As part of my job here at DRO, I’m sometimes asked to speak to groups about the disability rights movement and how it got started.  This is a much larger topic than I want to get into right now, but since I am sitting at home because it is a federal holiday honoring the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., it seems important to note that the idea of disability rights is inseparable from the broader quest for human rights.

MLK is honored with a national holiday because he is a hero of the nation.  He was a leader of a movement that spoke and continues to speak to the very nature of human experience.  What is a person?  What does being a person mean?  MLK asked Americans to think about those questions and answer them honestly. 

MLK’s invitation is still open.  Today, you can ask yourself these questions.  You can ask others to think about them. 

We can also think about segregation and institutionalization.  What fears or desires lead someone to demand the incapacity and impotence of others?   Are those urges different when applied to affordable housing, the nation’s borders or the institutions of matrimony?

Looking back to April 16, 1963, we know what MLK had to say:

All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.  Segregation … ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful.

Letter From A Birmingham Jail

Published: Sunday, September 25, 2011

The insanity defense has been part of Anglo-American law for centuries. An English legal treatise from 1581 noted that if "a madman or a natural fool, or a lunatic in the time of his lunacy [commits a crime] this is no felonious act for they cannot be said to have any understanding will." While the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness has changed tremendously over the years, our sense of justice has consistently recognized that punishing a person for actions she cannot control is wrong.

When a defendant is found "guilty except for insanity" in Oregon, she is usually committed to the state hospital for custody, care and treatment for a period of time that is necessary to control the person's symptoms and return her safely to society. The maximum period allowed for this commitment is the longest a defendant could have been put in prison if she had been convicted. The vast majority of successful insanity defenses are agreed to by the district attorney handling the case.

The state hospital hires psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and a variety of other professionals and skilled workers to restore the mental health of patients. The hospital has security staff to assure that treatment can be provided in a manner that is safe for patients, staff and the community. Patients are not in the state hospital to "do time." They are there to get well.

Recently, one patient ran away from a supervised walk on hospital grounds and jumped into a waiting car to make his getaway. He was captured 17 days later in Sandy, the same town where his 2009 auto wreck caused the tragic death of two people and resulted in his commitment for two counts of second-degree manslaughter.

Some have questioned whether patients at the state hospital should be allowed to walk outside the facility walls and whether they should be permitted to have uncensored communication with others. If the goal of the hospital is to return its patients to health, the answer is a resounding "yes!" This is, in fact, what the hospital is licensed and staffed to do and what it is asked to do by the criminal justice system.

Mental illness can be effectively treated and the majority of patients in the state hospital will recover and be reintegrated into society. Punishing them with long years of languishing behind high walls is bad for the patients, bad for the hospital environment and financially wasteful. It also violates patients' civil and legal rights to safe and effective treatment that is not unduly isolated from society, and it undermines hope for patients and staff alike.

We at DRO think the hospital has taken appropriate steps to review the individual security assessments of other patients to assure that they are up-to-date and accurate. The actions of one patient should not harm the treatment of others. A thorough investigation should be completed to determine if criminal prosecution is appropriate for those who planned and executed the escape.

Bob Joondeph is Executive Director of Disability Rights Oregon.

© 2011 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

THE STRUGGLE

The roots of the ADA are imbedded in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963:

All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.  Segregation … ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. 

Overcoming disability-based discrimination has required, and continues to require, "struggle."  Every step toward equality has been hard-fought against entrenched interests and attitudes.  Each victory has needed to be defended.  This experience is common to all civil rights movements.  Disability rights may, however, demand a particularly large change in thinking, both about disabilities and about society.  This new way of thinking is imbedded in the ADA.

The first major step toward the ADA occurred in 1973 with the passage of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.  Section 504 banned discrimination on the basis of disability by recipients of federal funds.  It was modeled after other civil rights laws that banned discrimination based upon race, ethnic origin and sex by federal fund recipients.

This represented the first time federal law recognized the exclusion and segregation of people with disabilities as "discrimination," and the first time people with disabilities were legally recognized as a class, in effect a minority group.

In 1973 the State of Oregon also passed its first law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities.

The Federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare was tasked with developing regulations to implement Section 504.  Only after numerous demonstrations and political actions did that job get done: four years later.  The regulations enacted on May 4, 1977 formed the basis of the ADA.  Disability advocates fought successfully to keep the regulations from being revoked in the early 1980s when business interests wanted to be free from federal interference. 

During the 1980s, there was also resistance from the US Supreme Court.  Disability rights advocates joined in the effort to pass the Civil Rights Restoration Act which overturned a Supreme Court decision that had severely limited the reach of all statutes prohibiting discrimination by recipients of federal funds.  (Grove City College v. Bell).

Legislation was also enacted to overturn Supreme Court decisions and reinstate prohibitions against disability-based discrimination by airlines, reinstate the right to sue states for violations of Section 504, and reinstate the right of parents to recover attorney fees under the Education for Handicapped Children's Act (now called IDEA).

In 1988, the Fair Housing Act was amended to prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities and the first version of the ADA was introduced in Congress.

The version of the ADA that passed on July 26, 1990 was introduced Senators Harkin and Durrenberger and Representatives Coelho and Fish (father of City Commissioner Nick Fish).  Justin Dart, Chair of the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of People with Disabilities, traversed the country holding public hearings which were attended by thousands of people with disabilities, friends, and families documenting the injustice of discrimination in the lives of people with disabilities.

THE ACT

The ADA has five sections, or "titles" which are regulated by different federal agencies:

• Title I - Employment - directed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
• Title II - Public Services - (and public transportation) directed by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); U.S. Department of Education (ED); U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
• Title III - Public Accommodations - directed by U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI); U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
• Title IV - Telecommunications - directed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
• Title V - Miscellaneous Provisions.

Some of the key Findings and Purposes set out in Section 2 of the ADA are:

1. Some 43,000,000 Americans have one or more physical or mental disabilities, and this number is increasing as the population as a whole is growing older;
2. Historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, and, this continues to be a serious and pervasive social problem;
3. Discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services;
4. Individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of disability have often had no legal recourse to redress such discrimination;
5. Individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and practices, exclusionary qualification standards and criteria, segregation, and relegation to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities;
6. People with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally;
7. Individuals with disabilities are a discrete and insular minority who have been faced with restrictions and limitations, subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, and relegated to a position of political powerlessness in our society, based on characteristics that are beyond the control of such individuals and resulting from stereotypical assumptions not truly indicative of the individual ability of such individuals to participate in, and contribute to, society;
8. The Nation's proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and
9. The continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and non-productivity.

It is the purpose of this Act--

1. to provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities;
2. to provide clear, strong, consistent, enforceable standards addressing discrimination against individuals with disabilities;
3. to ensure that the Federal Government plays a central role in enforcing the standards established in this Act on behalf of individuals with disabilities; and
4. to invoke the sweep of congressional authority to address the major areas of discrimination faced day-to-day by people with disabilities.

THE ADAAA

With passage of the ADA, Americans with disabilities had a new civil rights law and regulations, but again the US Supreme Court, in a series of cases, began to chip away at their protections.  And again, disability rights activists fought back and were able to obtain passage of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.

The ADAAA makes four major adjustments to how the ADA is to be applied:

• The term “disability” is to be construed in favor of broad coverage of individuals protected by the Act;
• An impairment that substantially limits one major life activity need not limit other major life activities in order to be a disability;
• An impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active; and
• The determination of whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity is to be made without regard to the positive effects of mitigating measures.

OLMSTEAD

Not to be overly negative about the US Supreme Court, it has made some positive decisions for disability rights over the years.  One was the case of Olmstead v. L.C. and E.W. in 1999.  By a 6-3 vote, the Court found that the 'integration mandate' of the ADA requires public agencies to provide services "in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities."  In this instance, the Court told Georgia's department of human resources that it could not segregate two women with mental disabilities in a state psychiatric hospital long after the agency's own treatment professionals had recommended their transfer to community care.

THE PRINCIPLES

At the beginning of this short history, I said that a new way of thinking about disabilities and society are imbedded in the ADA.  In short, the ADA recognizes that:

Disability is a natural and normal part of the human experience that does not limit the right to:

• Live independently
• Enjoy self-determination
• Make choices
• Contribute to society
• Pursue meaningful careers and
• Enjoy full inclusion and integration in the economic, political, social, cultural, and educational mainstream of American society.

