Down to the Struts

In the Season 9 finale, Qudsiya sits down with a dear friend and a champion of equal employment opportunity for people with disabilities, Amir Rahimi. Amir and Qudsiya talked about Amir’s journey with blindness and employment, and how he uses stand up comedy to make sense of ableism.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Qudsiya speaks with Marissa Ditkowsky, Disability Economic Justice counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Marissa and Qudsiya talk about the need to advance economic justice for disabled women, and the resources disabled women need to survive and thrive: from consumer protection to access to employment, to reproductive healthcare. And, they talk about what the National Partnership is doing to help make that thriving a reality for disabled women across the US.

Listeners should check out the systems transformation guides that Marissa and her team have developed that set forth a vision for disabled women’s economic equality.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Qudsiya sits down with retired DC Circuit Court Judge, David Tatel. Judge Tatel's recently released Book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice, chronicles his experiences as a civil rights lawyer, a champion for access to justice, and a jurist on our nation's second highest court. In this conversation he discusses his book and his journey with vision loss, including the dog, Vixen, who guided him to embrace his identity as a blind person.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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With just two weeks until the US election, access to the ballot has never been more important. But disabled people continue to face accessibility barriers when attempting to vote.

This episode dives deep into the realm of voting access with Dessa Cosma and Kenia Flores of Detroit Disability Power.

Dessa and Kenia walk Qudsiya through the process of conducting a polling place audit and how Detroit Disability Power is helping organizations across the country ensure that polling places are fully accessible.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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In this episode, Qudsiya will take you on a journey with one of her favorite adaptive sports organizations that prioritizes giving blind people access to the natural world. She joined the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes, affectionately known as MWABA, for a bike camping adventure along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Washington DC.

Thanks to a grant from the Adventure Cycling Association, 25 campers, including blind athletes, sighted tandem captains, and volunteer drivers spent one hot, sweaty, but incredibly fun night biking and camping along the Potomac River. Through Qudsiya’s firsthand account of the experience, you'll be immersed in the sounds and stories that made the trip so special.

⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Welcome to season 9 of Down to the Struts!

To kick off this season, Qudsiya sits down with Anna Zivarts, the author of When Driving Is Not An Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency. Anna shares how she has helped to build a coalition of non-drivers to create more accessible communities where disabled people, older adults, children, and so many others can move freely without a car.

She also offers some helpful tips about advocating for more inclusive transit systems so that we can all get around with independence and dignity.

⁠⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Down to the Struts is back September 24th!

Listen to the trailer for a sneak peek at the questions Qudsiya will explore with our guests in season 9:

⁠⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Over the next few weeks, we'll be bringing back some early episodes of Down to the Struts to get ready for season 9.

This episode was first broadcast in July 2021, but with a key election just months away, it couldn't be more timely now.

Qudsiya sits down with Lisa Schur and Doug Kruse, both professors at Rutgers University. They discuss their research on voting access for people with disabilities, and how to ensure participation in democracy is accessible to everyone.

⁠Visit our website⁠ ⁠for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Over the next few weeks, we'll be bringing back some early episodes of Down to the Struts to get ready for season 9.

This episode, originally broadcast in November 2020, dives into the world of adaptive sports, and specifically looks at Goalball, a sport designed for blind and visually impaired people.

Qudsiya is an athlete herself, and in this episode interviews Karla Gilbride and Justin Chan, the co-founders of the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes.

Their conversation explores the importance of design in making athletics accessible, the power of sports to transform lives, and beating stereotypes on and off the court.

Visit our website for a video about Goalball from the Paralympic Games, information about this episode’s guests, and photos of the MWABA Goalball players, and for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Qudsiya shared her love of libraries with Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association. They chatted about ALA's innovative Libraries Transforming Communities program, which is dedicated to providing libraries with the tools and resources they need to be more accessible for people with disabilities, and to enhancing the capacity of small and rural libraries to address the needs of their communities.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website for transcripts.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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