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| Ragged Edge EXTRA! Charleston, SC cuts bus service to disabled riders Philly Activists Swarm SEPTA Vans In Protest Atlanta crips sue transit system |
Off the Bus
by Rus Cooper-Dowda Rus Cooper-Dowda is a minister and freelance writer in St. Petersburg.
Just recently, the Montgomery, Alabama bus on which Rosa Parks is believed to have refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955 arrived at the Henry Ford Musuem in Dearborn, Michigan. The museum's curator of political history, Bill Pretzer, calls it "one of the most important artifacts of 20th century America." At the time, Rosa Parks was fined $10.00 for violating a city ordinance enforcing transportation segregation. Her arrest set off a boycott of the city bus system, helped forge the face of the civil rights movement at the time, and lauched Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into the public eye. The musuem paid $492,000.00 for the bus at an internet auction.
Lest you think, almost a half century later, that public transportation is now equally available to all, I am here to tell you that millions of Americans with disabilities are still waiting to be fully included. I was born the same Fall in the same state as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and I am still waiting to use the same public transportation my non-disabled peers have open to them now without question.
Bus drivers can still refuse to allow people with disabilities on their
buses. They can still refuse to use equipment in good repair that is
specifically there to help your grandmother. Bus company mangers can still
let drivers get by without announcing bus stops to people with visual
impairments. People with disabilities can still be publically blamed by bus
company employees for their own poor training and badly maintained equipment.
I am not making up this nation-wide scandal that is happening everyday at a
bus stop near where you live or work or pray. Here is one day's example of
what it takes to try to use a public bus when you have a disability:
"When we got off the bus this afternoon, my son was in tears. The driver had
made jokes about how maybe the wheelchair lift was not going to work today,
either. I have no idea what it will take to get across that not being able to
get on or off a bus is not funny.
"Back when we were calling in to find out if the buses on our route had
working wheelchair lifts, we would get responses like:
'You must not really be disabled if you can plan ahead.'
'You must be stupid to think you need to call ahead.'
'You must be dumb not to know bus drivers don't have to pick you up if they
don't want to.'
"We had to stop calling for lift information because the drivers would
retaliate by not letting us use them.
"In the presence of my kid, bus drivers have called me a 'bad passenger,' a
bad mother and a faker all for simply wanting to use the wheelchair lift."
Another Day:
"Then, laughing out loud about this failure, she said, 'Is it okay with you,
honey, if the lift doesn't work today? You didn't really want to go to work
anyway, did you?'
"I told her that yes, I did want to go to work today. She then refused to call
in the wheelchair lift failure. Next, still laughing, she closed the doors
and drove away without me. She treated the wheelchair lift and the reporting
failure as a pleasant joke between us."
Another Day:
"I asked the driver to move a few feet down to a more level area and to try
the wheelchair lift again. He refused.
The skies did not fall when integrated buses finally traveled the streets of
Montgomery.
"I asked him to radio in and ask when the next bus with a working lift would
come by. He refused to do this. He laughed and said he was not allowed to ask
that question on the radio. He said the sky would not fall if I didn't have a
ride to work.
"I then asked him to report that his wheelchair lift didn't work. He refused
and drove away. As he was closing the doors, I heard him muttering about
handicapped people going and thinking they could ride the bus like everyone
else."
Being able to get on a bus may seem like a small thing to many people without
disabilities. But, consider, people with disabilities are still struggling to
get TO the back of the bus. Eleven years after the Americans with
Disabilities Act passed in Congress, we are still just trying to get on the
bus.
Without the civil rights of fair treatment on and basic access to public
transportation -- the right to almost everything else stays theory only. And,
just as the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 led to the claiming of more
basic civil rights, so has the right to get on the bus birthed other work for
more complete civil rights for people with disabilities.
If this hunger to get the same consideration as others seems too whiney in
this day and age, consider the statistics:1 out of 3 Americans has daily
contact with a person they care about who has a disability. We save money by
keeping people in their communities. People with disabilities are actually
being placed in nursing homes now because they can't get on a bus to do their
own food shopping. It would be far cheaper to force public bus companies to
treat shoppers with disabilities more fairly.
If you live long enough, you will age into disability. Access to public
transportation then will allow you to stay active in your community longer.
What's not to like here about letting people with disabilities use public
buses like everyone else? Why aren't religious/liberal groups, who hated
segregation based on race back then, agitating over morally wrong public
transportation segregation based on disability now? After all, with a 50/50
chance of being disabled enough to need adaptive equipment by the end of
their lives, isn't joining forces to fight for fully inclusive public
transportation in their own best interests?
Two generations ago, marches and demonstrations in the South (against things
like transportation discrimination) were the places to be. Where are these
liberal and religious people and their descendants now? Don't they know that
by birth defect, illness or accident, the next disabled person in need of
transportation access could be them or someone they care about?
Rosa Parks' bus is a celebrated new item in a transportation musuem. Ken
Kesey's bus, once rumored to be at the Smithsonian, is fading into its
day-glo colors at the family's ranch.
The historic bus symbolizing the first day it was actually no big deal for
any American with a disability in any American city to catch the bus for any
purpose at any time doesn't exist yet. Why is that?
How long will the current wheels of injustice keep going 'round and 'round
all over town? How long?
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