The DHNYC Definition of the New York City Disability Rights Movement
In this image: Photo of Mayor Lindsay signing 1968 amendment to City’s Human Rights Law which added people with disabilities, along with officials and disability activists including Vincent Marchiselli and Julius Shaw.
Self determination. A productive and meaningful life. That is what the New York City Disability Rights Movement is all about—the ability to decide how you want to live, to do what you want to do—to travel, study, work, socialize, go to events, make your own decisions—things nondisabled people take for granted.
In the past, to the extent that there were efforts to deal with the situation of people with disabilities, those efforts were mostly controlled by others. Around the turn of the Twentieth Century, that meant professionals and more or less distant, usually elite nondisabled people. In the mid-Twentieth Century, it meant parents’ groups like United Cerebral Palsy and the original incarnation of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled.
Just as the racial civil rights movement’s struggle for political power and self-representation meant that it had to develop organizations powered by people from the community itself, the disability community had to develop grass-roots organizations that were actually led by people with disabilities.
In New York City, that process began in the early 1960s, thanks to founding organizations like the Handicapped Drivers Association and the Architectural Barriers Committee. It continued, as the Boomers reached maturity, with Disabled In Action and a host of other entities, all based on the idea of people with disabilities organizing and advocating in their own interest.
Over the sixty years since its beginning, the New York City Disability Rights Movement has pioneered historic changes in the City’s physical form and political life, which have greatly expanded opportunities for New Yorkers with disabilities. And along the way, this branch of the American Civil Rights Movement has developed a substantial community and social, cultural and arts complex.
That is the DHNYC definition of the New York City Disability Rights Movement.
by Warren Shaw