The Denver Post - Sat April 30, 1977

PHOTO by Dave Buresh: A fancy room inside the Colorado capitol building with Greek columns and ornately carved doors, is filled with protesters. Several are carry signs: "More job opportunities for the handicapped" and "End discrimination for handicapped." A blind African American man with a an afro, a fancy dashiki type jacket and pendant speaks into a microphone as an older white man in shirt sleeves and a necktie holds a paper in his hand. A woman standing between them looks down at the paper.
Caption reads: Handicapped Demonstrate Outside of Joint Budget Committee Offices. At microphone is Don Galloway, with State Rep. Morgan Smith, center and Janet Anderson in middle.

[Headline] Handicapped Rejoice at Rights Success
by Jim Kirksey

Flushed with the success of helping secure enactment of a “Bill of Rights" for the handicapped on Thursday, more than 200 handicapped and disabled Coloradans celebrated and demonstrated Friday at the State Capitol.

A new set of regulations that puts into effect a 1973 law was signed Thursday by Joseph Califano secretary or the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW).

Its enactment was credited to the efforts of handicapped persons across the country, and especially to a nationwide demonstration by the handicapped three weeks ago.

The law extends civil rights to the handicapped those civil rights guarantee already granted to ethnic minorities and women.

THE FESTIVE CROWD gathered on the west steps of the Capitol about 10:30 a.m. to hear a number of speakers congratulate them on their success and to caution them about the future.

The gathering - many people in wheelchairs, some on crutches, others with white canes or guide dogs - were told they were responsible for the victory, but were cautioned that it "it is only a beginning."

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...the HEW regulations would become a reality only if they are pursued, and the crowd was urged to remain united in the future for that effort.

THE SPEAKERS included Don Galloway, executive director of the Governors Advisory Council on the Handicapped; Janet Anderson, administrative assistant to the council; Lt. Gov. George Brown; Wade Blank, codirector of Denver's Atlantis Community; Ingo Antonitsch, executive director of the Denver Commission on the Disabled; Diane McGeorge, president of the National Federation for the Blind of Colorado; and Ludwig Rothbein, of the Colorado Developmental Disability Council.

After approximately an hour, the crowd moved inside the Capitol and presented legislators with a list urging them to:

-- Promote the "deinstitutionalization" of the disabled with increased state supplemental income payments and home care attendants fees.

-- Require school districts to integrate disabled students into their classrooms.

-- Legislate removal of architectural barriers.

-- Limit the growth of the nursing home industry as the wrong answer to problems of the disabled and handicapped.

-- Investigate the nursing home industry and state institutions and prosecute cases of abuse and violations of civil rights.

-- Expand affirmative action programs to include the disabled.

-- Appropriate $188,000 to restore to Denver General Hospital monies for services to the mentally ill.

-- Create a permanent advisory council on the disabled with the funding and power to “make effective changes."

-- Establish accessible polling places for the disabled.

THE GROUP stood outside the third floor office of the legislature's Joint Budget Committee and chanted, "We want to see the JBC.”

State Sen. Ted Strickland, R-Westminister, chairman of the JBC, State Reps Belly Neale, R-Denver, Morgan Smith, D-Brighton, both JBC members and Robert Eckelberry consulted with the gathering for 300 minutes.

Strickland, who met with them for about 20 minutes, addressed each of the listed demands by telling of action already taken and assuring them that the JBC hearings in next year's budget would be held in facilities where the disabled and handicapped could take part.

Neale said the JBC “does have the best interests of the handicapped at heart," and Smith assured them that he would circulate their demands throughout the legislature.

Created on

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Posted on

Saturday 20 February 2016

Tags

abuse, affirmative action, architectural barriers, Atlantis Community, Budget Committee, civil rights, Colorado Capitol, deinstitutionalization, demands, demonstration, Diane McGeorge, Don Galloway, HEW - Health Education and Welfare Dept., Ingo Antonitsch, Lt Gov Brown, NFB, nursing homes, Rehabilitation Act of 1973 - section 504, San Antonio, school integration, Secretary Califano, voting, Wade Blank

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