Andrew Pulrang In these days of Trumpism and the virtual political domination by the political right, we turn to public intellectual, Andrew Pulrang, for a perspective on disability life, ideas, identity, culture and politics. Eddie Ytuarte hosts. Andrew Pulrang is a disability blogger, online activist, and former disability organization administrator. His blog is Disability Thinking and he is one of the three co-partners of #CripTheVote with Gregg Beratan and Alice Wong. The post Disability Thi...
Jun 29, 2018•9 min
Laura Miller with Queer Friends Sixty-one percent of blind adults or those with low vision say it was hard to participate in sex education. And when people lose their sight later in life many wonder if that is the end of their sexuality. Like many of us with disabilities, they don’t know how to approach sexuality within the limitations of their particular body. Laura Miller is the Sexual Health Services Coordinator at the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind. She’s a legally-blind researcher, ...
Jun 15, 2018•9 min
Kristen Lopez Movie goers are often subjected to portrayals of people with disabilities that reinforce the many stereotypes and stigmas. But film critic Kristen Lopez says some films are bucking this trend and sees hope on the horizon. Hosts Alysa Chadow and Eddie Ytuarte trade stories of their favorite plots and portrayals with Ms Lopez. Kristen Lopez is a freelance pop culture essayist and critic based in Sacramento whose work has appeared at Film School Rejects, Remezcla and Paste. She also r...
Jun 01, 2018•9 min
Disabled Worker in mainstream job, New Zealand, photo courtesy of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Flicker The U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created the right to a minimum wage, with one huge exception — people with disabilities. We interview producer-director Jordan Melograna and play clips from “Bottom Dollars,” his documentary on sheltered workshops and the sub-minimum wage. How is it that nearly 250,000 people are currently and legally paid, on average, less than $2 an ho...
May 18, 2018•18 min
Jamie Caron In the wake of the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, youth activists have taken center stage as never before. Disability activists made history with last summer’s ADAPT protests of proposed Medi-Care cuts in Washington, Colorado and elsewhere. So, what’s going on today at the intersection of youth and disability? Jamie Caron of DANY, Hayward-based Disability Action Network for Youth, joins hosts Mark Romoser and Sheela Gunn-Cushman to talk about what issues are picking up ...
May 04, 2018•9 min
Graphic courtesy of CASATunr/VimeoE Electronic visit verification is a component of the 21st century CURES Act of 2016. It was a sneaky little poison pill added to the act and no one likes it…Except those who believe workers and recipients are ALL fraudulent pirates who MUST BE STOPPED! It will affect all in-home care programs including California’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS). And, if states do not implement it, they’ll lose critical funding for Medicaid (that’s Medi-Cal in California). ...
Apr 20, 2018•9 min
Santa Rosa Council Woman Julie Combs On April 5, 2018 a Federal judge in San Francisco heard arguments against evicting the 125+ people of a Sebastopol Road homeless camp in Santa Rosa. The camp residents asked the judge to issue a temporary restraining order against the eviction, claiming the County of Sonoma, whose land they reside upon, is violating their 4th, 8th & 14th amendment rights, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act. At the time of this program, the judge’s final decisi...
Apr 06, 2018•17 min
Do you remember where you were when the Bowling Green Massacre happened? You don’t? It was all over the news last year! But of course you don’t remember, because it never happened. It was fake news. As we approach April Fool’s Day, we learn that even the news must be treated with suspicion in these troubling times. Join Adrienne Lauby and Mark Romoser as we discuss fake news and how it affects your ability to stay informed. Call in and join the discussion. What Fake News has hindered disability ...
Mar 30, 2018•17 min
Kristen Lopez Is disability as portrayed in American popular cinema slowly transforming itself? Are filmmakers getting away from the good old days when a person with a disability was often viewed as a friendly, intellectually-challenged creature to be cuddled and protected because us disabled folk could not fend for ourselves or offer gifts to society? Are popular films breaking away from the usual Hollywood mushy, exploitative treatment of disability in films like the 1957, “An Affair to Rememb...
Mar 16, 2018•16 min
Hope Jahren Hope Jahren, author of the best selling memoir, Lab Girl, joins us for an hour of discussion about mental illness, trees, and the life of a woman scientist. Shelley Berman, Josh Elwood, Sheela Gunn-Cushman, Adrienne Lauby and Mark Romoser talk to Ms Jahren, read from her book and entreat listeners to become members of KPFA. Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her child...
