006: Tiffany & Victor
In this episode, we're chatting with Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, urban planning expert and disability rights advocate, on advocating for an inclusive and accessible pandemic response from local governments to protect people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We discussed:
Victor’s disability origin story
What got Victor interested in urban planning
The creation of and some of the work from Cities for All: the Global Compact on Inclusive and Accessible Cities
World Enabled and Cities for All’s response to COVID-19: webinar series connecting local governments on disability pandemic response
Learnings from the webinars
SHOW NOTES
Cities for All: the Global Compact on Inclusive and Accessible Cities: http://www.cities4all.org/
The Inclusion Imperative (2016): http://worldenabled.org/publications/the-inclusion-imperative-an-action-oriented-guidebook-for-city-leaders-and-advocates/
Report: Cities for All: Urban Innovation for Inclusive, Resilient, and Sustainable Cities (2019): http://worldenabled.org/publications/cities-for-all-urban-innovation-for-inclusive-sustainable-and-resillient-cities/
Book: Building the Inclusive City (2020): https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030329877
“Equity and Access in times of Pandemic” webinar series: https://worldenabled.m-pages.com/c4a-webinar-series
Join Webinar 6 on Accessible Online Platforms on April 29, 2020 at 11am ET: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/7615863571028/WN_7Qk9XaqjTSuFq0lTPPMWkA
Yan Cheng (article): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51362772
Join the Cities for All Campaign WhatsApp group by region (register for the webinars to get the links)
San Francisco Announces Program to Provide Reduced-Cost Essential Rides to Seniors and Adults with Disabilities (news release): https://sfmayor.org/article/mayor-london-breed-announces-program-provide-reduced-cost-essential-rides-seniors-and-adults
ABOUT DR. VICTOR SANTIAGO PINEDA
Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda is the President of World Enabled and President of the Global Alliance on Accessible Technologies and Environments (GAATES). He is a lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California Berkeley, USA. He is a two-time presidential appointee and a globally recognized leader on inclusive urban transformation. His teaching, research, and practice advances urban equity, access, and inclusion in global governance.
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TRANSCRIPT
[Opening medley by RootHub]
Tiffany Yu: Welcome to Tiffany & Yu. I’m your host, Tiffany Yu. On this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, who is the President of World Enabled, an international consultancy to protect the rights of people with disabilities. He’s also a lecturer at the University of California Berkeley, a two-time presidential appointee and a globally recognized leader on inclusive urban transformation. We’ll be chatting about the conversations that local governments around the world are having in how they can be more inclusive and accessible to protect the disability community during COVID-19.
Tiffany Yu: Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. This is your host, Tiffany Yu. Today I have with me, Dr. Victor Pineda. He's got quite a few different job titles but the main one is a Professor at Berkeley, is that correct?
Dr. Victor Pineda: That's right.
Tiffany Yu: President and Founder of World Enabled-- and owns a film production company.
Dr. Victor Pineda: Filmmaker, storyteller, and overall human rights advocate. And glad to be with you on this call.
Tiffany Yu: So I always like kind of including a little tidbit on how I know my guests. So Victor and I actually connected back in 2016. He had seen a video that was done by the Ford Foundation featuring our work at Diversability. He reached out, we met in late 2016, and I have loved being able to follow and support his work over the past couple of years. We've spoken on panels together around inclusive design, and most recently, I've been joining some of the webinars that he's been hosting through an initiative called Cities for All. So, Victor I thought I would go ahead and get started. Number one, did I miss anything in all of those job titles?
Dr. Victor Pineda: The most important one is I'm your friend and supportive of all the work that you're doing. That's the only one that matters for this conversation today.
Tiffany Yu: I love it. Awesome. And I always love origin stories and I know you and I both know our mutual friend Professor Rosemarie Garland-Thomson talks about the importance of sharing our disability origin story so if you don't mind I love to kind of just start there.
