II.
[Picking up on ADAPT]
``....On the other hand, ADAPT itself never adopted a coherent ideological perspective that might guide its actions and enable it to form long-lasting coalitions with others seeking social change, including anti-poverty activists, single mothers and homeless people. Even worse, at times it relied on informal personal connections with politicians, including Republicans, for favorable treatment. While this occasionally meant less harsh treatment by police when engaging in civil disobedience, ADAPT and the disability rights movements paid a high price for this connection. It felt compelled to downplay demonstrations against the first Bush Administration while the ADA was under consideration, rejecting the option of chaining themselves to the gates of the White House, so as not to embarrass President Bush Sr.19 Having chosen to undermine their own power to "stay relevant," ADAPT activists, lacking theoretical clarity and leadership, at times limited their own potential as a social movement...'' (R. Malhotra)
I can't exactly disagree with this, because it is true that several local groups here were shamelessly sucking up to Republicans in the Executive branch and Congress during the 80s and their lobbyist was trading back and forth with the conservative minions of power, including the neo-conservative disability groups whom Bush later applauded (ignoring the more radical Berkeley malcontents), and they (local groups) knew even at the time, at any point the whole game could be turned on them. But the argument was, these are the jerks in power and we either work with them, or get nothing done. It's hard to argue against realpolitik, especially when the possibility of concrete political gains are at stake.
ADAPT might have never come up with a coherent program and attending theory on how to overthrow the great capitalist pig hegemon, but that doesn't mean that a lot of people involved didn't have one or two of these plans up their shelves. ADAPT was a protest and issue centered organization, not a political party---and its main interest was getting accessible public transportation. And later, there were internal splits that fractured along predictable lines between those motivated to protesting for a specific change (East Bay Transit Terminal strike), and those who were into just having a good time doing guerilla street theater.
Ravi Malhotra will just have to trust me on this one, but there were very few people here in the Berkeley movements who were ``...lacking theoretical clarity and leadership, [or who] at times limited their own potential as a social movement....'' It was and always has been a question of achieving practical goals---getting it done now, and leaving the big questions and next moves for the kitchen table and drinks later on.
As for coalition building in ADAPT or in the 504 demos, between anti-poverty activists, single mothers, and homeless people---well, I just have to laugh. Who does Ravi Malhotra think were and are inhabiting all those wheelchairs? Anti-poverty activists, single mothers, and homeless people to boot---that's who---along with students, civil rights and public interest lawyers, law clerks, writers, college and public school teachers, prison counselors, and a few actual state and federal government bureaucrats who during demonstrations are under deep cover (hoping their officemates and supervisors wouldn't recognize them on the local news).
But more to the point, yes, putting together mass umbrella movements as coalitions between all these issues and groups and then linking them up with international organizations is definitely a problem in tactical accomplishment. I say a tactical question, because it is and always has been on the table and discussed endlessly for thirty years---certainly by the political gliterati who jet-set between capitals and community based local movements---conducting a sort of underworld of shuttle diplomacy.
The movement into an international arena of awareness and action (at least from here) took place in the wake of the federal, state and local government withdrawal of funding for community based services at CIL (center for independent living).
CIL might have called itself a center for independent living and pushed the rhetoric of the so-called independent living movement, but what the organization really amounted was a over sized coordinating committee or collective run as a community project to push all kinds of support services: attendant recruitment, training, and referral, van and wheelchair modification and repair, housing referral, housing accessibility modifications, peer counseling services, public school counseling services, emergency van transportation, a prisoner project, disabled kids project, elderly food services, and civil rights legislative advocacy. CIL also acted as general legal advocate and liaison between the local community, the city, state, and federal government programs and agencies. CIL's primary goal was to extend the scope of public services and to hold the mirid of local, state, and federal public agencies charged with these tasks, accountable for providing these services---and of course tried to make up for their enormous short comings.
