From: Julie Dawson 
Subject: Equality of Opportunity -- HISTORY.TXT  (fwd)
foundation.  It  seemed like manna from heaven,  said Burgdorf. 
Other legal centers active in promoting the rights of per sons
with disabilities were the Public Interest Law Center of
Philadelphia (PILCOP) and IN SPIRE of Georgetown University.
     While these organizations concentrated their efforts on the
legal front, others focused exclusively on political activism. 
In 1970, Judy Heumann, who used a wheelchair because of polio,
founded Disabled in Action (DIA).  It developed out of publicity
generated by Heumann s lawsuit against the New York City Board of
Education, which had denied her a license to teach.  Heumann and
such friends as Denise McQuade, Frita Tankus, and Larry Weisman
decided to use the case as a vehicle to heighten attention to
disability issues in general.  As people with disabilities and
their families read and saw the coverage of Heumann s case, many
began calling her about their own experiences: a cry for broader,
collective action.  Heumann and others felt that existing
organiza tions were not sufficiently politically active: DIA
would thus be overtly and exclusively political. It  was made up
of young disabled dreamers who believed that fighting for their
rights was their obligation,  said Heumann.  Two more DIA
organizations soon formed in Philadelphia and Baltimore.  They
were all cross-disability in focus and engaged such issues as
transportation, architectural accessibility, television
telethons, sheltered workshops, and institutionalization.  In
1972, Heumann led DIA to protest President Nixon s veto of the
Rehabilitation Act, culminating with two separate occupations of
Nixon s headquarters just days before the election.  DIA was also
instrumental in protesting HEW s delay in issuing the Section 504
regulations.
     The experiences with political protest, and especially the
1977 demonstrations, led Robert Funk, Mary Lou Breslin, Pat
Wright, and Judy Heumann, who were in varying ways associated
with the independent living center in Berkeley, to focus on the
absence of a national legal defense fund for persons with
disabilities.  As a partial solution, Heumann helped found the
Disability Law Resource Center (DLRC) as part of the Berkeley
Center for Independent Living.  The purpose of DLRC was to
provide legal services to individuals with disabilities: studies
had shown that persons with disabilities were not adequately
served by state legal services.  Robert Funk and Paul Silver were
among its leading attorneys.  
     To help manage the legal affairs of the organization, Funk
and Silver hired a young attorney named Arlene Mayerson. 
Interestingly, Mayerson had no prior experience in disability
law; she was trained in civil rights law.  But Funk and Silver
selected her over scores of applicants, including persons who
recounted stories of working with disabled children in camps. 
 They wanted someone who didn t have a lot of preconceived
notions about what was best for people with disabilities, 
Mayerson explained.   They wanted someone who thought in terms of
civil rights and whom they could mold in the disability rights
movement s image.   At DLRC Mayerson addressed any issue people
brought to her being kicked out by a landlord, getting fired, or
being denied entrance to a restaurant with whatever legal means
were available at the time. 
     DLRC was only a two-year model program.  As funding
approached its end, Funk, Breslin, and Wright decided that a more
comprehensive and long-lasting program was needed: a national
legal defense fund in the tradition of those for minorities and
women.  Consequently, in 1980, they created and opened a new
organization called DREDF, the Disability Rights Education and
Defense Fund.  Wright referred to Funk as  the architect  of the
operation, the one who was responsible for its stable foundation. 
Breslin provided the  vision  and excelled at management.  Wright
described herself as the  political strategist  and the  brawn 
of the organization.  Mayerson joined these three and represented
 the brains  behind the legal operation.  This blend of talent,
said Wright, was the key to DREDF s success. 
     Through DREDF, Funk, Wright, Breslin, and Mayerson could
advocate a national legislative and law reform agenda to provide
more leverage for meeting the concerns of persons with disabili
ties.  DREDF had two main goals.  The first was  to make
disability a real true partner in the civil rights community
nationally.   Up until that time, although many persons were
increasingly demanding their own rights, neither the civil rights
community nor most disability interest groups viewed disability
rights primarily as civil rights.  Rather, most groups focused
narrowly on their own missions shaped by particular diagnoses and
impairments.  DREDF hoped to change that.  The second goal was to
pursue law reform that would provide persons with disabilities
legal protections equivalent to those available to other
minorities and women. 
