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mittee wanting to do anything for the next three weeks, but sleep. So, you and your committee are really to be commended.

I am very happy to have the meeting here. A couple of years ago, I filed a bill that had a similar goal and despite all the good press and the good witnesses, it just never went anywhere. I hope that this committee, because of the outstanding task force that you have got assembled and the outstanding group that you have working so close with you will really do the job that my committee, my bill tried to do a couple of years ago. So, I would like to just sit in with you a little while this morning, before I depart, and just hear some of the testimony and to be with my outstanding colleague from Massachusetts, Chet Atkins. Thank you.

Mr. OWENS. Thank you, again, for joining us, Congressman Moakley.

Our first witness, I have already introduced him partially. And he will need no introduction, but I can assure you he will have a bit to tell about what he has been doing in his testimony: Justin Dart, the former Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration and also the chairman of our Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans With Disabilities. Justin. STATEMENT OF JUSTIN W. DART, JR., CHAIRPERSON, TASK FORCE ON THE RIGHTS AND EMPOWERMENT OF AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES

Mr. DART. Mr. Chairman, it is a privilege to appear before your subcommittee. And I am very happy and exceedingly proud to be here today with so many true 20th century patriots of independence like Charley Sabatier and Barbara Burnhardt, Maggy Schrieve, Duane French, John Schunarowski, and John Wensky. And, Mr. Chairman, you have already introduced my distinguished colleague members on the Task Force on the Rights and the Empowerment of Americans With Disabilities. I would like to second your recognition of these great individuals who have spent their own time and money and talents for the cause of Americans with disabilities as members of the task force.

I would like to particular recognize the hard work of our great staff: Marnie Sweet and Marcia Lee Nelson who are here today and have worked long hours and long months for the task force.

I would like to pay tribute to those volunteers who have also given their time and talents and resources to organize and finance this great people's forum today, and the chairman of this forum, organizing committee, Eric Griffin, and collaborators, Elmer Bartels, John Chappel, Bob Williams, Paul Spooner, Charlie Karr, Larry Robinson, Amy Brill, Nancy Waldren, Nancy Durken, Allen Wayne, Marie Lamont, and many others.

I would also like to recognize and to thank the distinguished representatives of the State of Massachusetts who are with us or will be with us here today. And my distinguished colleague, panel member, the Secretary of Human Services, Philip Johnston, and Charlie Crawford, the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, Barbara Jean Wood, the Commissioner for the Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and Mary McCarthy

from the Department of Mental Retardation. And representing the Department of Mental Health, Kevin Preston.

I think it is particularly appropriate that this hearing is being held in Massachusetts, a State with some of the most progressive rehabilitation and independent living services in the Nation and where the Governor and both the Senators and many of the Congresspersons have endorsed and been original sponsors of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I do not have to tell anybody in this room today about the consistent support that Senator Kennedy has given over the years to our cause.

And we are particularly honored today by the participation_in this hearing of Congressman Chester Atkins and Congressman Joe Moakley. And, Congressman, we who are disabled appreciate your support of the Americans With Disabilities Act and of our rights over the years.

I would like to recognize the presence of Dr. Pat Morrisee, one of the great advocates for the rights of people with disabilities in this nation, who is representing Congressman Jeffords, who is one of the original sponsors of the Americans with Disabilities Act and a great advocate for our rights.

And most of all, I would like to commend you, Mr. Chairman, and Maria Cuprill and Bob Tate and Pat Laird of your staff who have worked tirelessly to advise and support the task force. Americans with disabilities have several good friends in the Congress like Representatives Coelho and Jeffords and Atkins and Moakley and Senators Weicker, Harkin, Kennedy, and Dole.

You, Mr. Chairman, have made a unique and historic contribution because you have emphasized that equality cannot be handed down through paternalistic systems. And that people with disabilities will never achieve full first class citizenship until they are empowered to participate fully in the Government and other decisions which control their lives. And you have supported empowerment not only in words, but in action, in the administration of Federal rehabilitation services at Gallaudet University and the introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And you have created the task force on the rights and the empowerment of Americans with disabilities, including constituencies not often represented, such as Native Americans with disabilities, black Americans with disabilities, citizens with mental retardation, citizens with mental illness, citizens with AIDS and I have come to know you as a courageous champion of empowerment and equality and you have laid your career on the line for our rights. And we appreciate it.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the record an executive summary of the Task Force Findings and Recommendations as of today and I will not repeat all of that. I have prepared that for you and presented it to your staff. I would like to make a brief summary of that report and also, with your permission, to make some personal comments.

