News

Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month by recognizing the Legislative Leadership of Sen. Mazie Hirono

Washington, D.C., May 23 – U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) has been working in government since the 1980’s, striving tirelessly to make a difference and has made great advances on many fronts. She is the first Asian American woman elected to the Senate, the first woman elected to the Senate from Hawaii, and the first Buddhist senator. As of May 2017, Hirono is also a woman with a disability serving in the U.S. Senate.

During an x-ray before minor eye surgery, it was discovered that Sen. Hirono had stage 4 kidney cancer. Since then, she has had to undergo surgery to remove her right kidney and a rib, as well as extensive cancer treatment. Hirono considers herself lucky that she was able to get early intervention and that she had health insurance at the time of her diagnosis. Thus, she is a strong supporter of healthcare reform and specifically, Medicare for All. However, her support for healthcare reform started long before her diagnosis. [continue reading…]

Jewish. Chinese. Adoptee. Those three words don’t seem to go together, and yet for me they do. Those three words describe me and my identity… oh and don’t forget to add: autistic! Talk about intersectionality!

Upon first glance, it’s easy to notice that I don’t “look” like the typical American Jewish woman, nor does my family “look” like the typical American Jewish family! I was adopted from China at the age of one by my Ashkenazi Jewish, New Yorker, single mom. She and my godmother traveled to China to adopt me. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, May 20 – Everyone has different motivators in life. Some people are motivated by passion, some money, others necessity. For Shaina Ghuraya, her motivation is her white-hot rage. It’s that same rage that unintentionally drove Shaina to become a filmmaker. As a Punjabi woman in a wheelchair, Shaina describes herself as a triple threat, and it’s within that intersectionality that Shaina found her voice as a filmmaker.

Shaina’s foray into directing started with a spite piece she made while in undergrad at The University of Sacramento. Fed up with how inaccessible the university was, Shaina made a documentary exposing the university for its lack of accessibility. In making that film, Shaina saw the importance of her voice and her perspective. [continue reading…]

Largest cross-sector effort to shift from mental health awareness to mental health action organized in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing trauma of systemic racism

Learn more at www.MentalHealthActionDay.org

Los Angeles, May 20 – Today the disability advancement nonprofit RespectAbility and more than 1,300 organizations, brands, government agencies and cultural leaders will participate in the inaugural Mental Health Action Day to drive the conversation from mental health awareness to mental health action. Convened by MTV Entertainment Group, Mental Health Action Day is an open-source movement, aimed at motivating people to take action to get mental health support — whether for themselves, their loved ones or for everyone by advocating for systemic changes for mental health access and equity. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, May 19 – Steve Lee is a Chinese standup comedian, writer, actor, and producer with Amyoplasia Congenita Disruptive Sequence. Amyoplasia congenita is the most common type of arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC), and mainly refers to disorders with limb involvement.

Originally from Hong Kong, Lee came to America when he was 17 as an exchange student. He jokes that he was placed in the most diverse state in America: Kansas. Lee was the only student of color in his high school. In a short film for the 2020 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, Lee remembers it was a teacher in Kansas that made him realize he was the one labeling himself as a person with a disability. He wasn’t as different as society in America and Hong Kong wanted him to believe. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, CA, May 16 – DGA Award-winning director Andrew Reid was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. Reid lived in Jamaica until the age of 10, and then moved to the United States, where he went on to graduate from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

At the age of 21, while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico, Reid became paralyzed from the chest down. A malformation of his blood vessels (AVM) resulted in a rupture, which compressed his spine while he was sleeping, leaving him completely paralyzed. He was told by doctors he would never walk again, although he eventually did regain movement, and currently walks with the assistance of a cane.

During his time at the hospital, Reid completed his first film project. He went around the hospital and recorded interviews with other patients and compiled the footage into a chronicle of the institution. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, May 15 – This Mental Health Awareness Month, the new film Paper Spiders spares us feel good moments for the sake of providing us with an honest look at paranoia. The film juggles comedy and drama, but never at the expense of properly showing the life-changing severity of its respective disability. It is highly recommended if you are looking for a realistic drama anchored by great performances.

Paper Spiders’ pathos lies in its raw and often unrestrained examination of parent and child relationships. A recent film comparison which effectively explores similar themes would be Greta Grewig’s Lady Bird. However, unlike Lady Bird, Paper Spiders demonstrates the challenges of coming of age while bound by unforeseen obligations at home.

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Nelly Nieblas is the Manager of Policy, Advocacy and Engagement at RespectAbility, a nonprofit organization fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community.

Nieblas is a first-generation college graduate from the University of Southern California and a proud Latina with a physical disability. She also holds an MPA from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. [continue reading…]

Read the Report

Los Angeles, CA, May 6 – A new report from Think Tank for Inclusion & Equity (TTIE), Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and Women in Film shows that more writers rooms are including BIPOC and women writers, but other communities, including the disability community, still are being left out. The report, titled “Behind The Scenes: The State of Inclusion and Equity in TV Writing,” covers the results of an online survey with 1,226 participants, plus results from two focus groups.

According to the report, “93.0% of writers said their most recent writers room had no Disabled or Deaf writers.” Upper-level Disabled or Deaf writers are even more scarce, with only 2.6% of writers reporting that their most recent writers room had at least one upper level Disabled or Deaf writer.

In rooms with Disabled and Deaf representation, 91.7% of Disabled writers said they were the only staffed writers from their underrepresented communities in their most recent writers room. [continue reading…]