     As a first step toward meeting these goals, DREDF leaders
sponsored a meeting in San Francisco in the fall of 1980.  They
invited prominent strategists, organizers, and attorneys from
other civil rights causes.  The purpose of the meeting was
twofold.  First, DREDF wanted to educate the civil rights
community about disability.  They prepared a briefing book that
laid out how the education, employment, and voting problems faced
by persons with disabilities were similar to those confronting
racial minorities and women.  The second objective was to provide
DREDF with an opportunity to learn from the successes of other
civil rights causes and make contacts so that DREDF and other
disability organizations could become full partners in the civil
rights community.
     Funk, Wright, Breslin, and Mayerson learned an important
lesson from the meeting.  If DREDF were to achieve its goal of
being a truly national legal defense fund, it had to have a
presence in Washington.  Thus, in 1981, they set up an office in
the nation s capital.  There they encountered Evan Kemp, Jr.,
who, since 1980, ran the Disability Rights Center (DRC) an
organization sponsored by Ralph Nader.  Although Kemp worked out
of just two small rooms, he donated one to DREDF.  Kemp had begun
making his own imprint on the disability rights land scape. 
Since 1976, first under the direction of Deborah Kaplan and then
under Kemp, DRC focused its efforts on eliminating employment
discrimination by disseminating information and lobbying to
retain programs.  It also educated the general public about the
disability rights movement by submitting articles to newspapers
and magazines, and appearing on television shows and radio spots.
     These prejudices create stereotypes that offend our
self-respect, harm our efforts to live independent lives and
segregate us from the mainstream of society. 
          Evan Kemp, Jr. One of Kemp s favorite campaigns was
assaulting the image of  pity  that dominated public portrayals
of persons with disabilities. He focused especially on the Jerry
Lewis Mus cular Dystrophy Association Telethon, which, Kemp
argued, contributed to prejudice against persons with
disabilities.   These prejudices create stereotypes that offend
our self-respect, harm our efforts to live independent lives and
segregate us from the mainstream of society,  Kemp wrote. 
Moreover, the telethon reinforced infantile notions of persons
with disabilities by showing them as dependent children.  It lent
credibility to public images of disabled persons as  helpless.  
It also underscored the notion of persons with disabilities as
 sick  and in need of cure.   If it is truly to help,  said Kemp,
 the telethon must show disabled people working, raising families
and generally sharing in community life,  and promote independent
living programs rather than servile dependence.  Kemp also
defended efforts to integrate persons with disabilities through
barrier removal by arguing how it would benefit all Americans:
for example, bicyclists and stroller-users taking advantage of
curb cuts and subway elevators.
     After joining Kemp in Washington, Wright and Mayerson began
introducing themselves to people and groups around Washington  to
say we re here to do one thing, and that s civil rights.  The
early 1980s, however, were not exactly an auspicious time to be
heading to Washington to promote civil rights.  President Ronald
Reagan entered office with the intention of minimizing federal
regulations and reducing government s role in society, not
establishing new rights and more regulations.  This placed most
persons in the disability movement in a defensive posture, trying
to hold the territory already secured rather than launching new
expeditions.  But DREDF had other things in mind.
     One of the most important contacts DREDF made at the 1980
San Francisco meeting was with Ralph Neas, Director of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).  LCCR was the
legislative arm of the civil rights movement and coordinated the
legislative side of all civil rights initiatives.  It worked by
the consensus of all conference constituencies: for example,
African Americans and women.  DREDF believed that any effective
campaign to advance the civil rights of persons with disabilities
would need the support of LCCR, which carried over thirty years
of experience in civil rights, had extensive relationships in
Congress, and had firmly established its credibility.  Neas
described Wright and Mayerson as  thinking five or six years down
the line  in their solicitation of LCCR at the conference.  And
it was at the 1980 meeting, he said, that the strategy for
achieving comprehensive civil rights for persons with
disabilities was first articulated.
