TRIPIL Web Article Archives

Still Not Equal - Freedom Fighters

Article By: Observer Reporter
Published: 1998-07-26
By: Joe Smydo and Stan Diamond

Article has been reformatted for archival purposes.

John Lorence Jr.'s first visit to the Greene County Courthouse left him doubting the vaunted American promise of equal justice under the law.

Because the building did not have an elevator, the Morgan Township resident had to be lifted out of his wheelchair and carried up spiral stairs to the courtroom.

"And that is the first time I saw how the system really segregates me," said Lorence, who has a form of muscular dystrophy and cannot use his arms or legs.

Experiences like that pushed Lorence into the disability rights movement, a struggle for independence and equality that's being played out at the corner store and in the halls of Congress.

Washington, Greene, Fayette and Allegheny counties are a hotbed of the movement, which has been inching along for more than a generation, largely unnoticed by the nondisabled world.

Ruth Brenyo of West Mifflin said she helped found a chapter of Open Doors for the Handicapped in 1957, the same year the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to pursue civil rights for black people.

The disability rights movement is similar in many respects to the civil rights movement, and people with disabilities often draw parallels between their experiences and those of the black community.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, and people with disabilities are still fighting to get on board buses. Black students demanded to be served at lunch counters, and people with disabilities are waging their own battle for access to stores, restaurants and hotels.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law eight years ago today, has been called the Emancipation Proclamation of the disability community. But just as Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and later civil rights laws failed to abolish racism, the ADA did not level the playing field for people with disabilities automatically.

Disability rights activists are using the ADA to fight the discrimination and physical barriers they say they continue to find everywhere. They call the eight years since the law's passage the period of Reconstruction.

Like King and his followers during the 1950s and 60s, some disability rights activists use marches, sit-ins and other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience to call attention to the struggle.

In June 1997, Lorence and about 200 other members of the radical group ADAPT descended on Washington, D.C., to protest for wheelchair-accessible buses and a national home-care program that would help people with disabilities stay out of nursing homes. During one protest, some ADAPT members handcuffed themselves to a building for about three hours.

"We're not always what you call 'nice' about it," Stephanie Thomas, an ADAPT organizer from Austin, Texas, explained to new group members. But then, she added, there's nothing nice about lying in a pool of urine in a nursing home bed, "waiting for the call light to be answered."

Not all members of the disability community embrace militancy. Bob Schneider of North Franklin Township, for one, describes militancy as mean-spirited and unnecessary.

"The radical movement has attracted ruthless people," he said. Schneider also said ADAPT members demean themselves when they "flop around the ground and slobber and drool" at protests.

The way Schneider sees it, negotiation and legal maneuvering are more effective tactics in the fight for equality. Both are employed regularly.

With the ADA and other laws behind them, people with disabilities have filed waves of lawsuits against those they accuse of violating their rights at school, at work, even at the Dairy Queen and the lottery outlet.

Every state has a federally funded protection and advocacy system that provides free legal representation to those who experience discrimination because of a disability.

"We've got a lot of successes under our belt," said Curtis Decker, executive director of the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems in Washington, D.C.

While they disagree on the means, members of the disability community agree on the objectives of the movement.

"We want what you got," said Jim Glozier, an ADAPT member from Freeport Township whose son, Kyle, 12, has cerebral palsy.

"We want to be able to go to the same schools. We want to be able to compete for the same jobs. We want to be able to get into the same buildings."

Disability rights activists hope to shatter the stereotypes ingrained in the public psyche.

Forget the poster child and the Jerry Lewis telethon, some activists say. People with disabilities want respect and opportunity, not society's pity or protection.

"Do you want to be taken care of? You left your mother's house because of that," Lorence said.

Rallying the troops

They didn't have money for a conference center, so they gathered in the dimly lit parking garage two levels below the Red Roof Inn in Chinatown.

Ceiling fans did little to ease the summer swelter. The public-address system overheated, filling the room with the sound and smell of sizzling wires.

But this group, accustomed to adversity, made the best of it.

During the protests in Washington, D.C., in June 1997, ADAPT organizers used the parking garage for the same reasons that leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott used Baptist churches in 1955 -- to disseminate information and rally the troops.

From the ceiling hung a banner with the ADAPT logo -- a stick figure in a wheelchair, upraised hands in chains. Beside the picture, the battle cry, "Free Our People."

