"The Biggest Obstacle" (2021)

**This encore episode was recorded on March 1, 2022 **

Director, Gearóid Dolan, and Associate Producer, Jessica Murray,  discuss their film, "The Biggest Obstacle," and the importance of public transportation accessibility.

**Show Notes**

"The Biggest Obstacle":

• https://thebiggestobstacle.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/theBiggestObstacle
• https://www.instagram.com/thebiggestobstacle/
• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15084766/

Click here to see the full film on Tubi TV: https://tubitv.com/movies/637590/the-biggest-obstacle (North America, Australia & New Zealand, closed captions available)

Click here to see the full film on Plex: https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/provider/tv.plex.provider.vod/details?key=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F6180230734b5763acde71ae4 (Worldwide except China, closed captions available)

Gearóid's websites:

• http://www.screamachine.com/
• Interactive documentary sites: 
  • http://evill.nyc/fracturedselves/
  • http://www.evill.nyc/protest/
  • https://www.facebook.com/GearoidDolanArtist/
  • https://www.instagram.com/screamachine_art/
  • https://www.youtube.com/user/screaMachineART
  • https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12775852/
  • "Protest: Queer Liberation March": https://youtu.be/A4bMgtZ0z3A

Jessica Murray’s next project is to establish an archive to document disability rights movements in New York City. To learn more about the project, visit: https://library.csi.cuny.edu/archives/projects and if you have materials to contribute, please fill out this short form so we can get in touch: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfCCcDDUBAxqpJMXpc3EpQZvLzCw-dBHtMA3NhStm3yyiSH1w/viewform

Transcript

- This is Katrin with Disability Rights New York. Welcome to our podcast, Empire State of Rights: Closed Captioned. We are here to bring you information on the most relevant topics regarding disability rights and advocacy. Today we welcome director, Gearóid Dolan, and associate producer, Jessica Murray. They're here to discuss their film, "The Biggest Obstacle," and the importance of public transportation accessibility. Gearóid Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today.

- Great to be here, thanks for having us.

- Yeah, thanks for having us.

- So let's start by just talking about the inspiration for this film. I think anyone who has used the subway system in New York City specifically would probably have a lot to add to the conversation, but let's talk about from your perspective, was this important to do and what inspired you to do it?

- My inspiration actually is Jessica. I've been making activist films for over 20 years. My main focus has been on protest movements and activists in general with a lot of emphasis on social conscious construction. And I was interested in Jessica's activism in general at first, when I first got to know her, and then the more I got to investigate what she was working on, the more interested in this specific topic I got, so I actually started out with the intention of making a short, like a profile piece on Jessica and her work. And the subject was so amazing and the depth that we went into it, and it just expanded and expanded. And over the course of two years, it turned into this feature project, which was originally supposed to be a few weeks and a few minutes worth of a profile of Jessica. So Jessica is my inspiration and her work and her activity and her advocacy and her research all combined make for a compelling story for me, as well as my interest in the subject matter of course itself.

- And Jessica, do you have anything that you'd like to add to that?

- Well, I mean, I guess, Gearóid and I knew each other and I knew that he was this very talented filmmaker and like he said, I've been doing advocacy and research-- research for almost a decade and then the advocacy piece, probably for about the last five years, I tried to kind of apply what I was learning about the various disability communities and see how we could actually make change. And so I connected with some very experienced advocates, Rise and Resist, they have been doing organizing around social justice issues for decades, some of them. And so I really learned a lot from them in terms of getting this issue more in the public mind, in the public eye and building awareness of it. And so, yeah, I think our collaboration was also to kind of talk to other people and make some videos available to other members of the disabled community who were experiencing their own challenges and transportation and I was working on a separate project to kind of develop a training resource and guide for people who were new to the city or newly disabled, and were still trying to figure out how to get around. And so that kind of spurred our club collaboration. And yeah, we ended up with so much footage from various protests from right along said that there was a lot of material to work with.

- So you both brought up the amount of time that was invested and how it went from a smaller project to a larger project sounds like pretty quickly. So was that really mostly due to the volume of information that was available and as well as the volume of issues that presented themselves, were there any challenges that went along with that? Did you run into any obstacles yourselves in the filming and did that also contribute to the length of time that was invested, the two plus years, as well as the longer timeframe? So was it a combination of both and certainly whomever wants to start first, I'm guessing you both have some information to share on that.

