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University of California Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Oral History Series BUILDERS AND SUSTAINERS OF THE INDEPENDENT LIVING MOVEMENT IN BERKELEY VOLUME I Herbert Leibowitz RESEARCH AND TRAINING SPECIALIST FOR THE REHABILITATION SERVICES ADMINISTRATION, 1971- 1990 Mary Lester GRANT WRITER FOR THE EARLY CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING IN BERKELEY, 1974-1981 Bette McMuldren ASSISTANT TO JUDY HEUMANN AND GRANT WRITER AT THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING, 1975-1980 Kenneth Stein PUBLIC INFORMATION COORDINATOR FOR THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING AND PARTICIPANT/OBSERVER OF THE DISABILITY MOVEMENT Interviews Conducted by Sharon Bonney Susan O Hara and Jonathan Young 1998 Copyright 2000 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well- informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ************************************ This manuscript is made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: To cite the volume: Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume I, an oral history conducted in 1998, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000. To cite an individual interview: [ex.] Mary Lester, "Grant Writer for the Early Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, 1974-1981," an oral history conducted in 1998 by Susan O Hara in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume I, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000. Copy no. Cataloging information BUILDERS AND SUSTAINERS OF THE INDEPENDENT LIVING MOVEMENT IN BERKELEY. Volume I, 2000, xxii, 222 pp. Herbert Leibowitz (b. 1923), Research and Training Specialist for Rehabilitation Services Administration, 1971-1990: Physically Disabled Students Program at UC Berkeley and RSA; wheelchair development, peer counseling; World Institute on Disability (WID). Mary Lester (b. 1951), Grant Writer for the Early Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, 1974-1981: research and development project; leadership of Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann, and Phil Draper; financial management, personnel policies, philosophy of CIL; evolution of Computer Training Project; training of employees and hiring practices; Disabled Children s Computer Group; Alliance for Technology Access. Bette McMuldren (b. 1948), Assistant to Judy Heumann and Grant Writer at the Center for Independent Living, 1975-1980: organizational structure, cross- disability inclusion, marketing of disability rights movement by Judy Heumann; Rehabilitation Act of 1973, San Francisco 504 sit-in; interaction with California Department of Rehabilitation and the media. Kenneth E. Stein (b. 1947), Public Information Coordinator for the Center for Independent Living, and Participant /Observer of the Disability Movement: 1975-1979, editing The Independent; disabled access to transportation and other services; documentation of Section 504 sit-in and twentieth anniversary; ADA hotline at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) . Interviews conducted in 1998 by Sharon Bonney, Susan O Hara, and Jonathan Young for the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Oral History Series, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Oral History Series was funded primarily by a three-year field-initiated research grant awarded in 1996 by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) , an agency of the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Any of the views expressed in the oral history interviews or accompanying materials are not endorsed by the sponsoring agency. Special thanks are due to other donors to this project over the years: the Prytanean Society; Raymond Lifchez, Judith Stronach, and Dr. Henry Bruyn; and June A. Cheit, whose generous donation in memory of her sister, Rev. Barbara Andrews, allowed the Regional Oral History Office to develop the grant project . TABLE OF CONTENTS--Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume I SERIES INTRODUCTION by Simi Linton i SERIES HISTORY by Ann Lage and Susan O Hara vii SERIES LIST Xiv INTERVIEW WITH HERBERT LEIBOWITZ xix Research and Training Specialist for the Rehabilitation Services Administration, 1971-1990 Table of Contents xx INTERVIEW WITH MARY LESTER 30 Grant Writer for the Early Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, 1974-1981 Table of Contents 31 INTERVIEW WITH BETTE MCMULDREN 119 Assistant to Judy Heumann and Grant Writer at the Center for Independent Living, 1975-1980 Table of Contents 120 INTERVIEW WITH KENNETH STEIN 168 Public Information Coordinator for the Center for Independent Living and Participant /Observer of the Disability Movement Table of Contents 169 TAPE GUIDE 215 INDEX 216 SERIES INTRODUCTION- -The Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement, by Simi Linton When I was asked to write the introduction to the Bancroft Library s oral histories on the disability rights movement in Berkeley, it reminded me of the summer of 1975, when I left New York City and headed out to Berkeley, California. For Berkeley was the place to be I told my friends, filled with hippies and free love. I would spend the summer, take courses at the university. I had been disabled just a few years and this was my first trip on my own, away from the tight circle of family and friends I had relied on in those early years. Someone had told me that Berkeley was a center of disability activism, but I didn t tally that in my list of reasons to go there. I was a naive young woman in my twenties, and still new to disability. I "managed" my disability by keeping its profile low, and its needs in check. I use a wheelchair, and did then, and decided I would need to call the disabled students office at the university to get help finding an accessible apartment near the campus, but also decided this would be the only concession I would make to my disabled state. I was fine, I told myself and my family, and by that I meant I could go anywhere, I could do everything. Disability would not bog me down and it would not mark me. While bold on the outside, I harbored the deep fear that I might fail in my ability to keep disability in its place, that it would come crashing in around me and swallow me up. I, therefore, was completely unprepared for the headlong leap I made that summer toward disability, toward the people and the territory that I had shunned. I never imagined that I would move toward disability with interest and gusto. It didn t happen all at once in that brief summer, but I call that time in Berkeley my coming out. I had arrived in a place where disability seemed more ordinary than it was where I had come from, where accommodations were apparent, where the curbcuts on every corner made it possible for me to go to the supermarket, to the bookstore and up to campus without having to stop someone at each corner, explain to them how to tilt my wheelchair back, take it down the curb, and lift it back up on the other side. Although Berkeley may not have had significantly more disabled people than other places, it seemed to. Maybe it was because I was out on the streets more than I was in New York. I saw people acting out the daily routines of lifegoing to the supermarket, school or their jobsusing wheelchairs or crutches, brandishing white canes, using sign language and all of the other indicators of membership. ii And life started to become easier and more flavorful, not by avoiding disability but by living with it in a different way. The lure of the other disabled people I saw was great, and I learned