Disability Rights Movement
Growing Individual Voices in Political Influence
Political Influence of Individuals with Disabilities
Rehabilitation Act: Cross
Disability Protests to release
Gov't stalled s. 504
Regulations
American with Disabilities Act
Maryland Disabilities Forum
Established
American Disabled for
Accessible Public Transit
(ADAPT)
League for the Physically
Handicapped: Disability Led
Civil Disobedience Group
"Disabled in Action" Founded
Blind Employees in Pittsburgh
Stage a Sit-Down Strike
Dorothea Dix appeals to MA
Legislature for State Funded
Medical Institutions
1840
1865
Help America Vote Act
(HAVA)
Voting Rights Act
1890
First Petition to Congress to
Address the treatment of
Individuals with Intellectual
Disabilites
1915
1940
1965
FDR Elected: First President
with a Physical Disability
1990
The Voting Accessibility for
the Elderly and the
Handicapped Act
"Rolling Quads" in Berkley
begin Demonstrations for
Independent Living
Formation of The National
Federation of the Blind and
the American Federation of
the Physically Handicapped
91 ADAPT Activists arrested
outside White House
Overview - 1900
Political Influence of People with Disabilities
•Rarely Serve in
Public Office
Elected or Appointed
•Disability
Community has
No “Voice”
•No Input With
Government
•No Vote
No Organizations to
encourage or support
Individuals with Disabilities.
Public Perception: Should be Excluded
Overview - 2009
• Serving in elected and
appointed offices
Political Influence of Individuals With Disabilities
• Senators & Governors
• County Executives
• Serving on Boards
and Commissions
Maryland Disabilities
Law Center
On Our Own
• As Voters, kept more
informed and engaged
Maryland
Disabilities
Forum
• Supported by outside
advocacy groups
• Taking an individual
“voice” as well as a
collective “voice” for the
disability community
Arc
Maryland
Developmental
Disabilities
MACS
Council
Epilepsy
Foundation
Maryland
Works
Historical Perspective
• People with Disabilities forced into
dependency.
• Others speak for them, label them, and
while often with the best intentions –
generally don’t view individuals with
disabilities as deserving direct
participation.
A New Vision
• Self Advocacy and Individual
Empowerment through inclusion in the
political process.
• Independent Living, Equal Rights and
Access to ensure full citizenship and
progressive participation in every facet of
society.
Dorothea Dix
• In 1841 Dorothea Dix, a Boston
schoolteacher, began a campaign to make
the public aware of the plight of people
with mental illness. By 1880, as a direct
result of her efforts, 32 psychiatric
hospitals for the poor had opened.
Dorothea Dix
Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts
Jan. 1843
• “I have seen many who, part of the year, are
chained or caged. The use of cages all but
universal. Hardly a town but can refer to some
not distant period of using them; chains are less
common; negligences frequent; willful abuse
less frequent than sufferings proceeding from
ignorance, or want of consideration.”
Dorothea Dix
Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts
Jan. 1843
• “It is not few, but many, it is not a part, but
the whole, who bear unqualified testimony
to this evil. A voice strong and deep comes
up from every almshouse and prison in
Massachusetts where the insane are or
have been protesting against such evils as
have been illustrated in the preceding
pages.”
• Dix successfully petitioned the Massachusetts
Legislature to remove individuals with disabilities
from prisons, and to begin classifying their
disabilities to determine treatment in state
funded institutions.
• Dix also petitioned Congress in 1848.
• President Pierce vetoed a bill sponsored by
Dorothea Dix calling for the sale of federal lands
to subsidize institutions for “indigents with
mental disabilities”. May 3, 1854.
• Set precedent for no federal intervention for next
50 years.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Elected President of the
United States in 1933.
• In 1921, he’d contracted
a disease which paralyzed
him from the waist down.
FDR’s Contribution
• FDR established the Roosevelt Warm Springs
Rehabilitation Institute which gave way to technical
advancements for people with disabilities:
– More advanced wheelchair designs
– Accessible Restroom Designs
– Automobile Possibilities for alternatively
controlled devices.
• He helped found the “National
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis”
(now known as the March of Dimes).
• Social Security was developed in response to
the increasing numbers of disabled War Veterans.
1930s-1940s
Parents Organize
• Parents who did not want their children
institutionalized or banned from public
schools sought each other out and started
to organize.
• Concerned about lack of community
resources and support, advocated need
for “special education”.
