This is a look behind the scenes at the viral video I directed last week about disabled access. The link below is an interview I did for Steemit with the star of the video, Will Pike who directly calls for the Steemit community to help raise awareness about the issue.
Our film "Yes We Can..If" clearly resonated with a lot of people and has already got around 700,000 views on facebook and has been picked up by British press. It is set to the Sammy Davis Junior track “Yes I can” and is a parody of this British advert for the Paralympics called “We're the Superhumans”. This is typical of the type of content I make: edgy comedy with a political purpose, as I outline in my introducemyself Steemit post here.
Will was a filmmaker himself before he was the victim of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in India. It was incredible that Will and his girlfriend survived the ordeal at all and it’s been a long road adjusting to life as a paraplegic. However, working with him it was clear that his naturally determined spirit is as strong as ever and he’s a confident guy who makes things happen. He came up with the idea for this film and my colleague from The Revolution Will Be Televised Heydon Prowse and myself set about planning it, refining it and getting a team together to put it into action.
It was the Paralympic closing ceremony yesterday and there is no doubt it has been inspiring, with so many incredible stories of people overcoming difficult circumstances to achieve really great things. However, after the global spotlight is no longer on these incredible athletes, far too many normal disabled people carry on having to struggle with their everyday activities.
Indeed there has been a lot of coverage about how in Olympic and Paralympic host city Rio disabled access is still way behind what it should be and disabled people often feel like second class citezens there, meaning that some disabled fans gave up on the whole experience.
Our film “Yes I Can…If” was shot in London and specifically highlights the lack of access on the UK high street for wheelchair users, but I know this is a global issue. It has been accompanied by a petition that has already got over 40,000 signatures in just the first 5 days! We think we really can make meaningful change and are hoping that big high street companies who know they should be doing more will be compelled to radically improve their access.
Is Decentralization The Key?
We’ll certainly keep up the fight here but I’m also interested in the wider point about how to best get important things done that aren’t relevant to the ONLY thing that Capitalism really cares about...PROFIT.
As we know corporations are increasingly more powerful and all too often with this great power there is NOT a great sense of responsibility, or the desire to contribute anything tangible or positive to the communities they profit from. In the UK companies are supposed by law to accommodate access for disabled people, however, when these companies don’t provide access it is down to the individual disabled person to take that company to court to get these changes made.
This is clearly unfair and the system is not structured to realistically hold these high street giants to account. So in reality it comes down to the goodwill and good practice of that company to do the right thing, off their own steam. As we know though “the bottom line” and shareholder profit is usually the primary concern of corporations.
Of course, the obvious answer here is that governments should be more effective in curbing corporate greed and that is certainly what we would like in this case. However, most of the evidence is that the tide is going the other way pretty much all around the world. In Europe and the US although TTIP seems to be off the table for now, other similar treaties are in the pipeline to strengthen corporate powers.
On Steemit the idea of decentralization is discussed a lot by @falkvinge and others and is often regarded as a solution to corporate and governmental corruption and failings. So is decentralization of power what we need, to ensure more responsible action? In theory the ability for communities to be designed in the best interests of those who live in them and not simply serve huge power structures that don’t work effectively for real people sounds great.
And when the impersonal interests of corporations and corrupt governments are no longer the decision makers then yes, it would make sense that people are more likely to be treated with dignity and like humans (nevermind superhumans) and have their reasonable needs met more of the time.
However, it seems to me that no matter how we organize ourselves, if we don’t put the values of equality and inclusivity front and centre of everyday life, then any system has the possibility to fail those who need assistance. Now, more than ever, we need to use community to put pressure on the decision makers (in this case the companies) to act responsibly.
Please sign the petition here.
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HOW IS DISABLED ACCESS WHERE YOU LIVE? DO YOU HAVE GOOD EXAMPLES OF PEOPLE HOLDING CORPORATE POWER TO ACCOUNT AND WINNING? HOW CAN WE TURN THE TIDE OF CORPORATIONS HAVING A STRANGLEHOLD ON GOVERNMENT POWER? WOULD DECENTRALIZATION ACTUALLY SOLVE PROBLEMS LIKE THIS?
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