that that disease has truly retarded this nation. And if this Nation's reputation was based upon its treatment of disabled people or minorities, they would certainly rate something less than great. And until the segregated people are truly mainstreamed into our society, we will not reach our greatness that we have the potential to do.

I believe that the disease is caused by arrogance, ignorance and sometimes outright stupidity. I think that just in the past few years, I have personally been discriminated against. There is not a person in this room who is disabled who has not been personally discriminated against. A few years ago, I was arrested on an airlines simply because I refused to sit on a blanket, a blanket that they thought was devised to evacuate me in the event of a survivable crash. In fact, it was a policy that the airlines had invented to make sure that I, as a wheelchair user, a paralyzed person, did not soil their upholstery. To me, that was dehumanizing and it was just another one of those things that robs people of their dignity and their self-respect, their humanness and their sense of self-worth.

Every single day, we face that. We face our discriminators whether it is coming to this building this morning and going to the front door and being instructed to come through the driveway to get here-now, that may not be much to the guy standing at the front door, but if I were black and if I were instructed to come through the driveway to get here, it might mean something. Or, if I as a Jewish person, was instructed to come through a separate entrance, there is no need for that. But those are the kinds of things that continue to rob disabled people.

I got more than my legs robbed from me in an accident-not an accident. I was shot in 1968. But in every single day, we are being robbed little by little, inch by inch. That is what this movement is all about and that is what this act is all about: To rectify that wrong. And those thieves are out there. They continue to rob from us. What is unfortunate is that many of us have not developed a defense for that. We do not know how to even recognize those thieves. They are like pickpockets. Sometimes we get robbed of our dignity, our self-respect, we swallow insults on a daily basis to continue to get along in our society.

For instance, this summer, if I chose to the Great Woods Concert a few miles away, I would have to accept the personal insult of being separated from my wife as the price of admission to the concert. And the person that makes that decision is the usher. Nobody should have that right. Whether I am separated 1 inch, 1 foot, or 100 miles is segregation. It is that segregation which the Supreme Court was talking about in 1954 and it is that kind of treatment that we have got to stop in 1988.

The idea is that they created a seating zone for disabled people. They are creating policies based upon what is expedient, whether than taking a humanistic approach to policy making. And it is those types of things I think that are our biggest problems today. It is the system. It is those people who enforce and implement the laws that are doing bad jobs. We have got a lot of good laws on the books that are not being enforced because we do not have people that have been educated to the point that they understand how to

rectify our problems. They create policy based on expediency to overcome oversights. Thank you for the opportunity.

Mr. OWENS. Thank you. Mr. William Cavanaugh.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM CAVANAUGH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AD LIB, INC.

Mr. CAVANAUGH. Thank you. I have been a consumer of the mental health system in the State of Massachusetts and I have been a past patient of Northampton State Hospital. While a resident of this psychiatric institution, I witnessed on a daily basis abuses and day-to-day treatment that only in the mildest terms would be referred to as discriminatory. Abuse and disregard for the basis human rights of people who suffer from mental illness occurs all too often to be ignored. We who suffer from mental illness are no less deserving of non-discriminatory treatment and protection than others enjoy.

In the few cases I know of, when abusive treatment practices and human rights violations are proven, all too often limp excuses or technical rationales are presented and accepted as a defense to the incidence and dilute the consequences administered to the guilty parties.

One such incident that comes to mind is that of a Mr. Vincent Veletia who suffered from a debilitating form of mental illness. In desperation, his guardians admitted Vincent to a private psychiatric institution that often used adversive therapy techniques as a treatment response to certain behaviors. Vincent suffocated and died when a full sensory deprivation hood was placed over his head. Attached to the hood were earphones which emitted constant white static noise. Vincent's hands were handcuffed behind his knees, forcing him to remain bent over at the waist.

Authorities saw this act not as murder, but as an authorized treatment procedure that failed.

Vincent's guardians had signed the paper allowing the facility to administer such treatment. This seemed to make things acceptable. The administrator who designed the treatment procedure that the staff administered to Vincent that resulted in his death was not found guilty of anything. Nor were the staff. Instead, the institution's administrator received a substantial voluntary settlement for damage to his reputation reportedly suffered by bad publicity.