Institutionalization Is Not
Necessary
League for the Physically
Handicapped
• New Deal programs label people with
disabilities as “Unemployable”.
• In May of 1935, a group of 3 men and 3
women with disabilities went to see the
director of the Emergency Relief Bureau in
New York City to change that policy.
League for the Physically
Handicapped
• They demonstrated for a week, demanding
“handicapped people receive a just share of the millions
of jobs being given out by the government.”
• As a result, the Works Progress Administration (WPA)
hired about forty League members.
• The protest was the beginning of the “League of the
Physically Handicapped”, and over the next few years
they fought job discrimination and contested the ideology
of disability that controlled early twentieth century public
policies, social arrangements and professional practices.
Cross-Disability Action
• In September 1936, the League joined
forces with the League for the
Advancement of the Deaf to secure a
promise that 7% of future WPA jobs in
New York would go to deaf and
handicapped individuals. As a result, 1500
people went to work.
Disability Rights Movement…
A New Understanding
• Predicated on the notion that it is the structural and attitudinal
barriers in capitalist society that are the fundamental cause for the
discrimination and oppression faced by people with disabilities.
• In this framework, people with disabilities are limited by the systemic
lack of physical access to public services, the failure of educational
institutions and employers to make materials available in alternative
formats, and the intricate bureaucracy that people must navigate in
order to get essential services such as income support and medical
services.
• Attention needed to be redirected from the medical impairment or
“medical model” of disablement to the social-political issues that
underpin disability oppression. In other words, the first step in the
liberation of people with disabilities is a fundamental paradigm shift
in societal values.
Disability Rights Movement
• Struggle to gain full citizenship
• Demand for equality, independence,
autonomy, access to public life
• Integration vs. “separate but equal”
• People First Language
“Rolling Quads”
• Beginning with Ed Roberts, the
“Rolling Quads” were a Berkeley
based student activist group seeking
Independent Living and Equal Access
in the 1960s.
• The Rolling Quads questioned their
living situation.
– Why were they forced to live in a hospital?
– Why was it so difficult to travel around the
city?
– What options did a student with disabilities
have?
– What could the University do to help
students with disabilities?
– What would they do after graduation?
Ed Roberts
Today’s “Rolling Quads” still in Action
“Rolling Quads”
• “Rolling Quads” members engaged in campus
demonstrations as well as political activism and
were able to accomplish:
– The formation of a “Physically Disabled Students
Program” that became the nation’s first Disabled
Students Office.
– An “independent living” course to discuss improving
conditions for people with disabilities in the city of
Berkeley, as they had done with the University.
– Petitioning for government funds to create The Center
for Independent Living or CIL.
Disabled in Action
• Founded in 1970, “Disabled in Action” was
based in radical activism.
• Adopted the tactic of direct political protest
to raise both the consciousness of people
with disabilities and awareness of the
discriminatory barriers endemic in
American society.
Disabled in Action
• During the 1972 presidential election, militants in
Disabled in Action joined with disabled and often
highly politicized Vietnam veterans, clearly an
influential base of support for the American
disability rights movements, demanding an oncamera debate with President Nixon.
• They also organized a demonstration at the
Lincoln Memorial after President Nixon vetoed a
spending bill to fund disability programs.
Rehabilitation Act
• The high point of the 1970s resurgence of disability
liberation politics was the remarkable San Francisco
occupation that occurred in conjunction with protests
aimed at forcing the release of regulations pursuant to s.
504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
• The regulations were to outline how it was illegal for
federal agencies, contractors, or public universities to
discriminate on the basis of handicap. They had been
delayed by previous Administrations but there was an
expectation that the incoming Carter Administration
would fulfill its promise to issue the regulations.
Rehabilitation Act
• Democrats' policy makers were stalling and
wanted to substantially modify the regulations to
permit continued segregation in education and
other areas of public life. Disability rights
activists mobilized in nine cities across the
United States.
• In Washington, three hundred demonstrators
occupied the offices of the Health, Education
and Welfare (HEW) Secretary for some twentyeight hours despite the termination of the office's
telephone lines by authorities and the refusal to
permit food through to the protestors.
Rehabilitation Act
• In San Francisco the movement raged on.
There, disability rights activists occupied the
HEW federal building for twenty-five days
culminating in total victory: the issuing of the
regulations without any amendments.
• Many of the participants of the occupation, at
times as many as 120, literally risked their lives,
as they were without their personal care
attendants or assistive devices, in order to
pursue their fight for social justice and
integration into mainstream society.
