Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act on American Experience
The Westerly Library will host a screening of the film May 29 at 5:30 p.m. along with a Q&A with producer Hilary Steinman.
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people with disabilities from discrimination in areas such as employment, education, and public accommodations.
A new documentary tells the emotional story of the activists who led the determined effort to achieve equality and accessibility that culminated in the passage of the ADA. It’s called “Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act,” and it’s being screened today at the Westerly Library.
Morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Westerly filmmaker Hilary Steinman, one of the producers of the documentary.
Transcript
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: You’ve been doing documentaries for a while, and I’m wondering what inspired you to do this story?
Hilary Steinman: You know, I was really lucky in that the executive producer at American Experience, Cameo George, was really the visionary behind this project and I was invited to join the team and I was really interested in the subject matter, because I had done a documentary a number of years ago called Going Blind, all about the experience of what it’s like to be a filmmaker, losing your sight, and how do you navigate the world. And in that film, the biggest challenge was not how do you navigate the world, but how do you navigate the way people treat you. And so that was sort of an entry into the history, but I was shocked at how much I didn’t know and how recent this history was and how difficult life was for people with disabilities as recently as 1989, and that was so eye-opening,
Hernandez: Going back to the late eighties, this story goes back, you know, decades beyond that. The passage of the ADA got me thinking as I was watching this, wait a minute, I was in high school and yet I couldn’t remember a time before we had the ADA. I had to learn that by watching this film. Where were you at the time? How do you view that history?
Steinman: I was horrified that I didn’t remember the passage of the ADA and a little bit ashamed, but I have an excuse because I was teaching English in China in July of 1990. So I have a little bit of an excuse. I’d just graduated from college, but my big “aha” moment [was] almost the first day we started researching this film was reading Judy Human’s biography. And about how when she was a child living in New York City, she couldn’t go beyond her New York City block because there were no curb cuts. And then I had this moment thinking about riding the bus in New York City and every time you had to let on a person in a wheelchair thinking selfishly, “Oh my gosh, I’m gonna be late. Oh, it’s gonna take so long.” And just being horrified and ashamed at how ignorant I was and how this is what makes New York City one of the things that makes it accessible to people and how could you be so selfish as to think, you know, three minutes out of your day isn’t worth that? So that was kind of a big “aha” moment about how I lived my life, sort of in the privilege of the able-bodied.
Hernandez: I think a lot of us did. And again, the movie kind of reminded me of that too. One of the things that hit me about this film is again, the fight had been going on for decades before that, before the passage of the ADA. And I think one of the interesting parts about it is it’s a reminder that to make progress sometimes in our system, it takes time. And I’m wondering what you think about how that could go towards helping young people today as they’re fighting for what they believe in to remind them, hey, sometimes the fight is gonna be a long one.
Steinman: Exactly. I mean, I found this film very inspirational in that if you look at how polarizing politics are today and how it seems like nothing can be accomplished in the current political environment. And you look at just 30 years ago, politicians on each side of the aisle came together for something for the greater good, and they had very, very different motivations. On the Democratic side, it was all about civil rights. On the Republican side, it was all about getting people off of welfare roles and about independence and about how if we do this, even though it costs money for small businesses to put in ramps or to make different things accessible, you’re gonna bring more customers into the store. As you mentioned, it took a long time. There were a lot of stepping stones to getting the groundwork set for the actual legislation to be worked on in the 1980s. But prior to that, when things seemed hopeless, when there were no rights for young people or adults with disabilities, you had parents, the parents movement, who got out there in the trenches locally and started fighting for their kids and saying, “My kid deserves a right to education. My kid deserves a right to be able to work. My kid deserves a right to be able to enter a building,” or all the things that we all take for granted. And everything that led to the ADA started locally and with parents and built into a national movement. So I think that’s really inspiring for today. When it seems overwhelming, how can we fix some of these huge problems we face?
Hernandez: Do you think people with disabilities face less discrimination than they did before the passage of the act?
Steinman: I think that if you look at the world today, in the United States, I think that there is more opportunity, but it’s fragile. And it’s frightening because all of the things that people fought for in terms of access to education, access to healthcare, access to work they’re very fragile. And so while there have been huge advances, especially in educational opportunity, people with disabilities are still the most underemployed minority group in America today. And there’s still, we touch upon it ever so briefly at the end of the film, but there’s still a marriage penalty for people with disabilities where you can lose your benefits if you get married. And certain things like that that make it very difficult for people with disabilities who come from underprivileged backgrounds to sort of find a way out of poverty and [it] really keeps them in perpetual poverty. So it’s very difficult and that’s only getting worse in the current climate. So they face a lot of challenges.
Hernandez: If someone attends today’s film screening at the Westerly Library, what do you expect they’re going to see and what do you hope they take away from this?
Steinman: They’re going to see really personal, deeply emotional stories from the people who made this history. The film is told entirely through the voices of firsthand participants, activists, and people inside the government. And I think people will be surprised to see how much they work together, not just Democrats and Republicans, but these people who were in the streets putting their bodies in front of buses as well as people who were standing on the floor of the Senate and the Congress and how much they worked together. And I think that will surprise people to kind of see how the sausage is made with legislation. and I forgot the second part of your question.
Hernandez: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Steinman: The one thing that has stuck with me with the making of the film is that one of our participants said, “we’re all just temporarily abled and we’re all going to be disabled at some point in our lives, probably. If we’re fortunate to live long enough.” And now every time I text, every time I roll my roller bag up a ramp or across a curb shortcut or you know, you’re in an airport and you’re reading closed captions. I think the ADA benefits me every day, and whether you have a disability or not, we all benefit from this.
And I think people think that things for special interest are just that for a narrow group, but actually the Americans with Disability Act has benefited us all every day.
Hernandez: I’ve been speaking with Westerly film producer and director Hillary Steinman about a new documentary Change not Charity, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Hillary, fantastic film really and a history lesson that we all need. Thanks so much.
Steinman: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on the show.
