On part two of our series commemorating the fight for the passage of the ADA, we have on long time activist Jim Dickson. Jim talks with us about the challenges they faced in getting the ADA passed, what changes he’d still like to see, and surprises us with a fun story about a former guest and friend of the podcast.

Full transcript available at: https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndr-jim-dickson/

Jack Rosen:

You know, Michelle, we feel like this part of your life is more mysterious. What was living in St. Louis like?

Okay, started that wrong. I’m trying to just get you to give us some St. Louis trivia. Mysterious was the wrong choice of word there.

Michelle Bishop:

Mysterious? Is it the biscuit?

Jack Rosen:

I wanted you to talk about the spaghetti and chili. That’s what I’m trying to get to, and I didn’t know how to get there.

Michelle Bishop:

I don’t know anything about that. I don’t even know what you’re referring to.

I do know there’s definitely fish fries every Friday, and it’s always fried catfish with a side of spaghetti, if that’s what you’re thinking of.

And we invented toasted ravioli, and most things that matter, like ice cream cones were invented at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

And there’s St. Louis-style pizza, but it doesn’t have mozzarella on it. It has Provel cheese, which is I’m pretty sure only exists in St. Louis.

And pretty much everyone has some sort of connection to Nelly or Nelly’s mom. That’s about it.

Jack Rosen:

You know what? I was thinking of Cincinnati.

Michelle Bishop:

Gotcha. I gave all that, and you were thinking of something from Cincinnati.

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

Is Cincinnati famous for its pizza?

Michelle Bishop:

Is Cincinnati famous for-

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

For anything? No offense to any Cincinnatians.

Michelle Bishop:

Shout-out to Disability Rights Ohio. We love you.

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

Yas.

Michelle Bishop:

Our bad. Our bad. I was just in Cleveland. It was cool.

Do you not know Midwestern cities, Jack? Can you not tell them apart? Is it all the same to you once you get past like Buffalo?

Jack Rosen:

Well, then there’s Los Angeles on the other side of the country.

Michelle Bishop:

Hi. Welcome back to National Disability Radio. I’m Michelle Bishop, one of your co-hosts and the voter access and engagement manager at NDRN.

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

And I’m Stephanie Flynt McEben, public policy analyst, and also one of your hosts for this wonderful podcast here at NDRN.

Michelle Bishop:

And then we also have a producer, who’s just a producer. Why don’t you tell them hi, our producer?

Jack Rosen:

Hi, Jack Rosen here, one third of the podcasting team, as you know, a host.

Michelle, do you want to tell the people who we have on today?

Michelle Bishop:

Yes. This is a continuation of our series on the anniversary of the ADA, and allow me first to say, Go ADA. It’s your birthday. Go ADA. It’s your birthday.

Okay. I’ve been wanting to get that out since the last episode for the ADA, so thank you for humoring me.

So this episode, we have Jim Dickson. He has over 30 years of experience with nonpartisan voter engagement work, particularly in the disability community. He served as the co-chair of the Civic Engagement and Voting Rights Committee for the National Council on Independent Living.

He is a former vice president for organizing and civic engagement at AAPD, the American Association of People with Disabilities, where he led AAPD’s Nonpartisan Disability Vote Project, a coalition of 36 national disability organizations, whose mission was to close the political participation gap for people with disabilities, focusing on nonpartisan voter registration, education and get out the vote.

He actually played a central role, along with the leadership conference on Civil and Human Rights, in passing the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and he was part of the leadership team, which passed the National Voter Registration Act, which you probably call Motor Voter.

He’s the past chair of the board of advisors of the United States Election Assistance Commission, and prior to joining AAPD, where he was for a long time leading this work, Jim organized the campaign to place a statue of President Roosevelt in his wheelchair at the FDR Memorial and the National Mall in Washington, DC.

He has a long history of grassroots organizing with multi-issue organizations all over the country. I know definitely in Rhode Island, Connecticut and also in California, so that covers three states Jack has probably heard of. And with the support of the Sierra Club, he organized the first grassroots congressional mobilization for the environmental movement, which resulted in the passage of the first Clean Air Act.

So Jim has a long history of civil rights work and grassroots organizing, but if you know him, you probably know him for his leadership with the disability vote work. That’s how I know Jim, who’s actually been a mentor of mine for a long time. Welcome him to the podcast.

Jim Dickson:

So Justin Dart really used his appointment to the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities to lay the groundwork for the ADA.

He and Yoshiko, his wife, went around to every state, held a public meeting and prior to going, they sent out emails saying, “Sit down for a few minutes and write down all of the experiences of discrimination that you experienced.” I don’t remember whether he said in the last week or the last month.

And then in every state, they held a hearing, and people stood up and said, “I experienced discrimination because I got in an elevator, and there was no braille on the buttons, and I had to go to four floors before I got to the right floor.” That was turned into a report to Congress, and that report was used for Congress to hold hearings.

The hearings were fascinating, very important. This whole process, which took years, was really the first time that anything approaching the cross-disability community existed. The blind, we were off doing our stuff. The ARC was doing their stuff. There were a few organizations like Nickel and NDRN who were cross-disability and active in more than one disability silo. But the struggle to pass the ADA really eliminated those silos.

And it was really interesting both first for me, because I had never thought that the lack of a braille button in an elevator was an act of discrimination. I just thought it was a pain in the ass. And many of us began, because of the way Justin and Yoshiko framed the discussion, we really began to think for the first time in terms of civil rights, is this a discriminatory structure or situation statement?

And some people got that very quickly. But I think for much of the community, not the advocates, not the lobbyists, but for the rank and file, I would say it took a good year for that perception of accesses to civil rights to really be absorbed emotionally and intellectually by much of the rank and file.

Simultaneous with Justin and Yoshiko’s going around the country and collecting stories and giving a report, Evan Kemp and his partner played bridge with George Bush and Barbara Bush. They were social peers, class, old aristocratic families. And Evan got, between the shuffling, would talk about discrimination that he felt and experienced. And Evan graduated fourth in his class from Harvard Law, at the time walked with crutches and did not get one single offer from a major law firm to come and go to work, totally because using crutches, he was perceived as somehow less competent.

Pat Wright with CCD, Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, formed a strategy committee. And again, there would be 20 to 30 people at every meeting representing 20 to 30 different organizations, different segments of the community.

And in the initial stages, there was a lot of talk about if you weren’t blind, the fact that there wasn’t braille on the buttons or an audio announcement on the elevator never occurred to you. So