By:
Catherine Kudlick
As the nation prepares to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 2015, the Paul K. Longmore
Institute will celebrate the unique Bay Area contributions to disability
rights. Our ambitious exhibit “Patient No More!” will focus on what is
known as “the 504 occupation” in 1977 when more than one hundred brave
women and men paved the way for so many of us and passing the ADA
thirteen years later. We must return to thinking of the Americans with
Disabilities Act as the product of grassroots activism and disabled
people’s political savvy rather than a mandate somehow passed down from
on high. To quote
Paul Longmore’s speech
at the 20th ADA Anniversary celebration in San Francisco, “We are the
ones who did this. This wasn’t handed to us. This wasn’t an act of
charity. This wasn’t something done paternalistically. We
made it happen.
We did it.”
The little-known story of the 504 protests is amazing. On April 5,
1977, dozens of disabled people from diverse racial and social
backgrounds entered San Francisco’s office of Health, Education, and
Welfare for twenty-five days in what remains the longest occupation of a
federal building in US history. They came on crutches, using canes, and
in wheelchairs; some used American Sign Language, others augmented
communication devices. Many others contributed simply by showing up to
offer support. Most arrived with little more than the clothes on their
backs, guided by a few vague ideas about why they were there. Yet enough
of them had political smarts, experience with building coalitions,
tenacity, and fire in their bellies to confront the government of a
major world power about their civil rights, and win.
They had come because of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.
Buried in the law to accommodate returning Vietnam veterans was a
provision based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act stipulating that
individuals with disabilities “should not be denied the benefit of, or
be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving
federal financial assistance.” Cast in broad terms and bureaucratic
language, Section 504 – which would serve as a model for the Americans
with Disabilities Act thirteen years later – basically said that
everything touched by the U.S. government needed to be fully accessible
to people with disabilities: schools, universities, public offices,
transit systems, hospitals. After over four years of government stalling
that extended to the newly-elected allegedly pro-disability rights
Carter administration, the regulations still awaited a final signature.
Infuriated, hundreds of protesters around the country occupied
several federal buildings. Most were starved out within a day or two.
But San Francisco was different. The organizers’ incredible
resourcefulness and months of cementing relationships with local
community organizations resulted in an unlikely, dedicated coalition of
supporters that included the Black Panthers, the gay community’s
Butterfly Brigade, labor unions, Glide Memorial Church, Safeway and
McDonald’s, along with sympathetic local and national politicians.
Thanks to food, showers, and other forms of help, the 504 occupiers held
on for nearly a month, generating national attention and ultimately
helping to gain the support necessary for signing the regulations.
The 504 Occupation would be a watershed personal and political
moment, one that solidified the Bay Area’s key role in the struggle for
disability rights. The Americans with Disabilities Act would not exist
in its present form – or even at all – without the energy, people, and
determination galvanized by this unparalleled historical moment. Thanks
in no small part to the 504 sit-in, cross-disability thinking would be
central to the ADA’s scope and reach and would shape the disability
rights movement in general. The experience of spending more than three
weeks in close proximity among people with a wide array of disabilities
during what became simply known as “504” fostered an esprit de corps and
coalitions that would have been unimaginable a few years earlier. When
officials first cut the phone lines, Deaf people stood at the windows
and used American Sign Language to convey messages between protesters
inside and outside the building, while, blind people fed and toiletted
quadriplegics. Friendships and romances formed. The experience of 504
helped create a sense of community grounded in successful activism that
in turn gave people with disabilities a sense of their historical
agency. Once people with disabilities had shown this prospect to the
outside world and to themselves, they could continue to fight for
expanding their civil rights. Indeed, a number of 504 participants would
go on to help forge the ADA as well as key organizations such as
Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund -DREDF (1979) and the
World Institute on Disability – WID (1983) that promote disability
rights.
And thanks to insisting that 504 be signed unchanged, language
linking disability rights to civil rights would find its way into the
law of the land. Section 504 states in part: “No otherwise qualified
handicapped individual in the United States shall, solely by reason of
his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the
benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or
activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act is far from perfect. But thanks
in no small part to our brave sisters and brothers 37 years ago, at its
core the ADA is more about rights than about charity. Let us not forget
that this movement, like our nation and its other ongoing struggles for
civil rights, was forged in revolution. By sharing this history, we hope
to inspire? incite? future generations to continue this important work.
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| Outside of the HEW building, April 1977. Photograph by Anthony Tusler. |
