Here are a few stories that give info. These orgs are all on the web. Alan Holdsworth lives in London. ADAPT of Texas is Stephanie Thomas and Bob Kafka. Marta ******************** SFrom: adapt at adapt.org (ADAPT of TX)
HOW DISABLED ACTIVISTS GOT IN PEOPLE'S WAY (AND MADE THEM STOP AND THINK)
Yesterday, as part of the "Accessible City" initiative, disabled activists got in people's way at the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station. Or at least that's what a police officer told our special correspondent Valery Paniushkin: "Those disabled people were bothering everyone." All this week, the non-profit organization "Perspektiva" hosted a seminar in Moscow's Salut Hotel. Young disabled people from Moscow, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Toliatti gathered together to learn, in the words of Perspektiva director Denise Roza, "new ways to fight for their rights."
These kinds of seminars, which Perspektiva hosts regularly, are similar to the training programs that McDonald's managers organize for their new employees, complete with contests slide shows and diagrams. It is very clear that these enthusiastic young people did not just come to Moscow for a good time. They are learning things - like how to inform a Governor that the lack of ramps in his region is a violation of the Russian Constitution.
"According to the Constitution, I have a right to an education," explains an attractive young woman in a wheelchair. "But without a ramp, I can't get into the university. The physical barriers are a violation of my constitutional rights."
The most recent Perspektiva seminar was honored by the presence of Alexander Lysenko, a high-ranking employee of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. He gave out his telephone number and invited the participants to call him for any reason, congratulated them on attending the seminar and in general tried very hard to say as many good things as possible about rehabilitation programs for disabled people: "Our new rehabilitation program, the experience of the rehabilitation program in Samara, British rehabilitation centers."
During the speech, Perspektiva director Denise Roza, a slender woman with large, bright eyes, stood off to the side and whispered to me: "Actually, We try to avoid the word "rehabilitation" because it often implies "repairing" a person with a disability, or getting rid of their impairment. That is insulting for someone with a disability, and that is not what our organization is promoting. In reality we need to talk about inclusion. Society must accept disabled people for whom they are and provide them with equal opportunities."
It turns out that society is not quite ready for that. Society is quite firm in its determination not to integrate disabled people. Or at least it seemed that way on Friday, when thirty some wheelchair users left the Salut Hotel in southwest Moscow and headed for the nearest metro station.
"What if they arrest us?" some worried.
"What could they arrest us for?" asked Allen Holdsworth, a disabled British human rights activists who had come to Moscow for the seminar. "We're just going to the metro. Is that illegal?"
"There are a lot of us," the others explained to him. "They could very easily arrest us all, if only to hold us until evening."
Have you ever seen thirty people go down a staircase in wheelchairs? Have you ever heard a plump wheelchair-user[s] say that she'll never make it back up those stairs, and then seen her go down all the same to show that it is unjust that the city is built only for those who can descend "on foot"?
Seeing the thirty wheelchairs coming down the stairs, the station manager began to scream at the flood of people heading towards the exit. "Citizens! Use the other exit; there are disabled people here!" As if they had the plague.
A police officer walked up and politely asked them to leave the station. "You see it's rush hour now, and you are getting in people's way."
One of the youth activists responded, "Excuse me, sergeant, what about us, aren't we people, too?
A young man holding a bouquet of flowers watched the wheelchairs bouncing along the stairs and said, "Man! I never thought about how these people got into the metro."
Allan Holdsworth smiled, waved and called out in English, "We will come here every day until they build ramps! Brothers, let's storm this train!"
*****************************
"Fellow Activists: (from ADAPT in USA)
>
> On Friday, October 20, 2000 after three days of ADAPT style community
> organizing training demonstrated at Moscow's largest Metro Station
> (subway stop), seventy-five disabled activists from across Russia crawled
> down two flights of stairs to ride the Metro.
>
> The community organizing training was provided by Alan Holdsworth an
> ADAPT Member, an Organizer and founder of DAN (Disabled Action Network)
> in England. According to Alan there will be more demonstrations over the
> next several months.
>
> This was the first demonstration by people with disabilities in Russia
> ever. Alan said, "These activists have braved uncharted waters without
> concern for their personal safety to change a system that denies
> disabled persons equality."
>
> Let freedom ring from the highest mountain top to the subways of Moscow.
