The Widening The Circle Committee (WTCC) is delighted to alert the congregation each month to Awareness and Heritage Month honorees. October is National Disabilities Employment Awareness month.  And this month we remember our UUCB member, Dr. Marsha Saxton who was a trail blazer and international speaker for disabilities rights.  She was also the founding scholar of disabilities studies at UC Berkeley.  Marsha and her friend, disability rights activist, Dr. Judy Heumann, were instrumental in the passage of multiple pieces of legislation including the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).  Our UU worship service phrase, “Please rise in spirit or body, if able” was begun by Judy Heumann and championed at UUCB by her buddy, Marsha.

Judy organized the now famous 1990, “Capitol Crawl” where people got out of their wheelchairs at the bottom of the U.S. Capitol Building and climbed the steps on their hands and knees bringing acute awareness to people with disabilities. 

Marsha’s US and international disabilities rights advocacy was well known at UUCB and some of her favorite slogans included: “Nothing about us without us,” and “Power to people with disabilities!”  In talks she gave at UUCB, she often told us that, “the Disability Rights Movement is one of the most successful movements for human rights in the history of the world – although we still have a ways to go.”  She was a major source of support for UUCB to create a ramp in the Sanctuary, church facilities to include wheel chair access and doors with push-button opening.  

Current member, Jane Lundin, in 2020, generously put into reality Marsha’s and UUCB’s vision of access for everyone when she donated the monies to create the Sanctuary ramp that leads up to the Chancel.  This beautiful ramp has allowed visiting ministers, Good Neighbor recipients and those of us with visible and invisible support needs, to come up to the Chancel with ease as well as with dignity.  This ramp was Marsha Saxton’s dream for UUCB.  It was also the dream of another current member, Dr. Megan Kirshbaum. 

Megan Kirshbaum and Marsha Saxton both were instrumental in the creation of the Ed Roberts campus (on top of the Ashby Bart) where multiple programs are housed that support people with disabilities.  And Megan’s work is extraordinary!  In working with parents with disabilities who have children, Megan, has advocated (fought for) legislation that would challenge and change current change given to support parents with disabilities to keep their children.  YES! To actually keep their own children and not have them taken away because the mother or father had a disability!!! 

Megan’s organization at the Ed Roberts campus, “Through the Looking Glass (TLG)”, is the reason that there are diaper changing tables that can be lowered so that a mother or father in a wheelchair can diaper their infant babies—as well as other equipment.  This is only one example of the many changes Megan has pushed through legislation in America.  

Both Megan and Marsha presented to America “a complex picture where reproductive and disability justice do not need to be pitted against each other, but where we can support the reproductive rights of women and pregnant people while challenging a eugenic framework and future.”  We hope to have Megan speak to UUCB again in 2025 about the latest achievements of her organization.  We are gifted to have her as part of our UUCB community.

One final note, my dear and sorely missed friend, Marsha Saxton, always after giving a presentation to UUCB Social Justice or Personal Theology, would pause and look the audience in the eye (even on Zoom) and say, “I want you all to promise me that sometime in your life you will watch the movie, ‘Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution.’”

This movie was extremely important to Marsha and to the whole disability community.  Judy Heumann went there as a child and later as a counselor.  President Obama and wife, Michelle Obama, were executive producers for the making of the movie gathered from films taken in the 1970.  And “Crip Camp” was eventually nominated for an Academy Award!  I urge you in honor of Marsha and all the disability rights pioneers to watch the movie on Netflix.  Here’s a link to the Crip Camp Trailer on YouTube to get a sense of it.

Okay, THANK YOU for being an “Awareness Warrior!”  Next month, November, is Native American Heritage Month. 

Below is the description of the creation of National Disabilities Employment Awareness month. 

“Congress, with the aim of helping disabled veterans, designated the first week of October as National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week in 1945. Seventeen years later, the word “physically” was removed from the phrase in order to recognize the needs and contributions of individuals with all types of disabilities. In the 1970s, a shift in disability public policy led to further emendation. For the first time, it was viewed as discriminatory to exclude or segregate people because of a disability, and activists were fighting strongly for legal revisions. As a result, the U.S. saw changes such as the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and the designation, by presidential proclamation, of a full month to increase public awareness of those with disabilities and appreciate the capabilities of the 30 million people in the U.S. of working-age who are disabled. Various programs throughout the month headed by The Office of Disability Employment Policy emphasize specific employment barriers that still need to be addressed and eliminated.”

In Community, Commitment and Love,
Lonnie

Widening the Circle of Concern members:
Cynthia Asprodites, Suzette Anderson-Duggan,
Karen Elliott, Dorothy Herzberg, Lonnie Moseley,
Rev. Fran Moulton, Melissa Rosales and
Board of Trustees representative, Beth Jerde