She was fierce.
Anne Emerman, the pioneering disability rights advocate, has passed away at the age of 84 in Manhattan. She died of pneumonia with complications due to post-polio syndrome. She contracted polio as a child in the 1940’s, and after multiple unsuccessful surgeries, it was clear Ms. Emerman would remain in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Doctors predicted she would require institutionalized help for daily living, but Ms. Emerman went on to defy medical expectations by attending college independently in Manhattan, subsequently doing post-grad work at Columbia School of Social Work, where she received her master’s degree in 1964. She then worked as a psychiatric social worker at Bellevue Hospital. She later married and further defied medical predictions by giving birth to her daughter in 1972.
It was around this time that Ms. Emerman became involved in the growing disability rights movements throughout the country, working to make New York City, a notably treacherous landscape for the disabled, more accessible. Emerman took a distinctive approach in her championing for the rights of persons with disabilities, a ferocious and uncompromising style that is no doubt familiar to advocates today. Here, we explore the legacy of Emerman’s work and how her tenacious push forward for change set the mold for paths taken by future advocates.
Fight with ferocity
As Victor Calise, the head of Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities has said regarding Ms. Emerman, “She was fierce. She set a standard of advocacy in city government that is still going on today. She knew her stuff, and you weren’t going to mess with her.”
The most famous instance of Ms. Emerman’s ferocity is a much-retold anecdote involving Mother Teresa. When the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun wanted to build a homeless shelter in the South Bronx, Emerman insisted on elevators for the building, as many people who need such assistance are also disabled. Mother Teresa balked at the idea, not wishing to bear the expense, and what followed was a clash of cultural ideals and morality that lead to Emerman drawing a line in the sand regarding elevators and subsequently Mother Teresa et al backing out of the project altogether.
As evidenced by this bit of history, it’s clear that Emerman ferociously considered accessibility a moral imperative and was unwilling to negotiate it away, regardless of the financial cost.
This is a battle that is likely familiar to many advocates today. Often in the fight for accessibility, disability advocates are already asking for the bare minimum while being offered less than that. In order to secure bare-minimum accessibility, an Anne Emerman-level of ferocity is not just the best approach, but often the only one that leads to action and change.
Change comes in increments, not overnight
Ms. Emerman knew that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and an accessible New York City wouldn’t be either. Understanding that sweeping change was unrealistic, she strove for lasting change via many small victories. Knowing that change starts on an individual level, she spent a lot of time speaking to people one-on-one to achieve smaller goals, such as getting small retail businesses like delis and drugstores to replace the short steps at their entryways with ramps. Indeed, change has to start somewhere.
Use every tool in the bag
Moving beyond the individual level of effecting change, Emerman set her sights on policy and policymakers. And she knew that in order to address accessibility on a legislative level she’d need to use every tool possible in order to reach government officials and lawmakers. For decades, Ms. Emerman utilized an array of techniques including class-action lawsuits, acts of civil disobedience, and simply her own sheer force of will to accomplish accessibility goals in New York City. The effect was an incremental success in opening up the city’s transportation, housing, and public toilets to people with disabilities. Her most far-reaching accomplishment was achieved in this way. After years of lobbying, her tireless efforts lead to the passage of a 1987 law requiring all new or renovated buildings in New York City (except one- and two-family homes) to be accessible to people in wheelchairs.
Labels matter
In 1990, Emerman was appointed to serve as director of what was called at the time the “New York City Mayor’s Office of the Handicapped.” But recognizing that the words we use to describe people matter and that labels can create negative associations in the minds of the public, she pushed for a name change, and the office became known as the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. The battle over language and labels is certainly one familiar to disability advocates today.
Disabled shouldn’t mean invisible
Another battle advocates likely still run into is receiving some amount of accessibility accommodation that is coupled with efforts to hide the very disabled people in need of accommodation. Maybe those efforts are a coincidental, unintended effect rather than intentional, but whatever their source, attempts to sweep disabled people under the rug and hide them from public view are still painful and harmful for many in the community. Anne Emerman understood this fact of disabled life better than most. She was passionate about civil rights for all and voting rights in particular.
I am not absent, I am not on vacation, I am part of my community.
Regarding accessibility at polling places, she balked at the idea of disabled people simply casting absentee ballots, arguing that the approach in essence made the disabled population invisible. On absentee ballots: “I am not absent, I am not on vacation, I am part of my community,” a stance that highlights the fact that when people with disabilities are excluded from the visible parts of the voting process, they could easily be ignored by politicians, leaving them out of legislative processes that would shape their daily lives. And by not backing down on her stance on disabled voting rights, her advocacy efforts ultimately lead to the city spending $10 million to make polling places accessible to people with disabilities.
Though she may be gone, the work of Anne Emerman lives on. It lives on in every advocate today, their ferocity, their lobbying for change and inclusivity, in their efforts to bring visibility to disabled people and the issues that affect their daily lives.
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