Street Heat For The ADA - Americans With Disabilities Act activists

Accent on Living, Winter, 2000 by Arie Farnam

The next generation marches for justice

Andrea Williams, 19, grew up in the post-Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) world. "I remember people saying that the school would have to make an accommodation or couldn't do some bad thing because of the ADA," she says. "That promise was always there."

She also grew up with stories about the way things used to be. Once, not so many years ago, children with motor and mobility impairments were branded as mentally retarded by many public schools regardless of their intellectual ability. People using wheelchairs were often prevented from voting, testifying in court and entering public buildings by steps and narrow doorways.

Williams, who lives in the remote high-desert town of Ontario, Oregon, is determined those stories stay where they belong -- in the past. She plans to attend Treasure Valley Community College next spring and hopes that her juvenile arthritis, which keeps her in a wheelchair most of the day, won't suddenly become a barrier to her education in 2001.

But, if the state of Alabama has its way, it just might.

Ten years after the ADA was passed, Alabama is asking that the Supreme Court to rule that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to force states to abide by the ADA as a civil rights law.

If the court declares the ADA unconstitutional, state educational institutions, services and employers may no longer have to accommodate people with disabilities as early as next year.

That worries Williams. "If the ADA were struck down, there wouldn't be a reason for anyone to make accommodations for us," she says. "If there is no law, everything anyone ever does to give us access is just out of the kindness of their heart. It's my human right to have access to the life other people have."

Leaders in the disability community say the states' rights case is not only the gravest threat to the ADA since it became law but also a potential threat to every civil rights law on the books. Demonstrations in support of the ADA were quickly planned in Washington DC and other major cities.

"This is a profound challenge to our civil rights but much more important than that it is a profound challenge to democracy as we know it," says Justin Dart, who was a crucial player in passing the ADA. "We have to fight back because we are fighting for the future of democratic government."

But time is running out. Dart is 70 and most of the other activists who helped pass the ADA are nearing retirement. That's why, when John Dziennik of the Blanche Fischer Foundation organized a delegation of Oregonians to attend the October March for Justice in Washington, he sought out Williams.

Williams started working for disability rights as soon as she moved to Ontario two years ago. She is currently volunteering as a grant writer at the Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living, a non-profit organization providing people with disabilities with information, job training, peer support and, when needed, high-powered advocacy to combat discrimination.

Fresh from completing high school, Williams is already breaking down barriers in expectations. "I want to be a fiction writer," she says. "That is really a shock for a lot of people in the Vocational Rehabilitation Office. A person with a disability making an independent choice like that is an alien concept out here in eastern Oregon."

Dziennik says her youth and experience in rural areas made Williams an extraordinary member of the delegation and a symbol of a positive future for the disability rights movement.

She grew up on Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska, home to the largest brown bear in the world. She was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 22 months. With only 50 miles of road accessible from Kodiak, harsh winters and deep-mud much of the rest of the year, Williams learned to overcome difficulties and to read a lot of books.

Many of those books dealt with the civil rights movement, the history of the slave trade and the ill treatment of native Americans. "My hero was Martin Luther King. I loved to listen to his speeches."

So, October was a fitting and timely meeting of worlds.

The first time she ever visited her nation's capitol, Williams saw Jessie Jackson and Martin Luther King III stand up before 3,500 demonstrators on the Capitol lawn and compare the fight for disability rights and the ADA to the civil rights movement of the 1960's.

"We are prepared again to bring street action and street heat," King shouted into the microphone to an eruption of cheers. "It is unfortunate that we have to do that. Enough is enough. We aren't going to take it any more... Don't ever get tired. We have come too far. No one ever told us our roads would be easy but I know our God did not bring us this far to leave us now."

Williams' face, among the crowd, lit up with a smile. It is time for a new generation.

Eastwood wins against ADA - Round two will be fought in congress

by Jim Patterson

In what some activists call a surprise judgment, a jury found that superstar Clint Eastwood was not liable to pay damages of $577,000 to a disabled woman, Dian zum Brunnen, who has muscular dystrophy. Ms. zum Brunnen and her husband sought lodging at the actor's Mission Ranch Inn near Carmel, Calif. in 1997 and filed suit against Eastwood. He was found liable for two ADA violations - insufficient signs to the restrooms and no ramp access to the inn. This past spring, he took his case to Congress and helped Republican congressman Mark Foley drafted the Americans With Disabilities Notification Act (ADNA) which would give owners of small businesses 90 days to comply with ADA violations.