Mar 02, 2018•34 min
The difference in the disability experience throughout the U.S.A Food, politics and slang. In the U.S.A. it seems like these things very greatly between regions. Could the way people perceive those with disabilities also very greatly between areas? Join us on Pushing Limits as we explore some of the variations in attitudes that people with disabilities face throughout the USA. Helping us explore this topic will be Karin Willison. Ms. Willison is the creator of https://www.freewheelintravel.org, ...
Feb 16, 2018•16 min
s.e. smith photo by Jim Burakoff Writer, agitator, and commentator s.e. smith* joins us for the half hour. Based in Northern California, s.e. smith has a journalistic focus on social issues, particularly gender, prison reform, disability rights, environmental justice, queerness, class, and the intersections thereof, with a special interest in rural subjects. s.e. smith has been published in The Guardian, Bitch Magazine, Aljazeera America, AlterNet, Yes! Magazine, Jezebel, Salon, the Sundance Cha...
Feb 02, 2018•16 min
A half-hour radio show providing critical coverage of disability issues and bringing the insight of the grassroots disability movement to the general public. The post Pushing Limits – January 26, 2018 appeared first on KPFA.
Jan 26, 2018•16 min
Maybe the way to end poverty is to give poor people money. The idea of a universal basic income in the U.S. isn’t new. Progressives pushed the concept in the 1960s and 70s, and several other countries have tried local experiments. But, tech industry leaders like Tesla’s Elon Musk have recently taken up the idea and that’s making a buzz. Many of us in the disability community already live on the basic income called Social Security and SSI. Today, Mark Romoser, Josh Elwood, Sheela Gunn-Cushman, Ed...
Jan 19, 2018•18 min
A half-hour radio show providing critical coverage of disability issues and bringing the insight of the grassroots disability movement to the general public. Pushing Limits advances the voices of people who live with disabilities. It is produced by a collective of media makers and activists who themselves live with disability. The post Pushing Limits – January 5, 2018 appeared first on KPFA.
Jan 05, 2018•9 min
Art by Kunyo, a Korean artist inspired by the United Nations Development Programme’s work in Kazakhstan Jacob Lesner-Buxton joins our crew for 30 minutes of analysis and reflection on the events of 2017 for people with disabilities. Some topics: 1. U.S. involved wars cause death and disability in Afghanistan, Mexico, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere 2. Electronic Visit Verification to be required in California IHSS homes 3. Trump – Defeat of Health Care Deform; success of Tax Deform. This summer...
Dec 29, 2017•9 min
Laurie offers you a starfish holiday tree Laurie joins us to talk about how living with diabetes, the Epstein-Barr virus, fibromyalgia and other physical problems has been improved by her long-time participation in 12-step anonymous recovery programs. “I used to say: Food Was Just My Butter’s Delivery Service,” Laurie says talking to Shelley about her acceptance of herself as a food addict and her slow recovery of her self-worth through the 12 steps. “We’re looking at trying to find ourselves ac...
Dec 01, 2017•9 min
A half-hour radio show providing critical coverage of disability issues and bringing the insight of the grassroots disability movement to the general public. The post Pushing Limits – November 17, 2017 appeared first on KPFA.
Nov 17, 2017•9 min
Today we celebrate the musical contributions of Stevland Hardaway Judkins who for decades has delighted the disabled and non-disabled world with his music, commitment to blind and disability rights and to universal peace. Of course, we are talking about Stevie Wonder who still is a fixture in popular American culture and to think that this is the same musician who presented us with “Fingertips, Part Two” in 1963. Those years were the time of one-hit popular stars who faded away permanently; but ...
Nov 03, 2017•9 min
Photo courtesy of BLM.gov Sharon Rae Robinson who lived with memory loss, Christina Hanson, a 27 year-old woman who used a wheelchair her entire life because of Spina Bifida, and other disabled people were among the 42 who died in the Northern Calif. fires in the last ten days. Among the 20 thousand humans evacuated in Santa Rosa were people from numerous assisted living and supportive group homes, including 240 people from the Sonoma Developmental Center, 450 people from Oakmont assisted living...
Oct 20, 2017•9 min
San Diego Women’s March draws 40 Thousand. Photo by Tom and Nadin Abbott. There has been a great deal of coverage of the alt-right neo-Nazi movement since the civil unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia but, despite the Nazi murder of 70 thousand people with disabilities in the period leading up to the Holocaust, little has been said about alt-right, neo-Nazi attitudes toward people with disabilities. In this program, Nadin Abbott, from the website Reporting San Diego, an expert on this shadowy wo...
