#CripTheVoteStories with Sam de Leve (01:30)

#CripTheVoteStories with Sam de Leve

On Tuesday, September 27, 2016, National Voter Registration Day, our friends at #CripTheVote hosted a Twitter chat on Storytelling and Voting with Rooted in Rights as a Guest Host. Rooted in Rights and the organizers of #CripTheVote created a series of short videos featuring the disability community.

Video visual descriptions
Each video begins with the same graphic as follows: Logo of #CripTheVoteStories with the text of the hashtag in rainbow colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue purple and yellow) is placed at the top of every video player, and remains there during the video. During a music jingle, a graphic of a box with four quadrants with pictures of 1) the international symbol of access, a wheelchair sign, 2) Two hands signing, 3) A person using a white cane and 3) An image of a person’s brain. The box with four quadrants turns into a voting box with grey check that swipes across. An orange title screen draws in from both sides with the name of the person, and their city. Following each video, the music jingle plays again with the @RootedinRights Twitter handle as a title screen.

Sam de Leve | Los Angeles, CA transcript
“Voting matter for everyone, and if you’re disabled, voting is the first step to shaping the government that shapes our lives. As disabled people, government policy isn’t abstract to us. We feel it in the things we experience every day. If your insurance won’t replace that trashed, half-broken wheelchair, that’s a healthcare policy issue. If your kid needs an interpreter at school, that’s a policy issue too. If you’re scared that you or a member of your community is gonna suffer violence because your local police force isn’t trained to recognize and de-escalate situations with disabled people, that’s a policy issue, and it deserves to be acknowledged and addressed. We have to get more disabled people into policy making positions and into government so that our community takes charge of the laws that affect us. We’ve got to bring nothing about us without us into all branches of the federal government. And just as importantly, we’ve got to bring it to the state and local government positions, because they directly impact our access to housing, employment, transportation, and education, so #CripTheVote. #CripTheVote on election day and #CripTheVote a year from now at your local city council meeting. #CripTheVote with phone calls and letters to your congressional representatives, and #CripTheVote with your state rep. #CripTheVote at the school board. #CripTheVote with your county elections office. If we get out and vote, we show politicians that their election and re-election rides on taking us seriously and making our issues a priority.”