Transcript- APRIL Youth Conference Lets Talk IL


all right everyone it is
1 30 so our pacific time i don't know
what y'all are working with but
um my name is fantasy i use she
pronouns
and i will be the moderator for today 
welcome thank you so much for joining
sorry i need to turn that off
um thank you so much for joining we will
be getting started
um i'm just gonna go through some
logistics
so um like i said my name is fantasy i
am
the vice chair for the steering
committee so excited to be here with
the chair themselves mel's felton um
this session is called
is the youth conference and it's let's
talk about il
so um i'm excited for everyone to be
joining us
and if we could go to this slide where
i see to see a black screen
i think it is this end of slideshow so i
don't know if it was just a slightly
funny yeah i don't know why it's not
coming up but i'm
trying perfect thank you
it's not a zoom presentation without
technical difficulties
exactly perfect
maybe perfect it's still showing a black
screen maybe
um it was showing it before that though
before you present it i think so i don't
know if that's better
yes it's showing now um we can leave it
here if you don't want to go into full
screen
hopefully um that's this will be doable
um basically just wanted to go over some
housekeeping items before we get started
today
so first when you scroll over um the
screen
a menu bar pops up and depending on what
device you are on you can find the menu
bar at the top or at the bottom of the
screen
and this is where you can find the
closed captioning for today's session
in my screen screen it's at the bottom
right
it says closed captioning and then it
has a like a square with
cc in it you can also view the
captioning by selecting the cc tab
on the menu bar like i just said um and
then you can also stream text is also
available for today's call
you can find that in the conference
website connections instructions
for this session so just let us know if
you need any of those links
um for sign language interpreting you
can find the interpreter on the screen
you can pin their video as well if you
hover over their screen
and click the three dots i'm using a
desktop so that's how it works for me
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then for
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um please note that there's a q a box on
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top
and please only submit questions there
as they might get lost in the chat so if
you have a comment
you can use the chat bar or the chat box
if you have a question you can use the q
a box i will be monitoring both as well
so feel free to um use both of them
but with either questions or comments
um to ask a question make um you can put
it in the
in the q a or you can um choose the
feature
like raise hand feature um
for y'all it might be it's like the
there's a hand and it says race hand
you can push that and then we'll have
hosts on our end are able to see
um when you raise your hand and then we
can either call on you later and unmute
your mic
we'll let you know before that happens
though um
for those of you on the phone today or
using keystrokes
we ask that you press asterisk 9
on your keypad to raise your hand then
we will let you know when to unmute you
and remember if you join into the
conversation please keep all background
noises down as much as possible so that
it will allow us to hear you clearly
again i will let you know if we um
call on you to either vocally share
through the microphone
or if you want to use the chat you can
use the chat to express some comments or
concerns and i will
localize them to the rest of the group
or you can put your questions in the q a
so without further ado let's get started
with the conference
if you need anything um questions if you
have any questions please let us know
and for now we will take it away with
mel's
hi all and thanks so much fantasy um for
doing the moderating it's kind of nice
not to be the moderator for one of the
youth sessions today i just get to talk
all right so my name for those who have
not met me um either through the digital
conference discord or
the before covered times when we could
be in person my name's mel spelton
i use they them pronouns i am a white
non-binary person with blue hair that is
currently in
braids and bangs that are getting a
little bit too
long um
yeah so today we're going to be doing a
session called let's talk il
and we're specifically going to be
looking into
voting and other civic responsibilities
um before i get into that a little bit
more about myself
i am a disabled person i use the word
disabled
i'm autistic i have a psychiatric
disability
and for most of my life i was very much
in that medical model of disability
um seeing things as like oh this is
something that i need to hide this is
something that i need to fix this is
something that's really just
something that i need to change about
myself to adapt to society
and that caused me a lot of harm in many
ways um
partially through burnout partially
through
um just negative uh
self-worth and that
continued until i kind of found myself
thrown into the independent living
movement
um it happened um all through
chance um and when i ended up at my
first
april conference i showed up
at the youth conference very quiet i was
wearing
slacks and flats and like
a very businessy shirt and i was just i
walked in
and i saw people presenting and jeans
and t-shirts and everybody just chilling
out and i was like oh
this is not a formal situation
and that's ever since i think that
moment i have started to
really um become less and less formal in
my presentations and
i call that il it is about independent
