Speaking out in Julian
Kudos to disability access activist HolLynn D'Lil for submitting an opinion piece to the North County Times giving some much-needed perspective to the Julian, CA lawsuits. It isn't surprising that the paper published it. D'Lil is just the kind of "expert" newspapers look for in selecting opinion articles to run opposite their editorial pages.
In her article, Julian can make history with access, D'Lil writes,
I served on the California State Historical Building Safety Board and chaired the committee charged with bringing the California State Historical Building Code into compliance with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.... In law, there is no conflict between preserving our history and stopping architectural discrimination against persons with disabilities.
D'Lil's opinion article follows on the heels of columnist Mark Mush's Turning ADA into an ATM, which ran three days earlier.
It would be great if Edge-Centric readers took advantage of the North County Times's comment feature to post comments. Do it here.
The San Diego Union-Tribune took up the Julian access story over the Christmas weekend. Read J. Harry Jones' Disability warrior swoops on Julian.
Comments
Hi Mary, and thank you for your comments. I have a suggestion to pass on to readers. I think we could get published more if we submitted more letters to the editor. However, many folks find it difficult to restrain their comments to 200 words, which is the usual max for letters to the editor. I suggest that they go ahead and write what they want and need to say, then divide their letter into parts. Then they can ask friends to send in some of the parts of their letter under their name. This way, we can get all our "say" out there, and avoid the frustration of having to pare down our letters to 200 words. True, the letter writer won't get credit for all the writing, but then that's not the point, anyway.
In fact, I was in the process of doing this, when the editors of the North Coast Times wrote back and asked me to expand my letter to the editor to a 500-word max op ed piece. So, see what can happen?
Happy Holidays!
HolLynn
Posted by: HolLynn | December 27, 2005 03:23 PM