Our Children Left Behind. Birmingham Civil Rights.
May 2003

Tricia Luker writes:

A group of diverse parents working together on the IDEA reauthorization has created OurChildrenLeftBehind website, to support parent and family IDEA reauthorization activities. We invite you to visit the website and contribute your ideas and feedback. The IDEA reauthorization battle promises to be swift and hard-fought, but we still have time and opportunity to make a difference in the final product.

OurChildrenLeftBehind hopes to be both a resource for parents, families, students and others committed to preserving IDEA and a leader in the IDEA reauthorization struggle itself. We look forward to your visit and your support in the battle we fight for our children.

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Rus Cooper-Dowda's Editorial in Birmingham News

BIRMINGHAM NEWS
May 18, 2003
The Rest of the Revolution:
Southern Sidewalks and Civil Rights

"What has been done in Birmingham has laid the basis for a better city, built on the ashes of what was. At one time, Birmingham was segregation, deprivation, subjugation...." Rev. Fred Shuttleworth, a Birmingham civil rights pioneer

Rev. Shuttleworth said this at the recent 40th reunion for "soldiers of freedom" in Birmingham, Alabama. It was held in the area of the city shared by the civil rights museum, the 16th Street Baptist Church and the park where protestors were persecuted for speaking out against racial exclusion in the 1960s.

Statues in that park depict authorities abusing people of color simply for wanting to be included. They are powerful statements of how Birmingham used to be if you were not white.

I am proud of how far my hometown has come. I have signed what is called "The Birmingham Pledge" asking people not to discriminate against others who are different. Thousands of people across the South have done the same.

But I am also very puzzled. Birmingham has recently openly decided to still exclude people with disabilities of all colors from its public walkways.

Sacramento, California is pursuing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to have those justices declare that public sidewalks do not have to be accessible to people with disabilities. That city is paying the legal fees for any other cities and counties in America who want to join the appeal.

To my great regret, Birmingham has signed on to that effort to keep disabled people off public sidewalks. My city bought into the fiction that allowing people who use wheelchairs the same passage as others would immediately cost millions of dollars.

That simply isn't true. The Americans with Disabilities Act specifically states that actions can be modified (but not ignored or cancelled) to take into account undue financial burden.

Birmingham is not the only bastion of the civil rights era to sign on to currently keep disabled people off their streets. The list includes many cities right out of the pages and films of the historic racial struggles of 1950s and 60s.

Albany, Georgia is there. So is Little Rock, Arkansas where the first great effort to integrate public schools is now part of American history. Even the city where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. drew his last breath has signed on to legally block disabled people's access to sidewalks. What gives here?

Statistically, the poorer you are and the more likely you are a minority -- the higher the odds are that you are disabled. One out of every three African-American workers has a disability that affects their Activities of Daily Living. And the older you are, the more likely you are to be disabled.

Also, one out of every three Americans has daily contact with a person they care about who has a disability. If all of American's disabled population gathered in one place -- the total would be larger than the entire population of Canada!

That affects people of all races, colors and ethnic backgrounds.

How can it be Southern cities that gave birth to the civil rights struggle for African-Americans can be working to deny the aging and increasingly disabled foot soldiers of that struggle access to public right of ways now?

If your city doesn't want you on the sidewalk now because you use a wheelchair when it used to not want you there because of your racial heritage -- aren't they still trying to keep you out of public life due to discrimination and prejudice?

All the arguments about why Birmingham can not afford a gradual and timely transition to better public access has been heard before. It was used to explain why the city couldn't afford racial and gender equality way back when. But that expanded opportunity happened just the same.

I say any Southern city and its people who went through trial by fire and waterhose for racial access has no business now denying the veterans of that struggle needed access once again based on their disabilities.

It just doesn't make sense.

Please write officials in Birmingham, Alabama; Albany, Georgia; Little Rock, Arkansas; Nashville, Davidson County and Memphis, Tennessee. Ask them why a disabled and aging civil right struggle veteran is not worth as much as an able-bodied and younger one.

Tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Remind them that planned lack of access to public throughways for anyone for any reason is still Rev. Shuttleworth's "segregation, deprivation, subjugation...."

Rus Cooper-Dowda

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