living really has an authenticity to it
because
we are all experts in our own um
in our own lives we know what we need we
know what our wants are
and april really broke me out of that
medical model oh i need to get this
fixed about myself
and instead thinking hey what is it
about these societal structures
that aren't working for people like me
and just like other people in the
disability community
sorry just moving my notes so that's
kind of um
what i like to refer to as uh some real
talk
with me like it's
i don't want this to be formal um i know
when i first came to the april
conference
every person that was a speaker i was
like
i can't even approach that person or
talk to them because they're a speaker
everybody here at april's on the same
level so
just feel free throw questions and i'll
be answering questions through this
whole thing
so with that being said a bit of an
introduction so
going into some basics what is
independent living
so as a person who is a youth
coordinator
also a youth um for a center of
independent living
i do my best to live in that independent
living philosophy of
consumer choice and consumer driven like
we
know what we want we know what we need
and we know how to and
uh we and that's not something that we
should have to compromise on we should
be able to live the independent lives
that we want
now there's when we think about um
independent living skills
and especially when i'm talking to
people about independent living skills
for
the very first time people to
ask me it's like oh that's like
brushing your teeth right i'm like well
i i guess
that technically is an independent
living skill but let's think
a little bit bigger than that so we're
talking about like
balancing a budget healthy relationships
sex education all of the things that we
need to live independent lives and a lot
of times
as uh people with disabilities
were kind of excluded from the
conversation
so that is why for this let's talk
il we as the youth steering committee
talked about um well it's 2020 um
you may or may not have heard there is
an election happening right now
um and so we're like you know this would
be a great time
to talk about voting and
not just voting but other civic duties
so also feel free post any questions
stop me um whenever i want this to be
more conversational
but as anybody who's met me i can talk a
lot and i will talk forever
so um
i am going back to that idea of real
talk so when it comes to um
civic duties um i know we have um
people from all different age ranges in
here we have those who are still in high
school those who are in college
those who are out of school um those who
aren't technically youth but still that
young at heart
um and there's a lot of expectations of
what a person
should or should not know at a certain
age
about voting or about your civic duty
and i want to be completely honest with
you all my school didn't
teach me anything
about civics like i had the class and i
took it
but it wasn't taught in an engaging way
that i would actually remember and
so i had a lot of insecurities
about talking um about politics talking
about elections because i felt like i
just didn't know enough
and that that uh spiral sort of contin
it kind of made this like vicious cycle
of
i don't know enough so i can't talk
about it and since i'm not talking about
it
i don't know enough and it just
continued in a way until i got an
opportunity
um to um participate in
something that kind of ended up being
political nerd camp
um and this wasn't until i was in my 20s
and
i'm sharing this because it is never too
late to ask
questions for so long
i stopped myself from asking questions
because i was
i had this fear that people would judge
me
for what i don't know and in reality i
was just the one judging myself for what
i didn't know
i like to think of it as every person
learns something new every day
so why not you so
going back to like my school not
teaching me much
about civics i knew it's like okay
so i i'm in a state where we do complete
mail-in ballots we have since 2008
i couldn't vote until 2014
no 2013 trying to remember how old i am
i couldn't vote until 2013 so i've only
known mail and ballots um
so i know that's going to be a little
bit different
um from everybody across the nation
and we we are everybody across the
nation here at april
so when but i looked at
a lot of times when you're looking at a
ballot either it be mail-in
absentee or if you're actually going to
the polls um on
in november um everything can be
incredibly overwhelming
and very much in a way that
makes voting more like even more
inaccessible
that's before we even talk about
voter suppression and id laws
and the uh and just inaccessible
voting uh like platforms like
just the act of voting if we removed all
those other barriers
is made to be a little bit
convoluted to make it difficult one of
the examples i'll give
from my state right now our
legislature which i'll go a little bit
more into what legislatures do in a
moment
um passed a law about comprehensive sex
education
and then there was a uh
enough signatures were collected for a
referendum to either
so to allow the entire population to
vote
either to approve or deny that
um um approve or repeal
but how it's worded is it sounds like
oh if you vote approve then that means
you're getting rid of it
and if you oppose uh vote repeal then
that's a no
so you're voting not to get rid of it
but in reality
if you vote to approve that means we're
going to keep the law
that the legislature passed and if we do
repeal
we are going to repeal that law and so
just the uh the wording can be
completely just confusing so we're gonna
go through uh
some tips tricks and i have an
