In the August 11-17 Chester Spirit paper, page 4, is the editorial 'Americans with Disabilities Act Marks 20 Years of Good Government'.
As you read passages below from an interview 'Low-Income Minorities with Disabilities See Services Disparity' you may be led to conclude that Good Government isn't quite Great Government.
...a number of Americans have yet to fully benefit from the law. Individuals living with disabilities are disproportionally poor, many of whom live in low-income urban areas that sometimes lack necessary services or physical accommodations.
...a lot of times, because individual disabilities are impoverished, they don't have the funds nor the transportation and the awareness to know where to go to access the services needed. And thus the word doesn't get to that community.
...you don't have enough field workers to go into these communities. And the individuals in the communities don't have the money to leave their community to go to the departments of the bureaucrats to find out the knowledge.
We've had a lot of starts and stops in terms of trying to study why the services to our folks in urban communities very rarely gets trickled down in the same way that services to the majority community happen. And even in this year's 2010, to say that while most businesses in the majority communities have complied with the ADA, our communities are still lagging behind.
There's currently a great organization called the National Blacks with Disabilities Coalition and it is poised now to take on these issues.
...there are a number of people who are in nursing homes inappropriately, who don't need to be, because of a lack of accessible housing in other communities.
You're ostracized by your own community because of a lack of understanding that disabilities rights are civil rights. So you don't have the NAACP or the Urban League or the National Council on Negro Women embracing these issues as they move forward in the true civil rights status. And then, also, the majority community that ostracizes the folks with disabilities from the urban community.
...in our community, of course, we had the religious tenets - that this something that God has done, you know, because he was unpleased? And we have that. And then the second thing we have in our community is the sense that we're going to take care of our own. Our folks feel that if you're just taken care of, you'll be all right, as opposed to being empowered, as opposed to being - having equal access to the education system, equal access to the transportation systems, equal access to the medical systems.
And more importantly, equal access to a place - a decent and accessible place to live. If you don't have those four key things as a person with a disability, you're not in and of itself going to be successful to be able to get a job and keep the job and therefore contribute.
...a number of Americans have yet to fully benefit from the law. Individuals living with disabilities are disproportionally poor, many of whom live in low-income urban areas that sometimes lack necessary services or physical accommodations.
...a lot of times, because individual disabilities are impoverished, they don't have the funds nor the transportation and the awareness to know where to go to access the services needed. And thus the word doesn't get to that community.
...you don't have enough field workers to go into these communities. And the individuals in the communities don't have the money to leave their community to go to the departments of the bureaucrats to find out the knowledge.
We've had a lot of starts and stops in terms of trying to study why the services to our folks in urban communities very rarely gets trickled down in the same way that services to the majority community happen. And even in this year's 2010, to say that while most businesses in the majority communities have complied with the ADA, our communities are still lagging behind.
There's currently a great organization called the National Blacks with Disabilities Coalition and it is poised now to take on these issues.
...there are a number of people who are in nursing homes inappropriately, who don't need to be, because of a lack of accessible housing in other communities.
You're ostracized by your own community because of a lack of understanding that disabilities rights are civil rights. So you don't have the NAACP or the Urban League or the National Council on Negro Women embracing these issues as they move forward in the true civil rights status. And then, also, the majority community that ostracizes the folks with disabilities from the urban community.
...in our community, of course, we had the religious tenets - that this something that God has done, you know, because he was unpleased? And we have that. And then the second thing we have in our community is the sense that we're going to take care of our own. Our folks feel that if you're just taken care of, you'll be all right, as opposed to being empowered, as opposed to being - having equal access to the education system, equal access to the transportation systems, equal access to the medical systems.
And more importantly, equal access to a place - a decent and accessible place to live. If you don't have those four key things as a person with a disability, you're not in and of itself going to be successful to be able to get a job and keep the job and therefore contribute.
Click HERE to listen or read the entire interview
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