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Coelho Challenges 2004 Candidates and Disability Community on Work Agenda
Charging that none of the 10 major party Presidential candidates “has dared to take the concerns at the center of our community and place them consistently at the center of their campaigns,” former Congressman Tony Coelho urged the disabilities community to only support candidates who adopt a 5-point agenda for dismantling barriers to work for the disabled.
Coelho, author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, delivered his remarks in an address at New York Law School.
By adopting his work agenda, Coelho said, each presidential candidate could “look to our community for the margin of victory for his campaign and moral advantage for his cause.”
The former congressman, diagnosed thirty-nine years ago with epilepsy, and himself a victim of employment discrimination, also directly challenged the disabled community.
“Some of us settle for the empty promise of more federal funds; the empty gestures of White House summits or a presidential advisor; or the empty warmth of rhetoric that too often sounds like pity,” Mr. Coelho said, “we can only support a candidate for President who adopts this agenda for work.”
Coelho said the disability community should only support candidates who pledge to:
- appoint federal judges who will respect the Americans with Disabilities Act as originally passed by Congress;
reverse the damage done to ADA by ideologically-driven court decisions;
boost employment for people with disabilities through changes in federal contracting, affirmative action, and small business policies;
- increase federal employment of people with disabilities by 100,000 as required under the Executive Order promulgated by President Clinton; and,
- reform Federal programs so that disabled people have incentives to seek work rather than stay at home.
Coelho concluded: “If we force these candidates to speak, clearly and directly, about how they will take down our barriers to work, we will not simply be heard, we will be respected. And if we force a change in this campaign’s debate, we will forever change national policy toward the disabled, and we will permanently change our lives and our nation for the generations that follow.”
Speeches
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