Something to Know - 25 July

This story from PBS is a reminder to me to remind my neighbors that the home we live in currently (521 Harrison Avenue) was the Pilgrim Place residence of Harold Wilkie.   Read the obituary from the Los Angeles Times about the history and life of this gentleman.    He was a tireless promoter for action which ended up as the ADA, Americans for Disability Act.   The picture below does not include Mr. Wilkie as he is present in a signing ceremony for the legislation with President George Herbert Walker Bush.   If you place your cursor on the American Experience picture, you will get the information of who is in the photograph.  The home we live in was constructed with the needs of Mr. Wilkie, born without any arms, and his wheelchair dependent wife, Maargaret.  The home features a special concrete ramp from the sidewalk to the front door.   The interior of the home has wide doors, and a bathroom with a shower outside, of the normal stall, in the middle of the floor with a drain so that one could sit in a chair while bathing.   My wife and I enjoy our home, and are not yet in need of its amenities, but if the occasion arises, we are in a good place.  This is the Wilke story; https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-01-me-wilke1-story.html

American Experience <films@americanexperience.wgbh.org>	5:00 AM (5 hours ago)
to me

On July 26, 1990, thousands gathered on the White House lawn to watch President George H.W. Bush sign the Americans with Disabilities Act into law, a landmark civil rights bill aimed at providing basic amenities and protections to some 40 million Americans with mental and physical disabilities. It was the culmination of decades of activism and resulted in transformational changes in education, employment, and public spaces.   In today's edition, meet the determined activists who fought for access and equality — and changed how all Americans live. Protestors ascend the steps of the U.S. Capitol during the Capitol Crawl protest on March 12, 1990. Photo credit: Tom Olin. Climbing Their Way into History Today we take many of the ADA’s changes to society — curb cuts in sidewalks and closed captioning on entertainment, to name just two examples — for granted. But the act’s passage was anything but guaranteed. By spring of 1990, the ADA had been trapped in legislative limbo for months. Despite the strong support of then-president George H.W. Bush, the act was languishing in Congress, caught in the deliberations of House subcommittees. Many U.S. Representatives balked at the expense and complication posed by the ADA’s requirements.   Enter ADAPT — American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit — a grassroots disability rights organization that had been staging protests across the country even before its official founding in 1983. On March 12, 1990, ADAPT led a procession of more than 500 marchers, including other disability activists and lobbyists, from the White House to the west side of the U.S. Capitol.   There, in the kind of guerrilla civic action for which the organization had become known, scores of marchers dropped to the ground and began the long journey up the hard marble stairs leading to the “People’s House.” They climbed backwards or on their hands and knees, step-by-painstaking-step. “As I’m seeing the people around me,” recalled Anita Cameron, one of the ADAPT activists who made her way up that day, “I'm like, ‘whoa, we are doing it. We are really doing it. We’re, like, crawling into history.’”    📖 The civil rights march you DON'T know.

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Juan Matute

R.B.R.

C.C.R.C.