What if we lionized disabled people for their ingenuity the way we sometimes do skateboarders?
 | By Peter Catapano Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
About two years ago, when I was looking for ways to cope with the isolation of the pandemic, I began taking long walks throughout Lower Manhattan. One day I found myself at a small park underneath the Manhattan Bridge: the L.E.S. Skate Park at Coleman Playground. Inside, beneath the massive clatter and roar of trains on the bridge above, were about a dozen skaters crisscrossing the park at various speeds, some slouching, coasting lazily; some kicking their way onto ramps, flying off, landing upright or on the ground in a sprawl of limbs; some skimming the ledges, gently riding the shallow bowls. I was mesmerized and forgot for a few moments what had driven me outside. |
I was not a total stranger to skating; In junior high school, I'd gotten myself a board with blue sparkle "poly" wheels, learned to ride and execute a few simple tricks — but that was 40 years ago. The skaters reminded me now in an ingenious and spontaneous way that forces like gravity and inertia and properties like density could be resisted and become invitations to mischief, creativity and play. |
In a guest essay, the writer Jeremy Klemin, who began skating as a young boy growing up in suburban California, recalls the lessons he learned about navigating and "hacking" the built environment — not from other skateboarders, but from his parents, both of whom have cerebral palsy and use wheelchairs and other mobility devices to get around. Klemin notes that even long after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 — which established legal requirements for accessible public architecture — his parents, like so many other disabled people, often find themselves forced to creatively "hack" public spaces to get around. He writes that problem solving with them helped shape the way he viewed the world and its limits, as a skateboarder and a son. |
Discussions of important public issues like accessibility and disability rights often get mired in ideological debates or reduced to the technical minutiae of the law and building codes. I like Klemin's piece for the way it blurs the boundaries between disabled and nondisabled, between frustration and opportunity, to accommodate something more than politics — creativity, care, child-parent bonding and love. |
It also raises questions, like: What if we lionized disabled people for their ingenuity the way we sometimes do skateboarders? What if we took a cue from disabled people who help make the world more accessible for everyone by not dwelling on barriers and obstacles but instead on what can be? |
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