Upon the Anniversary of the ADA

My son Teddy has a business selling tshirts. He sells tshirts designed by Dan Wilkins, but also his first personal design. This was designed to honor the person considered the father of the ADA, Justin Dart. Below is what Justin said when the ADA was signed and also what Teddy's new tshirt looks like. You can order these from his website, Teddy's Ts. They cost $18. and come in sizes S, M, L, XL, 2XL, and 3XL. They are Texas orange, Justin's favorite color. They say " I am with you. I love you. Lead on" Yoshiko Dart approved their design before they went into production.

ADA: Landmark Declaration of Equality By Justin Dart

President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990, a landmark date in the evolution of human culture.

Throughout all of reported history until recent decades, people perceived as having significant disabilities have been treated as sub-humans. At worst they were killed or left as beggar-outcasts to die, at best they were cared for through subsistence welfare, out of sight and mind in institutions and back rooms.

With the development of modern medicine and social responsibility, millions of 20th Century humans are surviving previously fatal conditions and living on with significant disabilities. These individuals have a great potential to be happy, productive members of their communities. However, our best efforts to fulfill this potential have been consistently limited by a massive residue of prejudice and paternalism. Our society is still infected by an insidious, now almost subconscious assumption that people with disabilities are less than fully human, and therefore are not fully eligible for the opportunities, services and support systems which are available to other people as a matter of right.

More than two decades ago many of us in the disability community concluded that Americans with disabilities would never achieve full, productive citizenship until this nation made a firm statement of law protecting their civil rights.

The Americans with Disabilities Act is such a law. It establishes a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. Taken in combination with previously existing disability rights law, it provides a sound legal framework for the practical implementation of the inalienable right of all people with disabilities to participate equally in the mainstream of society. It extends to people with disabilities the same protection of their rights that is already enjoyed by the members of all other minorities.

Most importantly, ADA is a landmark commandment of fundamental human morality. It is the world's first declaration of equality for people with disabilities by any nation. It will proclaim to America and to the world that people with disabilities are fully human; that paternalistic, discriminatory, segregationist attitudes are no longer acceptable; and that henceforth people with disabilities must be accorded the same personal respect and the same social and economic opportunities as other people.

ADA opens the doors of opportunity for millions of isolated, dependent Americans to become employees, taxpayers and welcome participants in the life of their communities. It prepares the way for the emancipation of more than half of a billion of the world's most oppressed people.

I am proud of America. I am proud of President Bush, Attorney General Thornburgh and Boyden Gray. I am proud of Senators Harkin, Hatch, Kennedy and Dole. I am proud of Congressmen Hoyer, Owens, Bartlett, Mineta, Fish, Brooks and all the great members of Congress who supported ADA. I am proud of former members Lowell Weicker and Tony Coelho. I am proud of Bob Silberstein, Bill Roper, John Wodatch, Melissa Schulman, Bob Tate, Maureen West and all the great Congressional and Administrative staff who authored and fought for ADA.

I am proud of Pat Wright, Lex Frieden, Evan Kemp, Sandra Parrino, Paul Marchand,
Wade Blank, Elizabeth Boggs, Liz Savage, Marca Bristo, Judy Heumann, Arlene Mayerson
and the thousands of other patriots who have struggled for long, hard years in a
wilderness of prejudice and paternalism for the victory of ADA.

Once again America has passed the torch of liberty and productivity to the world.

All who love justice must unite in action to protect our hard won ADA rights, and to ensure that they are implemented through strong regulations, and enforced in every community.

We of the disability community must communicate to America that full compliance with ADA can be profitable for all citizens, and we must join in cooperative action with government and the
private sector to ensure that all will profit.

But ADA is only the beginning. It is not a solution. Rather, it is an essential foundation on which solutions will be constructed.

We must undertake a courageous reallocation of our society's resources from paternalism to independence and productivity. We must invest in a continuum of new and strengthened programs to liberate people with disabilities from dependency, and empower them to be equal and productive participants in the mainstream: Productivity-oriented education for all citizens. Economic, technological, independent living, vocational rehabilitation, transitional, personal assistance and community based supports for productivity and quality of life. Prevention. Affordable insurance and health care for all. Incentives for productivity to replace disincentives. Accessible communications, transportation, housing, and completely new communities that are accessible as a whole.

