PROGRAM
Born with cerebral palsy, Hale Zukas is the “grandfather” of the disability movement. A pointer attached to his helmet pilots his wheelchair and he communicates by tapping letters on a board. Berkeley is the birthplace of the disability movement, and the work started there by Hale and others in the 1970’s forever changed how the world looks at disability. Every morning, he wakes up to fight for the right to live independently, with dignity, strength, and courage.
Film director Brad Bailey (University of California, Berkeley) was one of 17 student winners of the 44th Student Academy Awards® competition, and received the Gold Medal award in Documentary. This year, the competition received a total of 1,587 entries from 267 domestic and 89 international colleges and universities – which were voted by a record number of Academy members.
Following the screening, Director Brad Bailey will moderate a discussion with Katherine Bouton, President of the New York City Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America; Alex Elegudin, Accessibility Program Manager at New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission and Co-founder of Wheeling Forward; Gennarose Pope, Director of Communications and Outreach at INCLUDEnyc; and Paras Shah, law student at Harvard Law School and disability rights activist. Read a PDF of the transcript from the Hale discussion panel.
BIOS
Brad Bailey (Director, Hale) received his B.A. in Political Science from Yale and his Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton. He is currently a graduate student in Oral History at Columbia University. Last spring, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism. “Hale” is his documentary thesis from the program, advised by Robert Calo and Orlando Bagwell. Bailey is originally from Moultrie, Georgia.
Isaac Smith’s (Producer, Hale) interests include cognitive science, public policy, and cinematography. He has produced educational, instructional, and social issue documentaries in Dakar, Senegal and Yangon, Myanmar. A 2015 magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of U.C. Berkeley in Interdisciplinary Studies, with a minor in Public Policy, he studied the interface between politics, cognition, and morality. He is interested in being at the vanguard of the new evidence-informed, multimedia conversation about how society should regulate itself in the era of neuroscience and Big Data.
Katherine Bouton (panelist) was an editor at The New York Times for 22 years, and was Deputy Editor of the New York Times Magazine from 1998 to 2008. She is the author of “Shouting Won’t Help,” a memoir of adult-onset hearing loss, and “Living Better with Hearing Loss.” Bouton writes the popular blog “Hearing Aids, Hearing Loss, Hearing Help.” She has had progressive bilateral hearing loss since 1978, and in September 2009 received a cochlear implant. Bouton is the President of the New York City Chapter of Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) and a member of the HLAA National Board of Trustees.
Alex Elegudin (panelist) has spent almost a decade working as an advocate and mentor in the disability community. In 2003, when Elegudin was a college sophomore, he was in a deer-related car accident and sustained a C6 level spinal cord injury. After becoming paralyzed, he faced an uphill battle to reclaim his independence, though Elegudin continued on to Hofstra University Law School and became a successful patent attorney. He co-founded Wheeling Forward in 2011 to help others like himself get the support and resources they need to lead active lives. Today, Elegudin is the Accessibility Program Manager at the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, where he works on several accessibility initiatives, including the operations of getting the yellow taxi fleet to 50% by 2020, the Citywide Accessible Dispatch, and the FHV sector accessibility policies, among others.
Gennarose Pope (panelist) has worked with INCLUDEnyc for over three years, bringing her commitment to the equity, access, and inclusion of young people with disabilities to the organization. She is proud to have led the launch of INCLUDEnyc’s Spanish language website, INCLUYEnyc.org, and is passionate about reaching and serving NYC’s Spanish-speaking disability community, in addition to all of NYC’s diverse communities. As a person with anxiety, depression, and PTSD who has recovered from an eating disorder, Pope feels compelled to help young people find the sort of opportunities for self-care, support, and empowerment that weren’t readily available to her generation. In 2001, Pope graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in English.
Paras Shah (panelist) is a second-year student at Harvard Law School where he serves as an Articles Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Legally blind since birth, Shah understands and appreciates the importance of including people with disabilities in all aspects of society. To that end, he interned with the United States Departments of Justice and State, helping to advance fundamental rights domestically and abroad. Prior to law school, Shah was the John Gardner Fellow to Human Rights Watch, where he advocated for the rights of refugees with disabilities. Shah received a B.A. in History in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley.