Somehow to characterize a place like CIL as an independent living movement trivializes the radical and serious political power of the place, the people, and the time. CIL at its height (late 70s) had a budget of several million dollars and a payroll of more than a hundred people. It easily rivaled or surpassed most city government departments and had a permanent legislative analysist and advocate in Sacramento, as well as people working with the staff offices of the local state Assemblymen (Bates), Congressman (Delums), Senator (Cranston) and particularly Governor Brown's secretary of HEW, Mario Obledo. One of CIL's directors was appointed by Brown as the director of the Department of Rehabilitation (Ed Roberts), one of its legal advocates was appointed assistant State Attorney General (Jim Donald) and PDSP's director was appointed state Director of County Health Services (John Hessler). CIL wasn't some independent living group home---it was part the state of California's political power structure. All this was erased under subsequent Republican governors. Once Brown left office, CIL took the big fall as Reagan took the White House and Deukmejian became govenor. The Big Chill was on.
With the funding collapse of CIL (`81-83), its component pieces splintered off to form their own smaller organizations, and among these were World Institute on Disability (WID) and Disabled Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF). There were at least three or four more pieces and spin-offs, but I can't remember them all at this point.
The focus of DREDF was to implement the community training provisions of the original 504 regulations (administered through Dept of Justice, civil rights division), then later to organize much of the legal and political policy background needed to write the ADA and get it passed.
The focus of WID turned toward federal agency advocacy (RSA, OE in particular)and to exporting many of these political ideas first to the EU, then Africa, Latin America and Asia. The Central American wars during the 80s Reagan administration provided a serious impetus to attempting linkages with the Sandinistas that succeeded in opening a series of small wheelchair fabrication and repair collectives in Nicaragua. This was actually accomplished under yet another group working out of San Francisco State (Ralf Hotckiss). Meanwhile similar wheelchair building efforts and political linkages were worked out on the ground in Europe, Japan, Mexico, and several places in Africa (don't remember the names of these---I just supplied the used parts needed in these places---pilfered out of the largess of the privatized US healthcare industry---thanks to Invacare, Quickie, E&J, and HCFA.) One funny story. Several years ago, several people from SFSU engineering project were in Nairobi working on one these wheelchair projects, when the US embassy was bombed and the blast blew out their hotel windows. They weren't in the hotel, but out in the bush in some nearby community.
In any event internationalization of the disability movements were underway in the 80s and received another strong impetus in the early 90s with the collapse of the USSR, and in the wake of their own struggles after the Afghanistan war. The Russians had plenty of ex-military disabled guys trying to get out of hospitals and institutions---with almost exactly the same needs as those in the US and the original Cowell Hospital/Rolling Quads struggles of twenty years before. At least two of the same people involved in the now defunct PDSP (killed, thanks to a twenty year war of attrition carried on by the UCB administration and Republican administrations in DC) are presently working with the State University of Novosibirsk in Siberia, talking the same talk with disabled student activist there, working through the same issues (physical and programmatic access to the means to reproduce life) and worse--since public infrastructure in Novosibirsk is physically crumbling apart.
Another side note, before going on. This part really bothers me (addressing the limitations of the IL movement):
``...Furthermore, it was not fully representative of the disabled community, often marginalizing the perspectives of disabled women, people of color and gays and lesbians. By limiting itself to accept the restrictions imposed by market forces, it therefore undermined its own radical potential to empower disabled people...''
Ravi M must be citing background reading based on some one else's history, because this is completely misleading from the Berkeley perspective. (Where do the so-called historians of movements come up with this shit?)
Once again, in the Berkeley PDSP and CIL (that I knew and worked for), the community advisory boards would have laughed and screamed in the face of anyone who made such a stupid statement---many did, and much screaming followed---a whole decade worth (70s). The co-director of CIL (with Phil Draper) was Judy Huemann (later, Clinton's, OE assistant secretary of special education), and the CIL manager of community services was Johnnie Lacy (black woman, civil rights activist from the sixties), not to mention Mario Obledo's work with the legal groups in CIL, and there was an entire wing of the CIL staff who were pro-active members of GLAAD, and of course much of the community services were devoted to the Oakland-Berkeley minority communities. And there were numerous contacts and arrangements with the Black Panthers, Gray Panthers and any other panthers around for that matter. The fact is, CIL was meticulously constructed and continuously re-construction to represent every conceivable aspect of the disabled and minority community and include as many other progressive and activist groups as possible. It spent most of its time in internal staff struggles over these inclusion issues and how to implement their broad spectrum agendas and needs. It was always in some crisis or other over this political balancing act. CIL ultimately collapsed trying to fund and satisfy all progressive agendas in the completely hostile wave of rightwing conservative state and federal power grabs.
