Book Club with Rita Manak

Our March Book Club discussion will be on "Being Heumann, An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist" by Judith Heumann (2020). Judy contracted polio and became a quadriplegic at eighteen months of age when there were no accommodations for the disabled. She initially was denied the right to attend school with normal children because schools were not accessible. Her mother taught her to be a fighter. She wanted to be a teacher and eventually graduated from college, becoming increasingly active in disability movements in New York, Berkeley, and Washington D.C.  Unlike other civil rights movements of the 70s, the disabled were invisible. There was no accessible transportation or access to public buildings. The book chronicles the fight for publicity, acknowledgement, the passage of the American Disabilities Act and the internationalization of rights for the disabled.  Now with the challenges to the U.S. Department of Education, which has responsibilities for special education and is providing funding, the rights of the disabled are under challenge again.