>
Subject: Disabled Students take first steps toward equality (Russia) Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:17:13 -0700 From: Dave at Inclusion Daily Express <Dave at inclusiondaily.com> Reply-To: Americans with Disabilities Act Law <ADA-LAW at LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU> Organization: Inonit Publishing To: ADA-LAW at LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU
The following article which appeared in Friday's St. Petersberg Times can be found on the Internet at:
http://www.sptimes.ru/current/disable.htm
For those of you who do not have browsers, a copy of the article's text follows.
----Original Text Follows---- Disabled Students Take First Steps to Equality
By Irina Titova SPECIAL TO THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES Photo by Sergey Grachev
At birth, Svetlana Iskanderova's heart stopped for several minutes before doctors managed to revive her. The loss of oxygen didn't affect her mind, but left her with cerebral palsy.
Twenty-five years later, Svetlana is still hitting the books and studying for a law degree, in one of the very few higher educational programs available to the disabled in the country.
Along with 30 others with physical disabilities, Svetlana is ferried by bus three times a week to attend a special law department at the Herzen Pedagogical University.
"Very often, all that the disabled can give to the [job] market is their brains," said student Gennady Fyodorov, who is also president of Phoenix, a local organization dedicated to helping invalids.
But disabled people in Russia have very little chance to join the kind of program Svetlana and her friends are on. And even though they have cleared the first hurdle, the law students are making no bones about their future chances.
"We will have to be much more qualified to compete with the other students if we want to get a job," said Sergei Vasiliev, who is confined to a wheelchair.
"And that, after all, is the point of us being here."
Half the students on the course have had internships with various legal organizations, including Phoenix, the St. Petersburg Attorneys' Association and the Prosecutor's Office of the Moscow Oblast.
For many of the students, however, the most valuable aspect of studying law is learning about their own rights, and the rights of other disadvantaged groups.
"[When it comes to] getting a job, we will be particularly knowledgeable about the rights of groups marginalized by society," said Yevgeny Barulin.
Legal nous may help them defend themselves in a society that has done little to recognize the needs and abilities of the disabled, but in fact the students were faced with studying law, or studying nothing.
The City Social Security Committee and the City Pension Fund provide the special course with $7,700 a term necessary to keep the course running, but there is little money to expand the program into other disciplines.
"We have now got the experienced staff we need [for the program] and it would be a pity to waste this experience," said Igor Gladky, deputy dean of the department, which opened in 1996.
"We have ideas about introducing other specialities useful to disabled people, such as foreign languages, psychology and economics."
It would be a timely invention. Vyacheslav Ozerov, one of the organizers of a May gathering of specialists in this field, said at a recent news conference that the number of disabled in Russia was increasing.
According to Ozerov, there are 78 disabled per every 10,000 people in Russia.
The figure is higher, however, in the cities: 159 per 10,000 in Moscow, and 233 per 10,000 in St. Petersburg.
Out of these, only 16 percent have completed any form of higher education, and only 20 percent have graduated from high school.
While acknowledging that the special faculty was fulfilling an important task, Gladky nevertheless said that separating the invalids was unsatisfactory.
"In the West, there are no such divisions - the disabled study together with other students in the same schools, colleges and universities," he said.
"Russian society is not ready for this situation, because it lacks the most simple and basic [requirements] for invalids, such as wheelchair ramps and lifts in buildings, for vehicles and on the roads."
Even at the university, some of the doors had to be taken off in order that wheelchairs could pass through.
"There is a law that says all buildings must be built with ramps [for wheelchairs]," said Alexander Ilchenko, who takes time off from studying to lobby the City Construction Committee on the subject.
So far, Ilchenko has managed to persuade the committee to install ramps at the Mariinsky Theater, as well as pavement ramps along Liteiny Prospect.
As for the future, one student who did not want to be identified was skeptical about his chances. "There are many people with law degrees who can't find jobs," he said. "Who is going to hire us?"
To add to the difficulties of invalids is the insistence of many employers that severely disabled people get medical clearance before they can be hired - as admitted by Nina Borisova, office manager for the St. Petersburg Attorneys' Association.
On the other hand, said Borisova, the association has hired many disabled people in the past, and employs two of them full time.
Ultimately, the Herzen University's program may represent a very small victory for invalids in Russia, but it is at least an example to follow.
"Higher education is important to help my daughter get a job," said Svetlana's mother, Tamara.
"But it is also important for her inner state of mind."
The conference, entitled "Higher Education for the Disabled," will take place May 23 to 25. For more information, call 543-99-74. ----End of Article---- Forwarded by: Dave Reynolds, Editor Inclusion Daily Express News at inclusiondaily.com http://www.inclusiondaily.com -- Marta Russell Los Angeles, CA http://www.disweb.org