- Yeah, so there are a number of answers to this question. Certainly one of the things for me as a filmmaker is the thought of covering a wider range of issues that had previously been covered in filmmaking. So the range of issues is as wide as the range of the community, the people with disabilities and the range of issues matches that. But the most visible issues in transportation tend to be centered around people with mobility disabilities, mostly because they're the most visible. And there have been a number of films made on that subject. So we wanted to actually expand and include the wider range, the reflective of the community itself, and also not to be just reiterating the same conversation that has been had before. So that was part of it. And part of it was my own widening of my understanding of the situation as brought to light by Jessica's research. And so one of the issues that we ran into was to find people that were willing to participate and represent to what extent they could their element of the disability community, whether it's somebody with low vision or blind, somebody representing the d/Deaf community and people with different types of disabilities and including people that are wheelchair users, both manual chairs and motorized chairs as well. So we wanted to cover the whole thing. We didn't, of course, there were plenty of places that we didn't get to go and that was mostly limited by access to people who were willing to participate in this both as a project and as participants in Jessica's research as well, which was a second feature of what we were doing simultaneously.

- And so we're talking about the scope of your project and certainly that there were so many different people that were involved as well as different disabilities that you looked at. And so let's move to Malaysia Goodson and her case, how that sparked a lot of interest in accessibility when it comes to subways. And this was a case that included a stroller and staircases. Talk about how that influenced some more interest in accessibility on a much higher profile than it had been up until that point.

- Well, it's really hard to measure how much interest is generated by a story like this. I think that it did hit home for a lot of people. And there is a scene in the movie where Gearóid happens to encounter another mom with a stroller who encounters the broken elevator and she mentions Malaysia's death. And I think that hit home for a lot of people because it ties back to the idea that disability is not exclusive to people with disabilities and we all have access needs and parents especially have access needs when they have young children. And so the framing of the issue is like as if it's a luxury or a special accommodation for a very small part of the population is just wrong headed. It's really the whole of society that is impacted by inaccessibility. And this debate is coming up recently because there was some violence on the subway and someone was pushed onto the tracks. And a reporter actually reached out to me, we're gonna talk tomorrow about the MTA kind of pitting safety against accessibility and saying, we can't do both. And the reality is that safety is accessibility and like accessibility helps people travel safely and the members of the disabled community also want that security, knowing that if they're navigating a small passageway in a subway station that they're not gonna go over the edge somehow, so it's an accessibility issue as well there.

- I think it's sad though that it takes the death of a person to actually draw people's attention and the cameras and news reports to this. Understandably, of course, that it becomes a bigger story, but at the same time, it highlights exactly what Jessica has been saying and what her group, the Elevator Action Group, which is part of Rise and Resist, have as their motto, which is "elevators are for everyone" and that features a lot in the film too. And it's what they have on their t-shirts when they're at these protests and one of the main phrases that they speak when talking to this issue. So that notion that elevators are for everybody when discussing just the elevator issue itself is paramount. It's not just people with disabilities, it's people traveling, tourists coming with suitcases. It's people making deliveries, people make their livelihood on using the subway system and the public transport system, bringing carts, wheeling stuff around, and of course, mothers and fathers and people with strollers, et cetera. So it did bring light to the situation because of the horrific nature of the event. And it did bring politicians having to come in front of cameras to make statements, which I thought was great because it puts them in a situation where they have to defend, how they've been budgeting, spending and pressuring or not pressuring the MTA to adhere to the ADA and beyond. The ADA is the minimum level of application of accessibility that we were asking for, but we want a hundred percent accessibility. The disability community wants a hundred percent accessibility so the ADA compliance is the absolute minimum, and they haven't even come close to that.

- Agreed, and even to this day, the percentage of MTA stations that are accessible... The percentage is so low that as we look at even improvements that would be made even in the next year or two years or 10 years, there still really isn't a strategic plan that addresses all stations and the accessibility. And I find the, as Jessica was talking about, the safety versus accessibility is just not an argument that can stand. So, identifying these as access needs is certainly something that should be looked at more closely, as you said, without there having to be a tragic incident for people to take notice. And as we look at the accessibility issues, as we look at the number of stations that are in fact inaccessible, what are the most common ones that you have seen? There are so many, and as you said, population and needs that- that are needed for access are varied in a very large group. So were there more accessibility issues in one area than another? And did you observe any improvements at all that happened to be being made while you were filming?

- Well, there are a lot of accommodations quote, unquote, that don't really exist in any subway stations that should be there. And I think the most egregious aside from the elevators, which are obviously the most visible as Gearóid was saying, people in the blind and low vision community have almost no access to tactile indicators in the system. There are some printed braille signs in varied specific locations, but most of the people that I've talked to don't know the system that's supposed to be in place for where to find information. And then when they find that information is there, a lot of times, it's not even adequate, it's not the information that would help them to navigate stations more easily. For example, if someone's at the top of a staircase, they're kind of taking a guess in terms of like, am I going to the right platform because there's no information there that's accessible to them if they can't see. And a braille signage at the top of that staircase would really go a long way for helping people or raise type is also something that they've tried to incorporate, but as I said, it's inconsistent on the outside of stations, at the entrances, sometimes it's on the left side, sometimes it's on the right side. Why they don't put it on both sides, I don't know. The boarding area is something that a lot of people in the disabled community should be aware of, but often are not. So the conductors car is where the accessible boarding area is. It's in the center of the platform and it's most safe to board there. That's where they may modify the platform for a wheelchair user to reduce the gap so they can safely board the train. That's where the conductor sits and can see people with other types of disabilities getting on and off, they can ask for help or directions if they couldn't make sense of announcements that they heard on the train. I think some of the communication of information is sorely lacking. Even if you have no disabilities, it's very difficult to comprehend some of the announcements that are being made on the trains and in the stations. So once you start looking at all the things and think about it through the perspective of people with multiple types of disabilities, you begin to see how challenging it is. And for the rest of us who maybe like don't have these kind of functional limitations associated with having disabilities, it can be just as challenging, maybe not just as challenging, but like you experience the challenges that people with disabilities that are experiencing as well. So really from a customer service and business standpoint, you would think the MTA would wanna improve these things and think beyond what the ADA requires in the law and try to engage with these communities to figure out how they can make the stations more accessible to everyone.

- So the film spans the period of Andy Byford's tenure as president and while I didn't see any tangible changes, made physical changes to the structure, at the time, there was definitely a change in attitude and there was hope, Andy brought with him a willingness to listen to the community, not only to set a goal to aim for ADA compliance, but also to listen to alternative ways of making life and transport easier for people that may not be directly associated with the ADA compliance and his... trial in the MetroTech station of what they call the accessibility lab where they introduced a lot of technologies and potential implementations of fixes to known problems. That was a trial. So it happened, but it then went away and don't really know what the empirical results of that are if that's at some point going to generate a budget to implement some of these and there's hope that maybe they will, but certainly some of them, things that we saw there were flawed from the start and some of them are implemented worldwide, right? So we saw like tactile strips that you see in the Japanese transit system that are amazing- color coding and directional lines, things like that. So it's all there. There's lots of stuff that's capable of being done that's possible and that would greatly enhance the navigability of the system for people with disabilities should they implement them. But I've actually seen nothing happen except for goodwill and now we don't even know if the goodwill is there that Andy's no longer part of it.

- That's right, there's no firm answer as to where we're going as far as accessibility or where they're looking to go with accessibility. As far as goodwill is concerned, I agree that it feels like that that may not be out there as well anymore and that is more than unfortunate. And you're both disability advocates. You have been doing this for a very long time. And as you look at independence, as far as navigating public transportation and independence in every way, talk to us about the importance of being able to navigate transportation independently and how that affects the daily lives of people who are unable to navigate the transportation system independently. What does that do on a daily basis for people not being able to really live a full life? Just talk to us about in your advocacy, how have you seen that independence really have barriers to it because of the transportation system?

- Well, that was basically the topic of my dissertation was how does this affect people's wellbeing? And I was using a motivational framework called self-determination theory to try to study how these barriers impact feelings of autonomy, relatedness and competence, which are three basic psychological needs that people... If these needs are not fulfilled, they tend to not want to engage with the environment that they're in. And yeah, I think there's not enough research around how people with disabilities travel. I think there's this kind of misconception. When I looked at like national travel surveys, for instance, they kind of treat it as a binary. They mostly only care about people who are quote, unquote, "home-bound" because of a disability, but their methods were kind of flawed because the way they do this survey is that they ask people to report on their travel for one day and I guess if they ask enough people, they just assume that it translates to other people, but if they changed their method and asked for travel during a whole week, they would come to a much different conclusion that people with disabilities, despite the transportation challenges, wanted be part of the community and they do travel. I think their estimates of home bound disabled people in the US is overexaggerated. Maybe people don't travel as much. I think there's some evidence for that, but I think kind of putting it, casting it is like people are just immobile if they're disabled is just also incorrect. But I think that it does have an impact and through qualitative studies and interviews that I've done, people have told me that it does impact their motivation to do things. And if someone is trying to work full time, if they don't have an employer that's understanding of the transportation challenges they're experiencing every single day, it doesn't work out well. People have had to... A lot of people end up relying on paratransit in New York City because they can't reliably take the subway to get to work. And so if that system is also flawed as we all know that it is, people have just left employment and they're not contributing members of society at that point. And I think the transportation is such a big part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It makes up about 40% of the text. And I think that activists were fighting for transportation access here in New York City, as early as the seventies, before that even. People coming back from the war were trying to get access to public transit then, and local laws were passed. MTA has just kind of fought the issue for most of the last 50 years. They haven't wanted to invest in it. They thought it would be more cost effective to just develop a paratransit system and not put elevators in everywhere. Now 30 years later, we see that that's not true at all. They've spent about three times more in paratransit than they have on investment in elevators. So... An individualized system is never gonna be as efficient as making the mass transit network work for people.

- It also creates this separation of the community that affects people's self-worth. But even the people that do have access like Jessica De La Rosa, one of the subjects in the film, speaks to the issue of bus drivers not stopping for her when they see her at the stop or being reluctant to allow her on, or complaining and moaning, basically because of the way that they're having to accommodate people that are wheelchair users that might slow down their schedule. And how it really affects her own self-worth and how it demeans her as a person to even have to anticipate that she might have this feeling when she gets on a bus. Even if the bus driver is perfectly reasonable and nice and accommodating and positive, there's always that background noise that is- is this person going to be somebody that accepts me that considers me a full person? And so it affects your personhood just even have to consider those questions, even if you are capable of using the transit system.

- Agreed, and the film closes with the status of the New York transit authority's budget plummeting because of the pandemic. So many things have been affected by the pandemic. And we saw clearly that the subway system was a major one of them where they were looking at usership, they were looking at cleanliness, they were looking at all of these things. However, it didn't seem that accessibility came into the conversation even then, as we really had an opportunity I think to look at it a little bit more closely. Do you think that accessibility improvements will be still something that will be considered as we move forward or do you think that with the budget plummeting, it will be another issue of money not being put in the right place and resources being diverted into something else? I think that as we move forward out of lockdown state as COVID is clearly still here, the MTA seems to have other priorities, is that your sense of things, or have you heard or seen anything that might indicate otherwise?

- Well, I know that the federal government has given the MTA a lot of money in the last year. Some of it was emergency funding for things like station cleaning and there's also just a greater interest in infrastructure investment. And so some of that has also come through and the MTA continues to say that they're committed to finishing these 70 stations that they committed to doing before the pandemic. And I mean, they're sending out RFPs for stations. I think they're a little bit behind in terms of actually starting work on the number of stations, if they're gonna complete those 70 stations in five years, because that means they have to really finish around 14 stations per year. And they're just not up to that pace right now. I watched the MTA board meetings pretty closely and they have plans to put out RFPs at the end of this year, but they're already counting those as projects that are underway, even though that that's not even close. Advocates are still fighting for a timetable for full accessibility. This lawsuit has been going on for almost five years now. And it's not really clear why. It's moving along closer to trial, the MTA has tried to get it dismissed more than once, and that has not worked out so well. So essentially they're just kind of dragging out this negotiation. I don't know if they're gonna come to an agreement, I think it's gonna take them longer than the 15 years that they claimed a few years ago. It might take twice as long, but I don't think advocates are satisfied with that because people are aging right now, and New Yorkers are getting older and the incidence of physical disability just increases a lot after age 65, especially after age 75. And we have people that are living well into their nineties now. So this senior population is going to explode in 10 years and we can't really wait 30 years for a fully accessible system. I don't think the paratransit system can support this influx of older people who may think that they can like rely on the system that they don't know much about or how it operates. Paratransit has had an operating deficit for a while as well. And I think they were especially challenged during the pandemic because that was... People still had to get-- to see doctors and other things, not that I wanna stereotype people with disabilities as only going to see doctors, but those trips happen for a reason. And yeah... I don't know what else to say.

- Well, as we look at being able to watch "The Biggest Obstacle," let's talk about where people can see it. Are there any public screenings scheduled for it? And are there any other events that our audience may want to hear about or that you might wanna tell them about so they can be a part of it and possibly be a part of the activism as well?

- Well currently, it's... it's available on some streaming services, so it's actually available worldwide everywhere except for China. So that's on Plex and Tubi. Those are streaming services that have advertisements. So it's free to watch on those. And it has been picked up by Amazon Prime, has yet to appear on their roster. We're looking every day, we expect to see it turn up there. But one of the issues that we've run into with these distribution services is that they don't offer audio description versions of the film, which we do have. So we've been trying to hold public screenings and online screenings for the community in New York and have done so on a number of occasions with the open captions and audio descriptions. So we're always open to that potential if anybody has a need and a place to do that, we can work with them to do so. Currently I'm actually open Boston at MIT and MIT are talking about holding an event and screening up here. And yeah, we're going to continue to work as we can with anybody that can offer that, but we don't have anything scheduled in New York right now.

- Okay. And any of those events will be on your website?

- Yes.

- Great, we will list that in the comments of this podcast as well. And just to talk to any other advocates or aspiring filmmakers out there who maybe want to start a project like this, do you have any advice for them? Anything that they could use to get them started on their way?

- It's really about doing it, right? This was a zero budget film. It was made with just love and energy. Right? With available equipment, what equipment I already have. And you'll see in the film that Jessica might be walking alongside one of our subjects and she'll be carrying some of the lighting equipment because we're actually going to do the interview somewhere. And I have a backpack on, I'm carrying tripods and lighting equipment. Jessica's carrying it. And we just made it happen. So the initial inertia is the big step. Once you start, then you've got something. And you can either continue that momentum or use that as a stepping stone to maybe generate proposal to perhaps get some funding or something like that. In my case, I just kept going. I just kept doing it and doing it and the project itself made the film just by doing it, by talking to people and continuously shooting and getting what you can into the can as they say. So whether it's shooting with your phone or just writing notes and making diaries and planning, the initial step of just doing something and getting the ball rolling is what you need to do. And there are so many platforms and so many ways to distribute. You can self-publish, you can even do TikTok videos or YouTube channels, all that sort of stuff. Some of the people in the film have done similar. In fact, Michael has his own YouTube channel and various advocates have done it in that way too. So you don't have to aim for Hollywood, you can aim low. And if your project gets bigger than what you initially thought of, great. But there's no reason not to do the work, especially if it's something that's important and is coming from the heart, that will shine through. And that's what's most important.

- Absolutely, and really this film is so powerful and I'm so glad that I got to see it, and that I have been able to speak to both of you today, truly so powerful. And it really is shining a light on so many issues that really need to be talked about and so well done and so powerful. So thank you both for sharing your vision with us and really your... your real insight into this specific topic. It was just so well done and so thank you so much for sharing it with us. And as we get to sign off here, are there any other projects that you're working on? Is there any other issue that you're addressing?

- So as a filmmaker that's been working with protest movements, I'm not a single subject person. I've been... Actually the film I made after that was a film about the queer liberation march, which was this wonderful moment in New York during lockdown where pride parade was canceled and the reclaim pride parade, which happened the previous year, simultaneously pride parade took place simultaneously with the Black Lives Matter protests that were going on. So they got together and there's this wonderful moment in New York where all these different factions came together as one. And we had this amazing moment where pride and Black Lives Matter and all these issues were just there and celebrated and protested simultaneously. So that was the film that I made after this one. And what I'm working on since then, have been trying to work on interactive non-linear web-based documentary works. So the people that are during lockdown could actually participate in advocacy too. And also people that are either distant from protest movements, just simply by location or by accessibility as well. So I'm trying to create methodologies for people in various parts of society to be able to participate in various protest movements. And I'm thinking maybe the issue of war is going to be the current topic that's certainly what's front and center in my mind right now.

- Well, best of luck to you in those projects. And unfortunately, I agree with your last point. I'm sorry, Jessica, you were going to say.

- Oh, I was just saying I'm in the process of the very early planning process of creating a new archive related to disability rights history in New York City. So we're trying preserve documentation of various disability rights, advocates, organizations, people who have really led the fight for disability rights here in New York City. So we're currently collecting information that people have materials that they might wanna contribute to in archive. I can share a link with you to also include in the description if you want.

- Great, yes, please share any resources that you have with your upcoming projects with us and we would love to get those out for you. It has been such a pleasure speaking to both of you and thank you so much for all of the work that you're doing. Truly just such powerful information that's being put out there, and we really appreciate it. So thank you both for your time today as well as the work that you're doing.

- Thanks for having us.

- [Narration] Empire State of Rights: Closed Captioned has been brought to you by Disability Rights New York, your source for disability rights and advocacy. If you enjoyed our program, make sure to subscribe, like and share this post. If there is a subject you would like us to discuss, please email podcast@drny.org or comment below. Tune in next Wednesday, where we'll bring you more information on disability rights in the state of New York. The closed caption and ASL for version of this podcast is available on our YouTube channel. To listen to more Empire State of Rights: Closed Captioned, follow us on Apple podcast and Spotify.