On ADA anniversary, retiring Harkin promises to stay in the fight

IOWA CITY - Although he's seen steady progress since the signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Sen. Tom Harkin's advice to the disability rights community has remained constant.

'Press onward, everybody, press onward,” Harkin said Saturday at a celebration in Iowa City of the 24th anniversary of the signing of the ADA.

'We haven't reached the promised land,” he told more than 200 people who gathered on the Ped Mall, 'but, boy, we've come a long way.”

Rather than rest on their laurels, advocates were urged to keep pushing for full participation by disabled Americans in 'our community life, our political life, our business life, our student life, our university life. Everything.”

Harkin, the Senate author of the 1990 law, recalled President George H.W. Bush's charge at the signing of the ADA to 'let the shameful walls of discrimination come tumbling down.”

'That's what we did,” Harkin said, citing advances made in removing the physical barriers to full participation.

Now, he said, the focus must shift to breaking down 'attitudinal barriers,” - the ideas that people with disabilities have limits, can't do anything for themselves and must be pitied and patronized.

Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called for a renewed emphasis on achieving the four goals of the ADA: equal opportunity, full participation in society, independent living and economic self-sufficiency.

He touted President Barack Obama's signing Thursday of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which will help prepare disabled high school students to get job coaching and internships so they enter a competitive and integrated workforce.

'No more, no more will a young person with a disability go from (school) into a sub-minimum wage sheltered workshop someplace and get stuck there for the rest of their lives,” Harkin said. 'We're going to end that.”

As he had been doing all week, Harkin called for the U.S. Senate to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Based on the ADA, the treaty has been signed by 148 nations, but ratification in the Senate failed by five votes two years ago. Harkin joined former Sen. Bob Dole - who spearheaded passage of the ADA - and GOP Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and Mark Kirk along with veterans groups to call for a vote in the coming week.

Harkin, who will retire from the Senate at the end of his term in January, promised that he will not retire from the cause.

'I'm in this fight,” he said. 'I'll be with you.”

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