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<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">“The Most Inhumane Veto”</span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Politics and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973</span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">President Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 on this day, September 26th, in 1973.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Back in February of 1972, an expansion of the<a href="https://ldaamerica.org/legislative_news/100-years-vocational-rehab/" target="_blank"> <span style="color:#0432FF">Smith-Fess
Act</span></a>, (establishing the federal vocational training grants) that included a broad and potentially revolutionary anti-discrimination language that would eventually become<span style="color:#0432FF"> <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/centers-offices/civil-rights-center/statutes/section-504-rehabilitation-act-of-1973" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0432FF">Section
504</span></a></span> as we know it.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">“No otherwise qualified handicapped individual… shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial
assistance.” </span></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span></i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The Act easlily passed both houses of congress and was sent to President Nixon who
<span style="color:#0432FF"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/28/archives/nixon-uses-veto-to-block-9-bills-held-too-costly-30billion-hewlabor.html"><span style="color:#0432FF">pocket-vetoed</span></a></span> it along with eight other bills because he
had committed to a federal budget cap.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">In response, Senator Humphrey, Spoke on the Senate floor calling Nixon’s decision “the most cruel, the most inhumane veto the President ever handed down” Noting that his
<a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2010/05/10/humphrey-granddaughter" target="_blank">
granddaughter Victoria</a> had Down Syndrome Humphrey reflected on the privilege that allowed his family to take care of Victoria; concluding with “but many families can’t.”</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The disabled community followed with direct action.
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">In Carbondale, Illinois, six students in wheelchairs blocked traffic amid a larger hunger strike. \</span><o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">In May Judy Heumann orchestrated protests at the annual meeting of the President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.
At the conference, a portion of the delegation symbolically left the room during a speech by Nixon’s daughter, Julie, while 200 disability advocates held a candlelight vigil that night at the Lincoln Memorial. </span><o:p></o:p></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Meanwhile, Congress worked to rewrite the bill, reducing the overall budget but keeping new civil rights passage as Section 504.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 on September 26th, 1973.
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">“It is doubly gratifying for me to be able to sign into law today the Rehabilitation Act of 1973--first, because of the good the act will do in helping hundreds of thousands
of our disabled citizens attain self-sufficiency, and secondly, because of the encouraging example which our agreement on legislation sets for future executive-legislative cooperation.”</span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
Nixon<span style="color:#0432FF"> <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-signing-the-rehabilitation-act-1973" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0432FF">said in his signing message</span></a></span>. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The full implementation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 would take another four years of activism, negotiation, and protests.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">For an up close and personal view of this history I recommend <span style="color:#0432FF"><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621090/being-heumann-by-judith-heumann/" target="_blank"><i><span style="color:#0432FF">Being
Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist</span></i></a><i>.</i></span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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