Recovering our dreams

Liebe Debriefers,

Hallo from Berlin. With help from the Wheelchair Gods, me and my power wheelchair arrived here well on the weekend.

This trip is a big deal for me. It's the first flight I've been on since returning to the UK from Egypt in summer of 2020. The first flight I've taken a wheelchair on.

And it's a big deal for the global disability movement to come together. This Global Disability Summit is meant to be a milestone in bold new commitments for disability inclusion. But it's coming at a time of crises and cuts, and many of us are counting ourselves lucky if we can just cling on to progress made.

Today's edition is my postcard from Germany, on what the trip means for me, and what the Summit might mean for the global disability movement.

Peter Torres Fremlin is editor of Disability Debrief and is from the UK.

Kinanty Andini is an illustrator and digital artist from Indonesia.

Disability Debrief is published through a pay-what-you-can model. Thanks to Janet for a new contribution.

Back in the air

For over a decade, my life was defined by where I was going next. Every few years I shifted between countries and languages, living in Brazil, Bangladesh, Egypt. I always tried to find ways to visit old friends or work projects to take me to new destinations.

The pandemic brought that to a screeching halt, and then losses in my physical mobility left me wondering if I could ever resume. Indeed, when I had a long stay in hospital after breaking my leg in 2021, I lay awake wondering how I would ever walk down the aisle of an airplane again.

This weekend I went back to Heathrow, almost five years since I landed there from Cairo. The taxi ride there, the terminal, even the same old suitcase, all brought back memories of my previous travels, and the person I used to be.

I did not walk down the aisle of the airplane. I travelled with a personal assistant – also called Peter – who lifted me from my electric chair onto a tiny aisle chair. Airport staff pulled it through the plane, clanging against the seats.

To our relief my chair was easily found at Brandenburg airport excess baggage, unscathed by the flight. In short order we got to the hotel, received by old friends with huge smiles and a toddler ready to put stickers on my wheelchair.

This, for me, is the best of travel. To find the people that make us who we are.

Friends and frenemies

As for the Summit itself, it has many of the joys and anxieties of a college reunion. There are friends, frenemies, mis-recalled faces, and folk that I have only known through zoom.

It's a big group of people who have something important in common: the desire for a better world for disabled people. There's something special about being surrounded by so many pushing in the same direction.

I felt it even as we rolled into the event yesterday, alongside many other disabled people, each moving in our own way. Whether walker, white cane or wheelchair: here, for a brief few days, we are less the exception and much more the norm.

Beyond the usual suspects?

Events like these usually gather and platform a small group of usual suspects. Coming to an international conference is necessarily linked to privilege – whether money, contacts, passports or visas. And some absences are particularly striking as the result of recent cuts and resulting job-losses in international aid.

The question of privilege of those already in the room needs to be taken much more seriously by international disability work, which has enduring difficulties in renewing its leadership.

Fredrick Ouko, just elected as vice Chair to the International Disability and Development Consortium, asked about the previous summit in 2022, “Who benefits from the resources allocated to advance disability rights globally?”

But being here also shows how this event has gathered together a wide and diverse set of participants. Yesterday I met, among others, Black disabled activists from Brazil, organisers of the upcoming Special Olympics in Switzerland, and those trying to establish independent living services in Costa Rica.

This, for me, is the best thing about disability work. To so widely be able to find comfort and connection with those share our dream of a better world.

Recovering our dreams

The last few months have been hard, and certainly not an easy period to dream of a better work. It's been dispiriting and terrifying to see how the Trump administration can so quickly undo so much.

I of course have my own agenda at the Summit. The people gathered in Berlin include Debrief readers, writers and funders and those who might be interested in becoming so.

In terms of coverage I'm particularly interested to see how people are reacting to this new world. Now that the US is no longer leading international cooperation, what are the new sources of funding, coalition and narratives that we need?

But perhaps most of all, I'm looking for hope. Together we can refresh our dreams of a better world and the ways we get there. And, perhaps, dream of different destinations.

Tschüss,

Peter

Outro

See more about the Summit, including livestreams: on the Summit webpage.

See more from Kinanty: find her on Linkedin.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Kinanty Andini for the illustration of our treasures. To Peter, whose assistance made my trip possible, and to the British Government's Access to Work programme that provided funding for it. Thanks to my friends in Berlin and the Summit for warm welcomes and many many conversations.

And of course the readers and organisations that support this work.