Transcript of Senator Harkin's speech, April 29, 2009
The Community Choice Act Day Rally, Upper Senate Park, Washington DC
Mike Oxford: And I look around and I see the Senator who is always associated with disability rights. The Senator who helped fight for the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Senator who worked with us to write the MiCASSA bill, the Senator who has written the Community Choice Act; and he is in the house: Senator Tom Harkin. [cheers]
Senator Tom Harkin: Mike, thank you. Thank you all for being out on a miserable day, and cold. Thank you.
First of all I want to thank the SEIU for being onboard and helping us with the Community Choice Act; the largest, fastest growing union in America. Thank you, to SEIU, thank you for being here.
Let me thank all of you in ADAPT, thank you for what you did on Monday. Thank you.
Thank you for what you have been doing the last couple of days.
What you are doing is in the great traditions of civil disobedience that has brought us things like the Civil Rights Act, and Women’s Rights Act and all these things in the history of this country was brought about through civil disobedience. [cheers]
I was in Iowa, I was on my way back and watching what you did, it did my heart good to see what you all were doing down at the White House and what you’ve been doing up here. So I encourage you to continue your civil disobedience. [cheers]
When we think of the great civil rights struggle in America and we think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and all those who struggled; they didn’t do it by just being nice every day. They did it through civil disobedience. I mean read the Letter from Birmingham Jail, he didn’t write it sitting a plush office someplace, and so it was with that kind of fervor, and that recognition, that through concerted action, with people pulling together, and yes challenging the structure of the inadequate laws of this county, that got things changed.
No one gave us the Civil Rights Bill, we had to fight for it. No one gave us ADA, we had to fight for it. And no one is going to give us the Community Choice Act, we are going to have to fight for it. [cheers]
And you gotta’ know this that when we finally got the ADA through, and that is my name on that bill; I took the floor of the Senate and I said: “yes we got that done, but there is one more thing that we have to get done to fulfill the promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it is not necessarily self-executing, one more thing really needs to be done.”
At that time we called it personal attendant services, we have to get that passed, then we came up with MiCASSA and we tried to get that through. We never could by we kept trying and kept trying. I got to tell you the one thing that probably pains me more than anything else, nineteen years after my name went on that bill, is the fact that this government, our society still says to people with disabilities: in order to get help, to get assistance, we have to incarcerate you in a nursing home. [cheers]
That is wrong! [cheers]
Nineteen years after the ADA passed, sixty to seventy percent of people with disabilities still unemployed that is unacceptable. [cheers]
So I am here to tell you that we are now at that moment, thanks to all of you, thanks to the years of struggle, thanks to the years of your civil disobedience; we are now at that point where we are going to pass a major health care reform bill in America. I am here to tell you that there is not going to be any major health care reform in America if it leaves people with disabilities behind. [cheers]
I am here to tell you that we are going to incorporate the Community Choice Act with our health reform bill, it is part of health care reform. [cheers]
I am going to fight. I am going to take my case to the President who was, by the way when he was a Senator a supporter of the Community Choice Bill that I sponsored. And now we got to get him to push the bureaucracy to get them onboard. So I’m going to be down there talking to the President, I’m going to be talking to Senator Bahcus and Senator Grassley of the finance committee and others to let them know that this is a major civil rights struggle in American history. [cheers]
Civil Rights, I mean look, why is it that people with disabilities are the only group in America today that are incarcerated without committing a crime? [cheers]
So it is time that we get this last hurdle, that we overcome. But I can’t do it alone. I need your help. I need your help, I need you not just today, or Monday, or Tuesday; I need you every day from now on. We need you back in the states, we need you going to see your Senators today.
Oh, and do me a favor, don’t get arrested today. [laughter] Just today Mike, that’s all just today. [laughter]
Go over there and hit those offices and let them know that we are not going to be left behind. We are not going to be left behind out of health care reform. That this is a Civil Rights measure, it was promised by the ADA, it was confirmed by the Supreme Court in the Olmstead decision. [cheers]
And now this Congress and this President have to make good on those cases. They got to make good on ADA and they got to make good on Olmstead by making sure that people with disabilities can live in their own homes and in their own neighborhoods and not be forced into nursing homes. [cheers]
I tell you I sense and I feel that the years we worked on the Americans with Disabilities Act, I knew we couldn’t pass it in 85 or 86 or 87 or 88 or 89, finally it all came together. And I tell you, my thanks to ADAPT. Is Kafka here? Well, Bob is not here… There is Bob Kafka over here. I am telling you, I refer to Bob Kafka as the Martin Luther King Jr. of the Civil Rights movement for people with disabilities. [cheers]
I remember when he told me to watch TV, he said something was going to happen to the Capitol. What happened was ADAPT got there and they left their chairs and they crawled up the steps of the Capitol. And I will tell you that made its imprint on Senators and Congressman and people around this country who finally understood what the dickens we were talking about.
Well I believe what you did at the White House got attention. What you are doing here got attention. But now we got to get to those Senators and their staffs and let them know the long struggle. Yes we got ADA, we got the Olmstead decision, now that has been 9 years when the Supreme Court said that people with disabilities have the right to the least restrictive environment.
But it is not going to happen, unless this Congress incorporates those into the healthcare reform bill. Well you are going to hear things like: “Well it might cost too much money.”
Well you tell them that when we passed the civil rights act in 1964, yeah that probably cost money too, but it was for the basic civil rights of people in this country. And you tell them that when we pass this Civil Rights part of the health care reform bill for people with disabilities, it frees up people. It frees up people so they can go out and get jobs, that they are not incarcerated in nursing homes they will be able to work and pay taxes and be contributing members of society.
I always talk about my nephew Kelly, my nephew Kelly 30 years now a sever paraplegic and used a wheelchair for 30 years. He gets up every day; he has a nurse come in and gets him ready to go. He goes off to work, he comes home. He has someone to help him in the evening to do his things and get him to bed, and then in the morning a nurse comes to get him up and ready to go. He lives by himself in his own home, he drives his own van. He is his own individual. Now how is he able to do that, because he is rich? No. he ain’t rich at all, very poor family. How is he able to do it?
Because he was injured in the military and the VA comes and pays for all of that. And it just shows you what happens when people get that personal attendant services in their own home and how they are able to live, and how they are able to go to school and to work and to be contributing members of society. So if you want to, you use the story of my nephew Kelly to illustrate what we are talking about. Why should it just be for people who are injured in the military? God bless them, it should be for every person with a disability in this country. [cheers]
So I am here to thank you, thank you for your civil disobedience. I thank you for that, it is in the great traditions that I said of this country. I thank you for what you are going to do today visiting the Senator’s office. I’m going to thank you for what you are going to do when you go back home. You got to get a hold of the Senators there and the congressman. We’ve got to make our case, every single day from now on. We can’t let up. We’ve got to put the pressure on.
I will be here. I will lead the charge on this in the Senate and in the Congress. I need your help. And here is my … well here is what I am saying about what might happen. I hope and trust that we can get this done. I hope and I trust that the President will be on our side. I hope and trust that the members of Congress will see that this is a major civil rights deal that we have got to take care of before we do other things. But I will tell you this, if it comes down to it, I will be the example of Senatorial disobedience. [cheers]
We will not let this pass without Community Choice being a part of health care. You can count on it, but we got to have your help every single day. God bless you. Go get ‘em. [cheers]
Mike Oxford: Senator Harkin, you guys, he is our champion.