entire resource page for um across
the nation for things that you can use
especially like
november is approaching quick so when
we're talking about politics
we have our three different levels we
have
our federal level our state and our
local
there we go made it to three
um a lot of attention goes into these
federal races and so
i don't think anybody out there has been
able to avoid
a presidential ad in the past two years
it feels like this election's been going
on for
forever um and then you'll
also like in your local areas you'll see
like a congressional ads um
senate ads and
those get so much attention and it is
very important to vote for those
but those elections only come up
every um president every four years uh
each congressional seat every
two and same with senate every two
then we have our state level um
that is for your state in particular you
have
your governor lieutenant governor you
have your commissioners
attorney general um superintendent
of public instruction which is so
important to vote on um
especially as disabled people because
we've
ended up with the short end of the stick
a lot of the time when it comes to
education
and there's so much more on that state
level
but one of the things i really want to
focus on is that
local level i know for uh my community
uh many are we had a very um tight
uh city council uh
president uh race um
in 2019 and
it came down to i think a few hundred
votes
so when you're in these local elections
like
yes please vote for those
like those federal and state level but
make sure you're going all the way down
the ballot
and filling out everything because in
those local elections your
your vote has the most impact
and a lot
oh okay sorry i was uh peeking at the
chat and i need to not peek at the chat
that's fantasy's job i'm not a moderator
today
um so
that's one of the things so voting
is the absolute um is one of those
responsibilities that
um is for every citizen but
even more importantly for those of us
who are in
the disability community and who are um
not just have that one marginalization
of being disabled but
multi-marginalizations
and those of us who may not even be
multi-marginalized
vote affects those who are so
looking into what candidates are doing
for disability
and doing our research behind that and
that sounds like such it's exhaust it
sounds exhausting
i have made it as simple as possible in
my resource list
i want everybody here to at the end of
this
to be okay how do i vote how do i get
involved
now but here's the thing voting is just
one important leg of
uh let's say this three-legged stool
right so we have please vote
but also using our time
our energy our efforts uh for those who
may have it um i know i usually don't um
extra funds for donating um
volunt but volunteer your time into
campaigns that mean something to you
volunteer
um the amount i have uh in
since for the past
three years have been going to all of my
um
congressional representatives who are
running and my um local representatives
and asking
okay but what's your plan for disability
and i the most frustrating thing about
that question
is usually the response that i get is
crickets
they do not have a plan for disability
or when i bring it up their response is
oh we
love old people
and that's not what all
disability is like yes like every
population
all like older people are part of it
but when we're talking about disability
there's such a wide range of issues
so that when we have representatives who
only
think of it as a oh aging in place
and that's it they need that education
and a lot of the time they will not
receive
that education without a disability
advocate
going in volunteering their time
and volunteering their time to
educate them hopefully for those of us
who get lucky maybe
compensated for that but they need to be
educated
now i talked about this three-legged
school so we have
the first leg of vote we have the second
leg
of volunteer and i like to call the
third leg
as yell literally yell
um the amount of times that
i have gone in you you have to use your
voice
with people you have to be able
to find out where you can talk
um go before bc times before covid when
we could actually go places
um i had as many of us are from rural
areas
um getting to your s um
getting to your uh city council meeting
can be a little bit difficult that can
be travel getting to your
county commissioner meeting can be
difficult depending on what kind of
community you live in
and then getting to your state capital
to talk to your legislative
um representatives
is even more frustrating um i live in
washington state
um i like to say it's shaped like this
um if you're familiar with
um seattle seattle's over here
and then our capital of our state is
about
two hours below seattle
and i live over here
and that's about a six hour trip to get
to our um
city capital and right here
um you cannot see it on my hand but
there is a very large mountain range
called the cascades
which means when my city council members
are meeting
it is usually winter and there is snow
and four-wheel drive can only do so much
when you're going over a mountain pass
and the snow banks are three times
taller than your car
and one of the cool things to uh come
out of covid
is that we do have um
this bigger um use of
digital um contact so this is the first
year that my legit
2020 was the first time my legislative
session has used
um digital um like you can
use zoom or i think they use a different
platform though because of
state security reasons but it's pretty
much
um state zoom um to talk to our
legislature
um legislative representatives and
so knowing having a plan of
where you can go to yell at your
your representatives is an important