A large agenda? Certainly! But no larger than that which faced our patriot forefathers at the successful conclusion of the revolutionary war.

Like them, we have accomplished much. Like them, we have a profound responsibility to make a bold declaration of equality real in the lives of hundreds of millions of people in future
generations.

I believe that we will unite to fulfill that responsibility. Because I believe in you, the patriots of ADA. And I believe in you, the patriots to be.

Together we have overcome. Together we shall overcome.

Stranger in a Strange Land

An interesting video I caught on Pitt Rehab. Much like a film I had at my film festival a few years ago called "I am not from Hear". What would it be like it everyone but a minority had a disability and the world was geared to us with disabilities rather than the reverse?

ADA Restoration Act

The ADA may not be a perfect civil rights document, but its initial imperfections have been inflated tenfold by the changes in the way it has been interpreted. It is no longer being enacted in the way it was intended. Right now the ADA still offers people with disabilities important rights that without their status as equal citizens would be jeopardized. Without the ADA there would not be an increasing number of curb cuts in every city, or public TTYs in public buildings, or new voting machines that have given people their right to vote privately for the first time in their life.

What the ADA has been unable to accomplish has been in large part due to its major flaw - that to get the ADA enforced one has to go to court before a judge who will decide what the ADA says. Judges across the nation have interpreted the ADA and what constitutes a person with a disability differently. They are not ADA experts. They have generally decided to look at the language of the ADA as exact - the law must be followed precisely. But when written the ADA was written as a guideline to given people an idea of what made sense. Every situation that could confront a person with a disability could not be described in one document - so the ADA only suggests broad parameters.

Please, if the ADA is as important to you as it is to me, read the following and act!

Ask Your Representative to be an
Original Cosponsor of the ADA Restoration Act of 2007!

Background

This Thursday, July 26, marks the 17th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). On this day, the ADA Restoration Act of 2007 will be introduced by chief cosponsors Representatives Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to restore protections for Americans with disabilities under the landmark law.

Despite the ADA's intent to create a level playing field in the workplace, the full promise of the law has never been fulfilled. In recent years, the Supreme Court has slowly chipped away at the broad protections of the ADA and created a new set of barriers to employment for people with disabilities.

Courts across the country have been quick to side with businesses and employers, deciding against people with disabilities who challenge employment discrimination 97% of the time, often before the person has even had a chance to show that the employer treated them unfairly. Indeed, courts have created an absurd catch-22 by allowing employers to say a person is too disabled to do the job, but not disabled enough to be protected by the ADA. For example, people with conditions like epilepsy, diabetes, hearing loss, and mental illness that manage their disabilities with medication, prosthetics, hearing aids, etc. or mitigating measures are viewed as too functional to have a disability and are denied the ADA's protection from employment discrimination.

This is not what Congress intended when it passed the law and President George H.W. Bush enacted it into law in 1990. The law was intended to be broadly - not narrowly - interpreted.

The bipartisan ADA Restoration Act will amend the ADA to require courts to focus on whether a person has experienced discrimination "on the basis of disability," rather than requiring individuals with disabilities to first demonstrate that they are substantially limited in some major life activity.

Disability advocates have been working tirelessly for the last several years to restore the original intent of the ADA by meeting with Members of Congress, collecting stories about disability discrimination and ADA success stories, issuing a petition to support the ADA Restoration Act, and leading a bus tour that has traveled more than 13,000 miles in 28 states. We need your support now more than ever.

Status

On July 20, a "Dear Colleague" letter was sent by Representatives Hoyer and Sensenbrenner to all members of the House of Representatives seeking original cosponsors before the bill is introduced next week on July 26.

Take Action

Call your Representative TODAY and ask him/her to cosponsor the ADA Restoration Act now! Our champions need to have as many original cosponsors as possible to make a good showing on introduction.