Disability Capitol Action Day – 2006

This year’s Disability Action Coalition included Protection and Advocacy, Inc., Resources for Independent Living, Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, Respect-ABILITY Coalition, Independent Living Center of Kern County, California Coalition for Mental Health, California Network of Mental Health Clients, Community Resources for Independent Living, Disability Rights Legal Center, Mental Health Association in California, Independent Living Services of Northern California, Service Employees International Union, About Disability, World Institute on Disability, California Association of Public Authorities, and Friends of Californians with Disabilities.  

Disability Rights Advocates provided the majority of this year’s funding; other contributors included: California Coalition of Mental Health, Disability Rights Legal Center, Protection and Advocacy, Inc., State Independent Living Council, Service Employees International Union, Sacramento Wheelchair Center, American Medical Response, United Cerebral Palsy, Rally’s, and the Sheraton Grand Hotel.

The vision of Disability Capitol Action Day remained the same. People with all types of disabilities come together on one day to fight not just for our own personal rights, but disability community rights as well.   We came together to, celebrate our rights, united in our common cause, and celebrated our community of disability activism.  The 3^rd Annual Disability Capitol Action Day theme was “Access Equals Choices.” Both the Educational Forum and Capitol Rally included speakers that addressed issues regarding access to public facilities, voting, housing, benefits and services, transportation, school, health care, and community options. Issue briefs were provided for participants on the following topics: Housing, Special Education, Social Security Income, and other legislation that would affect the Disability Community.

In recognition of our theme, “Access Equals Choices,” multilingual presentations were provided throughout the Education Forum and Capitol Rally. We had ASL Interpreters, Text Captioning, English, Chinese, and Spanish simultaneously available.

With the State budget in better shape than in years past, were able to focus on Legislation rather than IHSS cutbacks. What that means is…….we’ve done an outstanding job of showing our legislators that we will not accept cutbacks that impact our freedom to live independently.

Since we were faced with the potential, “Opportunity to Repair Act”, during the beginning of this year, the coalition felt that focusing on our rights to equal access would be a perfect fit for this year’s theme. Assemblyman Tim Leslie was among the speakers who contributed during the rally. He raised the issue of why businesses should be accessible.

Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson pointed out that he is working to making the voting process significantly better for people with disabilities and that everyone should have access to voting.

We heard from several different people within the disability community that brought a variety of disability perspectives to our attention. We had a Native American Tribal member, a young woman representing Asian Pacific Islanders, an African American singer who is also blind, as well as many other diverse speakers. There were close to 1000 people who participated in this year’s event.