• The impact of building cross-disability solidarity was
remarkable.
• Instead of arbitrary divisions based on diagnostic
categories, people with disabilities united around
common political goals.
• The HEW Occupation was one of those rare events
where the consciousness of the participants was
dramatically transformed and their largely neglected
creativity unleashed.
• Many of the participants had previously seen their
oppression as personal medical problems. A real sense
of disability pride was developed that would have lasting
positive effects in building grassroots disability rights
movements.
Policy that Followed the Disability
Rights Movement
• 1970 Urban Mass Transit Act: requires that all new mass
transit vehicles be equipped with wheelchair lifts.
• 1975 Developmental Disabilities Bill of Rights Act:
among other things, establishes Protection and
Advocacy (P & A).
• 1975 Education of All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94142): requires free, appropriate public education in the
least restrictive environment possible for children with
disabilities. This law is now called the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
• 1978 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act: provides for
consumer-controlled centers for independent living.
• 1983 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act: provides for the Client
Assistance Program (CAP), an advocacy program for consumers of
rehabilitation and independent living services.
• 1985 Mental Illness Bill of Rights Act: requires protection and
advocacy services (P & A) for people with mental illness.
• 1988 Civil Rights Restoration Act: counteracts bad case law by
clarifying Congress' original intention that under the Rehabilitation
Act, discrimination in ANY program or service that is a part of an
entity receiving federal funding -- not just the part which actually and
directly receives the funding -- is illegal.
• 1988 Air Carrier Access Act: prohibits discrimination on the basis of
disability in air travel and provides for equal access to air
transportation services.
• 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act: prohibits discrimination in
housing against people with disabilities and families with children.
Also provides for architectural accessibility of certain new housing
units, renovation of existing units, and accessibility modifications at
the renter's expense.
American Disabled for Accessible
Public Transit (ADAPT)
• In 1983, the organization “American
Disabled for Accessible Public Transit”
(ADAPT) was formed by disability rights
activists in several cities across America to
highlight the inaccessibility of public transit
to mobility impaired people.
ADAPT
• ADAPT repeatedly disrupted the conventions
of the American Public Transit Association, to
the point of requiring mass arrests, in order to
raise awareness of the industry's hostility to
implementing accessibility features that
would enable people with disabilities to
participate fully as citizens.
ADAPT
• They also demonstrated a dramatic flair for symbolism
and a sense of strategic genius. Crawling up the stairs of
important but inaccessible public buildings, including the
eighty-three marble steps of the Capitol building, to
demonstrate their exclusion from American society.
• Having secured a measure of victory in this field, they
renamed themselves “American Disabled for Attendant
Programs Today” and have continued their direct action
tactics to raise awareness of the need for attendant care
programs, that provide assistance with activities of daily
living, to permit people with disabilities to live
independently rather than face warehousing.
Demonstration for Accessibility
People First
• Starting in the 1970s and permeating
public policy language and perception, self
advocacy groups chose a “People First”
approach to change the context of
disabling labels.
Americans with Disabilities Act
• The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
(ADA) is the most significant civil rights
legislation to be enacted by Congress since the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• The ADA makes it illegal to discriminate against
anyone who has a mental or physical disability
in the area of employment, public services,
transportation, public accommodations and
telecommunications.
President George Bush signing the American with Disabilities Act
A Vote is A Voice
• Voting Rights Act of (1965)
• The Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and
the Handicapped Act (1984)
• The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
• The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA)
With increasing accessibility to
voting locations, individuals with
disabilities are actively pursuing
their rights as citizens to engage
in the political determination of
leadership.
Congress enacted the
Help America Vote Act of
2002, which required
polling places to have at
least one voting system
accessible for people with
disabilities.
• Today we find people with disabilities more
often living in the community, employed in
an integrated workforce, voting, and
holding appointed and elected offices.
• While discrimination still exists, public
perception of disability has been steadily
shifting to that of equality, inclusion, and
independence for all.
Presented By:
The Maryland Disabilities Forum
• A non-profit cross-disability organization led by people
with disabilities that produces statewide systems change
in order to achieve community inclusion, civil rights, and
equal opportunity. This is accomplished through
education, leadership development and facilitating
consensus with the disability community, while
respecting its diversity.
• This display offers a glimpse into the evolution of
advocacy and influence from no representation in the
policies that govern individuals with disabilities, to
advocacy, and eventually self advocacy. In essence it is
a movement from exclusion and
segregation to full inclusion.