Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - 504 Protests

Dennis Billups: An Activist through the Disability Rights Movement, Two Tech Booms, and a Housing Crisis

Visitor — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 16:36:18 +0000

By: Asa Arnold

The experiences of Dennis Billups reveal two things that are overlooked in today’s discussions of disabled people in tech: 1) we live in a second tech boom (the first was the “Dot-Com” era at the end of the 1990s) and 2) people with disabilities play important roles in tech that are completely unrelated to programming, development and access. Interviewer Asa Arnold and Dennis Billups

As an African-American man with a visible disability, Dennis predated today’s discussions of diversity in tech by a generation. He worked in the dot-com era. Many times, when he took the train to his job in Silicon Valley he was given free fares because people found it so remarkable that a blind man was going to work at all. A participant in the 504 occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building in 1977, he has long been an activist who focuses on increasing economic power for disabled people [click to view our oral history interview with Dennis to learn more]. Since working as a telephone operator and information specialist for various Silicon Valley companies in the 1990s, he has first-hand experience with the effects of gentrification, the changing skillsets required in today’s tech world compared to thirty years ago, and ideas around people with disabilities. In each area, he finds both positives and negatives.

In the mid-80s, Dennis was looking for a job, but was unable to find one that would let him stay close to his wife who he had recently married. After a while, a representative from the Department of Rehab came to him about a job program in Silicon Valley and said, “We want you to become our poster child because you had a good speaking voice, you speak clearly, and you’re around a lot of people and a lot of people like you.” Dennis enrolled in the program and became a phone operator and information specialist at various computer chip companies in Silicon Valley. He describes his job as being “the person who did the calls, made sure packages got out, faxing in and remembering names of people and changing the phone list…letting people know what’s going on with the company.”

Dennis’ experience working in Silicon Valley during the Dot-Com boom was remarkably positive. This can partially be attributed to his job working well with his personality and skill set, but it was also due to supportive coworkers and workplace accommodations. He had documents provided in braille in addition to teachers who explained what he needed to do; his accommodations were “a natural thing.” Dennis also got on well with people in the office; for example, he would tease them when the lights went out, offering to guide them to the bathroom. One engineer and friend of Dennis’ would give him tours of the workplace, saying “you don’t need to be isolated at that desk all the time.”

With the money from his job and some struggle, Dennis and his wife bought a house in Bayview/Hunter’s Point, San Francisco in 1994 so they could settle down. He lived in the house for 20 years. In 2015, five years after his wife had died and 15 years after being laid off from his job, Dennis found himself being evicted due to failure to make monthly mortgage payments. Believing it unfair as he feels he was not given adequate time to prove he could make payments, having been receiving notification in print rather than braille, he has been challenging the decision. In general, Dennis is disappointed in how gentrification is sweeping San Francisco and pushing many (including disabled people like himself) out of their homes. He finds the trend “really uncomfortable, disheartening, maddening…Bayview and Hunter’s Point were the last community for African Americans.” Despite this, his goal is to return to his home and control some property to stop the gentrification and bring disabled people back into the neighborhood. Dennis says, “it’s never too late, as long as you can get one foothold you can get another one just like they do.”

Like many, Dennis lost his job when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, in his case because many of his responsibilities as an operator were becoming automated. He recalls two good friends and coworkers warned him ahead of time, “Den, you’re going to get fired, and it has nothing to do with you, it’s a company thing.” He had an opportunity to retrain for working on the web which was just starting to take off, but he decided to stay at home to take care of his wife who had grown increasingly sick. He has been unemployed since then and now focuses on advocacy. Dennis believes “we have a chance to do something for disability, especially when it comes to economic chances.”

Having lived through a disability rights movement, two tech booms, and a housing crisis, Dennis is surprisingly upbeat. “We need all kinds of people and all kinds of opportunities,” he says. “That’s how change happens.”

Students for Access also sees the chance to do something for disability, and aims to improve the employment situation for people with disabilities in tech through our summer project. We thank Dennis for sharing his story with us. Dennis Billups during the 1977 504 sit-in.

Tags:

504 Protests

blind people

Dennis Billups

gentrification

Hunter's Point

People with Disabilities in Tech

San Francisco

Silicon Valley

technology

Subversive Access: Disability History Goes Public in the United States

Visitor — Tue, 24 May 2016 18:28:11 +0000

Disability History is taking off in Western Europe, as evidenced by the Public Disability History Blog started in January 2016 that has already surpassed 10,000 visitors. In the guest blog shared below, Catherine Kudlick joins the conversation by introducing the “Patient No More” exhibit.

