IF IN FACT CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE, THEN WE ALL MUST THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT AGAIN PROVIDES US I URGE YOU TO MOVE ON THIS BILL, WE CAN NOT AFFORD DELAY, WE MUST PASS ADA. Mr. OWENS. Thank you, Mr. Myette. We have run out of time. Thank you very much, all the members of the panel. Our next panel consists of William Fennessee, Jerry Johnson, and Pat Deegan. Again, I apologize for our time limitations, but we are about to run out of time for this room already. It is very necessary for us to complete our testimony. Mr. Johnson, do you want to begin? STATEMENT OF JERRY JOHNSON, NAMES PROJECT NEW ENGLAND Mr. JOHNSON. Good evening, sir. My name is Jerry Johnson. I am a member of the Names Project New England and Names Project DC. I am also HIV positive, asymptomatic, which means I have no symptoms. As you can look at me and tell, I am still healthy, intelligent, have all my capabilities and capacity to reason and to carry on a normal decent life. On August 14, 1988, I was working for a company in the Washington, DC. metro area when they learned of my infection and I was immediately dismissed. They told me and I quote: "Your job is no longer needed. You are more of a liability to the company. Later on that month, the home that I was living in, the landlord found out that I was HIV positive. And my landlord evicted me without notice. I was out with the Project, came out and my things were sitting on the front porch. Mr. Chairman, I do say that HIV positive and people with AIDS are not lepers. They do not plan to infect the whole world. The education is getting better, but there is still a lot more that needs to be done. We can carry on in society and we can be an asset to society. Our time is limited. I do not feel that we need to have to keep proving ourselves and keep going into court and keep showing the world that we are somebody and that we have our feelings and our rights just as much as everybody else. Mr. OWENS. Thank you very much. Mr. Fennessee. STATEMENT OF WILLIAM FENNESSEE, RHODE ISLAND Mr. FENNESSEE. My name is William Fennessee and I am a certified rehabilitation counselor, national certified counselor. I also have a doctorate in rehabilitation administration and a four-State experience including Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, and Rhode Island. What I would like to speak to is regarding employment of the disabled people. The Rehabilitation Services Administration funds programs that are not required to have any affirmative duties relative to employment. By this, I am referring to the State rehabilitation agencies, the 6,000 rehabilitation facilities and some 80 or so odd college and university programs. These programs have no affirmative action requirements whatsoever and, therefore, professional disabled people do not receive good opportunities and they are underrepresented in these programs. I might also add that with the other two major Federal agencies, such as the Social Security Administration and the Veterans' Ad ministration, of course, the service delivery process includes those individuals that are providing services at the local level to be Federal employees. These agencies include non-competitive placements for disabled individuals. However, at the State level, with the State agencies, with rehab facilities and with the college and university programs, no such requirement exists. I submit to you that with the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and subsequent amendments have omitted consistently and persistently this reckless disregard for civil rights of disabled people in the main agency that provides services. I say that the Americans with Disabilities Act as it passed, I think this needs to be looked at very closely. I would like to also add that section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and its regulations, once upon a time when they first were submitted in 1977, included protection for any individual that complained or testified under the Privacy Act. However, under the current administration any individual that complains or provides testimony must sign an agreement that their name can be given to the respondent. This is a definite problem that will prohibit individuals from complaining and other individuals who are aware of disabled individuals being discriminated against from coming forth. Likewise, with the Defense Department's current problem with whistle blowers, I think this current practice allows us to inhibit individuals from coming forward. I would like to close by saying that I think that this has been an omission by the Congress and I wish that they would take action on it. Mr. OWENS. Thank you very much, Mr. Fennessee. And thank you both for testifying. Diana Viet, Speed Davis, and Bill Williams. Diana Viet, Mr. Davis is not here. Marilyn Price-Spivack? STATEMENT OF BILL WILLIAMS, BROCKTON, MA Mr. WILLIAMS. My name is Bill Williams. I would like to just talk a little bit about discrimination in employment. People with disabilities, they go through verbal "nos" as well as nonverbal "nos," that funny look as they see you in a chair or with braces or crutches. People that do not know anything about disabilities-I am mainly concerned about an awful lot of people who are in the positions to talk for and about people with disabilities. They do not know our feelings. They do not know what we live in, how we live in. And they do not represent us, they cannot. There is an awful lot of people, do gooders, that do help, but I think we not only need this bill to be passed, but we need people with disabilities in an awful lot of decision making slots. I lost a job-the gentleman just testified a few minutes ago about the Mass Commission on Discrimination. We bought a house in New Bedford. I directed that house. I came down with MS and I was staggering-of course, that is one of the symptoms of MS. They fired me because they said I was drunk. I had not had a drink in 12 years at that