Since 1975, when my illness stabilized, I have worked as a professional in the field of human services. Much of the past 13 years has been spent in a direct care capacity to persons who suffer from mental and physical disabilities. I have heard of, witnessed,`shared and personally experienced many cases of discrimination based on disabilities. Many instances of discrimination to persons with disabilities is of a stigmatizing nature, generally damaging to the particular disability group referred to, often administered by the video, audio and written media.

Other discriminatory practices are sanctioned by law or traditional policies and regulations. One such example is the accepted practice of insurance firms being allowed to practice discriminatory policies that regularly deny medical insurance to individuals who are disabled based on possibilities of medical needs. Others are bla

tant discriminatory practices such as the time a friend of mine, Michael, whose disability is cerebral palsy attempted to go to a movie with me only to be denied admittance by the theater manager who said that Michael presented a liability risk.

I am currently the executive director of an independent living center which aids individuals with disabilities to live independent lives. I daily work with and for individuals with disabilities who have waited far too long for legislation that clearly spells out that they are first class citizens worthy of every right to fair, equal and non-discriminatory treatment. The right not to be discriminated against can and should be insured by the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988. On behalf of the thousands of individuals with disabilities who live in my service area, Berkshire County in western Massachusetts, the hundreds of individuals I know and especially for the Vincents and Michaels who cannot speak for themselves, I ask you and your colleagues to enact the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988. Thank you for your time and attention.

Mr. OWENS. Thank you.

I want to thank all of you and particularly Mr. Eric Griffin for the tremendous amount of help we received from him in arranging these hearings here today. I also want to say that the calendar, the timetable that many of you received, we are way behind on it. And we are going to cut down on the lunch time in order to get to the schedule. We do not want to have to reduce below 5 minutes the time that each speaker has. We are here to hear from you, to have individual documentation from you, and we do not want to cut that time. So, we are going to cut down on the lunch hour and try to get back on schedule that way. Thank you, again, all of you.

Our next panel is Linda Pelletier, Emeka Nwojke, and Ted Kennedy, Jr. Mr. Don Levine can join this panel.

You may begin, Ms. Pelletier.

STATEMENT OF LINDA PELLETIER, BOSTON, MA

Ms. PELLETIER. I am really glad to be here and to be able to speak to you today. I wanted to say that I have been disabled all my life. And everyone thinks that-you do not realize that you get discriminated against when you were born disabled, but you do. And I am tired of being discriminated. It really affects every aspect of my life. Sometimes, you do not really see it for it is until afterwards. But, you know, everything I do--I will give you a few examples. I have gotten evicted from my apartment two times already in the last 8 years. I am not on the street homeless, fortunately, but both cases were really discrimination because people do not like to take section 8. They like to take rich people who can pay the bigger rent. So, each time that I got evicted, they either blamed it on my chair or some other thing that was not really, really true. But it was there and it was discrimination.

My last time I got evicted, I brought them into court because they had harassed me for about 8 months before I got evicted. I brought them into court and I asked to get damages and I won. But I still left. But it was so humiliating. It was very hard to live that way. So, you know, I feel that people who are disabled, you know,

they have a real hard time to get housing. Even though we have section 8 and all the provisions, the landlords do not like it. They would rather get the real money from rich people that can give it all at once.

In other words, I have gotten discriminated against-and even when I go out for recreation, at one time I went out with some people from Boston University where I go. And we went out to eat at a restaurant here in Boston. I went with her and another boy was with us, too. When we arrived, they refused to serve us alcohol-me and this other boy, because we were in wheelchairs. They said that we might fall out if we did not have seatbelts on. And we did have seatbelts on, but that is not the point. So, we all got out and Mr. Duscham was there from University Hospital and we all got out and we walked out. But I was the only person, again, that carried it out and went to the NTAD and I brought a case against them. And we got on Eye Witness News, too. I won that case, too. I got money from them. But they refused to even go on the air to make anything right. The manager would not call me. I have been discriminated against and really otherwise-like to get my education, it has been a fight all the while. I met before we had the disability bill at Mass Rehab when I started to go to college, it was hard. My rehab counselor at that time, back in 1970, he did not want to take on my case because I was too disabled and I would make a lot of work for him. I had to go to a home-to-school intercom at the time because the in-schools were not accessible. And he did not want to take on the extra work. So, he turned down my case and I had to write to Ted Kennedy who helped me to get back on Mass Rehab.

