MY SPIN Disability Pride and World Travel

Travel advertisesus as being a por-tal for others into

an as-yet-to-be-experienced way

of life as a personwith a disability.

When we travel we repre-sent more than our-selves because we arepart of a community. Asa person with a disabil-

ity you carry two items of unusualvalue — especially in combina-tion. Both tend to surprise thoseyou meet as you travel. The twoitems are money and pride. Bymoney I don’t just mean thechange in your pocket. By pride Imean the self-determination ofknowing who you are beyondeconomic measures of worth.

The very fact that you have adisability and travel suggestssomething about your economiccondition. It indicates that youhave credit, savings, education,maybe a profession that requirestravel, but most importantly theability to make decisions aboutthe course of your life for your-self. That combination of meansand dignity are a potent methodof social transformation.

Leisure travel means movingbeyond survival mode. A smallbut growing percentage of peoplewith disabilities have made thetransition to economic stability,but we are not equally distributedaround the world. Travel spreadsus around, which is to say that itspreads around living examplesof an alternate lifestyle.

With a generation of perma-nently disabled people havingexperienced increasing degreesof employment, education, andleisure, those of us with themeans to travel belong to a con-sumer group that is only startingto be noticed. How we choose tospend those resources — eventhrough our leisure activities —has profound impact. Here are

some little-known facts gatheredby Rosangela Berman-Bieler ofthe Inter-American Institute onDisability and Inclusive Develop-ment using research done by theOpen Doors Organization:

American adults with disabili-ties or reduced mobility currentlyspend an average of 13.6 billionU.S. dollars a year on tourism. In2002, these individuals made 32million trips and spent 4.2 billiondollars on hotels, 3.3 billion onairline tickets, 2.7 billion on foodand beverages, and 3.4 billion ontrade, transportation, and otheractivities. The most popular inter-national destinations for thistourist segment are: 1. Canada; 2.Mexico; 3. Europe; and 4. theCaribbean, in that order.

The economic means to deter-mine our own futures gives uspowerful leverage as consumerson the attitudes, infrastructure,and products of the travel indus-try. Our travel behavior is studiedby the industry.

Community is the multipliereffect that makes our economicbehavior only a small part of theglobal impact that we exert. Whenwe travel, we represent a commu-nity of people with disabilities,and woven through that commu-nity is a unifying thread of pride.

We may be fortunate enoughto have begun our travel from asituation where family, friends,legislation, luck, and hard workhave given us a strong sense ofself-confidence and a life livedamong people like ourselves. Achange of location might place uswhere our identity as a memberof the disability community is onlyvaguely perceived as member-ship in some inconsequential and

marginalized “community of dif-ference.” Often those meaningsattached to us abroad are the verystereotypes we have worked sohard to abolish, or at least insulateourselves from, back home.

Travel can mean separationfrom the replenishing sources ofdisability identity and pride in ourlives. Loss of a community of dis-ability pride isolates us from per-sonal relationships, political dis-cussions, and the artistic vitality ofour culture. Yet that very “pres-ence of absence” is one of theprivileged moments of travel.Personally, it can give us perspec-tive on our lives. Publicly, it adver-tises us as being a portal for oth-ers into an as-yet-to-be-experi-enced way of life as a person witha disability.

Travel the world today andyou will find there is a hunger forcommunity and solidarity amongpeople with disabilities. As anexchange student, backpacker,business or vacation traveler,your identity as a person with adisability gives you access tofaces of the host culture that areboth positive and negative.Wherever you go, you will findunique opportunities to learnfrom and contribute to local man-ifestations of disability culture.

When we travel, we areambassadors of a communitybeyond borders with a set of corevalues that the world has a chanceto discover through the choiceswe make. Take your pride on theroad and level the path for theones who come after you.

Scott Rains publishes theRolling Rains Report, a source oftravel info for people with disabili-ties: www.RollingRains.com.

By Scott Rains

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