ADA 20th Anniversary Celebrations Across The Nation
By Mike Reynolds

On June 26, 2010, people with disabilities celebrated the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Many locations throughout the country from Maine to San Francisco  had some really interesting events.  Here is a wrap of some of the events we thought were worth mentioning. aMany of these events were captured and uploaded on Youtube.


Massachusetts - Boston Common, Boston
The Boston event was huge - with well over 500 people at the event, perhaps more. There was a March to the Rally site and Several New England based and Massachusetts based non-profits were in attendence.  This is Hockenberry's final speech of the dazy and it is really worth watching. Several news media outlets were there including the "It's Our Story" Oral History project



Washington DC, - The White House
The White Housed had a pretty significant event for the ADA 20th Anniversary (as they did for the tenth anniversary) Here is a short clip of the Event with Robert David Hall (Dr. Robbins in the series CSI) introducing the President. Patti Labelle also performed and the entire event should be on  cspan.org to stream.


San Francisco, CA - Paul Longmore's last known public speech.
This event was probably huge as Berkeley is so close nearby. Longmore references John Kelly and Neil Marcus. Both are great activists and unfortunately it appears their performance is not captured on youtube.
The House of Representatives - Rep. James Langevin (D-RI), Speaker of the House on 7/26/10
On July 26th 2010, Jim Langevin  became the first Quadripledgic to serve as speaker of the house. Langevin  was elected in 2000 and began serving in Jan. of 2001.  Here is a link to his wikipedia entry, here is a link to the NPR blog that includes photos. We tried to contact Representative Langevin for a longer story  but never received a response.