     DREDF was not the first disability organization to join with
LCCR.  PVA and ACB, for example, had been long-time members of
LCCR.  DREDF was unique, however, in seeking a tight alliance
with the civil rights community as its central mission.  Although
Wright and Mayerson established a link with Neas and the LCCR as
a result of the San Francisco conference, and Wright eventually
represented DREDF on the LCCR Executive Board, they did not think
they could count on LCCR s support immediately.  First they had
to establish their own credibility and get involved in LCCR
campaigns as much as any other group.  Over the next several
years they did precisely that.
                          First Victory
     Sometimes, as in basketball, the best way to launch an
offensive assault is to get a good defensive stop a steal, a
forced turnover.  President Reagan s Task Force on Regulatory
Relief provided just such an opportunity.  No single president
since Franklin Roosevelt, wrote one historian,  altered the
political landscape so radically and in such a short period  as
did Reagan. He entered office on January 21, 1981, with the
support of a business coalition dedicated to rescuing a
languishing, inflation-ridden economy.  To Reagan, government was
primarily an  obstacle to personal achievement and opportunity.  
Alternatively, he promoted the idea of the  self-reliant,
self-made individual.   For domestic policy, Reagan proposed and
obtained the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.  This act
provided deep personal and corporate tax cuts that primarily
benefitted the wealthiest Americans, on the assumption that
wealth would trickle down to assist lower-income persons. 
     By insisting on a combination of tax cuts and vast increases
in military spending, President Reagan was able to force a
reduction in federal, domestic expenditures.  Thus, in addition
to freeing up business through tax cuts, Reagan wanted to roll
back the development of the welfare state by advocating
reductions in social spending.  He achieved this aim through the
Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act of 1981 (OBRA), which cut
$140 billion from the federal budget through Fiscal Year 1985. 
Reagan also hoped to aid businesses, school boards, and
government units through a deregulation campaign: the Task Force
on Regulatory Relief.  He appointed Vice President Bush to lead
these endeavors, who in turn designated his chief counsel, C.
Boyden Gray, to take charge. Over 150 different pieces of enacted
legislation were targeted for analysis.
     Section 504 was now known by many as  the Civil Rights Law
for the Handicapped. As Kemp observed, President Reagan s
emphasis on self-reliance and rugged individualism resonated with
some aspects of the disability rights movement.  But Reagan s
initiatives did not generally offer hope to the disability commu
nity.  Reagan s civil rights record, for example, was cause for
concern: he had won his way to the California governorship in
part by standing against student and civil rights protests in the
1960s.  And his Task Force on Regulatory Relief posed a direct
threat to the civil rights gains of the disability community. 
Three of the early targets of the task force were the Section 504
regulations, the Education for all Handi capped Children Act
(P.L. 94-142), and the regulations for the Architectural and
Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (ATBCB).  Although the
ATBCB regulations were relatively technical and
non-controversial, changes to Section 504 and P.L. 94-142
regulations had potentially stagger ing implications.  
     Section 504 was now known by many as  the Civil Rights Law
for the Handicapped.  Any changes to it would be a major defeat
and could have dire consequences for other civil rights
regulations.  As one civil rights attorney explained, persons in
the disability community thought the Reagan administration
started with disability regulations because  they thought the
disability community was the least well organized and they could
slip these regulations through and use them as precedents for
other regulations.   Deregulation of P.L. 94-142 posed an
additional threat to the educational prospects of persons with
disabilities, which in turn might jeopardize employment
opportunities.  The administration also considered introducing
legislation limiting the level of service for, and individual
attention to, persons with disabilities in the educational
process.
     Prior to becoming chief counsel to Vice President Bush, Gray
had no experience with disability policy.  But these regulations
immersed him in it, and he gained a new education.  The Task
Force started with Section 504.  By January, 1982, Gray had
received a draft of proposed changes from the Department of
Justice (DOJ).  This draft was leaked, however, and came into the
hands of disability organizations, including DREDF.  Wright and
Funk convened a meeting of nine disability organizations to
discuss the proposals, which decided to have DREDF lead the
fight.
     Persons in the disability community organized a nation-wide,
grassroots letter-writing campaign and flooded the White House
with letters over 40,000 by 1983.In March, the Office of
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