Dr. Victor Pineda: Sure. Well, the origin of what it means for me to have a positive disability identity, really goes back to an experience I had as an immigrant. I was born in Venezuela, and I was flatly denied a chance to go to school. I started having difficulty walking due to a neuromuscular condition. And that immediately changed the way other people saw my future as a child, a seven year old. And really what I could or could not do. But it wasn't about being denied a chance to go to school, it was about being denied a human right, and being denied a chance to have dreams and a potential for me to have an impact on the world. It was about having a choice, whether my reality would consist of what have been seen as being an invalid, meaning of no value, or somebody that could develop capabilities, and talents, and contribute. So that is a little bit of an origin story. But the real transformation happened, I would say as an advocate, and a human rights professional, and as a storyteller as well, is the summer of 1996. It was junior year of high school going on to senior year of high school, and I was brought into something called the California Youth Leadership Forum for Students with Disabilities. It was a summer program one week long that took 50 kids with disabilities that demonstrated some leadership potential to Sacramento. We spent a week, basically learning about laws, about public policies. And there I met Paul Longmore. And I saw him speak. And I said, "Wow, this guy is so eloquent. This guy is so articulate and he kind of looks like me." I could see myself in him, as a role model, a positive example of somebody with a disability that was contributing both in terms of academia, as a historian, but also as an advocate and as a social changemaker. And really the origin is about joining with others with disabilities in community to be part of this narrative. And the narrative is to make a more perfect union, a narrative is about unlocking human freedoms, a narrative is to ensure that we are to live independently and with dignity in our communities. And that's what I continue to do later in the US federal government, as well as internationally with the work I do with the United Nations in drafting the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities with a lot of other folks. So, it's really an origin from exclusion to developing a positive disability identity, and then working in community, to create social change.
Tiffany Yu: I love that. You're actually inspiring me to think about the fact that there are multiple touch points of all of our disability origin stories and how we-- and that journey to kind of reclaiming and claiming ownership of our disability identity. What is it that-- so I see you know you got your PhD in Urban Planning, Master's degree in City and Regional Planning, what got you kind of fascinated initially in cities and creating these inclusive and accessible smart cities?
Dr. Victor Pineda: It goes back to my personal experience. If you look at the way that you live your life, you know, most people are negotiating obstacles and barriers with transportation systems, with getting to school, with getting to work, with the ways that we have social programs and benefits. It's public services, right? A lot of those are really negotiated and implemented at the local level. So for myself, who was born in Venezuela, and who have parents that are from Serbia. My mother's Serbian, my father's German as well. And mainly was a third culture child. And knowing that I could visit Caracas, and see what that city was like or I could Belgrade to visit my great grandmother and other folks. I started to see that the cities themselves, not only the countries, but the cities, were really presenting a whole range of new challenges and opportunities. And so I wanted to also think about how is it that the city where I was born that has tremendous resources, people live in tremendous deprivation? In another city where I grew up in Orange County, in Newport Beach, doesn't particularly have any major resources, but is an incredibly affluent city. Newport Beach and then later, going to college in Berkeley, also a small city with a tremendous focus on social equity and inclusion. So I was really interested in the comparative aspect of urban life and wanted to see that from the lens of access and inclusion.
Tiffany Yu: Let's chat a little bit about this Cities for All Global Campaign on Inclusive and Accessible Cities pre-COVID, what exactly is that?
Dr. Victor Pineda: Yeah, of course. You mentioned we're going to have a little break. So I'll try to keep this brief but December of 2018 with the German government, with UN habitat, and with a lot of other partners, including the Ford Foundation, received some help to launch something called the Global Compact on Inclusive and Accessible Cities. This basically just took in the existing frameworks like the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities that I was a part of drafting, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals that we also provided input from the disability community, to ensure those targets were responsive, but also this other agreement called the New Urban Agenda. And so we launched this Global Compact to really align efforts and support local governments in making sure that their cities leave no one behind. And that was launched with an initial I think 10 or 12 cities and we've grown that to 20 partner cities that are now changing their policies and their plans and making a very clear commitment to these six principles. So that's where we work pre-COVID and really working with all the major city networks, who realized that this was kind of an area that they hadn't considered to make sure that they consider it, and they put disability and access and equity to work for all their citizens.