In summer 2015, the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University mounted an interactive, multi-media exhibit “Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights". We faced several daunting challenges that ultimately made our installation like no other. In fact, we have been sharing our process with museum professionals and continue to learn as we go. 1977 disability protests in San Francisco. Photographed by Anthony Tusler

First, the story itself: on April 5, 1977, more than 100 Americans with and without disabilities began a twenty-six day occupation of San Francisco’s Federal Building to insist on getting civil rights. Four years earlier, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 made it illegal for any facilities or programs funded by the national government to discriminate against disabled people. One official’s signature stood in the way of the law taking effect. After four years of waiting, a coalition made up people with different disabilities launched protests across the country. San Francisco’s occupation proved the most involved and successful. In fact, thanks to support from local community groups like the Black Panther Party, Glide Memorial Church, the Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade, as well as local and national politicians, it remains the longest unarmed take-over of a federal building in US history. The occupation itself and subsequent victory gave birth to a national disability rights movement and helped pave the way for passing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) thirteen years later in 1990.

Tags:

What the 504 Protest can Teach about Activism Today

Visitor — Tue, 10 May 2016 21:42:14 +0000

The following letter to the editor appeared in the SF Chronicle in response to this column:

By: Emily Beitiks

Regarding “Inflexible protesters are failing Politics 101” (May 5): C.W. Nevius accuses the Frisco Five of “failing Politics 101.” However, his critique seems oblivious to the truth that when the system has completely failed your group, playing a game of compromises (which leaves the system intact) might not be desirable. To understand this better, we can look back at an all-but-forgotten San Francisco protest from 1977, where 150 disabled people and their allies occupied a federal building to demand the first disability civil rights legislation.

After 25 days, the protesters left victorious. Some of the occupiers also held a hunger strike throughout. My organization recently conducted oral histories with people affiliated with the protest. With each participant, I asked: “What was your plan B? What would you have done if your demands were not met?” and repeatedly, I received the same answer: There was no backup plan. They were going to just stay in there until they got what they were asking for. Period. What Nevius forgets is that when your government makes you feel as though your people are under attack (let alone when you have suffered literal casualties, as the Frisco Five have), buying into that same power structure is not an acceptable option.

(SF Chronicle "Letters to the Editor" post here)

Tags:

New Orleans Students Sell Brownies to See "Patient No More"

Visitor — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:52:13 +0000

By: The Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability

Last year, a teacher reached out to the Longmore Institute, saying that she had a group of students, all with learning disabilities, who wanted to see our exhibit "Patient No More" at the Ed Roberts Campus. We hosted many field trips over the exhibit's six-month run, but this call was unique; the teacher was calling us all the way from New Orleans. The students would first have to fundraise in order to make this trip happen, so they launched a GoFundMe campaign called "Berkeley or Bust" and sold brownies to drum up enough funds.

To share the history of the 504 occupation with students who had traveled so far and worked so hard was a wonderful moment for the Longmore Institute. We arranged for 504 participants Maureen Fitzgerald, Corbett O'Toole, and Dennis Billups to come out and share their stories with the students. Watch this 2.5 minute video (audio described and captioned) of the students' day at the Patient No More exhibit:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jymnOKRlC1M&w=560&h=315]

Tags:

The "Patient No More" Mural

Visitor — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 23:07:37 +0000

By: Catherine Kudlick

A large mural features 504 protestors and celebrates the spirit of "Patient No More." Click here to see an expanded photo of the mural.

What might appear to the public as the anchor and one of the most striking features of “Patient No More” was far from certain; in fact, just a week before the exhibit launch, we debated whether it was the right use of our resources.

Still, our team of three - Curator/Graphic Designer Fran Osborne, Longmore Institute Associate Director Emily Beitiks, and Director (Me) - had been planning for something in that great rotunda wall all along. It offered a daunting blank canvas, so central, so white, so easy to make a giant mistake, yet so full of potential. And the ramp wall was red. Very red.

At the beginning we tossed around a number of ideas, from a detailed timeline to a large simple rendering of the iconic “Sign 504 Now!” yellow button or a large “Patient No More” banner.

