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Monday, November 20, 2006
Civil Rights online archive--where's disability rights?
There's a cool new website, The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, now fully operational, according to a recent announcement on the H-Net. I recently read Susan Schwartzenberg's Becoming Citizens (UW Press 2005), about the Seattle-area families that pushed for educational rights for disabled children in Washington State--a right they won, with a law that became a model for the IDEA. Great story, important story, it must be mentioned on a Seattle civil rights history project site, right?
Um... no.
Well, maybe there are.... no. Searching the words "disabled," "disability," and "disabilities" gives no hits; neither does "handicap" (always worth checking in historical archives), "blind," or "deaf," or "wheelchair" or "accessible" or "ramp".... do you get the idea? I know there have to be other disability rights stories in Seattle history--where are they? Then again, it's the city where an alternative weekly columnist recently forgot that disability rights are civil rights.
Here's a start: There are photos from a 20o4 ADAPT action in Seattle at Harvey Finkle's site; and also at the site for the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester (I found the above photo of Seattle ADAPT protesters at the latter site).
November just aint Seattle's month for being viewed as disability friendly, is it?
ReplyDeleteHeh.