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Presidential Citizens Medal Recipient Patrisha A. Wright
Pat Wright (left) and Muhammad Ali were awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for their work in advocating for the disabled.
President Bill Clinton Honors DREDF's Pat Wright
On Monday, January 8, 2001 President Clinton awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Patrisha A. Wright, Director of Governmental Affairs for the Berkeley-based Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund(DREDF). Honored alongside Pat were 27 other exceptional Americans, including Muhammad Ali, Archibald Coxand Elizabeth Taylor. Only 128 citizens have ever received this medal. Pat's citation says:
The President of the United States awards this Presidential Citizens Medal to Patrisha Wright, widely regarded as "the general" guiding the campaign to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. Patrisha Wright has been a driving force in the battle against discrimination based on disability. Through her tireless efforts to forge relationships with the civil rights community, defend disability rights, and promote progressive legislation, she has helped break down barriers to equal opportunity, enabling people with disabilities to participate more fully in our society.
January 8, 2001
William Jefferson Clinton
Wright also coordinated the legal, legislative and grassroots campaigns to enact the Fair Housing Amendments, the Civil Rights Restoration Act and the Handicapped Children's Protection Act. She has worked for two decades to establish disability civil rights in the traditional civil rights communities, the traditional disability communities as well as the halls of Congress and multiple administrations. She has received many awards including the Distinguished Service Award from President Bush, and was the first person with a disability to receive the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award given by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
DREDF, a non-profit law and policy center, promotes the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to secure their full integration into society. Founded in 1979, and managed by people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities. DREDF fulfills its mission by providing training, technical assistance, policy analysis and development, advocacy and legal representation. An integrated education for children with disabilities is the cornerstone for independent living; DREDF devotes considerable resources to empowering parents in self-advocacy. DREDF has been significantly involved with every major disability legal reform in the US, and is closely connected to grass-roots disability groups in the US and worldwide. DREDF recently presented the first-ever federally-funded international disability law and policy symposium, with participants from 58 countries.
Bio
Patrisha Wright's life changed dramatically in her 20's when the degenerative muscle disease in her eyes worsened and she was left with double vision. She was studying pre-med in college and she had planned to be an orthopedic surgeon. "Up to this point in my life, I didn't really identify with my disability or with other people with disabilities," Wright says.
Wright's view of herself was turned upside down. "I was devastated to find out that I would no longer be viewed as a wage earner. I was going from being revenue producing to tax depleting. My diagnosis said I was to be pitied."
As Wright soon came to realize, most programs were created to "provide for" or "take care of" people with disabilities. But she never bought into that perception. She knew that there was an emerging movement of people with disabilities who were seeking more control and independence in their lives--not less. Like herself, they were "not willing to take a backseat and have a career in welfare."
When Wright arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1980, she was the "outsider" in the circle of disability lobbyists. She made it clear from the beginning that she was there to promote the civil rights of people with disabilities, which was not the usual agenda of disability lobbyists many of whom were strictly concerned about paternalistic service providers and agency subsidies.
Then, in 1982, during the Reagan Administration, she successfully halted the deregulation of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Education for all Handicapped Children Act. "It was a grass-roots movement that involved training people in their civil rights. This was a critical time when civil rights and disability became linked within the disability community."
Since that time Wright and her colleagues have won other civil rights victories, with the most important being the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Wright ushered the ADA through the treacherous waters of Washington. Because of Wright's forthcoming, honest manner and her superb skills as a strategist, she was the perfect person to become "the general" of the ADA passage. She was instrumental in rewriting the ADA to make the bill more likely that it would become law.
A major hurdle, among many, was to get the disability community to buy into the ADA. Would the ADA really change their lives once it was implemented? Another major obstacle, Wright felt, was to get Congress to understand that discrimination against the disabled is significant.
"People with disabilities plan their lives so they don't have to deal with the inaccessibility of life," Wright says. To ensure that Congress really understood limited accessibility, Wright and her colleagues had to encourage people with disabilities nationwide to look at what they couldn't participate in and document it.
"It's depressing and painful for people with disabilities to have to look at a day in their lives and realize the number of places that they can't go or the activities that they can't participate in."
So, it was no easy task. But, these "diaries of discrimination" were influential in convincing Congress that there was a group of people throughout the U.S. who were indeed being discriminated against--every day of their lives.
Overcoming these and other obstacles took a very dedicated team of people. "ADA was the most comprehensive group effort in my 20 years of working on the Hill," Wright says. "Every single person pulled his or her weight--they all have a piece of the victory."
Now that the ADA has passed, Wright's work is far from done. Wright trains parents and adults about their rights under the law. "ADA is the future of a disabled child. I tell parents it's the end of second-class citizenship, but only the end, if they know and exercise their rights."
Wright also conducts workshops around the world to help others integrate the concepts of civil rights into their programs and policies. As Wright says, "The ADA is a beacon around the world. It's fabulous how it's changing the fabric of life for many."
Wright and her army of advocates have fought long and hard for passage of the ADA. They have changed people's lives with one of the most comprehensive civil rights laws in history. Now, Wright says, "it is time to train the next generation to step up to the plate."
In Houston on February 24, 2000, Wright, along with five other recipients, will receive the esteemed George Bush Medal, for her work on the ADA.
CITATION:
Widely regarded as "The General" guiding the campaign to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act, Patrisha Wright has been a driving force in the battle against discrimination based on disability. Through her tireless efforts to forge relationships with the civil rights community, defend disability rights, and promote progressive legislation, she has helped break down barriers to equality of opportunity, enabling people with disabilities to participate more fully in our society.
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Citizens Medal History