I can’t remember when we first came upon the idea for the dramatic seventy-foot photomural above the ramp. But it had something to do with the generous photo donations from HolLynn D’Lil, Anthony Tusler, and the Bancroft Library. For the exhibit stations we had sifted through scores of them, nearly all of them black and white. We had to make tough choices about what to include, while having to leave others out. Each time, we came back to the intense, joyful, determined faces of the participants.

For the first couple of years we approached it as a memorial to commemorate the lives of occupiers who had passed away. Naïvely maybe, we believed we could identify and account for everyone in all the photos. But the deeper we got into the project, the more we realized this would be impossible: too many people came and went, too many had disappeared into history.

And there were practical concerns. We dreaded the prospect of someone very much alive arriving at the exhibit only to find themselves up on the wall. And what would we do if someone died once the mural had been put up?

Ultimately, we decided to celebrate the people with disabilities associated with the occupation. We tried to create a mosaic of individuals who made up a vibrant group whose coming together transformed the struggle for disability rights.

If this wasn’t a memorial, we needed to decide on the story we did want to tell, assuming it was possible to tell one at all. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine putting 27 of them in conversation! Who looked at whom across the rounded wall all day and night?

Curator Fran Osborne spent countless hours sifting through photos with students, coming up with templates, sending us different examples, trying to get the balance. Did someone appear too often? Who was missing? Which pictures deserved to be larger? And which ones could actually be blown up to such a large size without being distorted?

We knew so much depended on a viewer’s location while looking at it: from the rotunda, from the ramp itself, going up, going down . . . . Like life itself, things completely changed with perspective.

And how to convey something so striking, so important, so visual to people who couldn’t see it? How to be true to our mission to incorporate access to everything in our exhibit, though not necessarily in the same way for everyone? Our solution: commission poets Eli Clare and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, each who identify as people with disabilities to respond creatively with sound poems (check them out below).

It’s hard to describe my first impression of the mural in all its glory. It sits somewhere between hearing those sound pieces read by the poets and walking into the Ed Roberts Campus rotunda just two days before our launch and seeing it on the wall. It was maybe the closest I came to understanding a sense of victory and permanence after working so hard on something that I sensed deep down would make a difference.

Two mural moments confirmed this was true. The first was the day of our launch when 504 participant Michael Williams posed in front of his photo from 38 years before: wearing the same button, same smile, same sense of defiant pride. Many other occupiers, their friends, their families have found people they knew up on that giant canvas.

Then one day around closing time at the Ed Roberts Campus, I came upon an older gentleman slowly making his way up the ramp where he wanted to get close to the mural. “I always wondered what this place was for!” he exclaimed as he turned to me. “I rush through here every day to catch BART, and for some reason today I looked up. My god, I had no idea! I’ve seen some of these people all over Berkeley!” When I introduced myself as being associated with the mural, he smiled and said, “Wow, this is history!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7U616jiE5M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpF85SfwxIo

Tags:

What Would You Have Done? Missing Kitty Cone (1944-2015)

Visitor — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 18:35:38 +0000

By: Catherine Kudlick

[Note: this Sunday, April 26, 2PM at the Ed Roberts Campus above Ashby BART, Bay Area people with disabilities and allies will gather to honor the life of a woman who history will one day credit with changing US history. Kitty Cone, along with Judy Heumann, was one of the key organizers behind the events that we’ll be portraying on our upcoming exhibit to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in July. In the post below I trace her unlikely impact on me.]

As we reach the final stretch for launching our exhibit “Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights” that opens at the Ed Roberts Campus in July, I’ve been consumed with a burning question: what would I have done? Would I have gone in to occupy a federal building for 26 days with over one hundred people I didn’t know, disabled people? Could I then or now sleep on the floor, bathe in a sink, eat food brought by strangers, live with crabs and who knows what else, for nearly a month? Would I have resisted the siren song of friends and family, clueless about disability politics as they gently mocked me about a cause I didn’t yet know enough about to believe in?

Kitty Cone, who to everyone’s great sadness died on March 21, was a central figure in the Section 504 Occupation of San Francisco’s Federal Building back in April 1977. She understood the deep connections between personal activism and political change. She could explain in basic ways how individual people could make a difference by insisting that President Jimmy Carter’s administration come through on a promise they’d made to sign legislation that had been languishing for four years, Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act that would guarantee people with disabilities their civil rights. And she knew how to build bridges between various local community groups and leaders who could support the protesters inside. Her persuasiveness and carefully-crafted alliances helped ensure the success of 504 and ultimately helped pave the way for passing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.