And even now, I have gone to Boston University and I am working on my Ph.D. in rehab counseling. But I am not able to really do my whole dissertation yet because I cannot get a computer and I cannot type too well, you know, I can write real good, but I cannot get my thoughts down on paper. So, I have been trying to get a computer for about 3 or 4 years any way I can. Now, it is real hard to have an equal opportunity to be able to communicate more easily than to put my thoughts down on paper.

Now, one more thing I wanted to leave you that every time that I worked-because I have worked at different jobs. And I have gotten a lot of discrimination in that area. Like one time, I worked at a rehab agency-well, I worked at two or three rehab agencies. At one, I worked for 4 years and then they got someone new and they said that because I could not drive I could not carry out the proper schedule. Then there was a rehab agency I worked for about 2 years. They said I could not go on working because I could not access their computer and they could not adapt it for me. So, it is just very, very frustrating. And, also, every time I worked, I had a real problem with SSI because I go in and out and on and off of the system. And whenever I worked, they make it hard for me. They really are crying to me for working because I get into big problems about overpayment, you know. I owe about $7,000 in overpayment for the different times that I have worked and that they did not handle it properly, SSI. I have got to pay that now.

And it is hard. I do get tired of fighting the system, but I will continue to fight. The way that I do it is I go to court whenever I

can. When I feel that I am in the right, I will go to court to carry out the fight because that is the only thing that many people will really listen to and support. I will still fight to the day I die. It is a real long hard fight. And I thank you all for what you have brought here.

Mr. OWENS. Thank you.

Mr. Nwojke. Did I pronounce that right?

STATEMENT OF EMEKA NWOJKE, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
NORTHEAST INDEPENDENT LIVING PROGRAM

Mr. NwOJKE. Can you hear me?

Mr. OWENS. Yes.

Mr. NwOJKE. Good morning, honorable Major, Major Owens. And I am glad you are here today. My name is wrongly spelled so that is why you could not pronounce it. My name is Emeka Nwojke and I am a resident of the State of Massachusetts.

I became disabled 5 years ago because of a car accident. I am the president of the Northeast Independent Living Program in the State of Massachusetts. I am also a strong member of the National Council of Independent Living. Right now, I am the chairperson of the NCIL. I strongly believe in the Constitution of the United States which promises freedom and independence for all within the Nation.

I take the stand of all people who think that you, the lawmakers, must be proactive to think about generations ahead of us, to think about tomorrow, to think about children coming after us. What can we do to better understand? So, today, I know you are here to think about making our environment barrier-free, affording us the opportunity to have a choice of full citizenship. I am glad to tell you that it is still the black man that has given us this chance. It was a black man that spoke for the freedom of people in America. So, it does touch my heart to see you sit there and listen to us testify about discrimination.

I have been educated to the point to know that the best way to aggrieve my discriminations in society is to go to court or go to what is called in Massachusetts, MCAD: Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.

I went to the courtroom one day and I want to share my experience with you about going to court. First of all, I could not get into the building because there were about 500 steps to get in there. Then I called for the security guard to help me, who happened to be a policeman. He told me there was an entrance at the back door for the handicapped people. I have no problem being called handicapped. The problem I have is being able to be a participant of that system.

I readily agreed and I went to the back door. I went to the back door and there were three more stairs for me to get over to be able to ring a bell to announce my arrival so that somebody would come and open the door and maybe let me in. I was not able to do that. So, I was at the back door for an hour waiting for somebody to come back so I could call for help. This is the court system that is supposed to give me a fair hearing. It took me 2 hours to get in. Then, finally, when I got in, that is where the story started. Tables