Power Grid Blog
Mark’s Weekly Message
June 1, 2012 | Mark Perriello
I am hopeful about the future of disability rights. I’m confident because I’ve spent several days this week with outstanding young people with disabilities who are preparing to go forth and make an impact.
This week AAPD welcomed thirty emerging leaders to Washington DC for our summer internship program. These students and recent graduates with disabilities will work on Capitol Hill, executive-branch agencies, non-profits, and the private sector for 10 weeks. They will contribute their enormous talents to these work places and build the skills they need to promote justice. Most will not enter the disability-rights field as their profession. But every single one of them—by striving, achieving, and succeeding, will advance our cause.
They couldn’t have come at a better time, because lately it’s been so apparent that our civil rights will be hard-won.
For months now, we’ve been fighting to ensure that pools are fully accessible. AAPD and community members like you wrote to the Department of Justice to show our support for a regulation requiring fully-accessible fixed lifts in public pools. The hotel industry pushed back hard and on May 24th DOJ announced that it had significantly lessened pool owners’ obligations to ensure accessibility.
As in other cities, Washington DC is considering making taxi cabs accessible to people with disabilities. The DC City Council proposed a bill requiring that only 5% of the city’s cabs be accessible. They raised it to 10% this week thanks to the work of AAPD and our strong coalition partners. But does 10% sound good enough to you?
The BIG picture looks better than the picture above. That’s because we have the ultimate weapon against injustice: great people. People like the ones who I’m getting to know this week.
In 10 years or so, they will be successful, knowledgeable mentors to the next generation of students with disabilities. When I was growing up, there weren’t many role models who were like me—people with disabilities to whom I could look for guidance about achieving my goals. When I entered the work place, I didn’t have that many peers who shared my disability experience. In fact, like many of us, I didn’t talk about my disability a whole lot. That’s changing everywhere in this country, in every field, as more and more of us claim our disability with pride. And as more and more employers like Wal-Mart and Mitsubishi Electric, who make this program possible, recognize our community’s vast and largely untapped potential.
It’s not changing fast enough but I believe that this year’s class represents a powerful wave sweeping over work places and bringing us forward.
Over the summer, we’ll feature blog posts by our interns from out in the field. I hope you’ll have a look at what they’re doing. If you are a student or recent graduate who wants to join us next summer, visit http://www.aapd.com/what-we-do/employment/internship-program/ to learn more. We will start accepting applications in November.
--Mark
Comments
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