Our Purpose

The independent living paradigm, developed by Gerben DeJong in the late 1970s (DeJong, 1979), proposed a shift from the medical model to the independent living model. As with the movements described above, this theory located problems or “deficiencies” in the society, not the individual. People with disabilities no longer saw themselves as broken or sick, certainly not in need of repair. He posited that such issues as social and attitudinal barriers were the real problems facing people with disabilities. Solutions could be found in changing and “fixing” society, not people with disabilities. Most important, decisions must be made by the individual, not by the medical or rehabilitation professional. 

Embracing these principles, people began to view themselves as powerful and self-directed, not as passive victims, charity recipients, cripples, or not whole people. Disability began to be seen as a natural, not uncommon – but certainly not tragic — experience in life.

Wade Blank began his lifelong struggle in civil rights activism alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the historic march to Selma, Alabama. It was during this period that he learned about the stark oppression against people considered to be outside the “mainstream” of our “civilized” society. By 1971, Wade was working in a nursing facility, Heritage House, trying to improve the quality of life of some of the younger residents. These efforts, including taking some of the residents to a Grateful Dead concert, ultimately failed. Institutional services and living arrangements were at odds with the pursuit of personal liberties and life with dignity. 

In 1974, Wade founded the Atlantis Community, a model for community-based, consumer-controlled, independent living. The Atlantis Community provided personal assistance services primarily under the control of the consumer within a community setting. The first consumers of the Atlantis Community were some of the young residents “freed” from Heritage House by Wade (after he had been fired). Initially, Wade provided personal assistance services to nine people by himself for no pay so that these individuals could integrate into society and live lives of liberty and dignity. In 1978, Wade and Atlantis realized that access to public transportation was essential if people with disabilities were to live independently in the community. This was the year that Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) was founded. 

On July 5-6, 1978, Wade and 19 disabled activists held a public transit bus “hostage” on the corner of Broadway and Colfax in Denver, Colorado. ADAPT eventually mushroomed into the nation’s first grassroots, disability rights, activist organization. 

In the spring of 1990, the Secretary of Transportation, Sam Skinner, finally issued regulations mandating lifts on buses. These regulations implemented a law passed in 1970 — the Urban Mass Transit Act — which required wheelchair lifts on new buses. The transit industry had successfully blocked implementation of this part of the law for twenty years, until ADAPT changed their minds and the minds of the nation. In 1990, after passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), ADAPT shifted its vision toward a national system of community-based personal assistance services and the end of the apartheid-type system of segregating people with disabilities by imprisoning them against their will in institutions. The acronym ADAPT became “Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.” The fight for a national policy of attendant services and the end of institutionalization continues to this day. 

The University of California at Berkeley hesitated to admit Ed Roberts when he initially applied, as he was severely disabled from polio, which he contracted as a teenager. He had virtually no functional movement and used a respirator to breathe. “We’ve tried cripples before and it didn’t work,” said the university. They reluctantly admitted Ed in 1962 and arranged for him to live in the campus medical facility, Cowell Hall. His brother, also a student, served as an on-campus PA, often pushing Ed from class to class in an old manual wheelchair. Ed was accustomed to rejection; a year earlier in 1961 the state vocational rehabilitation agency refused to serve him, as he was considered too severely disabled and labeled unemployable. That decision was later overturned. One of the many ironies of Ed’s life was that fourteen years later in 1975, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Ed as state Director of California’s rehabilitation agency, the same institution that once deemed him too severely disabled to ever work. He would serve as Director for eight years.

In the late 60’s and early 70’s Berkeley students with severe disabilities were organized into a group known as The Rolling Quads. Led by Ed, they began exerting pressure on the university to become more accessible and began seeking funding to develop a student organization to work for barrier removal and support services, including Personal Attendant services, for students with disabilities to live independently while attending school. Ed Roberts was launching a self-help movement that would radicalize how people with disabilities perceived themselves. He did it for himself and then began laying the groundwork for the rest of us. Independence and rehabilitation have not been the same since, and will never return to the archaic notions which perceived people with disabilities as passive recipients of charity, unable to self direct their lives. 

After establishing the campus organization, Ed and others realized the need for an off campus, community based organization. In 1972, with minimal funding, the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL) was started. The core values of the Berkeley CIL, dignity, peer support, consumer control, civil rights, integration, equal access, and advocacy, remain at the heart of the independent living and disability rights movements. Today, as many as 400 CILs exist throughout the country, funded with a mix of federal, state, local, fee for service, and private money. In the early 80’s Ed and others established the World Institute on Disability in Oakland, a progressive think tank focusing on independence and civil rights for people with disabilities. Ed traveled the country and the world influencing the lives of people with disabilities. He was featured on a variety of news shows, including 60 Minutes. 

Ed died at a far too young an age in March 1995. He was 55 years old. Wade Blank died on February 15, 1993, while unsuccessfully attempting to rescue his son from drowning in the ocean. Wade and Ed live on in many hearts and in the continuing struggle for the rights of people with disabilities. 

The lives of these two leaders in the disability rights movement, Ed Roberts and Wade Blank, provide poignant examples of the modern history, philosophy, and evolution of independent living in the United States. To complete this rough sketch of the history of independent living, one must take a look at the various pieces of legislation concerning the rights of people with disabilities, with a particular emphasis on the original “bible” of civil rights for people with disabilities, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.