The troops had come to the nation's capital from all over the United States. They had "visible disabilities" and "hidden disabilities," visual impairments and hearing impairments, mental illnesses and mental retardation, spinal cord injuries and developmental disabilities.

One man wore a sweater and gloves, even though the temperature hovered around 100 degrees that day, and one woman carried around a foam cup filled with strips of bacon from the breakfast buffet.

On the street, they might have been ridiculed, but ADAPT welcomed them with open arms.

For the benefit of newcomers, organizer Gayle Hafner of Maryland explained the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience, a talk reminiscent of the workshops that Gandhi devotee James Lawson conducted before sending black students on protests at lunch counters and department stores.

"Is it illegal to do some of what we're doing? Hell, yes," Hafner said.

She said the protesters would be breaking minor laws -- obstructing doorways, for example -- for a greater good.

Hafner told her listeners not to take weapons, alcohol or drugs on protests, and she warned them not to resist if the police moved in to arrest them.

"Violence will not be tolerated," she said. "It doesn't work. It's not why we're here."

If arrested, ADAPT members do not post bond, a throwback to the civil rights movement, when activists found a tactical advantage in making their jailers provide bed, board and other care.

"The minute the officer says you're under arrest, he's liable for whatever you need," Roland Sykes, a veteran protester from Dayton, Ohio, said later.

"If you have a medical episode and you got to go to the hospital, they got to pay for it. They don't want you in the jail."

Indeed, many protests end without a single arrest, and not only because police balk at the expense.

Paddy wagons and jails often are not wheelchair-accessible, so arresting protesters with disabilities can be a logistical nightmare.

Image works in ADAPT's favor, too. No matter how gentle they may be, police officers are apt to look like bullies when they start carting away people in wheelchairs.

ADAPT knows how to play these trump cards.

Sykes said he has been arrested about a dozen times, but has never spent more than a night in jail.

Fines are often minimal as well. Hafner said the system recognizes that many people with disabilities live on the edge of poverty.

Why direct action?

The next day, ADAPT's forces mustered on the sidewalk outside the Red Roof Inn and waited for marching orders.

They wore T-shirts promoting ADAPT and brandished signs promoting Medicaid Community Attendant Services Act (MiCASA), the national home-care bill they wanted House Speaker Newt Gingrich to introduce.

Organizers said Gingrich had promised months earlier to introduce MiCASA by noon that day. They figured a sit-in in the Capitol rotunda during the height of the tourist season would force him to keep his promise.

"Either we'll celebrate the introduction of CASA, or we'll do what ADAPT has done well: Hold people to their promises and beat them up," organizer Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas, had said in the parking garage.

Not knowing how long they would be, the protesters put snacks, bottled water and medicines into backpacks, which they strapped to the backs of their wheelchairs. Bumper stickers and buttons adorned the chairs:

"The shortest distance between two points is usually inaccessible."

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not special rights."

"Not Dead Yet."

"ADAPT or perish."

The wheelchairs edged off the sidewalk and began rolling down 5th Street toward the Capitol about a mile away. Jim Glozier of Freeport Township, Greene County, marched at the head of the column, a straw hat helping to keep the sun at bay.

Notified of the march, District of Columbia police closed intersections ahead of the protesters so they would have an unencumbered ride along some of the capital's busiest streets.

This group could not climb the Capitol's majestic steps as so many tourists do. Rather, the protesters headed straight for the wheelchair-accessible doors at ground level, where there was no panoramic view of the city, only grass and a parking lot.

The protesters formed a circle in the rotunda, and called the speaker's office on a cellular phone to say they would not leave until MiCASA had been introduced.

Tourists flowed through the rotunda, admiring the grandeur. The protesters, though, paid little attention to the marble and gold leaf.

"Keep your eye on the prize, on what you're trying to accomplish," Gayle Hafner had told them in the parking garage, invoking the mantra of the civil rights movement.

A contingent of Capitol police officers huddled in a doorway, eyes on the protesters.

Roland Sykes, the veteran ADAPT member from Dayton, Ohio, wore a headset that kept him in radio contact with other group leaders.

Sykes said people with disabilities would lead happier, more dignified lives if they had attendants come into their homes to help them with bathing, dressing and other daily tasks. He has a dim view of nursing homes.

"Nursing homes are where we segregate and exterminate people with disabilities in America," Sykes said.