Mr. OWENS. Without objection your report will be included in the record.

Mr. DART. Thank you. With the cooperation of congressional staff, task force members, staff and volunteers, and virtually the entire disability community, I have presided to date at over 59 public forums in 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Guam; at

tended by more than 6,700 persons with disabilities, their families, advocates, and service providers. I have also made task force issue presentations to numerous other meetings attended by more than 10,000 members of the disability community. The task force has collected and is in the process of analyzing several thousand documents submitted by citizens and organizations outlining discrimination and other barriers which limit the activities of people with disabilities and also proposals to eliminate those barriers.

The task force has no public funding or private grants. Special recognition is due task force members, staff, and volunteers and the literally thousands of patriotic citizens and organizations in every State and territory who have contributed services, money, and time to make the democratic system work. The task force has found overwhelming evidence that in spite of great progress in the area of disability during the past few decades, millions of Americans with disabilities are still subjected to massive discrimination in all significant aspects of life, including education, employment, communication, transportation, public access, insurance, recreation, and access to vital health, legal, and other services.

Our very promising pioneer services for people with disabilities are severely restricted by lack of funds, fragmentation, bureaucratic and regulatory limitations, obsolete public attitudes, and inadequate community access and support systems. Existing disability rights laws are poorly implemented and enforced. Millions of Americans with disabilities suffer unconscionable infringement of their human rights, segregation, unemployment, poverty, and physical and psychological deprivation. The task force believes that the more than 36 million Americans with disabilities will never achieve their full potential for equal participation in the productive mainstream of society until they are fully protected by comprehensive civil rights legislation. And they are empowered to participate fully in the Government and other decisions which control their lives.

America cannot afford either the moral or economic costs of maintaining ever increasing millions of its potentially productive citizens in unjust and unwanted dependency. Investments in the rights and productive independence of all people with disabilities have proven to be immensely profitable to every citizen and to the Nation as a whole.

The task force recommends that Congress enact an effective enforceable form of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The task force recommends that the Congress continue to move toward a full spectrum of effective services, protection and support systems designed to empower all Americans with disabilities to fulfill their potential to be productive citizens of the first class. Mr. Chairman, a personal note: I am shaken to the depths of my being by the holocaust horror of the discrimination, segregation, and deprivation of which I have become aware. I have had to reflect deeply on my personal responsibilities in this matter and the responsibilities of the disability community and the Nation. More than 200 years of hard sacrifices by our forefathers and, especially by the people in this room here today, have brought us to the threshold of a great victory for human justice.

We here today have a profound responsibility to complete that victory. And we are responsible to tens of millions of people with disabilities in America and throughout the world, in this and in future generations. And we are responsible to millions of potentially proud productive human beings who exist today in the 20th century as virtual outcasts from the mainstream of society: jobless, homeless, penniless, hopeless. And we are responsible to hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who die, literally die, years and decades before their time.

Available to us are the resources of the richest, most technologically advanced culture in the history of mankind and we have no excuse to fail our oppressed colleagues, and we have no excuse to fail our children's children.

Mr. Chairman, we solicit your continuing support and that of the Congress and the executive branch, but we also know that the final responsibility lies with us, with the members of the disability community. We must empower ourselves to exercise full and equal participation in the decisions of government and society. We must empower ourselves in the democratic process, in all parties and with all major candidates. And we must demand that our parties and our candidates support ADA empowerment and full and effective services.

Above all, we of the disability community must unite. We have no excuse to sacrifice our historic responsibilities to self-indulgent, self-destructive squabbling among ourselves. All people with disabilities, families, advocates, and service providers are natural allies. We all have the same ultimate goals. We have no irredeemable enemies. We have only enemy attitudes. Let us not seek scapegoats. Let us seek solutions.

Like our founding fathers, like Ghandi, Martin Luther King, we must utilize the power of love and the power of reason and the power of truth to overcome our differences and our apathies and to unite in common dedication to the cause of democracy and human justice. And we must unite and reach out to thousands and millions of our colleagues to join us in creating a tidal wave of positive advocacy that will establish the rights and the empowerment of people with disabilities in the consciousness and in the law and in the everyday life of this Nation. We must unite 36 million Americans with disabilities and all who love justice to declare with one voice that 200 years is long enough for Americans with disabilities to wait for the promises of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution to be kept. And that we will wait no longer. ADA, now. Empowerment, now. Services to be fully human, now. I thank you.

