Donor Profile: Anthony Tusler

Visitor — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 18:04:58 +0000

This week we sat down to talk to longtime friend of Paul Longmore, Anthony Tusler, at his house in Penngrove, CA. Disabled since the age of five, Tusler is a motorized wheelchair user. Describing Anthony’s contributions to disability rights and advocacy takes some time. In addition to over 20 years as director of disability services at Sonoma State University, he has led important work to draw attention to the higher rates of alcoholism and drug use in the disability community, he has researched and published about technology and access, and he also promotes disability in the arts, through his own photography and studying disability in music.

He first met Paul Longmore back when Paul was a graduate student writing about George Washington. A shared colleague recommended they meet, and Anthony remembers thinking then that Paul would some day be a leader in the disability movement. Shortly after, Anthony arranged to have Paul give a lecture on euthanasia for The California Association for Post-Secondary Education and Disability (CAPED) because he knew Paul had a voice and perspective that needed to get out there. While many of Paul’s friendships were more academic and bonded in disability theory, Anthony recalls that their connection was rooted in a shared love for disability culture. When Paul Longmore almost poisoned himself by taking too much Zinc to fight off a cold, Anthony just laughed to Paul’s relief, both agreeing that such a mistake was standard “crip stuff."

Since Paul passed away and the Longmore Institute reemerged in 2012, Anthony has been a vital supporter, both with his time and as a donor. In 2013, he hosted a concert at his home to benefit the Longmore Institute. He played a number of roles to support the Patient No More exhibit, which featured his photography from outside the building on the first day of the 1977 504 occupation. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the exhibit could not have happened without him. In particular, he convinced photographer and 504 protester HolLynn D’Lil to share her historic collection of photographs, primary sources, and notebooks, previously kept private. If Anthony had not vouched for the Longmore Institute’s integrity and recognized the importance of making this collection public, “Patient No More” might not have had enough materials. Anthony poses before giving a photography lecture at the Patient No More exhibit. Photo courtesy of Anthony's Facebook page.

Anthony disclosed that his first work with the Longmore Institute was less successful than he’d have hoped. In 2012, he gave a talk on disability and music that he felt just didn’t hit the way he wanted it too (he teases that Associate Director Emily Beitiks having her water break and needing to head off to have a baby minutes before the event was partially to blame). But this experience only strengthened his bond to the Longmore Institute. Afterward, Director Catherine Kudlick pushed him on how he could tighten the presentation and offered to help. He said, “This moment exemplified what makes you guys unique. We don’t critique each other’s work enough in the disability community, so it touched me that Cathy was not only willing to speak honestly with me but also offer to help guide it forward. No other organizations are offering this sort of support for the development of disability culture and scholarship. The Longmore Institute is in a unique position, being a part of a university, to do this work that invests in the long-term.”

He urges other people to start volunteering with or donate to the Longmore Institute because “Disability culture is essential to our efforts to improve the lives of people with disabilities. It can’t just be about services.” Anthony’s friendship with Paul Longmore was based on this belief, and he is grateful to see that the Institute’s recent work supports it as well. Anthony has supported our annual Giving Tuesday efforts for the past two years. Photo courtesy of Mr. Tusler's Facebook page.

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The "Patient No More" Mural

Visitor — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 23:07:37 +0000

By: Catherine Kudlick

A large mural features 504 protestors and celebrates the spirit of "Patient No More." Click here to see an expanded photo of the mural.

What might appear to the public as the anchor and one of the most striking features of “Patient No More” was far from certain; in fact, just a week before the exhibit launch, we debated whether it was the right use of our resources.

Still, our team of three - Curator/Graphic Designer Fran Osborne, Longmore Institute Associate Director Emily Beitiks, and Director (Me) - had been planning for something in that great rotunda wall all along. It offered a daunting blank canvas, so central, so white, so easy to make a giant mistake, yet so full of potential. And the ramp wall was red. Very red.

At the beginning we tossed around a number of ideas, from a detailed timeline to a large simple rendering of the iconic “Sign 504 Now!” yellow button or a large “Patient No More” banner.

I can’t remember when we first came upon the idea for the dramatic seventy-foot photomural above the ramp. But it had something to do with the generous photo donations from HolLynn D’Lil, Anthony Tusler, and the Bancroft Library. For the exhibit stations we had sifted through scores of them, nearly all of them black and white. We had to make tough choices about what to include, while having to leave others out. Each time, we came back to the intense, joyful, determined faces of the participants.

For the first couple of years we approached it as a memorial to commemorate the lives of occupiers who had passed away. Naïvely maybe, we believed we could identify and account for everyone in all the photos. But the deeper we got into the project, the more we realized this would be impossible: too many people came and went, too many had disappeared into history.

And there were practical concerns. We dreaded the prospect of someone very much alive arriving at the exhibit only to find themselves up on the wall. And what would we do if someone died once the mural had been put up?

Ultimately, we decided to celebrate the people with disabilities associated with the occupation. We tried to create a mosaic of individuals who made up a vibrant group whose coming together transformed the struggle for disability rights.

If this wasn’t a memorial, we needed to decide on the story we did want to tell, assuming it was possible to tell one at all. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine putting 27 of them in conversation! Who looked at whom across the rounded wall all day and night?

Curator Fran Osborne spent countless hours sifting through photos with students, coming up with templates, sending us different examples, trying to get the balance. Did someone appear too often? Who was missing? Which pictures deserved to be larger? And which ones could actually be blown up to such a large size without being distorted?

We knew so much depended on a viewer’s location while looking at it: from the rotunda, from the ramp itself, going up, going down . . . . Like life itself, things completely changed with perspective.

And how to convey something so striking, so important, so visual to people who couldn’t see it? How to be true to our mission to incorporate access to everything in our exhibit, though not necessarily in the same way for everyone? Our solution: commission poets Eli Clare and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, each who identify as people with disabilities to respond creatively with sound poems (check them out below).

It’s hard to describe my first impression of the mural in all its glory. It sits somewhere between hearing those sound pieces read by the poets and walking into the Ed Roberts Campus rotunda just two days before our launch and seeing it on the wall. It was maybe the closest I came to understanding a sense of victory and permanence after working so hard on something that I sensed deep down would make a difference.

Two mural moments confirmed this was true. The first was the day of our launch when 504 participant Michael Williams posed in front of his photo from 38 years before: wearing the same button, same smile, same sense of defiant pride. Many other occupiers, their friends, their families have found people they knew up on that giant canvas.

Then one day around closing time at the Ed Roberts Campus, I came upon an older gentleman slowly making his way up the ramp where he wanted to get close to the mural. “I always wondered what this place was for!” he exclaimed as he turned to me. “I rush through here every day to catch BART, and for some reason today I looked up. My god, I had no idea! I’ve seen some of these people all over Berkeley!” When I introduced myself as being associated with the mural, he smiled and said, “Wow, this is history!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7U616jiE5M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpF85SfwxIo

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