Rather than focusing on “fixing” the individual, actions must be taken to “fix” or modify the natural, constructed, cultural, and social environment.

Attitudinal and institutional barriers that preclude persons with disabilities from participating fully in society’s mainstream must be changed.

For more information about the ADA, go to: http://www.ada.gov.

According to news reports, a young man from Corvallis decided it was a good idea to blow up a bunch of adults and children at the Christmas tree lighting event at Pioneer Square in Portland.  The reports say that he planned to leave the country after detonating his bomb.

The stories indicate that this was not some grand conspiracy directed from someplace like Yemen or Pakistan. It appears to be, instead, the idea of a 19 year old graduate of Westview High School and former OSU student.

The news also tells us that a father and son stand accused of deciding it was a good idea to plant a bomb at a bank in Wilsonville to protest either the bank, the federal government or both.  They are now being tried for aggravated murder in the death of a policeman who was trying to disarm the bomb.

And then there is the news story about Eliza Schaaf.  She is a 20 year old woman with intellectual disabilities who enrolled in a ceramics class at Southern Oregon University.  After regularly attending class, Eliza was thrown out of school with just three classes to go.  SOU decided that a person with intellectual disabilities could not be allowed to audit one of its classes even though Eliza was not seeking college credit.

Eliza and her family are very disappointed.  So are her fellow students who have protested the university’s actions.  So are many citizens, newspapers and elected officials who have urged SOU to change its mind.  The university is not moved by these appeals and, just yesterday, turned down Eliza’s appeal of its decision.

Eliza has not planted a bomb, except metaphorically.  For details, visit her web site at http://www.elizaschaaf.com/. 

You will see that Eliza is a direct victim of disability discrimination.  She has been treated with ignorance by a university and with disregard by a publicly-funded and supposedly accountable institution.  Her grievance is not abstract or theoretical in the slightest.  In response, she has chosen to courageously take on this institution using the tools of communication, developing community support, following appeals procedures and working to educate decision-makers.

We need to support Eliza not just because she has been the victim of an injustice but because of how she has chosen to respond.  She speaks not just for herself, but for the disability community and for all Americans who believe that we can find justice by reaching out to the hearts and minds of fellow citizens.  

I’ve sent my letter to SOU officials decrying their actions.  Please join with me with more letters and protest.

I was at the Maranatha Church in NE Portland last night to see Jesse Jackson and hear what he had to say about the recent killing of Aaron Campbell. I walked in wearing a business suit, snagged the last name tag, and headed to the front area that was reserved for “community leaders.”

As a representative of DRO, I watched the press conference in a side room and then had a front pew seat for the speeches. Sitting next to me was the family of Mr. Campbell. Behind me was a standing room only audience.

Security was light.  The mood was a combination of reverence, excitement and solidarity.  The music was great.  The church leaders provided gentle and amused direction for those who parked their cars in the wrong place or might be tempted to bring in some food.  It felt like a welcoming community.

Meanwhile, I didn’t forget about the politics and I know that Jesse didn’t either.  There were no elected officials in the audience.  Today’s papers made it clear why: Jesse’s most controversial-sounding words were captured in the headlines.  This was no mistake.  The press and Jackson know the rules of the game.  Attention needs to be gotten and this is how you get it. 

In the church though, the topic was not controversy.  It was community. Reverend Jackson was surrounded on the stage by his fellow senior ministers.  They clearly enjoyed and appreciated each other.  Jackson seemed remarkably cool and serene during most of the proceedings.  That is until an elderly preacher followed Jackson’s speech with an explosion of passionate rhetoric that electrified the crowd and put an animated smile on Jesse’s face.

When Jackson spoke to the press and to the crowd, his first words were to offer comfort and support to the Campbell family. He then spoke about the killing and also about the general condition of black Oregonians. He held a recently issued report, The State of Black Oregon, which documents, in Jackson’s words, that African American Oregonians are “free but not equal.”  The statistics in the report bear him out.

Jesse spoke about the killing mainly in the context of respect and dignity.  He didn’t speak about whether the shooting was justified but dwelled on reports that the body was left on the ground, in handcuffs for a half hour while dogs sniffed it.  He spoke to the desire of every person in the audience to be treated like a human being.