Tiffany Yu: That's amazing. And I think that there was-- Wasn't there a book or some report that came out earlier this year?
Dr. Victor Pineda: Yeah. So there's a couple publications people can follow. One was in 2016 was their first sort of flagship report called "The Inclusion Imperative," and that's looking at sort of empowering local advocates to build more inclusive and accessible cities, looking at urban development. But then we continue to develop other tools, including in November, we launched a really important policy brief that really looked at the key ways that cities and city leaders should be developing inclusive policies for people with disabilities. And then finally, a book-- manuscript that I published with Palgrave, which is my first book that lays out, how do you build an inclusive city? It's an 150-page case study of the work we did in Dubai, to position Dubai to become one of the world's most accessible cities. That book is called Building the Inclusive City Governance, Access, and the Urban Transformation of Dubai. And that's available, open access on Palgrave's website.
Tiffany Yu: That's great. I'll link all of these resources in the show notes. It's actually interesting, when I was finishing up my Master's, my teammates and I wanted to-- were in ideation mode of trying to think through a new social enterprise we could create that could better serve the disability community. And our team really wanted to do something related to mapping and related to cities. And one of my team members was in Dubai, or is from Dubai, and she was like my city's great. There are no problems here. So what you said just reminded me of her a little bit. That's great. I love this overview. What we'll do is we'll take a quick break here and then I'd love to hear a little bit more after the break about how Cities for All has kind of shifted and introduced a lot of virtual programming as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Victor Pineda: Sounds great, thanks.
[ad]
Tiffany Yu: And we're back from the break here, you're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. We're chatting with Dr. Victor Pineda about an initiative called Cities for All. Cities for All has shifted amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Victor, do you want to give us a little bit of an overview of what-- one of the things that you and I were chatting about before we started recording was when when something like this happens, there are a couple different decisions you can make right. You can be propelled into action. You can take care of whatever needs to be taken care of from a mental health perspective. You can retreat. You've taken the first of those routes and moved into action. Would love to hear a little bit more about how things have shifted at Cities for All.
Dr. Victor Pineda: Of course. Let me start off by saying that it's incredibly important to first focus on all your basic needs. So do you have everything you need? Are you safe? Do you have a practice to ensure that you can deal with the tremendous onslaught of things disruptions, right? Anxiety, and fear, and security-- financial security are all very real, for all of us, including myself. And so it's important to not jump into action without first ensuring your wellness and your well-being. But I'm lucky to have a great network of friends and family, as well as a really good practice to ensure that I'm able to then contribute to providing innovative solutions and elevating the voices of folks that are too often not heard, and are silenced, and are not seen. And I think we noticed that immediately that our network was uniquely positioned to really become a platform. The Cities for All global platform really is about leveraging global allies into local solutions and ensuring that those local solutions are then shared across the platform. And we immediately connected with our colleagues at the GIZ, and then BMZ, which is German federal government, who helped us launch the Global Compact, and we said, there's a tremendous speed to share resources and knowledge and develop a learning platform to learning groups to respond to this crisis. And to understand how the outbreak provides particular challenges, threats, opportunities and how these expose pandemic weaknesses of the systems that we've built so that we can build back better. And so what we've done is we launched an eight part webinar series. On Wednesday, you can join webinar number 6 on accessible online platforms. And we'll be looking at how the series overall looks at how local government leaders, local advocates, academic partners, and industry partners could really create collaborative solutions to what we know is disproportionately affecting people with disabilities and older persons. And how do we learn from current horrendous experiences like Yan Cheng, a 17-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, whose father was quarantined against his will in China. And the father warned that his child-- had two children with disabilities actually. Yan Cheng had cerebral palsy relied on him for personal care, and his younger brother, who was on the autism spectrum. And they were literally left abandoned, and Yan Cheng died. Because his father was quarantined. And the father ended up not even testing positive for COVID-19. So these are the kinds of, you know, experiences that are happening on a variety of different levels from, me being told by my pulmonologist, my doctor, "Do not go to a hospital if you get COVID." I said, "Why not." And he said, "Because our policy requires you to give up your breathing machine. And you would go directly to be ventilated through either a trig