The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) celebrates 30 years of disability rights law, policy, and advocacy with a tribute to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and special recognition of distinguished guest, Congressman Patrick Kennedy.The event will be Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 6:30 — 8:30 p.m., in the Veranda Ballroom, at the Four Seasons Hotel, 757 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif.
Here's information about DREDF:
The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, founded in 1979, is a leading national civil rights law and policy center directed by individuals with disabilities and parents who have children with disabilities.
The mission of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund is to advance the civil and human rights of people with disabilities through legal advocacy, training, education, and public policy and legislative development.
The vision of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund is a just world where all people, with and without disabilities, live full and independent lives free of discrimination.
Americans with disabilities make up one of the United States' largest minorities. More than 25% live in poverty and only about 20% have gone to college. Seventy-five percent are unemployed. Such economic and social disenfranchisement is not an inevitable consequence of the physical and mental limitations imposed by disability; it is the result of society's historic response to those limitations: lack of accessibility in the built environment and policies that encourage or even require exclusion, segregation, and institutionalization. The result is a legacy of prejudice and paternalism that is deeply embedded in the social consciousness.
We work to replace this legacy with the core principles of equality of opportunity, disability accommodation, accessibility, and inclusion by employing the following strategies.