Statues and busts of famous Americans dot the rotunda. Karen Bogdan of Carmichaels parked her wheelchair near a likeness of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who 34 years before had outlined the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience in a letter he wrote from the Birmingham, Ala., jail.

"You may well ask: Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue," King wrote.

For more than 20 years, Bogdan lived in Western Center, a Cecil Township complex for people who are mentally retarded.

"It was OK. It wasn't half as bad as people think it is. But I had enough of it ... I needed my independence," said Bogdan, who left Western in 1987.

As the hours passed, rumors about Gingrich's intentions swirled around the room.

He would introduce MiCASA. He would not introduce it. Perhaps the protesters would have to raise the stakes by blocking the rotunda doors, action certain to provoke the growing company of police officers.

More than five hours after the sit-in began, Stephanie Thomas called a huddle. Wheelchairs zipped to the center of the room, and Thomas said Gingrich's staff had agreed to meet with the group to finalize language in the bill.

The next day, Gingrich introduced MiCASA as House Bill 2020, and ADAPT went on the offensive again.

No time for the group to rest on its laurels. The leadership wanted to twist as many arms as possible before sending the group home for the summer.

The target this time was the U.S. Department of Transportation. ADAPT believes the department has been soft on Greyhound Lines Inc., which does not have wheelchair lifts on its buses.

The wheelchairs slipped off the sidewalk and headed up H Street, passing beneath the decorative arch marking the entrance to Chinatown.

The procession, lacking a police escort this time, snarled traffic almost immediately. "Get your ass on the sidewalk," one motorist yelled.

Organizers had warned the marchers to maintain a tight formation, saying gaps in the line would give authorities an opportunity to move in and halt the procession.

When they caught wind of the march, police didn't try to interfere but drove ahead of the group, clearing traffic out of the way.

When the procession reached the DOT offices, four teams broke away from the group and sped across the plaza, each contingent making a beeline for a set of doors.

Some of the protesters got inside the building, positioned their wheelchairs in front of the doors and locked down the wheels.

Other protesters blocked doors from the outside. A handful, including Trinity High School graduate Shauna Eakin, attached themselves to the building with handcuffs.

The heat index reached 105 degrees that day -- so hot that social-service agencies in the city were giving away fans.

ADAPT members carried glasses of water to their counterparts who were blocking doors on the outside. Some of those at the doors also asked to be squirted with spritz bottles.

DOT employees and tourists watched in fascination.

Leadership positions in ADAPT are rotated among the members, just as James Lawson's disciples shared the role of spokesman.

Barbara Toomer of Salt Lake City, Utah, had charge this day, and she demanded an audience with Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater.

A security agent told Toomer that Slater was out of town. Fine, she told him, the group wanted to make an appointment to see him.

The protesters chanted off and on. The department's security agents scurried back and forth, and federal police arrived with bolt cutters.

One officer photographed the protesters. Bob Kafka, the organizer from Austin, Texas, offered a giant grin when the instant camera was turned on him.

About three hours after the protest began, officials handed Toomer a letter from Melissa J. Spillenkothen, the assistant secretary for administration.

"In response to your request, Secretary Slater would be willing to meet with representatives of ADAPT, as he does with other groups having an interest in transportation matters," the letter said. "The meeting would be arranged promptly, within the constraints of his schedule."

Toomer's response: not good enough. She wanted a timetable for the meeting.

The pressure was on the department, which needed to release a small army of employees through the blocked doors at the end of the day. A short time later, Toomer received a revised letter.

"Every effort will be made to schedule a meeting in the next 60 days," Spillenkothen wrote.

The protesters moved away from the doors and gathered in the plaza, where Toomer addressed them with a bullhorn. "We won," she said.

'We're fighting a war'

Jim Glozier says nonviolent civil disobedience is a legitimate weapon in the struggle for civil rights.

"We're fighting a war. We're fighting a war against injustice," said Glozier, assistant director of Tri-County Patriots for Independent Living (TRIPIL) in Washington.

As a "center for independent living," TRIPIL receives state and federal money to provide peer support and other services to people with disabilities in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties.

Employees consider advocacy an important part of TRIPIL's mission, and they cherish their strong affiliation with ADAPT.

In November 1996, Glozier, other employees and some of TRIPIL's clients revolted against a board of directors that wanted to restrict the agency's involvement in protests.

