1998

 

"When historians look at the disability movement from 1973 to 2003, the most shocking thing will be how the federal government totally abdicated its responsibility for enforcement."
-- Steve Gold

 

a photo of a brass-on-stone sign at the U.S. Department of Justice has been phototerrorized to read "Department of Injustice."

 

"The DOJ is and always has been an unwilling participant in civil rights cases. Only after a community has made its case and made the issue politically embarrassing does the DOJ suddenly leap into action."
-- Richard DiPeppe

 

 

the cover of the Segregation issue

 

 

cartoon of a fuzzy-headed fundsucker bird shows him at a deak reaching for the phone with one hand, a "Maybe, Maybe Not" rubber stamp with the other. He says a hundred things at once, among them, "I'd like to cast the tying vote."

 

"I am out of prison -- the nursing home I was placed in for two years. I fought with all I had. With paper, pen, stamps, envelopes, I wrote to the President, the Vice President, my congressmen, my state senators.
"Plus I would disconnect the computers and throw away the plug in and outs. Same with the telephones. I would disconnect the cords, throw them away. They did not want to hear my voice. I made sure they heard no one else."
-- Mrs. Dolores King

 

"I can't go on locking people away because they're not quite... like me."
-- Pamela Proactive

 

"If cannabis is supplied to disabled people, it will most likely be dispensed in tablet form. Now call me stupid, but it seems to me that it's going to be a bit of a pain, crushing up tablets to sprinkle them into a joint."
-- Ian Stanton

 

"Alternative dispute resolution has its place. But tell me: alternative to what? It's an alternative to law enforcement. What is the business of the Department of Justice? Law enforcement."
-- Sara Kaltenborn

 

"They don't get it. They just don't get it at all. Some of them have worked in disability rights for twenty years and they still don't get it. The [DOJ's] Disability Rights Section has a lot of money, they have a lot of people. What they don't have is consciousness of what is important to disabled people."
-- Sharon Mistler

 

"The movement to close institutions, to assert the rights of people with disabilities to live in their own homes and communities, has been the most successful civil rights movement in our country. This is the cutting edge of civil rights work."
-- Judy Gran

 

"Just starting right at the top, in the findings of the ADA, Congress says, 'Historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate people with disabilities, and despite some improvements, such forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem.' Those findings should be used by people as a trumpet, a clarion."
-- Steve Gold

 

"We helped to explain [the ADA] to Congress, but also Congress was getting people from back home who explained it to them in no uncertain terms. The whole community of people with disabilities was alive, politically alive. I give Justin Dart credit for that. He really made people understand that they had some political power."
-- Rep. Major Owens

 

"All members of a democratic society have a fundamental right to health care of their own choosing. No denial of treatment, ever. No forced treatment, ever."
-- Justin Dart

 

"Too many parents, students, administrators, and members of the public share the cultural belief that people with disabilities are better off segregated. They also accept the belief that children with disabilities are too costly in regular classrooms.
"If adults with disabilities were included in the [IDEA] process, we wouldn't see these abuses.
You are proof to educators that individuals with disabilities have a voice and a place in the community."
-- Jan Rimkus

 

"The long-standing rule in America is that if you are not like everybody else, then you ought to disappear. Many people with disabilities are frightened of being seen. We want to be the invisible force. Invisible."
-- Johnny Long

 

"Under the disability blanket you are always being evaluated, but you are hardly ever asked to evaluate the services you get.
"Most of my friends don't have to live their lives in programs, according to schedules that don't have any relationship to how they want to live."
-- Michael Kennedy

 

 

 

a Mouth page from the Segregation issue says, "Listen up, America. We do not want a single special thing. We want what you've got.... We've had it with what you're giving. We want what you've got."

 

 onward, ever onward
to the crossroads year, 1999

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The photo on the DOJ sign is by Tom Olin.
Lucy phototerrorized it.

The fundsucker cartoon is by Scott Chambers.

"Listen Up, America" was written by Josie Byzek, Kevin Seik, and Lucy Gwin.