Community Centre

People with disabilities in 2017 still have to advocate strongly to be allowed to participate fully in the community. 

I recently was invited to a community inclusion forum which I was unable to attend but this is what I would have said. 

All my life I have desperately wanted to be taken seriously. I have wanted to be considered a leader, not just in the disability community but in the world as a whole. 

People might see my disability as a detriment and it might be a cliche, I ask people to focus on my ability not my disability. I am street performer, poet, public speaker, political activist, professional actor, and most importantly a husband. All these socially valued roles and more are how I try and give back to the community. 

The fact that when it come to people with a disability we still have the necessity for social inclusion forums inspired me to write the following poem:

Community Centre

I sit looking up, getting a sore neck while everyone else gets to look down at me. 

I want to say "Excuse me, include me, do not exclude me. How dare you be rude to me. "

When my carers put me in my wheelchair I roll down to the shops

To buy myself a knot roll, but what I'm really hungry for is a socially valued role. 

In this day and age the sight of a person with a disability 

Should not be a cause for social stress;

Our mantra should be universal access, 

For older gentlemen and ladies to mothers with their babies. 

If you've seen me on the tv screen, a psychologist would say it's  my desperate

Attempt to be seen. 

Now just to keep it moving along I hope you don't mind 

If I misappropriate a Dolly Parton song

"I'm working nine to five, I'm prepared to make a living"

Life is about give and take, people take care of me but I'm prepared to do some giving

Community means a group of people living ing in the same place or sharing a characteristic in common

People with disabilities are here, you're here, and we're all part of this human race

We all have our part to play, this is not a hyperbole that is fun to say

I would love to get in the ring and box

But the only thing I have to fight with is my voice box

But inclusion is not about fighting it's about being a part 

That is the community inclusion art. 

Exclusion leads to isolation, isolation brings frustration, frustration brings alienation

Whether it's the community or the world we're all one nation. 

So each day it is a new society we enter so let's bring community to the centre.