The rebels said the board members, even those with disabilities, had lost touch with the needs of the disability community. They named the purge "Operation Alien Dispatch," called in reinforcements from other cities and marched to the board members' homes and offices to demand they resign.

Woody Osburn, executive director of Ohio State Independent Living Council and a former TRIPIL employee, took part in the revolt. Lou Diehl, a former TRIPIL employee who was running a center for independent living in Berks County at the time, also traveled to Washington for the rebellion.

Bob and Janet Schneider, North Franklin Township residents who have disabilities, called the police when the protesters gathered at their home. Janet Schneider, one of the board members, said one protester refused to budge from the front door.

The protesters also gathered on a floor of Washington County Health Center to pressure Dee Laabs, a member of the nursing staff, into quitting the board. The protesters dispersed after Laabs left the building undetected.

TRIPIL sent out a fax with board members' home phone numbers and encouraged radicals across the nation to join the fray long distance. Bob Keplar of Luzerne Township, Fayette County, said he received about 100 phone calls from TRIPIL supporters, all demanding he resign.

After Janet Schneider, Laabs, Keplar and seven other board members resigned, the rebels stacked the board with people sharing their point of view.

Among centers for independent living, TRIPIL is a standout, Osburn said. Other CILs, he said, have minimized the advocacy part of their mission because they do not want to offend the government agencies that fund them.

"All they are now is little social-service agencies that pander to local and state politicians, that pander to anybody with perceived power," Osburn said.

TRIPIL is a sort of union hall for the disability community, a place for members to draw solace and inspiration from each other.

Motivational signs hang on the walls: "Nurturing a social movement." "Why are we still dying in nursing homes?" "No quality of life without equality of life."

A table occupies one-fourth of the reception area. There, the activists meet to plan strategy before a local protest and to make the signs they hold while demonstrating.

They say they are merely following the lead of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and of patriots from an earlier era. TRIPIL quotes Frederick Douglass, the black author and orator, in one of its brochures:

"Those who profess to advocate freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without the thunder and lightning."

TRIPIL once stood for Tri-County "Partnership" for Independent Living. The group modified its name because Gov. Tom Ridge referred to a group of disability rights protesters as "patriots" in 1995, said John Lorence Jr., a civil rights specialist at TRIPIL.

Mike Auberger, an ADAPT leader from Denver, Colo., said protests draw attention to the struggles of the disability community and give the protesters a taste of the power they lack as individuals. He rejects the notion that militancy gives the movement a black eye.

"The fact is, we're doing the right thing," Auberger said.

Keplar, the Schneiders and Jim Steedle, a deposed board member from Finleyville, disagree.

They said the employees of TRIPIL spend so much time on ADAPT-style actions and are so caught up in the spirit of the movement that they neglect their clients in Southwestern Pennsylvania. That's why the board of directors wanted to restrict the agency's involvement in protests.

"You can't be doing your job and be somewhere else for a week demonstrating," said Keplar, a paraplegic for about 30 years.

At the time of the rebellion, board members wanted more information about the agency's finances and more control over the agency's activities.

TRIPIL spent $50,000 on travel in a year, and executive director Kathleen Kleinmann was out of the office frequently, said Janet Schneider, who has a connective tissue disorder.

Kleinmann denied that protests are hurting the agency, saying "I don't see it suffering. The budget's going great. The audits are fine."

TRIPIL's records indicate the agency spent about $43,000 on travel in fiscal year 1995-96, with Kleinmann's share totaling $3,800. Kleinmann said government money is not used to pay for travel or other expenses associated with protests; rather, she said, those costs are covered by private grants and fund-raisers.

Janet Schneider said an employee of the Washington bus station called her one day in February 1997 to say that a man with a disability needed help getting aboard a bus that did not have a wheelchair lift. Schneider said she referred the caller to TRIPIL and later learned that an official there ranted about the inaccessible bus but did not send anyone to help the man get aboard.

"It was more important to preach that the bus be accessible," Schneider said.

Like Keplar, the Schneiders and Steedle, Dianna Swihart and Elizabeth Todd would like the people at TRIPIL to pay more attention to the people they're paid to serve.

"They don't have a clue about disability," said Swihart, an Amwell Township resident who has multiple sclerosis.

Although home care is not an entitlement now, Pennsylvania and other states offer it to certain residents with disabilities, often on a first-come, first-served basis with a limited amount of money.

