Disability Rights in the U.S.
Source: Atlas Obscura
Allisa led a discussion on the 504 Sit-in in San Francisco though, when over 150 people occupied the SF federal building for 26 days to protest for the passing of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. Some of the talking points that came up:
We talked about the intersectionality of the movement, and how the Black Panthers came in to deliver food to the activists.
We were amazed at how recent these developments have been, with the Americans with Disabilities Act being passed as recently as 1990.
We spoke about our responsibility as environmental engineers to looking at the ability of people to access natural and built environments, and how building for people with disabilities helped non-disabled folks as well, thinking about strollers, people with injuries, etc.
We concluded with thinking about how our systems lack representation from individuals with disabilities, and how this affects the environments we build.
Some recommended resources from our discussion:
Our fight for disability rights -- and why we're not done yet: Judy Heumann, TEDxMidAtlantic, October 2016
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century: Vintage Books, 2020
Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life: Alice Wong, Vintage Books, 2022