Oct 06, 2017•9 min
Photo by Long Beach Residents Empowered Tenants gathered at a Statewide Renters Assembly in Alameda over the weekend. Ava and Fernando Nadal were there, gearing up to lead an attack on the landlord demon law, Costa Hawkins*. This, despite the impending loss of their home and Fernando’s upcoming major Ava & Fernando Nadal. Photo by Ridge Gonzalez, L.A. Eviction Defense Network surgery. Adrienne Lauby talks with them. If you’ve been asked to “tell your story” to a funder or politician, stick a...
Sep 29, 2017•9 min
Helga Spizman with her hand-made pussy hat Police march down the boulevard chanting “Whose Street? Our Street,” and Oklahoma City police gun down Magdiel Sanchez, a developmentally disabled deaf man, despite neighbors who yell, “He can’t hear you.” All this in a week when the Republican congress hopes to pass a health care bill that will radically restructure and deeply cut Medicaid, health care for poor and disabled people. Afraid yet? It’s time to take a stand for ourselves and for each other....
Sep 22, 20170
Stephanie Woodward at recent protests of proposed Trump Care. Photos courtesy of TheMighty.com Trump has something special in mind for poor people and the disability community as he moves into the Federal budget season with a tax reform agenda. Cuts! We’re not talking about the paring knife slices you usually notice over time. It’s bayonets, weed wackers, bulldozers and tanks — that kind of cuts. What cuts Trump can get from his right wing, but fractured, majority in the legislature is an open q...
Sep 01, 2017•9 min
Stephanie Woodward at recent protests of proposed Trump Care. Photo courtesy of TheMighty.com Photo courtesy of TheMighty.com Trump has something special in mind for poor people and the disability community as he moves into the Federal budget season with a tax reform agenda. Cuts! We’re not talking about the paring knife slices you usually notice over time. It’s bayonets, weed wackers, bulldozers and tanks — that kind of cuts. What cuts Trump can get from his right wing, but fractured, majority ...
Aug 31, 20170
Our guest, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, (she/they) is a queer disabled non-binary femme writer and cultural worker of Burger/ Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/ Roma ascent. Her work has been widely published, most recently in The Deaf Poets Society, Glitter and Grit and Octavia’s Brood. Her memoir, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home was praised as a “gritty, glorious, multi-layered story of homecoming and self-healing.” Currently a lead artist with the disability justice pe...
Aug 18, 2017•9 min
Phoebe Fico, a disabled woman, is playing one of the classic disability theatrical roles, that of Laura in Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie.” The production by Cal Shakes utilizes a multi-racial cast to portray the conflicts of this thinly-veiled autobiography set during Williams’ younger years. A disability activist and poet as well as an actor, Phoebe Fico will discuss the disability implications of the role as well as its relevance to family life today. “The Glass Menagerie” is the st...
Jul 21, 2017•9 min
The Myth is that homeless people are older white men with addiction problems. The Reality is that nearly half of homeless people (in Sonoma County – 41%) live with a disability. The Myth is that homeless people travel from place to place looking for the best deal from local communities. The Reality is that most homeless people (in Sonoma County – 79%) live in the place where they once had a home. The Myth is that homeless people just want to party and don’t want to be responsible people. The Rea...
Jul 07, 2017•9 min
Anita Cameron If you were inspired last week by the disability activists who sat in Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s office until they were dragged away from their wheelchairs, you’ll want to hear Anita Cameron of ADAPT talk about the deep history, the strategy and the future plans of these protesters. Her website is called Musings of an Angry Black Womyn. President Trump and the Republican Party are coming closer to the destruction or extreme weakening of the Affordable Health Care Act, which in...
Jun 30, 2017•9 min
Ethan Borochoff with Sam Fuld, professional baseball outfielder who also lives with diabetes. Six year old Ethan Borochoff is interested in many things and most of them are NOT Type 1 Diabetes. Yet, like most kids with severe disabilities, he knows way more than the average bear about the disease he lives with. Listen in to hear how he makes it through his days. Ethan explains it all: insulin pumps, carbohydrates, wobbly legs and why children can experiment with batteries but not the electricity...
Jun 16, 2017•4 min