I heard Jackson extol the virtues of compassion, peace, strength in adversity and perseverance.  He did not agitate.  He supported a grieving community and to suggested positive action for change.  He asked individuals to demand justice and an “even playing field,” and also urged people to take responsibility for themselves and their community.

Jackson suggested a path for action: the community, he said, should demand at the officer who killed Mr. Campbell be kept off the job until the police internal investigation was complete. This is hardly the stuff of a firebrand zealot.

But check out the response from Portland Police Sgt. Scott Westerman, president of the Portland Police Association.  He said: "… for the Rev. Jesse Jackson to come in last night and to divide the community again and to vilify the officer is a disgrace. I think Rev. Jackson is either ill-informed or has an alternate agenda."

Westerman’s response sums up the problem in this city. What I saw last night was a community coming together with the guidance of respected leaders to grieve and formulate a peaceful and constructive plan of action. What our official police spokesman saw was an outside agitator.

Westerman says that the community should leave the shooter alone and, instead, ask for change in police policies. Westerman’s belated call for policy changes may have merit, but it is buried under yet another insult to the black community. The people I was with last night know who they are and know what their experience is.  They also know who is on their side.

We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

The importance of Senator Kennedy to the disability rights movement cannot be overstated.  He has been our champion for decades.  It will take volumes of scholarship to fully document his importance to our community and the nation as a whole, but let me give you a highly abbreviated taste of what he accomplished for us over the past 40 years.

1975:  Cosponsored the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which later became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The law served to amend the Education of the Handicapped Act and to guarantee a free and appropriate public education to children with disabilities.

1975:  Cosponsored legislation to create a “bill of rights” for people with developmental disabilities, providing funding for services for people with this type of disability, supplementing funding for affiliated university facilities and creating state-based systems of protection and advocacy groups in all 50 states.

1978:  Cosponsored the Civil Rights Commission Act Amendments of 1978, which expanded the jurisdiction of the Civil Rights Commission to protect people from discrimination on the basis of disability.

1978:  Strongly supported the Rehabilitation, Comprehensive Services and Developmental Disabilities Amendments of 1978 establishing a functional definition of developmental disability, creating the National Council on the Handicapped and the National Institute of Handicapped Research, setting a funding minimum for protection and advocacy services and authorizing a grant for independent living services.

1980:  Cosponsored the Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act, which enforced the rights of people in government institutions such as the elderly, the disabled, the mental ill, and the incarcerated under the Constitution.

1982:  Cosponsored the Job Training Partnership Act, designed to break down barriers facing “economically disadvantaged” individuals including people with disabilities and assuring that people could not be excluded from the training program based on a disability.

1982:  Cosponsored legislation allowing states to cover home health care services for particular children with disabilities under their Medicaid plans. This was intended to allow parents “respite” or rest periods with a trained professional helping to care for their child’s needs.

1984:  Cosponsored legislation requiring polling stations to provide physical accessibility and registration and voting aids for people with disabilities.

1986:  Cosponsored the Air Carrier Access Act requiring facilities and services to be accessible to people with disabilities traveling by air.

1986: Cosponsored the Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act, which made work incentives for disabled individuals a permanent fixture of the Social Security Act.

1986: Cosponsored the Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986, which overturned a Supreme Court decision and allowed courts to award sensible attorneys fees to parents of children with disabilities winning in due process proceedings and other court actions under part B of the Education Act.

1986:  Cosponsored amendments to the Education of the Handicapped Act, establishing a new grant program aimed at developing an early intervention system benefiting infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families and promoting preschool programs for children ages 3 to 5 with disabilities.

1988:  Introduced the Fair Housing Act Amendments to extend the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to include people with disabilities and families with children.

1990: Cosponsored a bill that changed the name of the Education of the Handicapped Act to IDEA, changed the term from handicapped to disability, and added two categories to the amendment: autism and traumatic brain injury. It also reauthorized the programs under the previous act to provide improved support to students with disabilities particularly in the terms of computer access and assistive technology.

1990:  Introduced (with Senator Harkin) the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting discrimination against individuals with disabilities.

1990: Introduced the Ryan White CARE Act which provided emergency relief to thirteen cities hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, and also provided substantial assistance to all states to develop effective and cost-efficient AIDS care programs, aimed particularly at early diagnosis and home care.