time. I went back to school because in that particular field I was working in, they said you had to have a BA or above because they wanted you to be in the third-party building. I went back to school. As I was going to school, I applied for a probation officer's job over in Cambridge. The guy gave me the interview and I went over there. It was coming down more, so, I had a cane. He said, "Your qualifications is good." The second interview was set up. So, I came back for the second interview and I could not hardly make it at that time. I had crutches. And when I walked in for the second interview he said, "Well, do not call me. I will call you." And he never called me. Third, I went to school. I got my masters. First, I got a BA and I applied for a job and they said, the third-party building is not going to pay you with a BA. So, I went and got my masters. And I asked-two seconds and I am through. The Department of Rehabilitation would they pay for it? And they said, "No, we will not pay for it." But there was other people there that paid for them with their masters degree. They would not pay for my masters. OK. I got the masters degree. They in turn sent me for a job. The same thing happened. At the same time, I was investigating them because they had no people of color in that office to deal with people with disabilities. They did not give me the job. As I began to raise hell about that, they in turn hired two people. I applied at Bridgewater in a unit there. They did not have no people of color in that unit. We need this. But we also need people with disabilities to be able to accept decisionmaking positions. Thank you. Mr. OWENS. Thank you very much, Mr. Williams. Ms. Viet. Diana Viet. STATEMENT OF DIANA VIET, STATE OFFICE OF HANDICAPPED AFFAIRS Ms. VIET. You probably have heard many, many stories today. I want to tell you about my story. These are our lives, all of our lives. We get up every day and do them over and over and over. I am tired of them. And I am sure everybody in this room is tired of them. I grew up in Vermont and I moved to Boston about 6 months ago to join the disabilities rights movements here in Boston. I am going to tell you a story that I had not told yet in public but it is very difficult for me to tell. I grew up in Vermont. I have three sisters and a mother who has been a major influence in my life and have known about the disability laws and equal education to all. So, I have had the opportunity to go to public school and to get a college education but with a lot of work. About 2 years ago, after I graduated from a 2-year college, I took a year off. That year was very difficult for me, but it also changed my life and what I chose to do in my life. I did not want to live anymore. The first time I graduated from college, I wanted to end my life. I felt like I was not a good person, not a strong person. That reason is because I got up every day and walked down the street and kids stopped playing in the street to look at me. It is because I go to the bank and people stare at me when I am deposit ing my check, my money that I earn every week. And in that year that I took off-I know that my time is up-but I have something to say. In that time I took off, I met people with disabilities come to Vermont Center for Independent Living and I learned about the disability rights movement. I started telling my story with other people with disabilities like we are doing right here. And I learned what happened in my life and I started using the energy that I have felt other stereotypes had done-have felt about myself, in a positive way towards create change. The Americans With Disabilities Act is one more step to that change. The discrimination that we feel every day is much. Mr. OWENS. Thank you very much, Ms. Viet. STATEMENT OF MARILYN PRICE-SPIVACK, NATIONAL HEAD MS. PRICE-SPIVACK. Thank you, Mr. Owens. It is not easy to follow Diane. My name is Marilyn Price-Spivack. I am cofounder of the National Head Injuries Foundation. But more importantly, I am the parent of a severely brain damaged daughter who suffers a multitude of disabilities. I am not here to talk so much about Debbie as I am to talk about all the victims of traumatic brain injury as they are added to the 36 million disabled Americans. I am going to focus my short time on one area. And that is access to health care. One of the problems that we perceive and we see and witness and we try to deal with on a daily basis is that many people with disabilities cannot access appropriate health and rehabilitation care which is the presetter of acquiring human services and educational services. People with traumatic brain injury-it is recognized as a new disability. And I plead with the public policy makers that if we are going to save people and we are going to commit to a heavy-duty up front medical costs, what are we going to do to improve the quality of their lives? We desperately need to begin to address the access to health care and medical services. I think that is probably the most important message that I want to bring: That we are not going to move into the community until we are able to rehabilitate people out of hospitals. And for that, we have a major problem. Traumatic brain injury brings 60,000 to 70,000 severely disabled people to the population each year. We do not do anything that we should be doing in the area of prevention. We can prevent disabilities and we are not doing a good enough job in that area. I would plead that this committee with the support of the Americans With Disabilities Act look to the development of those services that will enhance the future for those people who need to find quality in their lives. In terms of what Diane has just said, we deal at our office with suicide calls on a regular basis, who cannot deal with the discriminations they face. I don't think a week goes by when we don't have a suicide call. The fact that people with disabilities such as this gentleman just referred to you, when you have communications |