[The prepared statement of Justin W. Dart follows:]

TASK FORCE ON the Rights and EMPOWERMENT OF AMERICANS With DisabilitiES Executive summary of reports, findings and recommendations as of October 24, 1988. More than 6,700 persons with disabilities, families, advocates and service providers attending 59 task force forums in 50 states have presented overwhelming evidence that:

In spite of great progress in the area of disability during the past few decades, millions of Americans with disabilities are still subjected to massive discrimination in all significant aspects of life, including education, employment, communication,

transportation, public access, insurance, recreation and access to vital health, legal and other services.

Our very promising pioneer services for people with disabilities are severely restricted by lack of funds, fragmentation, bureaucratic and regulatory limitations, obsolete public attitudes and inadequate community access and support systems. Existing rights laws are poorly implemented and enforced.

Millions of Americans with disabilities suffer unconscionable infringement of their human rights, segregation, unemployment, poverty, and physical and psychological deprivation.

The Task Force believes that:

The more than 36 million Americans with disabilities will never achieve their full potential for equal participation in the productive mainstream of society until they are fully protected by comprehensive civil rights legislation and empowered to participate fully in the Government and other decisions which control their lives.

America cannot afford either the moral or economic cost of maintaining ever increasing millions of its potentially productive citizens in unjust, unwanted dependency. Investments in the rights and productive independence of all people with disabilities have proven to be immediately profitable to every citizen and to the Nation as a whole.

The Task Force recommends that Congress:

Enact an effective, enforceable form of the Americans with disabilities act.

Continue to move toward a full spectrum of effective services, protections and support systems designed to empower all Americans with disabilities to fulfill their personal potential to be productive citizens of the first class.

Mission.-The Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans With Disabilities was established on May 2, 1968 by Congressman Major R. Owens, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Select Education. Composed of 31 distinguished representatives of major segments of the disability community, the Task Force is mandated to collect information and to make recommendations which will assist Congress as it considers the historic Americans With Disabilities Act, and other legislation designed to implement the rights of America's more than 36 million citizens with disabilities.

The Task Force believes that Americans with disabilities will never be able to achieve their full potential for equal participation in the productive mainstream of society until certain basic truths are understood and acted upon by the nation:

1. Disability is a universally common characteristic of human life; people with disabilities have the same inalienable rights and the same inalienable responsibilities as other people. 2. Equality cannot be handed down by paternalistic systems; people with disabilities must be empowered to participate fully in the government and other decisions which control their lives. 3. America cannot afford either the economic or the moral cost of maintaining ever increasing millions of its potentially productive citizens in unjust, unwanted degrading dependency; experience has demonstrated conclusively that investments in the equality and productive independence of people with disabilities will be immediately profitable to all citizens and to the nation in terms of both money and quality of life.

Activities to date.-The Task Force has held four meetings. With the cooperation of Congressional staff, Task Force members, staff and volunteers and virtually the entire disability community, the Chairperson has presided over 59 public formus in 50 States, the District of Columbia and Guam, attended by more than 6,700 persons with disabilities, their families, advocates and service providers. He has also made Task Force issue presentations to numerous other meetings attended by more than 10,000 members of the disability community. The Task Force has collected and is in the process of analyzing several thousand documents submitted by citizens and organizations outlining discrimination and other barriers which limit the activities of people with disabilities, and proposals to eliminate those barriers.

Findings to date.-While there is general recognition that there has been great progress in the area of disability during the past few decades, there is also overwhelming evidence that people with disabilities still suffer massive discrimination, segregation and deprivation which results in unconscionable injustice to millions of individuals, and unconscionable moral and economic costs to the nation. 1. Devastating discrimination and other barriers still exist in all significant areas of life, including education, employment, communication, transportation, public access, recreation, insurance and access to vital services. 2. Pioneer independence and productivity oriented service providers have struggled valiantly to achieve excellent initial results in certain areas, but are unable to meet all the needs of our rapidly increasing disability population due to obsolete public attitudes, regulatory and bureaucratic limitations and lack of adequate funding, authority, structure and community

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