Dark History - 32: Equal rights and Access FOR ALL: The Americans with Disabilities Act

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Just how accessible are accessible parking spots, bathrooms, tables etc. And what had to happen in order to even get to this point? Would you believe if I said something called Ugly Laws? Forced Sterilization? Supreme Court Battles? Well babe, that is just a start.  Today we talk about the road to the American with Disabilities Act and the dark history of treatment of people with disabilities.  Episode Advertisers Include: ZipRecruiter, Calm US, OUAI Haircare, and Hello Fresh. Learn more during the podcast about special offers!

Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to the Library of Dark History. This, if you don't know, is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who are thinking, hey, is history really as boring as it seemed in high school? Or just school in general? Oh, no, no. This is where we can learn together about all the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories. Maybe we didn't learn about in school. Okay. So for today's episode, it got me thinking when we did the lobotomy

episode, do you remember lobotomy? Shout out to lobotomy. Okay. So in that episode of Dark History, we mentioned that Rosemary Kennedy was sent away, okay, because she was unwell. And then when we did the episode about birth control, do you remember birth control? And we were talking about eugenics, and at this word kept coming up, like unfit. People were unfit, so then they would also be sent away. And they were always sent away. But what did that mean? What was a way? Where'd they go?

Where? Why? What was considered unwell, unfit? Well, let me tell you, that opened a whole mysterious door so that led me down a rabbit hole of the Americans with Disability Act and how this whole situation got started and how far it's come, but not far enough. We still got work to do, bitch. So let's get into it. So let me, no way, we're going all the way back to 370 BC. Wow, this is some dark history.

Let me open up my book to the year 370. Sure, we can relate to that and use our imagination and envision what that looks like. So we're in the year 370 before Christ. B. C. We're in Greece and we're at the Parthenon. I don't know what that is, but let me tell you, it's a dope-ass temple dedicated to a literal goddess named Athena. There are huge buildings with marble columns all around, and in nine of these buildings are permanent stone ramps. Now back then, Greece was known for accommodating people in wheelchairs, but over time things changed.

And even though wheelchairs have been around for over 3,000 years, accommodations for them started to disappear. In medieval times, not the restaurant with horses. The church started to say, disabilities are punishment for sin. That's what they said. I'm not saying it, that's what they said. And this would become the foundation for how people all over the world, especially the United States,

would think about disabilities for hundreds of years. Now there's not much change in treatment of those with disabilities until we get to the year 1800. Well, until we get into the 1800s. In the 1800s, the rise of industrialization meant that everyone's worth was based on your monetary contributions to society. This shift in values paves the way for how the United States treated people with disabilities. Whether their disability was physical or mental, it was considered a burden and needed to be accommodated. Quote, unquote. Which sounds like a nice thing. I mean, until you see like what they really meant

when they say the word accommodated, people with disabilities started being sent to something called an Almshouse, which are spoiler alert, not very great. Alms houses were church-run institutions that looked a lot like old-timey ins, you know, like cozy. There was usually a farm behind the Alms house, and anybody who got sent there earned their place by working on the farm. Now in return, the Alms house provided them with food, clothing, housing, and any medical treatment they might need. Sounds cute, sounds cozy, sounds great, right? No, this is

dark history. Hi. Well, you see, the thing is Alms houses were actually supposed to be for criminals after they got out of jail, and like a form of rehabilitation. But in reality, most of the people that were sent there were poor people who had been arrested for begging, elderly people who couldn't take care of themselves, and also people with disabilities. Almshouses turned into these big facilities where people considered the outcasts of society were sent and locked away, just out of sight and out of mind. As you might expect, since the institution was intended for criminals, the conditions were not ideal, okay?

Even by the standards of the 1800s. I mean, almshouses were considered unclean and overcrowded. Plus, the employees were known to neglect the people living there. There was usually just one doctor or a nurse for every 100 patients. So nobody was receiving proper treatment. And yeah, I mean, that's not gonna go well.

In a Boston almshouse over the course of 40 years, 25% of everybody who entered had died. And this was the norm in Almshouses across the country. Which is weird, because like I had never heard of that. Had you heard of that? Almshouses? I'd never heard of that.

Have you heard of that? Almshouses? I know, me too. I can't tell you what John said. It was a little fucked up. Eventually, sanitariums and hospitals replaced Alms houses. These new facilities were meant to give better protections to people with disabilities so they weren't just randomly lumped in with criminals anymore.

This seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. It always seems like a good idea at the time, right? But most of these facilities were focused on controlling the patients and not treating them. At the St. Louis City Sanitarium, reports of overdoseing patients with sedatives went public, being called cruel and inhumane. This was just one of many sanitariums where people with disabilities were mistreated and locked away often for their entire lives. So around the same time in 1867,

these things called, this is what's called, quote, ugly laws started popping up in the United States. Ugly laws. Oh God. The idea behind these laws was that cities wanted to stop poor people from begging in public because they thought it looked bad. The truth is these laws actually criminalize disability using language specifically targeting people. The law said, and I quote, diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object. So where did people in violation of these ugly laws go?

Well, you may have guessed it, sanitariums. These laws played into a popular line of thinking at the time. Remember Eugenics? Remember we talked about Eugenics? Still, it's not a plant. Thought it was a plant. It's not long story short.

Has nothing to do with plants. Eugenics is not great. We learned that here, didn't we? Great. I've talked about Eugenics before in the birth control episode, and as a reminder, if you don't know, eugenics is the theory that you can improve the human race by basically breeding out diseases, disabilities, or other less desirable traits. Basically, if the quote-unquote unfit members of society were prevented from giving birth,

then society would be a better place. Now Eugenics was one of the most popular beliefs in the 1800s, and it turns out it's really rooted in stereotypes about people with disabilities. One way Eugenicist would weed out the unfit was by forced sterilization. So forced sterilization laws started popping up all over the country. In 1907, an Indian law was passed calling for people with disabilities to be sterilized. Now this law had so much support that similar laws were passed using language specifically calling for sterilization of the quote

feeble-minded. Now it's important to remember that not only is this term super offensive, but it was designed to be incredibly broad. In the early 1900s, feeble minded meant everything from being unable to appreciate moral ideals, to not being able to read, walk, or write. What the heck is appreciating moral ideals? Joe? Nothing, she got nothing.

Most of the people who were sterilized under these laws weren't even told that they were being what was being done to them, and they were led to believe that they were getting surgery on their appendix. Remember we did discuss this in the Puerto Rican story? It's super disturbing. California was probably the worst offender. Oh yes, you are California. They sterilized over 20,000 people before sterilization was outlawed in 1979. Side note, many historians think that Adolf Hitler got the idea for forced sterilization directly from how much America was into this shit at the time. He once said that there was one place that had really nailed the idea of this whole eugenics

thing. Quote, of course, it is not our model German republic, but the United States. So as you can see, there is a long history of the United States not being very kind to its citizens with disabilities. I wanted to get all that out there to set the stage for what we would consider the modern fight for disability rights in the United States, because God forbid anybody asked for basic civil rights. And now is when the fight gets real ugly. But first we have to pause for an ad break. Let me introduce you to a man named Albert Sidney Pretty.

Oh my god, pretty! That's so cute! He would start the ugly laws as he had to do with the ugly laws. Pretty. Anyways, Albert was born in 1865 and he loved the idea of sterilizing people with disabilities. He became the head doctor of an institution called the Virginia State Colony for the epileptics and feeble-minded. I guess it was better than an Ohm's house, but not by much.

Think of this as if like a prison in a hospital had a baby. That was the institution Dr. Albert worked at. Now Dr. Albert believed it was his duty, duty, to take care of the social problems that people with disabilities were, quote, causing. His solution was to completely remove these people from society. Then, once they were removed, he could perform surgical sterilization so they couldn't reproduce. So sterilization had been around for quite a while at this point, but it wasn't actually illegal in Virginia at the time. That didn't stop Albert from performing a few sterilizations here and there though.

Eventually Albert gets busted while performing one of these procedures, but instead of being like, oh my god, you know, this isn't such a good idea. He decides, I'm not the problem. The law is the problem. He decides, I'm not the problem, the law is the problem. So he has a new goal. So he decides he needs to change it and starts pushing for legislation to legalize sterilization in Virginia. Albert pitches it as a way to save taxpayers money. Less disabilities equals less cost to the state, and people loved what Albert was pitching. So in 1924, sterilization becomes fully legal

in the state of Virginia, but that's not enough for Dr. Albert, of course not. He decides to find a case he can take all the way to the Supreme Court. He thinks that if he can get a Supreme Court decision in favor of sterilization, then he can keep sterilizing his patients forever and ever and ever and ever.

And that's when Dr. Albert remembers a patient of his named Carrie Buck. Now Carrie had become pregnant back in 1923 after she was raped. She met Dr. Al when she went to him for an abortion, and she was turned down because Dr. Albert and the hospital claimed that she couldn't have been raped. They said that she was promiscuous and too feeble-minded to know the difference. Because of the way the sterilization laws worked at the time, Kerry was committed to Dr. Albert's hospital and put on a list of women to be sterilized after she gave birth. Fucking sick!

Dr. Albert realized this could be the case to really make for sterilization the law of the land because Kerry's mother had also given birth out of wedlock and was also considered to be mentally unfit. And it was assumed by everyone at the hospital that Carrie's baby would be two. This case had all the ingredients to be a real slam dunk for Dr. Albert, so he temporarily canceled all of the hospital's other serializations to now make this his top priority. He requested a hearing with the local courts on whether sterilization was constitutional or not, and whether Carrie Buck was a, quote, genetic threat to society. Oh god, they are so dramatic.

On November 18th, 1924, the hearing would begin with witness testimony on the character of Carrie Buck. But here's the thing, only two of the witnesses at the trial had actually met Carrie before. And of those two, only one of them had actually recently seen her. There were doctors, social workers, and eugenicists who had spoke to Carrie

from what they had and read, but they had not seen or directly observed observed her is what I'm getting at. Almost everybody who spoke about Kerry said that she was obviously feeble-minded. One researcher who had spent just one day watching Kerry and her child went on record saying that her entire family was part of a defective strain. It probably also didn't help that Kerry's lawyer was unknown, eugenicist, and a friend of Dr. Albert's. Jeez Louise.

And then Dr. Albert testified. He went on record saying that Carrie's entire family was feeble-minded, and that without surgery, everybody born in her bloodline would become a, quote, middle grade moron. I just don't know what to say. This guy's a fucking psychopath. I think of Dev, this is Satan. This is Satan. I see it. This is the actual language from a court transcript. This was, this was okay. Yeah. Dr. Albert said if Carrie were to be sterilized, she could be released back into society to get a job and even get married. All without society worrying about whether or not she would have another baby.

After a lot of back and forth, the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, just like Dr. Albert wanted. They ruled 8 to 1 against Kerry Buck. Justice Oliver Holmes wrote the majority opinion for the court that it would be better for the world if society prevented the unfit from continuing to breed. He ended by saying, quote, three generations of imbicels are enough. Just burn it all down. Just fucking burn everything down. We could start over. It's fine. That statement went on to become a slogan for the entire Eugenics movement in America. This case has become known as Buck versus Bell, and it officially set the standard in the United States for sterilizing people considered

unfit. Buck versus Bell was weaponized to sterilize people with disabilities for decades, and it is actually still the law of the land today. Eugenics stopped being a socially accepted way of thinking after World War II, and when soldiers returned from the war with disabilities, the national conversation about disabilities really started to change for the better. This was the first time that many Americans dealt with this concern directly, and it seemed to be making people reevaluate Albert Pritties' line of thinking. But I mean, you know, this is dark history and as we've seen many times before,

nothing seems to change all that much. It's always a lot of talk and not a lot of action. Now if we're going to talk about inaction, we need to talk about a place called Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. We know by this point to not let the word school fool us, because this school was anything but that. This institution opened in 1947, and at its peak it had 6200 people with developmental disabilities that were being housed there, but the building was designed to hold only about half of that. Robert F. Kennedy even once said that this place was a snake pit. And given what his family did to his sister, Rosemary, this place must have been bad. Residents were literally experimented on here. A doctor named Soul Krugman used his patients for human experiments in 1955 to figure out a more effective way to treat hepatitis, often without their consent.

And if you remember our episode on the Tuskegee experiments, at this time, doing anything to a patient without their consent was illegal. Not to mention, it's just fucked up. And these experiments would continue for over 20 years. And during that time, Saul's patients were basically locked away and left to die.

And because we can't have nice things instead of being punished for these atrocities, Saul is remembered as one of the most successful scientists in his field. I veeey! So even though it was common knowledge on Staten Island for decades, that the conditions at Willowbrook totally sucked as, it would take 17 years after the experiments first started for a couple of whistleblowers who exposed these atrocities. Anyways, we have to pause for an ad break. It's 1972, and entered to the scene, two young, ambitious journalists named Jane Curtin

and Gerardo Rivera. The pair were tipped off by an angry employee who told them that Willowbrook was a complete cesspool and needed to be investigated. It needed to be exposed. So he gave them a key to the building and they snuck into the compound. And what they saw, they later said, chilled them to the bone. The first thing Geraldo and Jane noticed was the smell.

They said that the entire facility smelled of death. There were no bends and hundreds of patients huddled together in the cold winter months to keep them warm. Some of the children didn't even have clothes. Yes, there were children there as well. And even though everybody's staying at Willowbrook had been diagnosed with something different,

they were given the exact same treatment. If they were given any treatment at all. Joralto and Jane interviewed a 21-year-old man named Bernard, who had cerebral palsy, and he had been at Willowbrook almost his entire life. Despite any difficulty he had speaking, he described the environment as a disgrace. Saying he had been beaten by the guards

and witness countless incidents of assaults against the other patients. After their investigation, Joraldo called it a badly-run kennel for humans and said it shook him to his core. When their story aired on national television, it signaled to the nation that something needed to change for people with disabilities and honestly fast.

Willow Brook wasn't an isolated example and there were dozens of these schools all over the United States, but it turns out that the meaningful change was right around the corner, and it began with something that looked a lot like a sit-in. So when I say sit-in, what do you typically think of? Because I think of the Civil Rights Movement. Now we all know there's a lot that happened during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s,

but for today's story, the main thing to focus on is that people took to the streets and demanded equal rights and protections. This led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaw discrimination based on sex, religion, race, color, or where you were born. But what this act didn't provide was any protections from discrimination for people with disabilities. So, people spoke up, and in 1973, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act, modeled after the Civil Rights Act. It specifically addressed people with disabilities. Section 504 of the Act even stated that any government funded building or program had to be accessible to everyone. This is great, right?

Except four years went by and the law still didn't go into effect. Why? Because the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, or Hugh for short, delayed it. At this point, disability activists were sick of waiting for the government, so they started writing thousands of letters to Congress. One disability rights group called the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, or ACCD for short, straight up told a Hugh in January of 1977 that if nothing happened by April 4th, there would be a national protest, a full on uprising. Obviously, the Hugh didn't feel very

threatened by this, and the ACCCD never heard any response. So April 4th came and went quietly. Then on the morning of April 5th, activists showed up to the Hugh offices all over the country to hold mass sit-ins. Now these protesters would stay in the buildings for hours, and in some cases days. When they confronted the regional Hugh directors, they expected a fight, but the directors didn't even know the law hadn't been implemented. This is when disability rights activists decide to take their protests to the next level. It was no longer going to be just a simple two-day protest. Oh hell no. So over 100 San Francisco protesters, interpreters, and personal aides decide to occupy the

Hugh offices until something actually changed. They were assisted by local black Panther groups along the way who brought supplies like blankets, pillows, and meals for all the protesters, and even the San Francisco mayor was on their side and donated mattresses for the protesters to sleep more comfortably. The federal government did everything in its power to get the protesters out. They cut the power, they cut the water to the building, and they even sent police sent to try to convince them to leave. But the protesters weren't willing to negotiate.

I mean, these were long overdue demands that needed to be met. Eventually, a few of the protesters' leaders managed to get Hughes' regional manager to contact his buddies in the federal government and set up a meeting with leaders of Congress. Believe it or not, the protest leaders arrived in DC on April 28th and convinced Congress to immediately implement the Rehabilitation Act, which was guaranteeing protections for people with disabilities. But also, just in case you needed more reason to root for the protesters, they actually

stayed at the Hew Building for two days longer than they needed to. Why? Because they wanted to make sure to clean up after their own messes. That's so nice. And now let's pause for an ad break. The Rehabilitation Act basically carved out additional funding for services benefiting people with disabilities. It's important to point out that the act only applied to the federal government and programs benefiting from the federal government. I'm getting super

tongue-tied today. So government buildings had to be accessible and government jobs couldn't discriminate. The private businesses, individuals and local and state governments could do whatever they wanted to. Plus, it's rumored that the section in the Rehabilitation Act that was about discrimination against people with disabilities was snuck in there by some congressional staffers. So most politicians didn't even realize they were signing the civil rights bill into law. And because of this, that section was very limited and hard to enforce. So stupid, they make up so many excuses. So even though they had the Rehabilitation Act, activists knew the fight for equal rights was far from over.

I mean, what about restaurants, apartment buildings, medical facilities, public transportation? I mean, the list goes on. The point is access to everyday necessities is fundamentally important to living. And by the 1980s, this fight still wasn't getting any easier because of presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. One of his campaign promises was to cut funding to all federal welfare programs, and this included the recently passed Rehabilitation Act. So to Reagan, all this spending was an obstacle to the American dream. So Ronnie gets elected and in 1981 he signs a bill that slashes federal funding for the

very programs outlined in the Rehabilitation Act. Now it's up to individual states to find funding and how are they going to do that then? The National Council on Disability is an advisory agency that advocates for people with disabilities. Well, President Reagan not only cut their funding, but he fired all the members, replacing them with his own appointees. But Ronald Reagan doesn't exactly get what he wants out of this because he knew NCD quickly gets to work on a report about how the government should enforce disability compliance. This was a nice turn of events, I guess. The report was actually framed as a plea for basic civil rights for Americans with disabilities and called for sweeping changes to the way the government enforced the laws.

But after President Reagan saw the report, the head of the NCD was quietly fired. Okay, so not the best turn of events. But it was too late for Ron to stop any change from happening. Because this report ended up finding its way to Congress, which finally started a conversation about how all Americans with disabilities should be protected. So in 1988, 24 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, the push officially began for what we now know as the Americans with Disabilities Act or the ADA, which leads us to the United States under President George

H.W. Bush. Now President Bush, I'm sick of these goddamn presidents, they all suck. Now President Bush was vocally supportive of the ADA, I wasn't, my comment wasn't towards this, but I mean, they all like fangs up. Great, but there's like a catch, okay? A political, a political catch. Rumor has it that one of the main reasons why Bush supported the ADA was to distance himself from Ronald Reagan, who once made a derogatory comment about a presidential candidate with a disability. So he's trying to play the good guy. Reagan called that person in, quote,

invalid on live television, which created a massive controversy in the press. And Bush, who had been Ronnie Ray Gunn's VP for eight years, wanted to emerge from the shadows of his former boss. Whatever the motivation, Bush publicly supported the shit out of the ADA, so this was huge. Was it only infocking no? Because it is, but it's not, but it is, but it's not, but it's

not. You would think that the support of the current president would be enough to pass the ADA, but it got held up by debates and Congress for a few months over whether the cost of helping Americans with disabilities was even worth it. Some politicians argued protecting the rights of people with disabilities was too much of a financial burden on small businesses. Oh my fucking, I fucking roll. Get the fuck over it. Why don't you leave them?

Why don't you go to a different country if you can't let us like service everybody who lives here. Get the fuck out. Thank you, goodbye. The New York Times ran an editorial in 1989 called Blank Check for the Disabled, and the title kind of speaks for itself. Tired of the mistreatment and tired of waiting for the ADA, a number of disability activists staged a protest in Washington, DC on March 12, 1990. It was a pretty warm day in DC, a bright sunny sky and thousands of activists were marching through the streets, and there are

destination you ask. It was the US Capitol building. Now this was going to be one of the biggest disability rights rallies in the entire world. Various activists set up and gave speeches in front of the capital steps, calling for the passing of the ADA. Now crowds were forming, and people were cheering on the protesters as they passionately called for the Congress

to pass the bill. And something, even more amazing happened. 60 protesters jumped out of their wheelchairs or threw aside their crutches and began making their way up the stairs to the Capitol building one step at a time. For the record, the Capitol staircase is 78 long marble steps, so I mean this was pre-Freak and badass, okay? One of the demonstrators said that the protest was meant to be a symbolic depiction of what

the struggle of living with a disability and fighting for your own civil rights was like. As the protesters ascended the steps, the crowd cheered, holding signs of encouragement for the climbers, and they started their own chance. What do we want? ADA! When do we want it? No! One of the protesters climbing up the steps was a woman named Paulette.

Now she was interviewed by the press as she climbed and when she was asked like, why are you doing this?" She said, quote, I want to be treated like a human being. Is that so sad? Another one of the protesters was an eight-year-old girl named Jennifer Keelin who was born with cerebral palsy and how to use a wheelchair her entire life. Now when she was just six years old, she and her mother saw their very first disability rights protest in Arizona. And Jennifer said that completely changed her life. When the press asked her why she was climbing the steps,

she told a story about her friend Kenny, who probably wouldn't have died if he had better healthcare. She said, quote, I'll take all night if I have to, I'm doing it for Kenny." End quote. Now this event became known as the Capital Crawl. The press published story after story, photo after photo of all the disability rights protesters climbing the steps of the capital building, and suddenly the fight for the ADA caught the attention of the entire nation.

People started calling their representatives in Congress demanding the ADA caught the attention of the entire nation. People started calling their representatives in Congress demanding the ADA be passed. Now, the pressure was on. So just a few months later on July 26, 1990, the ADA was finally passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush. So the ADA is now the law of the land. It's definitely a start, but it's quite flawed.

When the law first passed, many businesses decided to just ignore it and wait to get sued. They simply just didn't want to pay the cost to update their buildings. We'll see this come up a little later. Another issue is that a main goal of the ADA is to get more Americans with disabilities employed, but their employment rates are still incredibly low. There's also that problem that disability itself isn't clearly defined. This is on purpose, so it can cover as many people as possible.

But in being broad, it's also super vague. And this gives room for attorneys to question if people really are, you know, quote unquote, disabled under the ADA. Like in 2002, there was a woman named Ella Williams. She worked at Toyota Car Assembly Factory in Kentucky. The repetitive nature of her job caused her to develop Carpal Tunnel syndrome. Ella told Toyota about the issues.

Instead of helping her, they required her to be more physically active, which she couldn't do. So, she was fired, and then she sued Toyota, citing a violation of civil rights under the ADA. Now, unfortunately, the court ruled that Ellis Carpool Tunnel did not qualify as a disability because her major life activities weren't affected by her condition. Now, let's create a bit of a loophole in how Quartz approached the ADA, saying, now that a disability has to limit task in someone's daily life,

as opposed to just their work life. So they're making up rules as they go. Because of Ella's experience and similar cases, there have been some amendments to the ADA, which better defined disability and protect the people it was actually intended to protect. This is great, but the work still isn't done because there is no federal government agency policing businesses to make sure they are truly complying with the ADA, which now leads me to another man named Albert Ditch. Albert is a disability activist who has made it his entire life's work to ensure businesses are abiding by the ADA. In 2008 he went to the movies and tried using an accessible restroom, but as soon as he entered the

stall in his wheelchair he became trapped. Now in response he wrote a letter to the theater asking them to fix it. They responded with a letter from their lawyer saying everything was ADA compliant and they didn't have to change a damn thing. Albert knew for a fact this wasn't true because he had been unable to use it, so he took them all the way to court. When an expert investigated the theater restroom, he only validated Albert's claim, but also found several other ADA violations throughout the theater. If Albert hadn't sued, there would have been no one there to make sure the theater complied with the ADA.

So Albert kind of realized if he actually wanted things to get done, this might be the way to do it. Over the years, Albert has sued over 180 businesses for ADA violations. This is because the very people hurt by these civil rights violations are required to report them to the Department of Justice. And Albert is on record saying that he is not after- he's not after anyone's goddamn money. Most of the time the settlement is like under $7,000 to cover his legal fees and like that's it. The real reason Albert is doing this is to shed light on- on a problem or on problems and just get them fixed. Not everyone has a time or ability to do the work that Albert is doing.

So imagine how many violations there are out there that aren't being addressed. You might be thinking, well, we need more Albert's in the world. But what we really need, hi, is a government agency actively spot checking for ADA violations, so it doesn't fall on us or Albert to do it. Albert is like a goddamn hero, but he shouldn't have to be doing us alone. The fight to improve and protect the ADA still lives on today. I mean, as recently as 2017, Congress attempted to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which would have undercut the services

that help people with disabilities guaranteed under the ADA. One of the Congress people leading the charge to overturn the Affordable Care Act was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, that fucking turtle. He looks like a goddamn turtle. He is a devil turtle. So a group of protesters showed up to his office and did their own mini-version of the Capitol crawl, chanting and demanding Mitch drop his attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

The Capitol police were summoned and images of the protesters with disabilities being arrested and dragged away in handcuffs quickly went viral, which obviously caused a lot of people to be pissed the fuck off. At Mitch, fucking asshole. In conclusion, there really is no conclusion because this is an ongoing conversation. The association of people with disabilities, AAPD, is one of the largest advocacy groups

for people with disabilities. They argue that the ADA is an excellent piece of legislation, but that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done and it needs to be improved. There's just so much that needs to be done. Healthcare, transportation, housing, all businesses need to be following, allowing everybody to come into their shops, their stores, whatever. And someone needs to be held accountable and checking these people. Again, just fucking burn it up.

What do we do? What do we do? There are a lot of people who cry welfare state and complain that costs associated with taking care of our vulnerable citizens are too high, but the cost of not taking care of them is much higher. And not like the costs should even matter. They shouldn't even be a question. World human beings are right not, and we should, it should be enough to want to care for our fellow humans, our fellow citizens.

So how can we help? Well, for one, don't be an asshole and care about other people. And two, even today, there's still no agency tasked with making sure companies abide by the ADA. The responsibility to report violations of the ADA like squarely on the public. And only once it's reported can it get investigated.

So if you see something that doesn't feel ADA compliant, report it. And make sure you're reaching out to your lawmakers to keep the pressure on to continue making legislation to help people with disabilities. Anyways, thank you guys so much for learning with me today. Remember, don't be afraid to ask questions, okay? And get the whole story because we deserve that as people do we not?

I'd love to hear your guys' reaction to the story on social media. So use the hashtag dark history so I can follow along. Also join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs. And also catch murder mystery makeup which drops on Mondays over my YouTube as well. I hope you have a great rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be seeing you later. Bye.

Dark History is an audio boom original. This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Kim Jacobs, Dunia McNeie from Three Arts, Justin Cummins, and Claren Turner from Wheelhouse DNA. Produced by Lexi Kiven, research provided by Thomas Mezzar Smith, writers, Jed Bookout, Michael Obers, Joey Skvuzzo, and Kim Gagead. And a big thank you to the ADA consultant, Marcella Rhodes.

And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. the ADA consultant, Marcella Rhodes. And I'm your host, Bailey Suryan.