part of that civic stool
now i use the word yell because i tend
to be a very loud
somewhat aggressive about things that
are important
um and i'm not saying the first thing
you go in is start screaming but
have a purpose of why you're going there
and one of the things the best things to
do when you're walking into
a uh any kind of session where you're
going to be
speaking to representatives not just
having a complaint
but having a potential solution
even if it's not um fully worked out
just being like hey
i'm a disabled person i have faced um
this issue how about but i think that
this
could fix it because i've seen it work
other places or i know this would work
for me as a disabled person
so this can work other places as well um
i know one of the things that we're
working on inside of my city right now
and if
you were in the um us protecting us
presentation it's on a similar
line of that as that but um
have like a similar topic that was
covered in that i should say
is as a person with a psychiatric
disability i have episodes
and i know that
if i have an episode i can act
erratic i can seem very angry i can seem
very
um i'll go out and say it dangerous
and having people who are trained in
mental health
to respond to those so if i say hey you
know people with disabilities are
have a higher rate of getting killed uh
by
um police brutality which has happened
in my city and we had a pretty high
profile case
it has act also happened in every city
i've lived in
in my life um as
as a person with a disability being um
killed
um by excessive force and so saying hey
what if we had mental health teams to
come out and how
like what that would cost what that
would cost in funding i think
one of my one of the most shocking
pieces of
information that i was given in my
stay in this uh in my fellowship of this
political nerd camp
was um in a state budget
a million dollars is a drop in the
bucket
and that blew my mind the idea that
that is so much money how is that seem
so minuscule but when we have a state
that is working with
billions of dollars in revenue um
we as taxpayers we should be looking at
how that money is being spent
and having it being spent in services
that are actually serving
us so i've talked about the three-legged
stool
so we got a vote we yell
we volunteer and
what is a stool for it is for lifting
people up
and with that stool we find somebody to
run
we find somebody who is going to run for
office
that represents what we
what we need as a society represents
what we
want as a society it is
great because we all have our needs that
need to be met people need housing
people need
food people need the ability to live a
comfortable life
without worrying about um
if they're going to become homeless if
they're not going to have
um if they're going to have to choose
between paying for their insulin or
paying for their food
we need those are our needs
and we are always going to like we need
to be working on making sure those basic
needs of survival are met and finding
candidates
that
as my brain turns off and turns back on
again
finding candidates that work
for us because your
representatives um are your employees
for those who have had experience with
consumer choice
specifically with consumer choice in um
with your personal care assistance
you get to be the one in the aisle
philosophy you get to be the one to hire
them you are the one who is seeing like
okay what are our wages and like is this
person working for me
and then we have the uh
sorry my words um
so think about your legislative
representatives and all
the representatives you vote for as your
employees
and if an employee isn't doing their job
then we do we need to reevaluate that
like can we talk to them to fix it and
if not then we need to get another
person in there who was going to
um and then
and so yeah and you know also
those three legs that we should all be
doing
also not everybody can run for office
but if you like if no if there is no
candidate who can do it
or if there is no um or if there's no
talking to your representative if
there's no amount of volunteering that
is making this change
you can run especially at these local
levels
and we know we go back to that
independent living philosophy
of we are experts in our own lives
so that means that we are we are experts
in what are these disability issues that
need to be addressed what are these
racial justice issues that need to be
addressed lgbtq
gender identity just everything
so why so we need to make sure that
we're that we're being represented
because if
i think we've all had that experience
where we meet someone who knows
nothing about disability rights but
they learn from us and they're like oh
my gosh i've never even thought about
curb cuts and just by
meeting you they learn about that and so
when disabled people like us stand on
top of that three-legged stool
we affect all the people around us of
seeing even
of showing other disabled people we can
run
and showing um the non-disabled
population like
we we have needs they need to be met and
we are serious about it
as i go to my next slide and
so my main thing and i'm going to um
i've seen one question go up in the
chat um and i'm going to get to that but
one of the things that i really want to
say is like vote
who is elected affects everybody inside
of this nation
but we need to be thinking like as
disabled people
it often affects us in a negative way i
know in my state we have had
every year we have somebody trying to
pass
a involuntary electroshock therapy use
on uh people with psychiatric
disabilities
every single year we have somebody
trying to pass that
so a person like myself uh who could be
in a mental health crisis
with laws like that passing could and
