In this image: Photo of political button, showing outline of person in a wheelchair, with a power fist in the wheel and the letters “DIA” on the arm.

Disabled In Action (DIA) is the definitive organization of the modern New York City Disability Rights Movement. More than just an organ of social activism, when it came to people with disabilities DIA threw down a permanent before-and-after dividing line that has only grown more important with the passage of time.

In part, DIA’s pivotal role was a matter of generational succession. Its members were Baby Boomers, mostly born in the 1940s, and it fell to the Boomers to build the movement out from where it had been taken by the founders of the New York City Disability Rights Movement.

The founders of the movement are people like Curtis Brewer, Richard Match, Vincent Marchiselli and Julie and Mollie Shaw, almost all born in the 1920s. They’d lived through the McCarthy era and the Red Scare, so while some of them were pretty outrageous personalities, their public face tended to be a bit restrained. They wore suits to their protests. By contrast, the Boomers had come up through civil rights, antiwar and college protest, and they brought a very different sort of spirit to the cause. Where the founders carried their revolutionary message implicitly, the Boomers brought it forth explicitly. No more suits. Where the founders argued for legal rights and a representational foothold in government, the Boomers argued frankly for CIVIL RIGHTS in capital letters, and openly expressed their anger at the traditional consignment to social limbo.

DIA was spurred into being in 1970, when the City’s Board of Education rejected an application for a teaching license on the grounds that the applicant was disabled. The applicant, Judy Heumann, brought a lawsuit, and she quickly became a cause celebre.

DIA became famous for its spectacular acts of civil disobedience, which include blocking traffic on Madison Avenue to protest Nixon’s veto of the 1972 Rehabilitation Act, picketing the United Cerebral Palsy Telethon, and members throwing themselves in front of buses for failing to provide wheelchair access.

Along with these confrontational tactics, DIA fostered a strong sense of community and brought a long-range organizing focus. To develop an activist network, branches were set up in several other cities, and DIA alumni became leaders in founding Independent Living Centers in New York City and elsewhere. On the arts level, several members formed the DIA Singers, which performed and recorded for forty years, while the graphic arts talents of DIA co-founder Pat Figueroa led to the campaign button illustrated above. DIA’s first leader, Judy Heumann, went on to a literally global career as a disability activist, first in Berkeley, then in Washington D.C. and the United Nations.

In New York City, DIA’s advocacy helped bring about innumerable tangible accomplishments including curb cuts, accessible buses, taxis, ferries, polling places and movie theaters, physical access to state and federal courts, Local Law 58 of 1987, accessible retail entrances, acessible internal layouts at retail chains like Duane Reade, and accessible community board and other local political offices.

The roster of talent fostered by DIA is massive. Along with Judy Heumann, founders included Denise McQuade, Bobbi Linn, and Fred Francis; prominent members over the years since include Edith Prentiss, Kipp Watson, Eileen Healy, Robert Levine, Robert Schoenfeld, Denise Figueroa, Marty Sesmer, Frieda Zames, Michael Imperiale, Ann Emerman, Carr Massi, Daniel Robert, Nadina LaSpina, and Marilyn Saviola.

by Warren Shaw