or intubation, and you won't be allowed to have your attendants or your personal care assistants with you in the hospital while you recover." So those are the kinds of things that are happening as well. That's for me, and I'm verbal, and I'm vocal, and I'm well educated and well empowered to deal with the challenges. But what about somebody that's Deaf? What about somebody that's maybe hard of hearing and has dementia? What about somebody that maybe has developmental disabilities? What are those realities like, not only the medical field, but also in the streets, like accessing public transportation and getting food delivered. You can't use your vouchers for food stamps for online groceries. So how do you get groceries if you can't go out? And you're high risk but you can't buy groceries online? So there's just so many different ways that this outbreak has played out, and the learning groups on WhatsApp now have hundreds and hundreds of people in these WhatsApp learning groups that are exchanging resources and experiences throughout different regions of the world. One of the most active is, Africa, for example. And you're learning what people are doing. And they're sharing resources. But here in the US, we're also working very much in San Francisco, in dialogues with Chicago and New York, to really see how the commissioners, or the Mayor's Offices on Disability are able to sort of use our platform and our network to also talk with each other and others partners. So one tangible example was, we saw that in San Francisco, and you might know this because you're on the committee, but San Francisco passed a voucher that for $6, you get $30 taxi credit. And for $12 you get $60 of taxi credits. And as soon as that voucher program-- the write up on that was shared in the WhatsApp group, the Chief of Staff at the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, Sara Rawshanara, was going into the MTA meeting in New York. She had printed that policy to then tell New York, that this is what's happening in San Francisco, and this could be really helpful for people with disabilities in New York too. So those are some of the impacts that we've been noticing in terms of our rapid response webinars.
Tiffany Yu: That's great, and for our listeners the webinar series is called "Equity and Access in Times of Pandemic." I'll include a link to the page so you can watch some of the recordings. I really love-- I'm just looking at the website now, the key questions for the webinar series: 1. What actions are local governments taking to protect and respond to the needs of persons with disabilities and older persons during the pandemic? 2. How are local governments engaging with persons with disabilities and older persons to ensure that all pandemic responses are disability-inclusive? And 3. What does an inclusive and accessible COVID-19 response look like at the local level? So one of the things I really appreciate about this Cities for All initiative is the fact that it is on the government level and it is global. And I've tuned into a couple of the webinars, and have been really impressed and also in the WhatsApp working groups to see people exchanging ideas or things that they've implemented. And I think what's interesting about the San Francisco piece that you mentioned is that was put together and in a couple of days, and it was working directly with the San Francisco Mayor's Office on Disability and really try to find a solution that worked because so many of our bus lines have shut down. But I think one of the things you highlighted that I guess two things that I would love to dig a little bit more into-- I'll talk about the first, which is this pandemic has really brought to light how-- all of the systemic issues that exist across all cities within their resilience and response efforts. And I think when it comes to, you know, disability experience and you were talking about, you know, making sure your basic needs were met. There are just so many different aspects of of this from not being able to get your food, not being able to get your personal care attendants--
Dr. Victor Pineda: The stimulus check also had a lot of confusion early on. RespectAbility and others helped advocate to make sure that it's not counted as income, it doesn't hurt your benefit, but also in terms of like, if you don't apply-- if you don't file taxes, would you get it? So, they just recently announced that people that receive Social Security, their information will be uploaded, and they would get a deposit. So there's just things that people are trying to catch up on. But that's what we have to be vigilant, we have to be vocal and we have to be heard. And I think that, you know, a podcast like this gives us the opportunity to engage with a broader audience. So if you would like to learn more about the webinar series, there's still three more left to participate in. We're going have one focus on Latin America, just focused on Spanish and Latin American perspective as well. And we're gonna also look at maybe extending it with other partners. So if there are other funding partners or other folks that want to really like dive in deeper on these discussions, we can explore building on what we've done now. And even once the pandemic is over and we've learned these lessons, all of these lessons need to be cataloged and put into sort of reforming these institutions, both at the global level, but also for empowering local leaders, by giving them the knowledge, the resources, and the tools that they need to be able to build back better. So those are some of the discussions we're having with Milan and others. I think that's what's really exciting for me.
