From Soap to Vintage License Plates, a New Disability Economy? | Pilot 1

How is disability represented in society today? With over 20% of the world's population is individuals with disabilities, 20% of media coverage is not about people with disabilities. John Robinson and Blaise Bryant will discuss and reflect with humor and opinion what's going on today.

From a new economy taking place in Colorado Springs, we discuss 'the efforts of Tony and Beth Feltman, co-owners of RM Soap Market and STORY by RM.'  Additionally, we look at New York State, Senator Patricia Fahey, and introducing new legislation to create a Disability Innovation Fund. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Our Ability Podcast Pilot Edition. This is John Robinson, your host, soon to be joined by Blaze Bryant, my co-host. We're going to be adjusting our podcast to focus on disability in the public square. It's something that I've thought a lot about is how people with disabilities are represented in media, in public policy, and how uh what goes on today is seen through the able-bodied lens, but also more importantly in our world, the disability lens. And so this morning on uh May 19th, I got two Google news alerts, and I wanted to share a couple of those with you and give you some perspective. The first is a story from the Southern Colorado Business Forum and Digest, um so-c-odigest.com. And the story is about a new economy taking shape in Colorado Springs around inclusive employment. And I want to I want to highlight this as a positive and and share with some thoughts on this. This is uh a shift in the economy, and it's because of the efforts of people with disabilities and and relatives of people with disabilities. This is called the Story Impact Project, which I believe is started by Tony and Beth Feltman, co-owners of RM Soap Market. Uh, and what they've done is they've created uh a local economy around employing individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities or the IDD community. And I want to read Tony's quote and it's disability is not the problem when it comes to employing the IDD community, it's the opportunity. We've seen firsthand what happens when systems limit people instead of creating new ways for them slash us to contribute. Uh and Tony and Beth talk about their siblings with disabilities that they have. And Beth goes on to say, we're we weren't looking for more services. We're looking for ways for people like Carrie to live fully, Carrie being the sibling, to live fully engaged lives. Working and interacting with co-workers is something many of us take for granted, and everyone needs to contribute to the local community and have purpose. Amen to that. And I just wanted to say that this article was well written. This article talks about what the Story Impact Project is, and it talks about how they're trying to create more job opportunities and create an economy around employing individuals with disabilities, as well as creating products and services out of that. These stories I love because this is uh exactly what what we at our ability, we in the general society of people with disabilities, we want to uh we want to highlight and we want to promote. And that's one of the reasons why I led with this story. Uh I read through this story a couple of times this morning, and I I don't see any overt ableism. And I actually am quite impressed that this story is just about individuals with disabilities being included into the workforce and how it's good business in uh in Colorado Springs, and it's good business everywhere. And so I urge you for a second to look up uh again, I'm gonna say the names, look up the RM soap market uh owned by Tony and Beth Feltman in Colorado Springs and give them a little bit of a bump. I would I would greatly appreciate it. The second story that came through on my Google News Alerts is a local story here in Albany, New York. And it's something that uh both Blaze and I have been loosely affiliated with, and that is disability employment here in New York State. Uh, at our ability, I think, I think you know that we we build employment opportunities around North America, and so but that gets us pulled into New York State uh issues at times. Uh recently I I gave written testimony to uh uh Senator Patricia Fahy's uh Senate Disabilities Committee on Disability Employment. I said there needs to be more opportunity, and I see said there needs to be more technology to assist individuals with disabilities, that we need to move forward, not move backwards, very similar to what the Colorado Springs story just said. And the story came out today in Google News that uh Senator Fahy is introducing legislation, uh, and I'm gonna try to read it here, creating lasting access to supported and inclusive careers for New York, classic act. And the legislation is creating a new disability employment innovation fund. And what the the fund is gonna be uh supported by is through the purchase of historic and vintage license plates. And again, it references something similar done in Colorado. Uh maybe we should all move to Colorado. Uh, it's a wildly popular program in Colorado, according to the press release from Senator Fahy. And this this fund will be created, it'll be monies created up uh from purchasing uh like you know classic license plates, and the fund will be built up as an employment innovation fund to support employment ideas for individuals with disabilities. The press release goes on to talk about the employment gap for individuals with disabilities. It very smartly recognizes that New York State uh follow uh falls behind the United States average for employing individuals with disabilities, also falls behind by six to eight percentage points Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont. So if you understand the the up the uh Northeast economy, we do not do a good job. And so it's great. I applaud Senator Fahy for creating a new fund. I applaud for thinking differently. That's exactly what we asked for. I will take a little bit of uh uh editorial license here, though, and say that there's a missed opportunity here. And it was part of what I wrote in my my written testimony. Uh I had been invited to speak publicly. I decided not to because the people in front of me were supportive of sub-minimum wage contracts, and I felt that was inappropriate. I also have pointed out before, and I know Blaze has as well, that that New York State Industries for the Disabled is uh manages the preferred source contract in New York State, and they take three and a three-quarters percent of New York State preferred source contracts. So they keep three plus percent of every contract, and they're sitting on $25 million. And so while it's great, we have a new innovation fund, and it's great that uh we're selling we're selling license plates, uh, that money already exists inside New York State Industries for the Disabled, and we should be asking for that money. I've talked about that before, and I've been very public about that. But in the meantime, I applaud Senator Fahy for doing something different. I uh uh caution that if this uh if this legislation goes through that the money is watched very carefully, that it is invested in uh uh real ideas, uh real opportunity. Uh, you know, as an entrepreneur with a disability in New York State, my business has been in New York State for 15 years. I've had to fight against able-body businesses trying to do the right thing. And so just some thoughts here that what we could do and what we should do in New York State, and I will I will uh again say that Senator Fahy is on the right track here with this uh disability employment innovation fund. I would call on the rest of the New York State Senate and and Assembly to support this bill. I would also look for new ways to fund it. It shouldn't just be because of classic license plates, although I think that's pretty cool as somebody that grew up in Shenango County and can remember his father's classic license plate. Um I do urge you to think about what you're seeing and reading and hearing in um in the in the media here as far as disability is concerned. And that's part of why we're doing this disability podcast, and it's part of the why the pilot project, and just gonna put that out there for people to respond to. And Blaze and I are gonna do this on a regular basis, I hope. Um, disability in the public square. What's being written about disability? Is there able ableism in the disability? Are we being treated fairly? We may talk about policy as I did here today. We may talk about uh news reports as I did about the Colorado uh story and Colorado Springs. We may talk about disability in media. Something popped up over the weekend. There was a commercial on the golf telecast in the PGA tournament where there is a person my height height hitting a golf ball in a golf manufacturer, in a golf manufacturer message. I think that's really cool. Those kind of things I want to talk about. I want to talk about how uh uh Blaze and I see see and and ingest those pieces of information. And then take your feedback. What are you seeing out there? What are you hearing out there? What are you reading out there? What's bothering you in the public space? Is there ableism out there? There is no real daily look on a disability podcast on on uh disability in the public square, and that's what we hope we do. So take this uh pilot episode as you will. Uh we're new, eventually there'll be banter between the two of us, but wanted to get one thing out there and just see what happens. This is John Robinson, your co-host of Disability in the Public Square, an Our Ability podcast.