have to
against my will have electroshock
therapy
we have solitary confinement being used
inside of our schools solitary
confinement
is seen as cruel and unusual punishment
worldwide and yet we're using it inside
of our schools specifically for
disabled people specifically um bipoc
people
um bipolar disabled people disabled by
pock there we go
like how is that still there but
beca or just the criminalization of
having a disability
of being publicly mentally ill or
being uh or in the case of uh
in uh when i would i think i was about i
think it was in
2004 because i i was still a kiddo
during this
a deaf man was shot and killed because
he was uh whittling wood
in seattle with a small knife and
because he didn't respond
because he was deaf and he could not
hear the uh
officer he was he was shot and killed
and just these things affect us
and then there's also this radical idea
of
even if it's not affecting you
personally even if um the
privileges that we have are not make it
so that issue is not affecting
us if we see it it's happening to other
people
and i know when i'm at april i've never
been around more
caring generous people
and so if we're seeing injustice
happening
to not just people in our community but
in communities around us
it is our responsibility to be taking
that on
so that being said i'm going to take a
pause there are
two questions what's up yes thank you so
much smiles
thank you for bringing light to all of
these issues current historic
um there is a question
from tria if that's how you pronounce it
i don't know exactly what context this
was in i don't remember but it says
what is my role if i don't need that
many services
and maybe true can elaborate unless you
know um
i'm going to go off of on trey feel free
to uh
type more in the chat if i don't answer
this um
directly um
as i close this out of the way um
so i have to
get back into the zone um even if like
if those aren't services that you need
let's say you
your health care is covered um you get
it through a job um
you have a job that pays a living wage
um you're comfortable so when we're
seeing
that kind of uh comfort
um that's
when we have that means if we're
comfortable and that means we we should
have the energy to be looking at other
people and looking at other problems
so that is the time where like you
should always be listening but if you
feel like
you're comfortable there's chances are
there are people out there who are not
and that is a time to start listening
that is a time where we need to
just and this is the hardest part for me
i need to shut my mouth and
just hear what people are saying
and contemplate that there
is a uh lyric in a death cab for cutie
song
that sticks in my head of uh
i wait to talk when i should listen
and it's this idea that when somebody
else is talking to you
you are either preparing what you are
going to say back
or you have already decided what you're
going to say back
so we need to make sure that we're
listening to
other communities i hope that answers
that question thank you so much
um yeah if not please feel free to put
some clarification in the chat
um another question that we have i'm
gonna have this one quickly
um somewhat quickly answered and then
there's
two more questions after this one um but
someone says
what is bipark and they spelled it a
little different they said if that's how
you say it but if you could just go into
kind of unpack what by
that terminology is awesome thank you
um just apologies um as
many of us do we get lost in the acronym
soup so if i use something
please stop me um by poc as in
b i p o c um stands for black and
indigenous people of color
um you will also hear um the beginnings
of
um used uh qt by pog which is
queer and trans black and indigenous
people of color
so i hope that clears uh that up
okay smelly it looks like we have a hand
raised
oh awesome and i'm gonna go ahead and um
it's opal uh opal you should be getting
something that'll allow you to
to ask your question
okay can you guys hear me now or no
yes we can okay hey um
that's good i just was wondering um
so i have a lot of
characters and so
oh if i want to go about
like re um
raging though i mean
raising the wage blast sorry can't pass
uh of um of
my caregivers like
um as far as like getting
lost past who do i go to
to do that would that be federal or
would that be
state level to
fix that yeah so that is an awesome
question um and a lot of the times with
awesome questions there
are not super simple answers so
it depends on where the funding is
coming through
um because there is state funding and
federal funding
um so first figure out where uh your
funding is coming through
but just at the very beginnings of it it
is always good to
start at a local level it is easier to
get things going
at a local level than it is to i'm just
go straight
to the federal level um specifically
when we're talking about um things in a
uh
rights-based um structure
okay thank you that makes sense
yeah very welcome thank you so much yes
feel free to raise your hand as well
sorry i'm just trying to like
navigate who was first and stuff like
that but um
the more the questions the the better
and the more dialogue we can have
and we do have about 20 minutes left so
the next question that we got
from emily is how can we advocate for
ourselves and get the help we need
i think we need an emergency hotline in
caps
number we have to take we have to have a
way to help
how can we do this on our own and
advocate for ourselves at the same time
awesome yeah so when we're looking
at um emergency hotlines first of all
we live in a capitalist society i'm just
in short things cost money and we have
to have money to do things
um that being said um