Tiffany Yu: What are some of the biggest learnings that that you've taken away from from the webinars that have happened so far?
Dr. Victor Pineda: I think number one, engage people with disabilities. The organizations can really allow them to speak for themselves. It's great to be an ally. And it's great to be sort of aware and put people in a position where they can speak for themselves and also support the process. Be part of creating solutions from whatever perspective you can, whether it's posting things on social media, whether it's engaging in your own kind of learning by participating in these webinars, or volunteering. See if there's opportunities to volunteer or to donate to the local disability organizations to strengthen their capacity to respond. I think those are some of the learnings, ultimately, we're not going to get to a world that really unlocks potential. If we're not all engaged in shaping that world. And I really believe the future is accessible, but it's up to us to build that- start building that future now.
Tiffany Yu: That's powerful. I think one of the things that I have learned from your series. Number one is, I appreciate how you really ask the hard hitting questions, you ask all of your presenters, what is the tangible or the tactical thing that local governments can do right now? But the last webinar that I caught, I think his name was Daniel. It was a conversation around data and data collection. And I just thought it was really interesting that you need to know why you're collecting the data, not just collecting it for its own sake. And I think when we're in an environment right now where things are changing so quickly, sometimes it's hard to know what data to collect. And so, one of the questions I did want to ask on that webinar, or maybe I'll tweet at the speaker who made the statement was, in an environment like this, is it better to kind of just collect whatever you do have? And then maybe in retrospect when you look back at it, you can you can see certain types of patterns or certain information that would have been more important to collect.
Dr. Victor Pineda: Part of it is also aggregating data and disaggregating data. So if you collect data on the local level, I think you should join our efforts, because we're the only kind of global platform to look at what it means to build inclusive and accessible cities. So that would be a great way to look at what data is is out there. But ultimately, if you're a larger institution and you have substantial resources, you want to make sure that you know why you're collecting that data, because those resources, need to not only drive, inform policies, but ultimately need to give us better results. And to be able to do that, we have to build what we're trying- What is the kind of information that will help us change those systems. Thank you so much for the chance to be with you. I know that we set a limit of time, but I feel like they could talk to you forever.
Tiffany Yu: For sure. We'll end it here. For our listeners, just last question, is there anything our listeners can do to support this Cities for All initiative or follow your work?
Dr. Victor Pineda: Sure, thanks. So you can follow me at @victorpineda, or at @WorldEnabled on Twitter and Instagram. And then you'll click on the link below for the webinar series and register and join us if you'd like to be part of the learning groups, especially for the US learning groups, we'd love to sort of get local leaders, and local advocates, and academic partners involved as well. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
Tiffany Yu: Thanks Victor and thanks for being on the show.
Dr. Victor Pineda: Bye bye.
Tiffany Yu: Thanks for listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. This is your host, Tiffany Yu. If you enjoyed this conversation, please leave us a rating and write us a review over at Apple Podcasts. It allows these conversations and these episodes to be discovered by other podcast listeners. I’m hoping that we can co-create something here that’s valuable for you, so to the extent that you have feedback or other topics you’d like us to explore, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can find us at http://tiffanyyu.com/podcast. And a special shoutout to RootHub for our opening and closing podcast medleys. We release episodes weekly, so I hope that you’ll join us next week for the next episode.
[closing medley by RootHub]