Swihart and Todd, her nurse and advocate, said TRIPIL at first did not respond to their complaints about the home-care program the agency was administering with state money. When the complaints continued, Todd said, TRIPIL decided to cut off her service.

"They won't accept suggestions," Todd said. "They're not interested in problem-solving. They don't care about complaints."

Todd said Swihart, a single mother of two, successfully appealed TRIPIL's decision through an administrative law judge and continues to receive care in her home.

"We've had criminals in here," said Todd, who claims that one attendant illegally withdrew $600 from Swihart's bank account.

Some of the attendants have been poorly trained, Todd said, and one told Swihart she was "just two steps from the county home" -- a surprising statement, given TRIPIL's opposition to nursing homes.

Todd said she believes TRIPIL employees are sincere about the disability rights movement. But she added, "We have to pay attention to individuals as well."

Kleinmann declined to discuss Swihart in detail, but said state officials supported TRIPIL's handling of the case.

Some see a caste system at TRIPIL.

Steedle said he asked to be put on TRIPIL's waiting list for attendant care in 1993 and wonders whether his opposition to militancy kept him there four years.

In the meantime, he said, TRIPIL hired an employee -- a radical -- from another state and gave him home care right away. "I need to know how that happened," he said.

TRIPIL said Steedle did not apply for the service until 1994, and Kleinmann said the radical Steedle mentioned first received attendant care through another agency's program, then switched to TRIPIL's program when a slot opened up.

She said the state, not TRIPIL, decides when a person is taken off the waiting list and given service; Steedle said the state couldn't take him off the list until TRIPIL put him on.

TRIPIL no longer administers that program.

Some disability rights advocates dislike the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon because the host, Jerry Lewis, raises money by making viewers feel sorry for children with disabilities. Bob Schneider said protesters do much the same thing -- exploit people's emotions to get their way.

"I can't see much difference between Jerry Lewis and Kathleen Kleinmann, and you can quote me on that. They're two sides to the same coin," he said.

Instead of making lives for themselves, some of the radicals just sit around and wait for the next protest, Janet Schneider said.

"They live for that," she said. "I'm sorry. I can't do that."

To the radicals, people like the Schneiders are "comfortable crips" or "Uncle Toms" because they're satisfied with their lives and don't want to rock the boat.

The effectiveness of militancy is a matter of debate.

ADAPT takes credit for the transportation provisions in the Americans with Disabilities Act and for Newt Gingrich's introduction of MiCASA.

Amy Coggin, spokeswoman for the American Public Transit Association, said ADAPT protests were "very effective" in bringing the need for wheelchair-accessible transportation to the public's attention.

But a spokesman for Gingrich denied that the Capitol sit-in played any role in the introduction of MiCASA, saying the speaker already had decided to sponsor the bill.

The American Health Care Association, the target of numerous protests because its member nursing homes receive Medicaid money that ADAPT wants for home care, says militancy is "misdirected and will not help increase the availability of home- and community-based services in this country."

"AHCA believes that the way to influence lawmakers is not through staged media events, but by building coalitions that can have true influence in the halls of Congress, where long-term care funding decisions are made," the group said in a statement.

Keplar, the Schneiders and Steedle also view protests as ineffective. They insist that the people who work behind the scenes -- lobbying, making phone calls, writing letters -- accomplish more than those who handcuff themselves to buildings.

"I don't believe ADAPT is ever going to do any good," Keplar said. "I only think it's going to work backwards."

The debate over militancy is healthy because it shows that advocates are staying "right up to the moment on what the people we represent want," said Bruce Williams, who works at the Center for Independent Living at Berkeley, Calif., the nation's first CIL.

Militancy is an unofficial activity at Berkeley. Williams said employees must take compensatory time to participate in protests.

At TRIPIL, employees use a combination of work time and vacation time on protests. The use of vacation time shows the employee's personal commitment to the cause, Lorence said.

The reverberations from the TRIPIL rebellion continued long after the 10 board members resigned.

Six protesters eventually were convicted of trespassing at the Schneiders' home. Janet Schneider said it's a disgrace that TRIPIL continues to employ people who committed crimes against individuals with disabilities.

Lou Diehl said his participation in the revolution was one of the reasons he was asked to resign as executive director of the Berks County CIL. He said the conservative board of directors did not want a controversial figure running the organization.

