Honoring Independent Living!

For many people throughout California and the world, Ed Roberts is the embodiment of the disability civil rights movement for social justice, equality and independence. Very few individuals have personally fought as relentlessly as Ed Roberts did against discrimination, prejudice, and ill-informed views of persons with a disability.  Now called ‘the father of the independent living movement in California”, Ed Roberts’ self-advocacy laid the groundwork for disability rights and empowerment.

Roberts contracted polio in 1953, two years before the Salk vaccine brought an end to the epidemics. At age 14, Roberts spent eighteen months in hospitals and returned home paralyzed from the neck down.  Roberts returned to school and after high school decided to pursue higher education at the University of California at Berkeley. The California Department of Rehabilitation, however, rejected Roberts’ application for financial assistance for college saying he was “too disabled to work.” He went public with this fight and within one week of doing so, had approval for financial aid from the state.

 While at UCB, Roberts and other students with disabilities founded a disabled students’ program called the “Rolling Quads”: a self-help movement that would radically change how people with disabilities perceived themselves.  Ed Roberts and others also realized the need for an off campus, community based organization.

In 1972, the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL) was started, which became the model for the now 29 independent living centers across the country and an independent living movement was born.    

Fifteen years after his initial rejection by the state of California as an individual, who was “too” disabled to work, he became the first state director of the department of rehabilitation with a disability. At the end of his state service, in 1983, he co-founded and served as the president of the World Institute on Disability.

Much like the action of Rosa Parks in the Civil Rights Movement, what started as a spontaneous act of individual advocacy has become a grass roots movement for access and barrier removal in housing, education, transportation, and employment equality. The cornerstone of this disability movement is the philosophy of individual empowerment and responsibility.  Institutional placement and marginalization in living arrangements are at odds with the pursuit of personal liberty, choice and life with dignity. 

Today, more than ever, we remember and celebrate independent living and Ed Roberts.   His death in 1995 at age 56, left a legacy recognized in 2010 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who signed a bill proclaiming January 23 (Ed‘s birthday) as ‘Ed Roberts Day.’  In this spirit, every year, we remember Ed Roberts’ to inspire and educate young people and adults, with and without disabilities, to better understand disability issues and their contributions to our state.  

Now, more than ever, in these critical times we rally to promote the core values of the philosophy of independent living: civil rights, equal access, inclusion, choice, individual control, and self-advocacy.  These values were worth the struggle 40 years ago and they are certainly worth defending now!