1991:  Sponsored legislation to reorganize the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration.

1997:  Cosponsored amendments to IDEA directing inclusion of special education in state and district-wide assessments, promoting mediation as an option to disputes between teachers and parents of children with disabilities, providing that special education students be disciplined in the same way as other students, continuing services to adult inmates with disabilities who were eligible for IDEA prior to their incarceration, and requiring charter schools to meet the needs of children with disabilities and to receive IDEA funds from district schools.

1998: Cosponsored the Crime Victims and Disabilities Awareness Act of 1998 directing the Attorney General to conduct a study of crimes against people with disabilities.

1999:  Cosponsored the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act. The law and its “ticket to work and self-sufficiency” program expanded employment opportunities for people with disabilities through providing disabled Social Security beneficiaries greater support and more options. It also allowed for working people with disabilities to receive benefits from Medicaid and/or Medicare.

2004:  Cosponsored the Assistive Technology Act which supports states in to sustain and strengthen the capacity to meet the assistive technology needs of individuals.

2004: Sponsored the reauthorization of the IDEA, with a new focus on promoting better alignment of special education with general education and having school districts be accountable for the educational outcome of all students, including students with all ranges of disabilities.

2006:  Won a 5-year-long battle to pass the Family Opportunity Act. The law provides states the option of allowing families of disabled children to purchase health coverage through Medicaid. The bill passed as an amendment to the budget reconciliation bill.

2008:  Championed mental health parity legislation assuring individuals living with mental health and substance abuse issues that their mental health benefit would be treated equally with the medical-surgical benefit regarding treatment limitations and financial requirements.

2009: Succeeded in having the CLASS Act included in the text of the Affordable Health Choices Act that was passed out of the HELP Committee. This bill aims to provide elderly and disabled individuals with a daily cash benefit to purchase services and supports they need to remain in and be a productive member of the community.

 These accomplishments amount to a virtual history of the disability rights movement.  For this and so much more, we salute and thank Senator Kennedy.

I attended a "friend-raising" breakfast this morning for United Cerebral Palsy Association of Oregon & SW Washington.  I've always been impressed by UCP and their director, Bud Thoune, for their high standards and dedication to the lives of the people they serve.

This event did not change my opinion.  On the ticket for the event are listed five principles: Be Visible, Be Independent, Be Involved, Have Friends, Make a Difference.  What a clear expression of how people with disabilities, families and advocates can act to achieve inclusion!  Disability will never be accepted as a normal part of life unless people with disabilities are visible, independent and involved.

We at DRO have been doing our part to be more visible in promoting the rights of our clients and communicating a disability rights perspective to a widening community.  In that spirit, I'm letting you know that Bud reminded us breakfasters that we just marked the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision.  In Olmstead, the Court found that the ADA prohibits unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities in institutions.  That's right.  Congress said, and the Supreme Court agreed, that isolation, dependence and hopelessness must not be promoted by government policies. 

Everyone deserves the chance to lead a meaningful life.  With the love of his family and support from UCP, A.J. will have that opportunity.  But isn't it shameful that a school district would not do what it can to contribute to this simple, yet profound, goal?

Guest speaker Art Edwards brought home the message of inclusion.  Art is a new member of the UCP Board and a reporter for KOIN.  He told us about his family, including his teenage son A.J. who experiences CP and occasional seizures.  His family is about to move to Tigard because its schools have a more inclusive educational approach than their present school system in Beaverton.  Art talked about life with A.J. including A.J.'s strategic use of the horn on his power wheelchair, his love of baseball, and his delight in yelling "flugelhorn!"  The whole family -- Art, his wife and daughter -- are dedicated to A.J. and are willing to make the sacrifices required for him to thrive.  For example, Art's daughter is accepting the move to Tigard because "it will help A.J."

When DRO changed its name last year, we came up with three words that evoke our vision: Opportunity,  Access & Choice.  Above all, I think that Olmstead, the work of UCP and the hopes of A.J. and his family are about opportunity. 

Everyone deserves the chance to lead a meaningful life.  With the love of his family and support from UCP, A.J. will have that opportunity.  But isn't it shameful that a school district would not do what it can to contribute to this simple, yet profound, goal?