working a new emergency hotline number
means hiring people infrastructure for
it so it's finding the funds for that
and when we're looking for something on
that level
um we'd want to start local um one of
the things
and i i'm pretty i'm trying to remember
my um
my emt like emergency medical team or
people who do the ambulance stuff trying
to remember the history of that but if
i'm
recalling correctly that started
as things that are on a local level and
only
some cities counties areas had that
but as the idea took off and it was seen
as a success
um it spread i still remember um
learn i remember learning about this
because i was watching a movie with my
mom
and somebody got really hurt at the
beginning of the movie and i'm just like
why don't they call 9-1-1 and my mom's
like this movie was based in this time
they didn't have 9-1-1 and that was like
mind-blowing for me because i was just
like what do you mean
um and so but now that's that's a basic
for us
kind of in the way that like the ada
generation sees things
as yeah we've always had the ada that's
baseline
um our new thing with advocating for
ourselves as well as
getting these new systems they go hand
in hand and
what it comes down to is we are in
charge of creating the new baseline
i want a society where
our our youth
see a mental health uh crisis line
where people can get um first responders
trained in mental health is like oh yeah
that's just that's just the norm what do
you mean you didn't have that why
wouldn't we have that
that's our responsibility is
raising the bar and making it
just the baseline for everywhere and so
that does start
at advocating at a local level coalition
building
um one of the things that i
i love about the independent living
movement but also um
find a lot of frustration in is we did
start as this
um
kind of radical idea of hey
we shouldn't institutionalize disabled
people
and at the time that wasn't the baseline
that was like
that was people trying to raise the bar
and others being like
it's always been this way why wouldn't
we do this
but now it's a very obvious like yeah no
we shouldn't institutionalize people
and let's get rid of these institutions
and i sometimes feel that the
independent living movement um
falls away from that very radical start
and so pushing
your independent living centers to um
like we cannot lobby we cannot say pass
this law or don't pass this law that is
um
which is a pain in the butt but it's
what we have to deal with
but i do have a resource in our resource
list
about how to find the line between
legislative advocacy and lobbying but
it does come down to um
advocating for ourselves
i like to i like to think about um most
movements like a hand
and when we're advocating for ourselves
that's like
the tip of our fingers and the tip of
our fingers do a job
and then as we start to build that
movement
we have get our full fingers and then
when we start to get org
um organized we have the palm
and the thumb and then we have a full
hand and then we have
that's something we can work with and so
it all plays a part
so when you're advocating for yourself
you are changing systems though in a
small way
in a very important way because when
people see something working on a small
scale
they'll be like okay this
this can work okay how do we expand this
so i hope that helps
perfect um thank you so much and we have
another question
um from jamie it says where can i find
the information
to what you said so i don't know
anything specific but is there any way
we can find maybe more resources or
information
to what you're sharing yes
okay so it will be posted
up on the website i need to send it to
um
mary um i should have sent it sooner but
i was still adding things to it this
morning because
there's just so much information but um
some i made a uh a resource list
um things that are on this resource list
contain
um a website called out of the margins
um
which is a kind of digital mentor
program
to explain advocacy reading legislature
and more
um if any of y'all have uh i think my
favorite part of it is uh
they have this section on robert's rules
which if any of y'all have had to go to
like a city council meeting or like
anything that's very formal
or just a board meeting um
robert's rules is very important but
it's super gatekeepy
because it's hard to understand and out
of the margins has
an amazing um walkthrough
of how robert's rules work and
it is completely accessible it's made by
disabled people
and um you can have
it's in a text and there's also videos
with audio descriptions
and captioning so that will be in the
resource list
i also have a state legislature
directory which um
links to every single state uh state's
legislative website
on legislative websites across the
country
find the one for your state and then
that's where you can start to follow
bills
i'm not sure if because i couldn't check
all 50 states plus territories
um but most have the ability for you to
make an account
and then track bills and also see
when your legislative session is um
wash like my state for example our
legislative session
is uh we have a long session and a short
session um which uh flip-flop every
other year
and but it's i think our short our long
session is done
by april and so it goes january to april
at the very longest so it's not a lot of
time in a year
um so um it can help you track bills see
what's going on
um who also um there's the uh who are my
representatives website which shows who
represents you at a
federal state and local level um for
some reason this website does not um
list who your um state legislatures are
legislative um representatives are which
is odd
but because it doesn't have that i have