And then we read this closing mantra:
``...It is incumbent upon anti-poverty activists, feminists, trade unionists, anti-racist militants, gay and lesbian community activists and above all the organized socialist left to work constructively with disability rights activists to make medium term solutions a reality while working toward long term transformation...''
I think the overall implication to Ravi Malhotra's essay on the politics of the disability rights movements is that somehow these movements failed to address authentically progressive socialist and leftist issues, and now, we have basically an apathic desert as a consequence of these conceptual and organizational failures.
I won't argue that the Internationale was sung at the opening of very meeting, that Marx was discussed in every planning session, or that words like praxis, means, and dialectic were upper most in everyone's mind, and that crossed red and black flags decorated every doorway. Clearly none of these occurred. On the other hand, the basic idea of reaching `medium term solutions while working toward long term transformation', was the very core of almost every group, organization, act, letter, meeting, protest, or law ever argued over and made concrete during the period. So, it's a little hard to understand what the complaint is about.
The real failure of these movements was simply the consequence of a thirty year long war of attrition against every conceivable and tiny gain or reform ever achieved. While the news media was full of rhetorical progress stories of self-determination and disability awareness, on the ground and behind the scenes the reality was that every bureaucratic, political, and economic weapon of the US political establishment from local city councils, codes and inspections, fire departments, boards of education, chambers of commerce, all the way up to the Executive Branch agencies charged with enforcement were devoted to defeating, thwarting and starving these grass-roots and community based movements of the very means (money, time, practical political support) to carrying out these reforms. The wonder is not that these organizations and movements failed in a rightwing dominanted political climate, but that these organizations and movements ever existed and managed to accomplish anything in the first place.
I tried to characterize this war against the War on Poverty and social protest movements and programs of the 60s/70s a few weeks ago in another long post (Seventies). All of that information and history was derived from work within and working for many of the civil rights and disability based movements noted in this article.
It is either simple minded, mis-informed or just a lie to suggest that the dozens of people and groups I knew who carried on this war were some how ultimately deluded and mesmerized by free market neoliberal nonsense---that they were not sufficiently radical enough to cut it. The real problem is that the entire sweep of neoliberal socio-economic policies that have effectively erased most of the US welfare state and that form the founding justification for global trade and the new financial world order, all of which amount to turning every public service into a privately held rip-off scheme of some sort to benefit multi-national corporations---that, all of that, was carried out against community based services and advocacy groups first, testing these policy maneuvers on progressive reform movements like some sickening medical experiment in Tuskegee.
This is why it is important to get the history of these movements straight. Their histories, struggles and demise are important lessons on how governmental social and economic policies can be configured to either benefit the people or destroy them, goals that are often employed simultaneously.
Other lessons have to do with the detailed stages of introducing the public sector services agreements (GATS) under the WTO, WB, and other organizations. This particular aspect of the global trade agreements, opposed by the anti-globalization movements could seriously benefit from the experience of committed disability rights activists, since many of social policy provisions that are threatened, depend on government legal and political support---which was originally argued and implemented by these very groups. This also forms precisely the reason many governments will be tempted to abandoned these reforms to the privatized schemes. It's a whole lot cheaper (and politically expedient) to merely monitor the so-called progress of these private sector service providers, than it is to implement and administer the progressive public service sector equivalents. Disability movements know the details of how this privatization is accomplished since many of the welfare, education, healthcare and community support services that were originally part of the government public infrastructure have been handed over to HMOs and other private administrative agencies---or to some completely fraudulent public-private partnership arrangement. These are now the targets of various local struggles. Government agencies can just sit back and watch, claiming an absurd neutrality in the face market forces, and local groups have essentially no political means to redress except to agitate the reluctant, lethargic, and ineffectual local public oversight agencies. This gives you an insight into how government bureaucracies envision their own sense of expedience, i.e. we oversee and monitor, someone else does the work, takes the heat, and profits (exploits the existing labor intensive work force), and our hands are clean.
Chuck Grimes