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And that is where Ed and getting back to Ed and his philosophy and how it has been perverted.
Ed never stayed a directory at anything, he always moved on to something else as a role
model. How amazing would it have been if some of these directors, and it goes back to the
founding of independent living centers where there was this assumption that just because
you were disabled you would get it. I think that that has been shown to be a big fallacy.
Just because you are disabled does not mean that you will get independent living or that
you want that. I mean we have all seen the Tiny Tims that love being very very special.
Because they get all this attention for just showing up and blabbering something and everybody
goes “ohhh”. And the rest of us who are ambitious and want to get things going are
stuck being a spokesperson. Independent living centers have done what in marketing is called
brand identification right. My associate Craig and I wrote this thing and Senator Mickem
comes up and says “hi Patrick, you are with that independent living thing aren’t you?”
Because they have this brand identification. And recently in California we have seen that
there is this huge, huge digression between grassroots activates and the paid advocacy
community and the paid advocacy community has all these paid resources. And I think
one reason “drease” and other groups got labeled vexes litigates by the right wing
judge in LA is because the independent living centers have been sucking up millions of dollars
and they haven’t trained the business community and they haven’t trained people with disabilities
to enforce their rights. Instead you have a woman who is associate director. Who they
won’t allow anyone to talk to anymore but she still have a job right. Who is saying
businesses are going to be scared of people in wheelchairs coming because they will get
sued and that woman does not get it. We can’t get in there! Hey woman we can’t get in
there! Do you get it?! They don’t like us. In a capitalist economy where money is everything
they don’t even want our money. I mean that is how bad it has gotten. I mean that women
will have a job and retirement and advocates will not have jobs. I mean it goes back to
the heyday of independent living centers in the 80’s. In the 1990’s we saw a shift
after the ADA. We saw how these independent living centers tell everyone to go and demonstrate
and they won’t involve because it would look to radical. And when the jobs for directors
and assistant directors came up the leaders of the movement that demonstrated and put
their lives and careers on the line where told they were too radical for jobs in the
advocacy industry. But some able bodied person who has been a service provider is perfectly
OK to hold jobs as a director of a independent living center for twenty years. I mean it
is how we lost it. Part of it was because we assumed that even today with the ADA and
all these advisory committees and they can be really good. And I am not saying to get
rid of them but in perspective if you are head of the advisory committee of the transit
agency you don’t need any of the other advisory committee members in other transit agencies
so you don’t get to exchange information all of you information comes form staff and
there meetings are not at times that people who have jobs will go to.