Many, many years ago.  Back when Vera Katz was Speaker of the House and the legislature decided to take a crack at setting new limits on gun ownership, a bill emerged that would prohibit people who had been civilly committed from buying, owning or possessing a firearm.  The country was still reeling from the acts of John Hinkley and politicians wanted to make folk feel safer, however illusory that safety might be.  I argued at the time that civil commitment was a a poor standard to use to judge ability: many people were committed who were not dangerous and the whole purpose of commitment was recovery.  To my amazement, legislators were willing to compromise the point.  A provision was added to the mental health commitment law that allowed a judge to bar gun ownership but such a prohibition would not be automatic.  A process was also put into place to allow those who had been barred to show, at a future point, that they were no longer a risk.

Four years later, I was not so persuasive (or lucky).  The legislature established a permanent ban on gun ownership in Oregon for those who are committed because of mental illness.  What most people in Oregon didn't know was that the federal government had outlawed gun possession by committed people long before any of these laws were enacted in our state.  Oregonians were not unique in this knowledge gap.  The feds had never done much to let people know.

But then came the Virginia Tech shootings and Congress decided to take stronger action.  It created a nation-wide, FBI registry for conviction and commitment information.  Law enforcement and firearm merchants will be able to use the registry to determine if a person is prohibited from having a gun.  But this won't work unless the information gets to the FBI.  And that's where House Bill 2853 and my deja vu moment come into play.

Governor Kulongoski learned that only two Oregon records were in the FBI registry and that the Oregon State Police would lose a bunch of federal grant money unless we got with the program.  This prompted a rush of work to put together a bill (sponsored by Rep. Galizio) that would require the collection and transmittal of the required data.  And when various stakeholders were brought together to discuss the bill, I was there saying the same things I had said back in the late 1980s.  Again, to my amazement, there was flexibility in the state's position and after many hurried compromises, amendments and hearings, a bill got out of the House Rules Committee.

I don't know how you feel about firearms.  They are not at the top of DRO's agenda.  But the US Supreme Court has found gun possession to be a a fundamental right and a bunch of folks in Congress have earmarked "persons adjudicated as a mental defective or those committed to mental institutions" as being unworthy of exercising this right.  The original Oregon bill would have gone further to include people who were in the state hospital for only evaluation and those found incapable of facing criminal charges due to their young age.  It did not provide a way for a person to demonstrate that he should no longer be barred, did not provide a way to expunge a commitment and did not require notice to those who might be affected.  When it came to people with mental illness or developmental disabilities, life-long incapacity and dangerousness was assumed and need not be proven. 

More will need to be done to balance public safety and individual rights in a manner that is not discriminatory. As is often the case, disability discrimination arose in Congress and in HB 2853 from unfounded assumptions about people's abilities.  Rep. Sara Gelser, a Rules Committee member, said it best: People who have never committed a crime or hurt anyone should not lose a constitutional right because they have a disability.

It's not my job to advocate on every bill affecting people with disabilities, that would be impossible.  Every bill affects folks in the disability community in some way because we are all citizens.  DRO only weighs in on legislation that directly affects people who are most likely to be our clients.  Yesterday, as most committees prepare to shut down, there was a lot to weigh in on.

At 8:00 am in Senate Judiciary, we had HB 2441 that would allow those who sexually abuse folks with developmental disabilities to be more easily prosecuted.  This bill is getting strong push-back from criminal defense and civil liberty groups.  Also on the docket was HB 2335, a bill that we don't care about except that it is being used as a possible vehicle for a variety of amendments that could be used to save the state some money.  The "-11 amendments" would eliminate client-requested hearings before the Psychiatric Security Review Board and extend a time limit for another type of hearing.  Both of these bill did not get a hearing because of time and were set over to today.

At 1:00 pm, the Ways and Means, Human Services Sub-committee heard SB 25 that would create an advisory board for Oregon State Hospital and HB 2442 that would create a Quality Care Fund to support training and technical assistance for group homes to achieve high standards of care.  Both bills were amended to remove fiscal problems and moved to the full Ways and Means Committee.

Then, at 3:00 pm, three separate committees were hearing bills that DRO has worked on.  In House Health, SB 16 was passed after last minute negotiations with the committee chair.  The original bill allowed advance health care directives to be used to authorize in-patient psychiatric care for people with dementia.  The committee chair wanted the bill to also allow any person to receive such care, not just folks with dementia (presently, the advance directive can't be used for this purpose - you have to use a "declaration for mental health treatment").  A compromise was struck to make the change only for people with dementia but to form a work group to explore other changes.

