Today is the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and as anniversaries do, it sparks us to remember the event, reflect on the actions that led to the event, look at where we are now, and contemplate our future. We are proud of the role DREDF played then and continues to play now.
Reflection
The day President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA, July 26,1990, came after years of tireless work and leadership by DREDF Government Affairs Director Pat “The General” Wright, Directing Attorney Arlene Mayerson and policy analysts Mary Lou Breslin and Marilyn Golden. DREDF worked alongside other activists and lawyers to make this long-awaited day a reality. Work made possible because of the decades of activism of the disability rights movement. As Arlene describes in this recent interview for the Administration for Community Living, and as she wrote in 1992, in The History of the Americans with Disabilities Act – A Movement Perspective:
“The history of the ADA did not begin on July 26, 1990 at the signing ceremony at the White House. It did not begin in 1988 when the first ADA was introduced in Congress. The ADA story began a long time ago in cities and towns throughout the United States when people with disabilities began to challenge societal barriers that excluded them from their communities, and when parents of children with disabilities began to fight against the exclusion and segregation of their children. It began with the establishment of local groups to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. It began with the establishment of the independent living movement which challenged the notion that people with disabilities needed to be institutionalized, and which fought for and provided services for people with disabilities to live in the community.”
This set the foundation for the day when thousands of disabled people and our allies gathered on the East Lawn of the White House to celebrate the first comprehensive civil rights law since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Interviews conducted in 1999 and 2000 with DREDF’s ADA team reveal the legal strategy (Arlene Mayerson) (VIDEO), grassroots organizing (Marilyn Golden) (VIDEO), and overall political and disability community strategy (Pat Wright) (VIDEO).
After the ADA, DREDF continued our work to implement the new law. First, DREDF represented 504 disability groups across the United States in comments on the proposed regulations to ensure that the words of the law had the strongest possible interpretations. We also engaged in litigation to implement the law and have used the equality principles that formed the foundation of the ADA to forge victories that could not have been imagined in 1990 – bringing captions to the Internet streaming explosion, and bringing basic health care to students with diabetes and other health conditions in school.
Today
DREDF continues to use the ADA to meet today’s challenges. DREDF wrote a seminal paper , and with the National Council on Disability convened a meeting to examine the disproportionate discipline of disabled Black and Brown students. Advocates have used the ADA to end institutionalization and oppose the detainment of immigrants. And while no one could have imagined that the ADA would be used to protect the lives of disabled people during a global pandemic, DREDF has worked in coalition with other advocates to challenge the rationing policies of states that devalue our lives, and to ensure that personal assistants, disability service providers, and family members can accompany disabled people who are admitted to hospitals.
The Future
We recognize that all of our work, now and always, must be done with an intersectional lens to correct the wrongs that ableism, racism, xenophobia, sexism, and white supremacy have compounded against BIPOC.
We will continue to work in Washington DC with our civil rights allies in coalitions like the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights who were with us during the passage of the ADA, and Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities , and strengthen our collaborations with others.
We will leverage our legal, public policy, and educational work with media advocacy to promote accurate representation of people with disabilities, and to eliminate disability stereotypes and misinformation in news, television, films, and other media.
We will always listen to what disabled people tell us is happening on the ground (and, since we’re talking about the future, in space).
Ensuring the essential rights guaranteed by the ADA, is a work in progress. A never-ending evolution that shifts to meet the changing needs of people as long as societies continue to grow, reassess and adapt. All of us at DREDF are honored to do this work and we look forward to the next 30 years of advances for the rights of disabled people.