In April 1977 I was an awkward kid in college at UC Santa Cruz, excited about my upcoming junior year abroad in France. I didn’t know any other disabled people, because I didn’t want to. My community was friends from my dorm. We had in-jokes and talked late into the night about our classes, our professors, our families, each other, the crappy dining hall food, our hopes for the future. I’d like to think of myself as political, but I wasn’t. I was just an insecure gal looking for myself and hoping people would like me or at least not taunt me like they had for most of my life about my “weird eyes.” I didn’t know to think of what we today call “bullying” as political, as part of a bigger civil rights struggle.

Given how much time I spent secluded in my dorm room struggling to read the small print in my books for class as I hid (from) my vision impairment, little wonder that I had no idea that a revolution was taking place just 75 miles away up in San Francisco.

What if I’d met Kitty back then? Many of the people we have interviewed for “Patient No More” described her as the one who urged them in and gave them strength. Her activism extended far beyond strategizing a revolution of disabled people: there was something deeper, something about her that made you feel part of something bigger, gave you a sense of purpose that was profound, real, full of conviction.

I often fantasize that if I’d met Kitty Cone in 1977, I would have marched right in, claimed my identity as a person with a disability and taken my place in history. But the truth is, I’m not sure I would have been ready.

Yet Kitty made me a revolutionary. Rather than awaken a future me, our talks thirty-five years later put me in touch with that scared Cathy on the threshold and accept that college kid for who she was: someone poised for a new adventure where she’d live in a foreign culture among people who didn’t speak her language. I was about to occupy my own building back then, laying the groundwork for the activist I would become. The remarkable thing was that Kitty taught me this without our actually having spoken of it. She understood something about activism that never gets acknowledged: it is as much about extending tools to draw strength and integrity from a painful past as it is about charting the future.

To celebrate Kitty, the Longmore Institute has compiled a video from clips of our extensive interview with her for “Patient No More.” The video is captioned and audio-described.

https://youtu.be/759dirUhsKc

To learn more about “Patient No More” that will be at the Ed Roberts Campus above Ashby BART in Berkeley from July 26 - December 18, go here.

Tags:

Fighting Shame with History

Visitor — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 22:37:36 +0000

By: Katie Murphy

Getting ready to start a new semester is a bit different for me. Like everyone else, I have to buy my books and readjust to a less nocturnal schedule. But, as a disabled student, I have the added preparation of having to work through a lifetime of internalized ableism at the beginning of each semester. You see, at the start of each term, I have to meet with my professors and explain to them my accommodations. And no matter how awesome and with it my professors are, requesting accommodations makes me a wee bit anxious. Before I even walk into office hours, I have to go to battle with all the awful ideas about disability that I’ve been exposed to since birth.

I have to engage in a little mental boxing match with self-doubt: “Do I really even need those accommodations? I could get by without them, right? I did before.” And guilt: “I’m wasting my professor’s time. They’re going to hate me. I’m such an inconvenience.” And shame: “A good student and a stronger person wouldn’t need all this stuff. I guess I don’t deserve any praise I get from my family about going to grad school. I guess I’ll have to give my Uncle Jimmy back that sweet card he sent me when I graduated from Berkeley. Oh my god, where did I put that card? Where did I put that card?”

And I’m guessing a lot of other disabled students go through the same thing. (Minus the card from my Uncle Jimmy part.)

But we don’t have to. We really, really don’t have to.

And I think most of us know this. Intellectually, I know that accommodations are my right and I’m not getting some unfair advantage over everyone else. My accomplishments are my own, and I don’t need to torture myself by going without accommodations.

And yet...

Pure logic isn’t always the best tool for fighting feelings like self-doubt, guilt, or shame. Disabled people grow up learning to hate themselves, to hate their disability, because the world we live in hates disability for no logical reason. And sometimes the best way to fight that kind of illogic is with more illogic.

If I can’t completely get rid of that part of me that demands I feel bad for being a disabled student, I can at least trick it. “Hey ‘Part of Me That Demands I Feel Bad for Being a Disabled Student’! I don’t owe you any feel bads. Somebody else already felt bad on my behalf. My bill is paid. My debt is settled. You can stop leaving harassing voicemails.”

