Tropic Thunder: What Can the Disability Community Do?

The movie Tropic Thunder, a movie with very negative dialog relating to cognitive disability is scheduled to be released next week. A coalition of disability groups and self-advocates is meeting with Dreamworks studios today.

I am very pleased by the response of our national organizations and I think they should be backed up by a nation full of local responses. I am not sure, at this late date, that the movie itself can be changed, but I am positive that the disability community can have a role in how the movie is received in our home towns.

Watch this video. The speaker is Jon Warnow who helped organized Step it Up 2007 which made environmental goals such a prevalent issue in our country. I thought their strategies could be applied to increase the visibility of disability issues.

I think that hundreds (or thousands) of local responses could patch together and change the world. So, what are your ideas for what can be done? What are you and your friends willing to try?

Will you :
• Write a letter to the editor of a local or national newspaper?
• Hold an event next week like a ball game, dance, rally, car wash, bake sale, race or something else and invite the press so they can see the reality of life with disability?
• Do something on-line? Engage others? Gain Google rating?
• Instead of hosting an event, invite the press into your real life?
• Support a Self-Advocacy group who is planning a response?
• If you are some sort of expert, make some sort of professional response?
• Plan a rally or protest at your local theaters?
• Write your own movie, play, or song that is better than this one?

What are your thoughts? Ideas?

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."

Teddy Roosevelt

My other post on this topic here.