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ROCHESTER — While it’s uplifting rhetoric to assert that people with disabilities have super powers, Minnesota playwright and storyteller Kevin Kling would like to start at inclusion.
Kling was the keynote speaker at the annual International Day of Persons with Disabilities celebration in Rochester on Thursday at the Chateau Theater.
“Most of us don’t want to have super powers,” Kling told a crowd. “Most of us with disabilities just want to be included in the normal fabric of society.”
It shouldn’t take superhuman strength or determination for people with disabilities to be employed, included and accepted in society, he said.
“Making it more attractive to people that when you are more inclusive, it’s better for everybody,” he said.
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Progress continues to be made. Kling said most of his appearances are for corporations and not at schools because “the kids get it.”
This was the sixth local annual observance of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which is officially Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022.
About 150 people with disabilities and advocates attended the Thursday event. Another nearly 100 watched remotely via Zoom. The virtual component is a holdover from the 2020 event and helps accommodate people who can’t attend in person, organizers said.
MaxAbility Taskforce, an organization that promotes hiring people with disabilities, and the Disability Mayo Employee Resource Group organized the event.
The celebration promotes hiring and expanding inclusion of people with disabilities and is a networking event for people who share similar experiences to meet.
Edward Cohen, who is blind, attended and helped promote the event, said he hoped to meet other blind people there.
“We do have a small but thriving community of people with visual disabilities, but in a city this size, I know there are more,” he said.
When people with similar disabilities meet, they don’t have to explain their lived experiences. Living with disabilities can be isolating, Cohen said. Meeting other people with similar experiences can be comforting.
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The event is a chance for people to learn about those experiences too, said Dawn Kirchner, Mayo Clinic diversity recruitment specialist.
“If you don’t have the lived experience, you don’t have the same perspective,” Kirchner said.
The event included an art show of multiple works of various media and musical performances by people with disabilities.
Kirchner said the art event showed how people have more facets to their talents and lives than we first see.
Ben Cockram, a career navigator with Goodwill, introduced the musical portion of the evening.
“As people come up tonight, just understand that, yes, we have disabilities,” Cockram said. “But they’re performing in front of strangers, which normally scares us to death.”