another link on there which is open
states
which does find you that information and
it is another way to track legislation
in your state
um one of my favorites of all time is
ballot pedia
um using like wikipedia but specifically
for figuring out your ballot
and you can look up what measures are
being listed on your ballot um
at the beginning of this presentation i
talked a little bit about
how there was um incredibly confusing uh
wording for a referendum that is on my
ballot this year and i went to
ballotpedia
to double check to make sure that i was
voting the way that i wanted to vote and
didn't get them flip-flopped
and those resources and more are going
to be posted
and i think the um
best thing that i can think of um also
is
find an advocacy group and there
is unfortunately not a directory for
that
and i that is something i want to work
on but that's hard to keep track of uh
on a local level let alone a state level
let alone effectual level
but looking into what is around
your local area um or also um
april has a advocacy committee um that
meets monthly and so
fi meeting with the advocacy committee
there where we talk specifically about
rural disability issues on a federal
level
and also where people bring their state
level um issues to
as well and gives us the ability to kind
of brainstorm on a
what sort of legislative advocacy we
should be doing
to make sure that our people aren't
being put into institutions
um be that um nursing facilities
or on prisons like what what systems
can we what systems do we need to
dismantle at a legislative level
yeah so that will be posted perfect
thank you so much so yes please look
forward to that
um that resource link will be posted
thank you most for creating that and
just bringing awareness
um so there's two questions that kind of
involve media
and maybe like and interconnect people
with disabilities and then there's
another question that i'll
ask after but these two questions let me
know for me to repeat them but the first
one is it kind of was tying back to when
we were talking about
um police brutality against people with
disabilities
um and someone asked why would you shoot
a man that is
whittling wood who is not a threat
question mark
and then this other one kind of ties
into people with disabilities and the
media as well and it
says i love how most people think people
with disabilities don't fall in love
it's frustrating
like why is it newsworthy so if you
could
answer those and then we'll go to the
next question before we're
done in 10 minutes all righty um could
you reread the first one real quick
yes it says um why would you shoot a man
who is whittling wood who is not a
threat
well before that no it's just those two
and then the
other one is about on the people this
people with disabilities falling in love
like why is it new
okay all right so honestly
that is that that's the hundred dollar
question isn't it
um if i am
so we've had these conversations about
intersectionality the last couple of
days
and how um intersectionality at least in
the
modern sense of the word and how it's
being used and how it's been adapted
is we do not live single issue lives
um i personally i cannot remove
my psychiatric disability
from my autism i cannot remove my autism
from
my um my experience as an autistic
person from my
uh queer or transness i
cannot remove it from my whiteness there
are all these diff
all of our identities become
intersecting
and if you have the chance to listen to
uh
christiana speak yesterday um we
as a society like to put things
to label things put things in the boxes
do whatever we can to explain things
people
want to explain things we want to make
sense
of things but by doing that
we come up with these societal ideas
that might be
um accepted um oh gosh i hate thinking
about it but
i think the um best example is the one
that christiana gave
um during the uh
i think it was the 14th century i can't
remember exactly i'm bad at dates
but um priests would show how
um pious and unemotional that they
were by showing off how much body lice
they had and whoever had the most body
lice
was the most pious and the holiest
and that sounds absolutely ridiculous to
us but
that was the norm and so people
see things as a norm so when
a police officer specifically in this
case uh
this was a bypack man specifically um
from an indigenous tribe of the pacific
northwest
um when he didn't respond um the police
officer
saw that as a threat to himself because
the man had a
small widdling knife and was not
responding to
him and so using all of his
uh what inside of his head
what he saw as a threat using his bias
using his stereotypes using whatever it
was
he made that decision to shoot um
and we see in other cases where um
specifically um with non-disabled people
specifically with non-disabled white
people
who have participated in gun violence um
many times they are they're talked down
they're brought into custody alive
um we had we've heard a lot about um
inside of portland uh
people being uh taken in in the protest
people being taken into unmarked vans
for protesting
but um what was it i think it was either
two or three years ago there was a uh
armed militia that took over
a government facility and they were
allowed mail to come in and out which
but this was a
predominant this was a white group
mostly based on white supremacy
and so we have these ideas of
specifically when you add disability to
it when you add race to it and when you
have
predominantly white officers that have
not
um dealt with diversity they make these
split-second decisions that end
somebody's life and change their
family's lives forever
and we need we need to change that we
and that's when it comes down to we need
