NYC Sentinel

By Lynsey Chutel

Lavar Phillips wipes a combination of perspiration and steam from his forehead, and peers into the aluminum pot. As he stirs the white rice, the kidney beans vibrate in boiling water. The kitchen smells faintly tropical as the smell of coconut air lingers in the steam.  Still wrapped in plastic, 6 frozen chicken breasts on the counter near the kitchen sink are yet to be transformed into dinner, “I haven’t decided what I want to do with it yet,” says Phillips.

The small kitchen has become Phillips’ laboratory; a gas stove, oven, toaster oven, pop-up toaster, pressure cooker, an electric fry pan, baking pan and George Foreman’s Lean Mean Grill Machine his equipment. Dressed casually in grey tracksuit pants and a red T-shirt, his short frame and broad shoulders move quickly around the kitchen. Since Phillips struck out on his own almost two years ago he has had to learn to do his own cooking, cleaning and laundry. Baking is a skill he has yet to master, “It just doesn’t come out the way it’s supposed to. Honestly, I hate baking.”

Phillips, 21, lives in his first apartment. Except for the challenge of baking, he loves his home at the accessible 12-story apartment building, Selis Manor in Chelsea Manhattan. He shares one of the 200 apartment units with his roommate and long-time friend, Alex Alverez. A third member of the household is Danzy, a large cat with a tortoise shell coat and tiger-stripes on his forehead. Phillips insists he is not a cat person, but he spoils the tomcat, cradling him like a baby in his arms.

Where the iris of Phillips’ right eye should be is a light blue film, with hints of brown. He wears thick bifocal spectacles. “I was born with cataracts on both of my eyes. It’s like a cloud. It would have prevented me from seeing anything. When I was two or three months old, I got them removed,” he says. “I’m considered high partial. I’m totally blind in this eye and my vision is 20/80 in the other. So I’m on the line of being considered legally blind. This eye messed up after the surgery. It hemorrhaged and they couldn’t do anything to fix it.”

Like most people his age, Phillips is trying to assert his independence. His disability makes his life one of adjustments and adaptations. His determination to live that life on his own terms makes him part of a history of civil rights for people with disabilities.

For more than forty years, disability activism and culture has championed independence and acceptance. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities provided federal protection for disability rights. Without these rights, his visual disability would limit his options to institutionalization or dependence on the care and generosity of loved ones. Independent living gives he and other disabled people the skills and confidence to decide their destiny. Their independence, in turn, slowly teaches the world to see the person first, then the disability.

Opened in the late ‘80s by prominent blind businessman, Irving Selis, Selis Manor is often the first step to independent living as one of the few places in the city where people with sensory and physical disabilities can live without assistance.

Visions, the non-profit rehabilitation and social services organization, has an onsite office, making it an ideal home for people with visual disabilities. They offer social security support services as skills training to equip people with tools for independent living. Recreation is not forgotten and activities from ceramics to yoga are offered. Visions also runs support groups.

“People come to the classes, they talk about their blindness, they talk about their day to day struggles, being someone with a disability dealing with the public, dealing with family, dealing with friends, with different relationships,” says Ann De Shazo, Director of Visions.

Phillips’ own family took some time to get used to the idea of living on his own, but soon they not only supported his decision, they also supplied many of the household goods he relies on. His single mother gave him a sturdy foundation on which to base his independence. “My mom wasn’t one of those parents that said ‘You’re visually impaired so you can’t do this and you can’t do that’. She let me go and if I get hurt she’d say, ‘See, now you won’t do that again.’”

At Selis Manor he has found a group of friends who act as a strong support system. While he is cooking dinner, his friend Shaniqua Hamilton and her guide dog Roxy stop by. Hamilton lives two floors above with her fiancé. She is legally blind. Phillips’ sets out a chair and guides her to her seat. The furniture in the apartment is arranged around the border of the room making it easier for a blind or visually impaired person to make their way around.

According to the American Foundation for the Blind, more than 20 million Americans have significant vision loss. The 2000 US Census counted 3.2 million people in New York State with some sort of sensory disability. Yet the public’s ignorance remains one of the biggest challenges for people with visual disability. “I had a guy tell me ‘People with sight just don’t pay attention. I had a lady who stepped on my cane and she told me to watch where I’m going.’ So it is things like that are very stressful to them, very upsetting, but they get through it. They learn to navigate the system,” says De Shazo.

Phillips is keen to have Hamilton join him at next years National Federation for the Blind’s national conference in Dallas. The conference will be a great networking opportunity and a great excuse for two friends to go on a cross-country trip.

This evening Phillips expects an online meeting with a few other friends to discuss the event. The group is planning to breathe new life into the New York Chapter of the Federation’s Student Division. He plans to use the chapter as a springboard into the Entertainment Division. Phillips plays the drums and is perfecting his audio engineering capabilities. He wants to be involved in the Federation’s musical effort, Sound and Sight, a compilation of the blind entertainers in the country.

His work within the blind community inspired his career path. This year he is enrolled in the first year of his occupational therapy course at York College in Queens. “I’ve worked at the Visions camp for so long. I was always part of the group with kids that needed occupational therapy and I thought ‘Hmm, I like this field’ so that’s what I did.” While he studies, his financial needs are taken care of by Social Security. He pays his own $594 monthly rent at Selis Manor.

Once Phillips completes his course finding a job might be challenging, as many sighted employers balk at hiring blind and visually impaired workers, according to Arnold Kramer of the New York Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The Commission and Visions work to educate and prepare employers and workplaces to add workers with visual disabilities to their companies. Kramer describes an ideal dialogue between employer and employee: “When they say ‘You know what, let me ask you how you do certain things so I can use your strengths.”

As Phillips puts the final touches to his dinner, he and Hamilton make fun of each other all the time; their blind jokes are the best. It is the sighted public who fail to understand their humor.

Hamilton asks Phillips to throw away a soft drink cup for her.

“Why can’t you find the trash can?” he says.

“Because,” Hamilton says holding the cup out to him already, “I can’t see it.”

They laugh as Phillips relents.