By: Sue Hutton

Shineeca, Peter and Emanuel

You may know Emanuel Chasi as Community Living Toronto’s bill of rights artist, but now he is adding his art and his voice to a bigger cause. Emanuel has joined with the Respecting Rights group at ARCH Disability Law Centre. Respecting Rights is using art, music, theatre in a peer-advocacy model to teach people labelled with intellectual disabilities about their rights to make their own decisions. Emanuel is getting ready to do artwork for the project, and is jumping in presenting, script-writing and acting in videos too.

Emanuel had his first experience presenting at Flying To Freedom, a special event hosted by Community Living Ontario, marking the 10^th anniversary of the closing of the institutions.

The event brought survivors together to tell their stories and share in art, theatre, music and story telling with a community working together for change. Respecting Rights founder Peter Park had artwork on display- using graphic recording to tell his story (Co-created with Sue Hutton, who drew Peter’s vision from his memory, with Peter’s direction).

It’s exciting for new artists and advocates to get involved. Says Emanuel “It was my first time public speaking and I was a little nervous! But my goal of the day was to get the message about rights, and institutions no more across. I think we got our message across because the applause was great. I heard someone say “you’re doing great”.

Peter Park acts as a mentor to Emanuel, and the two of them work together on advocacy efforts with Respecting Rights. Emanuel: “I’m a visual artist, and all I needed was to see the artwork of Peter’s experience in D Ward at the institution, and it said everything. I want to know all about these stories. As the next generation of advocates it’s good to know this stuff to keep us going”.

Emanuel really looks out for Peter when we are working together. Emanuel is lucky enough to not have lived in an institution, and feels awful seeing what people lived through. “I wanted to make sure he was doing okay with all the talk and memories about abuse that day. “We gotta look out for each other”.

Peter and others spoke about still needing to make change for people with developmental disabilities and that the fight is not over for everyone to be included and respected. Emanuel: “Lots of changes need to be made”. What needs to change, is for people to follow the bill of rights – across the province. When I hear that people are not having their rights upheld I get upset and want everyone to have their rights. Individuals are the ones paying rent in these homes, and I think the message at Flying to Freedom is that we all need to look out for each other and make sure people are having their rights. The advocacy work we’re doing together right now, we are taking to the government. We are excited to take this as far as we can. People’s rights are that important.

It’s an honour to work with Peter Park. He’s legendary and his story will live on. We are different generations and we are fighting for the same thing”.

Dignity. Respect. Inclusion.

Drawing by Sue Hutton in collaboration with Peter Park

Each month the council has activities lined up. Meetings are the third Wednesday of every month from 11-1:30pm. For further information, contact Sue Hutton at shutton@cltoronto.ca or Tara Bates at Tara.bates@cltoronto.ca