For many years the unemployment rate of people with disabilities has hovered around 70%.   It seems that every few years, a public official announces initiatives  to address this statistic by hiring ten people, or thousands of people with disabilities for public service.  Do these programs lead to more of us obtaining government employment?

Ammy Joseph is a person with a disability who’s looking for state employment.

The 10th Annual Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival is coming to San Francisco for next three days.  It’s produced by Antoine Hunter’s Urban Jazz Dance Company, California’s only Black Deaf-led professional Dance Company.   Deaf artists are flying in from Colombia, Canada, India and all over the USA.  The Festival has four major performances and workshops in Jazz, Hip-Hop, Ballet and ASL Dance all taught by local Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing artists who sign fluently.   There is a great depth and variety in their accessibility options.  Sadly the main performance space at Dance Mission Theater has a delay in the installation of its elevator, so if you need that kind of access, you can find it at the Sunday performance at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.   To find out more about the covid precautions and everything else about this exciting, amazing, wonderful festival, go to RealUrbanJazzDance.com.

And, by the way, the East Bay’s AXIS Dance Company, one of the nation’s most acclaimed ensembles of disabled and non-disabled performers, has an evening of world premier pieces called Adelanti coming up the weekend of Sept 17 at the ODC Theater in San Francisco..   You can get $20. tickets but only if you book them TODAY using the code “Axis Early Bird”.

Produced and Interviews by Jacob Lesner-Buxton

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