PASSAGE OF THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT WAS ONE OF PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH'S GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS

ANY OBITUARY OF THE 41^ST PRESIDENT THAT FAILS TO HIGHLIGHT THE ADA ACT OF 1990 IS ADDING TO THE TREMENDOUS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES.

From the beginning of time, people with disabilities have been considered half human.

Even in the 21^st century, a half century past the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights legislation and more than a quarter century since the ADA as adopted, people with disabilities face harrowing discrimination.

Fewer than one percent of single family housing units are even minimally accessible to those who use an assistive mobility device, such as a wheelchair.

Millions of public spaces contain barriers to mobility.

Tens of thousands of brand new civic buildings and spaces are built in ways that segregate people with disabilities – forcing them to use humiliating side or rear doors to enter a facility.

The press, usually a bastion of championing civil rights, continues to use pejorative, 100 percent inaccurate phrases such as “wheelchair bound” and "confined to a wheelchair.”

The press, which I was a member of for nearly two decades, is embarrassing itself again today – in print, on TV, on radio and online.

Very few stories, even the super-lengthy ones reserved for the retelling of the life of a U.S. president who has died, have made any mention of Bush’s role in adopting the ADA.

The stories that mention it, make the most far-reaching civil rights legislation created for people with disabilities in the western world – sound like the 1,000^th most-important thing George H.W. Bush did as a leader.

I am an Independent and a Progressive.

But I take pause today to hope that our 41^st president is in a peaceful place and that his family takes comfort in the grace that he put into his career as a public servant.

Shame on any news organization that fails to list the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act as one of George Bush’s greatest accomplishments.

Far reaching-civil rights for all is very important.

Failing to see how important it is, tells us that the mainstream media still sees people with disabilities as largely worthless and deserving to remain marginalized.

https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/recollections/george-bush-and-the-americans-with-disabilities-act/

EXTREME PREJUDICE AND BIGOTRY

TOWARD PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Why is it that people are so quick to want to strip away the rights granted by the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Why is it if one thing goes wrong – say one law firm of ambulance chasers slightly abuses the ADA’s intent in a lawsuit…

Or one construction project screws up its wheelchair access…

…and otherwise fairly smart, rational and compassionate people want to dump the ADA?

How is it that every other thing on the planet has flaws and unintended consequences, but people can accept those imperfections?

If we treated flight like the ADA, the first time an airline plane crashed, we’d ban all flight forever.

The first time a person committed fraud, we close all the banks and stuff our money under the mattress.

Medicine would still be in the dark ages, because the first surgery, antibiotic, etc. that didn’t work perfectly, we’d shut all exploration into those fields for eternity – because, gasp, a percentage of people die in surgery or have bad reactions to pharmaceuticals.

Why is it that everyone reading this agrees it is nonsense to stop a good thing because it has a few warts, or because it doesn’t work perfectly 100% of the time?

But otherwise right-headed politicians, leaders and everyday people read about one case of possible ADA abuse, one case of a cheap skate business owner (falsely) claiming they went broke modifying their building.

And everyone is ready to strip away the only civil rights legislation, weak and watered down as it is, ever enacted to help 50+ million people with disabilities.

WTF.

It makes no sense.

Please share this with a dozen people, so we can pull our heads out of our collective asses when it comes to being so prejudiced against the ADA.