Directing Attorney, DREDF
Under the auspices of doing a story on the anniversary of the ADA, Cooper and his team came to the birthplace of the disability movement, Berkeley, California, and talked to many who have benefitted from the ADA. They spent hours with two of the most honorable lawyers one will ever meet, Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian, who have done a world of good to make America more accessible to people with disabilities. Most of this change came about as a result of cooperative negotiations between these lawyers and the businesses seeking these clients as customers. From accessible ATM’s where blind individuals can bank, to traffic lights with sound so blind pedestrians can safely cross the street, these negotiated settlements have allowed access to basic community life for the millions of blind Americans who had been deprived of the daily independence we all take for granted.
Feingold and Dardarian took the time to explain to Cooper and his CBS colleagues various successful ways to provide access for people with disabilities. They rightfully expected a sound journalistic piece that would highlight these options.
So, what did Cooper spotlight in his story on the ADA? A tempest in a teapot: a story about a few lawyers who file a lot of frivolous suits against small businesses. Even if this reporting were accurate (which I do not concede), those stories are at most a footnote to history: the story of how a large segment of our population fought against the unnecessary barriers and unexamined prejudice that excluded them from community life, and achieved inclusion. Cooper instead chose to make the successes of the ADA a mere footnote in his hatchet job of a piece.
I have been practicing disability law for almost 40 years, as the Directing Attorney of Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc. (DREDF). We were intimately involved in the passage the ADA in 1990, the first law in history protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities in order to reverse centuries of exclusion, segregation, and extreme prejudice against people with disabilities. The stories Congress heard about how poorly people with disabilities have been treated in America resulted in a sweeping bi-partisan approval of the ADA. Since passage, we at DREDF have used the ADA to allow children with diabetes to attend school, to allow people who are blind and deaf to have access to the rapidly growing world of e-commerce and online education, to allow people who had no options other than institutionalization to live in the community with the rest of us, to allow people with disabilities access to basic health care barred by inaccessible offices and equipment, and so much more. The only reference to DREDF in the piece was a headless shot of our development director, Ingrid Tischer, using a walker. She did not volunteer to be used this way.
DREDF, Dardarian, and Feingold are not alone in our pursuit of justice for people with disabilities. The Disability Law Bar Association is comprised of over 250 lawyers who are among of the most honest, sincere, passionate, and skillful lawyers one could ever meet. These lawyers do the profession proud by using their skills to open doors that have been closed shut too long.
But Cooper would probably say (as you, the reader, might) that he was just “reporting” the fact that unscrupulous lawyers bring frivolous claims under the ADA to the detriment of small business owners. But, therein lies the problem that was all too evident in this election cycle — treating the outlier as the norm, the exceptional as the ordinary, and the abuse as the practice.
It does not require an exhaustive study of biased journalism to recognize the fact that selective reporting, even if based in truth, can serve the nefarious purpose of perpetuating an untrue impression. Take for example the widely reported story that a girl died after receiving the cervical-cancer HPV vaccine, while the fact that 1.4 million girls received the vaccine with only beneficial results goes unreported. Whether it is called selective reporting or cherry picking, the 60 Minutes piece on the ADA took the rare abuse of the ADA and made it the story. That is a disservice to people with disabilities who finally have a civil rights law that challenges centuries old barriers and prejudice. The Americans with Disabilities Act is one of the most important advances in modern history; and it was presented as a scam. Shame on you, Anderson Cooper.
Is there a way to communicate to CNN and Cooper our agreement with Ms. Mayerson?
I did not see the 60 Minutes Piece you referenced but in our town, we celebrate businesses who voluntarily go beyond the letter to the spirit of the law. Two restaurants and a dance program were honored on 12-9-16 for how they welcome all people as customers or performers and were nominated by people with disabilities who patronize them. I am sorry to see a national stage used to sideline inclusion as a niche issue that negatively impacts the larger community. Access makes for better communities. People with disabilities are consumers and voters and employees and employers. They are us.
I thank you for this honest expression. I really feel that CNN is responsible for alot of what we are facing. If they had more guts, they would have called out alot of things that were damaging in this election. They will have to live with the truth of their participation, in the wee small hours of the night and in the depth of their hearts. I am with you.
audrey hope
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ms. Mayerson! I was also outrage by the 60 Minutes piece, and I wrote a comment to their blog to voice my concern. Not surprisingly, I never received an answer.
In my comment (which I have attached below), I tried to make the point that not only were Mr. Anderson’s comments insensitive and skewed, they were INACCURATE!
If you or anyone else would like to continue trying to reach Mr. Cooper about this piece, I would love to help!
Happy New Year, and thanks for all you do!
Helen Russon
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.HELENRUSSON 5 minutes ago
I am an attorney with a disability, and I teach a course in disability law at one of our local law schools. I have always had tremendous respect for Anderson Cooper, but I think he missed a couple of important points in this piece.
The ADA clearly states that accommodations do not have to be made unless they are “reasonable.” And “reasonableness” is defined as “without undue difficulty or expense.”
In addition, the extensive regulations Mr. Cooper cited only apply to businesses that are building new structures or are altering portions of existing ones. For businesses that are doing neither, the above definition of “reasonableness” applies.
Finally, there is a tremendous amount of free information available to everyone about the ADA. Go to http://www.ada.gov for more information.
As has been mentioned by several others here, the ADA is a law of access and inclusion, which is very much needed now more than ever.
I watched the segment. As a Disabled American on S.S.D.I. currentely in Federal District Court Pro Se two seperate Civil Rights suits, Arlotta v Diocese of Buffalo et al., and Arlotta v Bank of America et al., I can’t say that Mr. Cooper painted a “positive image,” of Americans’ that’re disabled. Rather than groups of sham artists’ or scammers’, looking for ways out of the subsistence poverty of fixed income that the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS HAVE NO EMPHATY OR UNDERSTANDING OF!
The Stigma is furthered as, yet again, ALL DISABLED AMERICANS’, have been subjugated onto the realmed fringes of society.
Until ANY PERSON OR PEOPLES’ CAN LIVE OFF OF SUBSISTENCE BELOW THE GOVERNMENT POVERTY LINE FIXED INCOME DON’T BE SO QUICK TO JUDGE NUMEROUS DISABLED PEOPLE AS SCAMMERS’ OR WHATEVER OTHER CATEGORIES OF DISCRIMINATORY CLASSIFICATION THEY CAN COME UP WITH!
Not too long ago, might I point out, HOMOSEXUALITY WAS A VERIFIABLE DSM LISTED DISABILITY!
There are the diagnosed and the UNDIAGNOSED!