Welcoming Remarks, White House Celebration Commemorating National Disability Employment Awareness Month, October 19, 1999

Welcoming Remarks

White House Celebration Commemorating
National Disability Employment
Awareness Month
and Recognizing the
Musical and Artistic Talents of
Americans with Disabilities

October 19, 1999

Marca Bristo
Chairperson
National Council on Disability

Greetings from my colleagues on the National Council on Disability, the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, and the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities. I am pleased to join my friends Tony Coelho, Mary Beth Cahill, and Jonathan Young in celebrating the accomplishments of people with disabilities in the arts. I also want to recognize my good friend and a valued member of the Council, John D. Kemp, who is also President and CEO of VSA Arts, an international organization that had a hand in today's event and whose mission is to promote arts, education, and creative expression involving children and adults with disabilities, thereby strengthening the human spirit and improving the quality of life for all.

I want to commend my colleagues at the White House, especially Jonathan Young, for understanding the importance of recognizing and fostering the development of disability culture and history during the October disability employment awareness celebrations, in part so that children and adults with and without disabilities and their families will learn about the important historical and cultural contributions and struggles of Americans with disabilities.

As my fellow Chicagoan Dr. Carol Gill has said, the recognition and development of a disability culture will strengthen the communal identification and pride of people with disabilities; it will help to unify us by facilitating the recognition of our common experiences of oppression and common values; it will help us articulate to the world and signal to each other who we are as a distinct people; and it encourages people with disabilities to "come out" as part of the community, allowing them finally to integrate their disabilities into their individual identities and offering them a sense of group belonging.

In addition to those artists who use art as an expression of the disability rights movement, there are many artists with disabilities who are well-known nationally and internationally and not always associated with the disability movement. This group of talented artists, which includes people like Stevie Wonder, Marlee Matlin, Chris Burke, Itzak Perlman, Michael J. Fox, Winona Ryder, Teddy Pendergrass, Whoopi Goldberg, and Andrea Boccelli, are important role models and powerful examples of the ability of people with disabilities to rise to the top of their professions.

Art, music and humor created by children and adults with disabilities are all critical parts of American culture, and all important parts of the growing disability rights movement in the U.S. and abroad. Let's all join hands in celebrating the role that the artists being celebrated today and their brothers and sisters around the U.S. are playing in helping to advance and define the disability experience in the U.S., in addition to contributing to the enrichment of the broader American culture.

I want to close by remembering a policy admonition that I received from an actress with a disability, Nancy Becker Kennedy, who called attention to the failure of our public income support and health insurance programs to support artists with disabilities who work sporadically and may need to come on and off the rolls without losing their health care or jeopardizing their benefits. Thanks to the leadership of the President and colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress, particularly Senators Jeffords, Kennedy, Roth and Moynihan, we are very close to passing work incentives legislation that will enable States to fix some of the problems artists with disabilities experience as they navigate public benefit programs. Let's all work together to bring home a victory on work incentives from this Congress that is fully funded and intact, and to continue to build on this critical first step so that when we celebrate disability employment awareness month in future years, we will have eliminated many of the most troublesome barriers to employment that keep too many U.S. residents with significant disabilities from pursuing their career goals. Thank you.