THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240433
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, a 1960s self-styled revolutionary for African-American civil rights, never saw the connection.
That is, he never thought about the need for civil rights for people with disabilities - until he fathered a boy with Down syndrome.
``I used to pass them on the street without thinking about it at all,'' Cleaver said Thursday at a conference on advocacy for people with disabilities.
He also acknowledged having made fun of them, and long ago, as a child, being afraid of them.
That's all changed, Cleaver told the 225 conference participants. Now, he said, he sees the common humanity.
He also believes that the civil rights movements of blacks, women, homosexuals, people with disabilities and illegal immigrants are ``all part of one continuum'' that began with the American Revolution of 1776.
Cleaver, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., was one of several speakers at the conference, named ``Beyond Advocacy.''
``It's called `Beyond Advocacy' because it's about understanding and building on each other's similarities and tolerating each other's differences,'' said C. Lynne Seagle, executive director of the Hope House Foundation. The Norfolk-based program serves residents with disabilities such as mental retardation.
Speakers at the conference, which concludes today at the Cavalier Hotel, discussed their connections to disability issues.
For example: Lucy Gwin, editor of ``Mouth: The Voice of Disability Rights,'' suffered a severe head injury in a car accident. John Artis of Portsmouth, once a promising athlete, lost several fingers to gangrene after he was wrongly imprisoned on murder charges.
Each focused on problems with institutionalized treatment and the need for more community-based programs.
Conference participants also sought to learn more about advocacy and civil rights from speakers such as Lt. j.g. Dirk Selland, one of the few openly gay men in the Navy.
The common bond, Selland said, was in the struggle to preserve human dignity.
``We're linked together in many ways,'' Selland said. ``This is a movement of equality for all.''
Cleaver reflected on his experience with his 9-year-old son. ``Our task is to bring this out in a way that you don't have to wait until everybody has a personal experience with disabilities,'' he said.
The man who who wrote ``Soul on Ice'' in a California prison three decades ago now says he's talking about ``the soul of America.''
``What we have to do has to do with values and re-education and reorientation . . . because we are dealing with a discrimination that's older than the rest of discrimination,'' he said.
Yet, there was still much of the vintage Cleaver, the radical firebrand who battled police and politicians in the heyday of the Black Panthers.
Cleaver aimed barbs not just at Republicans but at President Clinton, also.
``If he could keep his pants zipped up, we may get something done,'' Cleaver quipped. ``At least with Richard Nixon, we knew who was president.''
But he also returned to the theme of the ``unfinished American Revolution.''
``Even though a lot of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners, they proclaimed a standard that was higher than their own behavior,'' Cleaver said.
``This was the beginning of the civil rights movement. Once they proclaimed this high standard, then the struggle began to bring their behavior into conformity with those high principles. . .
``That's what America is about.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Lucy Gwin, editor of ``Mouth: The Voice of Disability Rights,''
suffered a severe head injury in a car accident.
by CNB