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).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

November just aint Seattle's month for being viewed as disability friendly, is it?

Heh.