlier in my learning Paulo Freire has had a major impact on my understanding of discrimination & oppression, he also influenced Boal thoughts & theories which transformed what and how theatre could be. Amazingly and with so much good fortune I had the privilege and opportunity to meet and spend time learning from Augusto Boal back in 2003ish engaging with him around his theories & book 'Rainbow of Desire'. A year or so ago I was honoured to have played a small part in attempting to get him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize which now sadly will never be realised.

Adrian Jackson played a great role today and it was definitely an amazing event to be part of.

Thank you Augusto for impacting on my life in such a positive way. Important & significant moments, here, today, and in the future we can transform & we can change our reality.

Reflective Note: Today I found out that there were events in Rio de Janeiro,London, Los Angeles, Lille, Vancouver, Istanbul, Belgrade, Barcelona, Stockholm & Rotterdam and these are only places that were able to promote there event so it is likely that there were many more as I know his work is also celebrated in India, Ireland, Croatia amongst others.

Times they are a changing

I actually missed the moment Obama was sworn in all though I did get to here Aretha give it large which was very powerful indeed. As it turned out I didn't miss it all, as he had to do it all over again the next day. The whole thing did get me thinking about how far have we really come? What got put in place in America to challenge discrimination and begin to get black people into positions of real power. I'm under no illusion that discrimination and racism hasn't ended just because of Obama, but there is an energy of optimism for change. My gut reaction is to think that black people themselves have made the changes by believing, by working and by challenging for opportunity.

What's it going to take for things to change for disabled people? Even in America there is still a lack of disabled people in positions of power, in the media, on the television, running companies.

On another note, snow angels? Yep it snowed and all of a sudden every ones creating snow angels, wheres that all come from?

I'm working with a group around inspiring people? I'm trying to move inspiration away from celebrity and away from success only being about how much money they make. I've always been a bit cautious about inspirational disabled people, because because of the links with being seen as brave heroes over-coming perceived adversity. So what's your criteria for inspiration cause there are some inspiring people out there, Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, David Heavey & Pete Seegar for a start!

We're almost into march! My life seems to get faster and faster, so what do i need to do to slow it down a bit...answers on a postcard, or of course you can just post a comment below.

Be Lucky,

RP

Big up the New Year!

Just thought I'd do a quick blog to comemerate my internet connection in County Down. Some Random thoughts & people in my head...Joe Dolan, Ronnie Drew, hope Shane makes it through another year, Gemmsey's leaving for New Zealand, Lots of interesting work coming up, first time I've ever sent post to ALL my aunts & uncles - what a mission that was, my lovely God-children are growing up, I'm flippin 40 this year, so the Wolfe Tones can officially sing Janey Mac I'm nearly forty to me now, still not sure I've grown up yet, scary!

I've loved this last month away from everything, a time to reflect, try and generate some new ideas, not sure I've totally succeeded but I did do most of the work I was aiming to do.


So lets do it, 2009!

RP

Single Equalities Again

The government announced once again it's intentions to introduce a single equalities bill today. It got chucked out before because of concerns from many who had fought for the various focused discriminations acts. The concern was, and possibly still is that individual strands of diversity and equality will be watered down. Todays news coverage demonstrates that that concern is well justified.

Remember how you cringed when you worked out what the lyrics to "melting pot" actually meant and this is on the road, bland homogenised policy which possibly doesn't address the real deal of discrimination. Actually I quite liked the song but loud and proud of who you are it certainly 'ain't!

I wrote a piece once about justifying the need to focus on individual dimensions of equality in order to truly understand the particular and unique characteristics of the various forms of discrimination and oppression. Of course there are cross-overs and links which have helped us to come together and unite but there are distinct and subtle differences which make each form of discrimination unique to a particular dis empowered group.

If a single equalities law truely addresses issues of power & social change then it sounds good, but already there are concerns that things like Disability Equality Duties will be watered down to a commitement rather than enforceable duties, so we will have to keep a watch on this one as it could be good or it could go against the battles already in progress.