When the disability rights magazine Mouth published an article praising the rebels at TRIPIL, Bob Schneider wrote a letter to editor Josie Byzek.

"I believe that Malcolm X once said that 'the black community will never be liberated until we learn to be united.' As long as those within the disability community who subscribe to radical militant philosophies continue to try to exclude moderates and conservatives from the struggle and continue to portray us as demons and devils, we will never all be free," Schneider wrote.

Byzek wrote back to say the article was an accurate account of how the rebels "rescued their CIL from a sell-out board."

"And aren't you the slime ball that called the police on your own people?" she asked.

Infuriated, Schneider fired off another letter.

"The bravery you attribute to the rabble who supposedly 'saved' TRIPIL is the bravery that comes from being part of a mob," he wrote. "It is the type of bravery that allows a coward in a hood to participate in a lynching."

Another form of advocacy

In 1961, a Harlem native journeyed south to register black voters in the Mississippi back country.

Bob Moses gave elementary civics lessons, then led his most courageous followers to the county registrar's office to try to get their names on the rolls.

Thirty-five years later, Yvonne Siler and Ian Engle conducted their own registration campaign in a couple of Michigan's institutions for people with disabilities.

While they didn't put their lives on the line, as Moses and his aspiring voters did in Mississippi, Siler and Engle encountered a certain amount of resistance from employees of the institutions.

People with disabilities aren't competent to vote, the advocates were told. Residents of the institutions don't pay taxes, so they shouldn't be allowed to vote, the pair also was told.

Siler and Engle refused to be dissuaded. They held a series of workshops about the electoral process and registered about 100 voters in the weeks before the 1996 general election.

"I explained how one vote can decide who is elected," Engle said at a seminar in May 1997.

He and Siler work for Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service, part of a congressionally mandated network of disability rights agencies.

The P&A organizations, one in every state, were founded 21 years ago to investigate abuse and neglect in institutions for people with developmental disabilities.

Today, the P&As have a much broader role, helping people with all kinds of disabilities obtain and exercise their civil rights.

In a fight, negotiation and lawsuits are the P&As' weapons of choice, just as they were the NAACP's preferred tools during the civil rights movement.

In fiscal year 1996-97, P&As provided free legal and advocacy services to 720,000 people, making them the "primary nonfederal enforcers" of the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (NAPAS).

With their button-down shirts and briefcases, the attorneys and advocates who work for P&As look much different than ADAPT's casually clad shock troops. But they all have the same goal: the full integration of people with disabilities into society.

Engle and Siler conducted five workshops before the election. They discussed political parties, candidates and issues and invited candidates into the institutions to field questions from the residents.

"They had the same questions you and I have for our legislators," Siler said in May 1997 at the NAPAS conference in Washington, D.C.

Funded by the federal government, the P&As didn't have to hold their conference in a parking garage. They met at the Renaissance, a hotel with liveried bellhops a few blocks from the Red Roof Inn in Chinatown.

The P&As gathered not to march and protest, but to exchange ideas and tricks of the trade. James Harrington of Advocacy Inc., the Texas P&A, explained how a blitz of minor lawsuits can yield dramatic change.

During "Restaurant Week," the P&A filed suit against a number of eateries that did not meet the accessibility standards of the ADA. The P&A also had "Bank Week," "Dairy Queen Week," "Doctor Week" and "Lawyer Week," one after another.

"Doctors think they're exempt because they're God, and lawyers think they're exempt because they're above the law," said Harrington, a lawyer.

Harrington said the agency chose easy cases -- "slam dunks" -- and hoped to start a panic among those who had been flouting the ADA.

He said he likes to target chain stores because they have more money and fewer excuses than mom-and-pop establishments. He said he has told chains to make all of their stores accessible "or we'll just follow you around the state."

"Think of the impact that has," he said.

Often, the defendants settle out of court. But Harrington offered some advice to attorneys who find themselves before a judge and jury: Let the clients tell their stories in court.

"The stories they tell are so powerful," he said.

Citing the possibility of contamination, a Texas brewery refused to let a tourist with a vision impairment take his guide dog through the production area. The man sued.

The P&A argued the law, but Harrington said the client's heartrending story won the case.

"He's the one that educated the judge about what the ADA means," Harrington said.

P&As take on government agencies, too. Pennsylvania Protection and Advocacy Inc. and a private attorney sued the Pennsylvania Lottery in federal court in 1995, claiming some lottery ticket outlets were not in compliance with the accessibility provisions of the ADA.