You see, in 1977, years before I was born, 150 disabled people occupied the old federal building in San Francisco to force the government to enact the first civil rights legislation for disabled people in US history. As I’ve learned going over interviews with some of the occupiers for the Longmore Institute's Patient No More exhibit, one of the major motivations for occupying the building was the right for people with disabilities to get an education. Some of the sit-in participants went to segregated schools—separate schools for disabled children. Some were lucky enough to go to one of the few universities that admitted disabled students. They all sat-in so I could go to school and have the accommodations I need.

Just think: For twenty-six days, around 150 disabled people lived in a single floor of an office building. Only a handful were aware that they would be occupying the building at all, let alone for a month, so most participants didn’t have any bedding or a change of clothes with them. Many participants required attendant care for eating, using the bathroom, or preventing pressure sores. All of that care had to be improvised inside the building with everyone helping wherever and whoever they could. Some protesters had medicines that needed refrigeration, so a makeshift fridge was created with a window air conditioner and a plastic sheet. When the phone lines were cut, they communicated with the outside world by signing to people picketing in front of the building. Their struggle was supported by the Black Panthers, who made the protesters (including Black Panther Bradly Lomax and his attendant Chuck Jackson) two hot meals a day. When a bomb threat was called in, they didn’t leave the building. The protesters were in such close quarters with such limited opportunities for personal hygiene that many of them got crabs.

Crabs.

On top of all that, the building was completely inaccessible. The protestors were fighting for the implementation of the Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which made it illegal for entities receiving federal funding to discriminate on the basis of disability. Under Section 504, the very building the protestors were occupying would have to be made accessible to disabled people. Yet they stayed in this inaccessible building for nearly a month to demonstrate the need for disability rights legislation, showing the nation the strength of the disability community and its allies.

If you, like me, ever find yourself feeling guilty or ashamed about being a disabled student, doubting whether you really need or deserve accommodations, I encourage you to think back to the 504 protests. If you ever feel society tugging at you to “get by” without accommodations, “toughen up,” “suck it up,” “stick it out,” because “the whole world doesn’t cater to you,” remember that you are part of a community that has spent enough time living in an inaccessible world. If you feel tempted to do an ableist society’s work by torturing yourself for being disabled, remember that over a hundred protestors (and an infestation of crabs) stayed in a building for nearly a month without the comforts of home or any accommodations or accessible structures. Remember that all the discomfort and indignities they faced as protestors were so that you wouldn’t have to go through the same thing. You’re relieved of any duty to feel guilty or ashamed about being a disabled student.

At the same time, you’re not completely off the hook. Remember that you have a legacy to uphold—a legacy that was forged in part at the 504 protests. Remember to honor the qualities that made the 504 sit-in so successful and such a life-changing experience for those involved: community pride, collaboration, and commitment to education.

Remember that the 504 sit-in did not occur so that one disabled person could scale the social ladder while the rest of the disability community remained on the bottom rung. The 504 sit-in was an effort by the disability community for the disability community. Remember that when you next come across fellow students who might be eligible for accommodations but are unfamiliar with the disability services offered by your school. Remember that you have knowledge worth sharing about disability services when a friend discloses that they are struggling due to a disability or medical condition. Remember to honor the confidentiality of anyone who confides in you.

Remember the invaluable work performed by the Black Panthers, the Grey Panthers, the Butterfly Brigade, and the International Association of Machinists. Remember that their support, supplies, and expertise enabled the sit-in to last. Disabled students gained the right to an education in part because of the different social justice groups that collaborated with the protestors. Remember that when students aren’t getting a fair shake at an education for reasons other than disability. Remember the power of collaboration when you come across women facing isolation in STEM fields, working class students going into debt to afford textbooks, trans students being referred to by the wrong pronouns, or students of color having their names mispronounced or mocked. Remember that as someone who has benefitted from different groups coming together to support disability rights you have the responsibility to pay it forward and support the right to an education for everyone.

If you can do all that without getting crabs? That means you’re one step ahead of the 504 protestors.

Katie Murphy is a graduate student in Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University and student assistant at the Longmore Institute. She also runs Space Crip, a blog about disability in sci-fi/fantasy.

Tags: