tzippy@dasys1.uucp (Tzipporah BenAvraham) (03/16/90)
Index Number: 7194 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Disabled demonstrators in wheelchairs confronted House leaders Tuesday, demanding passage within 24 hours of legislation guaranteeing civil rights protections. Several demonstrators threatened civil disobedience and interrupted House Speaker Thomas S. Foley and House Republican Leader Bob Michel as the congressional leaders tried to speak over the din in the cavernous Capitol Rotunda. "It is a priority for passage in this session of the Congress," Foley shouted over catcalls from some of the estimated 150 people arrayed before him in their wheelchairs. "I am absolutely satisfied it will reach the floor, we will have a conference with the Senate and it will become law." "Will it be on the floor in 24 hours? No," Foley added, in a statement greeted with a chorus of boos. The speaker said, "I am not going to set an artificial deadline that prevents the committees from sending a bill to the floor that they can defend." It was the second day of lobbying by the disabled. On Monday, dozens of people crawled out of their wheelchairs and up the steps of the Capitol to dramatize their demands. "I'll take all night if I have to," said the youngest, 8-year- old Jennifer Keelan of Denver, as she pulled her small body up the steps. "Come on, Jenny, you're almost there," said Michael Winter of Berkeley, Calif., who was making his own difficult journey up the 83 stone steps of the Capitol's West Front. They were among 60 or so people who put on the demonstration Monday following a rally at the base of the Capitol steps by about 1,000 people supporting legislation to ensure rights to people with disabilities. The focus of the protest was the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed the Senate last year but has bogged down in the House, despite widespread predictions of its ultimate passage. The measure would outlaw discrimination based on physical or mental disability in employment, access to buildings, use of the telephone system, use of public and private transportation and in other uses. The Capitol building has ramps for wheelchair access to two of its entrances and ramps and elevators inside to enable people confined to wheelchairs to get around. "We're not asking for any favors," said I. King Jordan, president of Gallaudet University and the first deaf person to hold that position at the school for people with impaired hearing. "We're simply asking the same rights and equality any other American has." "What we did for civil rights in the '60s, we forgot to do for people with disabilities," said Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo. During the midday faceoff in the Rotunda, Foley sought to assure the disabled that House leaders "want to see that this bill has the greatest possible support and will reach the president's desk in a way that he can sign it."