While that was going on, the House Rules Committee was hearing HB 2853, a bill that would require information about criminal convictions and civil and criminal commitments to be sent to the FBI for a national registry to prevent those convicted and committed from buying firearms anywhere in the country.  Many changes have been made to the original bill to address concerns of gun advocates and disability advocates (an interesting alliance).  Additional amendments will be needed before the committee will act on the bill.

Not to be outdone, the House Consumer Protection Committee heard SB 731.  It would assure that people who receive public benefits that are exempt from garnishment do not have to go to court to reclaim their exempt funds.  This bill would protect many of our vulnerable clients from losing access to money that they rely upon for food, housing and other essentials.  The committee adopted the bill's "-11 amendments" and passed the bill out.  [Careful readers will note the second occurrence of -11 amendments today.  Coincidence?]  This is one of those bills that will help many of our clients in a very direct way. Many thanks to Sybil Hebb from the Oregon Law Center for her skilled shepherding.

So that's enough, right?  Well, no.  Midway through the afternoon, we learned that our #1 priority, SB 874, had run into a technical problem.  This bill would conform state law to changes made by Congress to the ADA.  It has already passed the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee.  But the Legislative Council decided that the bill has to amended.  Another bill was recently signed by the Governor that changes a section of law that our bill affects.  If our bill is not amended, it will wipe out the other bill's changes.  So SB 874 is coming back to the Judiciary Committee today to be amended.  It will then go to the House floor for a vote and then go back to the Senate for concurrence (knock on wood).  Since the bill had a close vote in the Senate, we are not thrilled by this development.  But that's how things go here at the legislature.

Recent news reports about the official sanction of, and guidelines for, torture (or, if you prefer, "enhanced interrogation techniques"), brought me back a couple of years to some work I did for the government.  I was on a monitoring team, checking out a Protection and Advocacy organization in the Midwest.  A member of the team had recently returned from Guantanamo where he had worked as a mental health therapist for prisoners.

Unable to resist, I asked him what it was like.  I had heard that many prisoners were attempting suicide or other self-harm.  He told me that all the prisoners received excellent care and that their psychiatric records were sent to Washington every day for review at the Pentagon.  He said that the prisoners were very scary, noting that having someone stare at you who you know would like to kill you was a chilling experience.

Recent documents that the government has released show that medical personnel were always present at water-boarding sessions in order to assure that the prisoner did not die in the process.  All treatment of the prisoners was under medical supervision.  This, according to defenders of the interrogation techniques, demonstrates that the interrogators were not truly engaged in "torture."

When I recently read that one of the prisoners who received a lot of "enhanced techniques" probably had a psychotic disorder, a number of thoughts came to mind.  These prisoners had been sent to a place that was out of the way where nobody could see what was happening.  They were often held in segregation even when known to be mentally ill.  While it is generally understood that segregation exacerbates mental illness, exacerbation seems to have been the purpose for all prisoners, not just those with mental illnesses.  The medical staff who were there to care for them were, at least in the case of the fellow I met, deathly afraid of them.  Those same medical personnel monitored enhanced techniques that were performed in order to protect society from harm. 

Defenders of the program seem to assume that inflicting mental and emotional pain cannot be categorized as torture.  Driving a person into psychosis and suicidal action is one of those items that does not seem to be considered as severe as causing organ failure.

Back here in Oregon, we put many hundreds of mentally ill people into jails, prisons and the state forensic hospital each year.  Many end up in segregation for behaviors associated with their mental illness.  The staff who oversee them are often scared of them.  Officials who are responsible for putting them in custody, often want them to stay behind high walls regardless of their mental condition or their risk of harm because the public is afraid of them.  All of these inmates and patients are under some form of medical care and supervision that is provided with the resources and in the environment at hand.

I am not suggesting that Oregon officials are engaging in torture.  But are we causing some of our fellow citizens unnecessary mental anguish in order to feel more secure?

The public is now turning to a debate of whether torture is justified if it can yield life-saving information.  How do we justify our treatment of Oregonians with mental illness?