Under a settlement, the lottery agreed to issue no more licenses to inaccessible retailers, to require stores that already had licenses to comply with the ADA and to take licenses from stores that refused to comply, the P&A reported.

"It's been a very successful case," P&A director Kevin Casey said. "I think we probably have had more effect on the issue of accessibility with that case than any other single case."

With that lawsuit, the P&A ensured the accessibility of 7,400 retailers statewide. Going after the stores one by one "would have been almost impossible," Casey said.

Daryl LeHew, the lottery's ADA coordinator, said he knew of only one store so far that lost its license because of the settlement.

At a cost of more than $500,000, the lottery hired Accessibility Development Associates Inc. of Pittsburgh, an arm of Three Rivers Center for Independent Living, to evaluate the accessibility of all its licensees.

The Pennsylvania P&A was one of two advocacy groups that sued the state Department of Public Welfare in 1989, claiming residents with mental retardation were being improperly housed in Western Center when they could be living happier, more typical lives in the community.

Since a settlement in 1992, more than 225 residents have been moved out of the Cecil Township institution and into community living arrangements. In January, the state announced it would close Western in 1999.

Not even the FBI is beyond the reach of disability rights advocates.

Disabilities Law Project, a subcontractor of Pennsylvania P&A, filed an administrative complaint with the FBI in 1996, claiming the agency violated the federal Rehabilitation Act by rejecting a man's employment application simply because he had asthma. Employees of the federal government's executive branch are covered by the Rehabilitation Act, not the ADA.

Under a settlement, the FBI agreed to give the man an "individualized assessment" to determine whether he could perform the essential functions of the job. Tom Earle, the P&A attorney, said his client ultimately was denied a job for reasons that had nothing to do with his disability.

Siler said she became an advocate because of her sister, who is mentally retarded. Others have similar reasons for working at P&As.

"It's certainly not the money," Casey said, claiming the P&A's top attorneys could triple their salaries by jumping to big law firms.

"Sometimes, we call it the 'being able to live with yourself when you go home on Friday night feeling.' ''

Too nice, too long

Many say that the radicals and moderates need each other, say that one group makes the other look more reasonable.

"You have to have what I call extremes in order to create a middle," said Tony Coelho, a former congressman from California who introduced the Americans with Disabilities Act in the House.

Strategy was a matter of dispute in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s time, too.

In his book "Parting the Waters," Taylor Branch notes that NAACP President Roy Wilkins was known to criticize the brash young protesters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

And Branch noted that James Lawson, a proponent of the protest, criticized the NAACP for its "preoccupation with fund-raising and lawsuits."

At times, disability rights advocates will fight for a single person's rights. Other times, advocates tackle an issue that affects dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of people with disabilities.

The battles fought in Washington and Waynesburg are being waged in many cities across the nation. Progress is coming too slowly for disability rights advocates, protesters and lawyers alike.

On John Lorence Jr.'s wheelchair is a button that says, "We've been too nice too long."

-- End of Part 1

Other Parts of the Story

• Part 1. Freedom Fighters:
  The disability rights movement is a struggle for independence, respect and equality. And that fight is far from over.
• Part 2. Access is a Civil Right:
  People with disabilities encounter barriers daily.
• Part 3. No Place Like Home:
  Disability rights advocates want to replace the hodgepodge of state programs with a national attendant care initiative.
• Part 4. Peers, not Classmates:
  Children with disabilities find themselves fighting for equal opportunities in the classroom.
• Part 5. 'We Will Ride':
  Transportation remains an acute problem, especially in rural areas.
• Part 6. Myths and stereotypes:
  People with disabilities are fighting attitudinal barriers, as well.
• Return to Main Article

Behind the Story

• Reporter Joe Smydo, 28, graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in 1991 with a degree in history. He was a staff writer at The Pittsburgh Press before joinging the O-R in June 1993. He covers county government and politics and has won Keystone and Golden Quill awards.
• Photographer Stan Diamond, 55, is a native of Burgettstown who began his career in 1966 in the Greene County Bureau in Waynesburg. He was a general assignment reporter and the bureau's primary photographer. In 1985, he transferred to the Washington office as a photographer. He has won several Keystone Press awards for his photography.

Copyright

Copyright © 1998 Observer Publishing Co. - Republished with permission