to make systemic change in these
structures which means talking to our
legislation getting funding for better
resources
better trained resources um and then
went into uh
gosh what was it um i think it was like
kind of like talking about like why is
it inspirational and like
like people don't see like disabled
people's falling in love and
gosh just so the term i use for it which
is not a term i've coined
it's used pretty wide as inspiration
porn and it comes back to that societal
expectation that they don't
they um non-disabled people expect
disabled people to be a certain way
and when we break out of that box it's
like
what what do you mean you're
you're dating you're um
living inside of this house uh or doing
stuff i
i know even in my work like as a young
person with a disability um i am treated
uh
completely different uh in non-disabled
uh spaces
because i'm not seen as valid because
like oh you're young and have a
disability why are you out advocating
and i do know uh one of my coworkers um
who is like seven years older than me um
who does disability advocacy everybody
assumes that oh
because you're doing advocacy you're not
disabled your kid must be disabled and
everybody's always asking oh what's your
kid's disability when she's like
i'm disabled and so
it goes into these um
these societal expectations that people
just
don't expect things of us and then when
we do the things that everybody else is
doing because surprise surprise we're
people
um it breaks out it breaks
their box and instead of seeing it as oh
maybe my box is wrong it's this is the
exception to the rule and that makes it
inspirational
um okay i think i answered those
questions are there others
yes thank you so much so for our last
question this is fantasy
for our last question since we only have
three minutes um feel free to answer
this question and then just kind of say
any closing statements
or thoughts that you have um and then we
can kind of close out um with the
the survey and things like that so the
question is what is the best resource
for receiving assistance
understanding the ballot while filling
the ballot out
um so good question um
i think everybody is going to find like
um different
like there are different resources but i
love valipedia
i love it so much um because
it just it makes things understandable i
can plug in
what's going on like what what the uh
who the person is and then be able to uh
either who the person is or what the
initiative is and get more information
on it through there
um also your uh
i can't talk for every state and thank
you for posting
that that in the uh chat fantasy
um i can't talk for every state but also
i'm
getting a hold of your local voter's
guide
um i know um ballotpedia
did not have a uh
a uh very small local judicial race
uh for my area and i was just like i
don't know the
difference between these two people like
what is going on and so i was able to
find
my um my local voters guide
and i was being able to uh i was able to
uh look through and be like oh
okay these are the differences and then
it
for for my state it gave like oh these
are like what they put down for
volunteer organizations and this is like
why they why they are running and
also just like you know elections
like usu like happen once a year except
for like sometimes there are special
elections that come up throughout the
year
um but taking the time
to do your research and do the uh
due diligence needed to know who you are
voting for
and especially um when you're
like if this year you're looking at a
candidate and it's just like
or you're looking at a race and it's
just like oh neither of these really
like
work for me or like there's this idea of
like oh am i
choosing the lesser of two evils which
one of my friends said the best way it's
like don't you want less evil
and then but looking keeping that in
your mind as we move past
this election and then looking
into future elections and going back to
that stool of
all right i voted who who do i need to
yell at who do i need to volunteer for
and
should i run or who should i support
running
and like work technically we're always
in the election people are always
getting ready to run so
one why not you and two just
do the research and uh ballotpedia local
election guides they're my
go-to thank you so much mel this is
fantasy
um i think we got a we got a whole body
of the new congress here um i know that
i will be excited to
potentially run when i'm old enough um
so thank you all so much we're gonna put
the assessment link
in the chat um feel free to take that um
kind of like survey or just give
feedback um again
this is the um il
sorry the exact name
of this session is let's talk i owe
these
youth conference so thank you all so
much um
there's a lot of great um encouragement
and resonations
in the chat mel so great job um thank
you so much for
giving us information and being so kind
of candid with us
um it really helps to have youth just be
open
and honest and have um dialogue about
these things so thank you so much
this is the end of the session and i
think it's the last session of the day
so
i hope you all have a great rest of your
evening
and enjoy the last two days of the
conference mel's has something to say
and feel free to talk to me on discord
there will be a chat up
soon for this session as well as all the
other sessions
in the discord awesome yes this is
fantasy
feel free to use the discord um and
reach out with
even more resources we can put the um
the links um
to like ballotpedia and different things
like that in discord
um again just taking the survey and the
link is in the chat
let me know if you need it directly to
you and thank you so much everyone
[Music]
goodbye