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Disabled with service dogs don’t have to reveal disability  

Editor:  

Robert Lauriston’s letter to the Planet of Jan. 17, 2001 is ludicrous.  

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states clearly that it is a violation of the ADA to ask a person “What is your disability?” or “What is the nature of your disability?” No documentation of the disability is required.  

Many people with hidden disabilities have service animals. I personally know people who use service animals to guide them, to alert them and to carry objects for them. Among these disabilities are people with low vision, post polio, decreased hearing, physical instability, chronic dizziness, early stages of multiple sclerosis, seizures, fibronyalgia, decreased spacial awareness, and some developmental disabilities.  

You cannot tell by looking at any person whether they have a hidden disability. Nor, under the ADA, does anyone with a hidden disability have to reveal their disability when asked. And, by definition, any person with a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits major life activities is considered disabled.  

It follows then that Michael Miniasian does not have to “prove” that he has a disability or reveal it. All we need to know is that he says he is disabled and that his dog, King, is a service animal. That’s the law.  

The challenges of dealing with ignorance is the most difficult disability we face. I sincerely hope that Mr. Lauriston never develops a disability - hidden or obvious. Because, if he does, he will have to eat his words.  

Karen Craig 

Co-Chair, Commission on Disability 

Anti-inaugural protest holds hope 

Editor:  

Bush gives an anti-abortion rights ruling the first day in office. He nominates right wingers to the cabinet, and there is a repressive police presence at his inaugural. The signals are for a grim future, but then there are the signals given off by the anti-inaugural protest demonstration in San Francisco this past Saturday.  

The behavior and composition of Saturday’s massive march is something this old Berkeleyan has not seen since the Vietnam war and Cal’s FSM demonstrations. Demos in the 1980s and 1990s featured “the usual suspects” among whom I guess I am one. We used to come in organized contingents that supplied pre-made signs and we shouted clichés. This Saturday’s crowd had a flood of home made signs, very few “leaders,” and few specific contingents.  

Personal rather than ideological feelings marked many signs, such as “Hope my First Vote Counts,” and “We Wuz Robbed by King George the Turd.” The people with bull horns skipped the united people never being defeated cheer and instead had us chanting, “Cocaine, DUI, Bush ain’t got no alibi. He’s stupid. He’s stupid.” 

After the march from civic center to Jefferson Square about a thousand people turned back toward downtown in a spontaneous, no-permit march that took over Van Ness and then Market Street. At Powell and Market Street, there was a half-hour long spontaneous break dancing contest to rave music blaring from a demonstrator’s boom box. Later the cable car turnaround was filled with demonstrators who made it a twirling merry-go-round, until police stepped in, at which point another original cheer was heard, “Whose merry-go-round thingy? - Our merry-go-round thingy!” 

All in all, this was a happy multi-racial, multi-aged crowd, one that will probably come back for more protests.  

Ted Vincent  

Berkeley 

Answer to BHS lunch problem: build a cafeteria 

The Daily Planet received this letter addressed to Mayor Shirley Dean: 

This letter is regarding the large number of BHS students in the downtown area at lunchtime and their negative impact on the area.  

As a retired High School counselor, I suggest the solution is having an adequate cafeteria right on campus and keeping the kids on campus.  

Your idea of "Working with the High School on a code of conduct and ways to commit the students to more positive behavior," is a hopeless idea.  

Jay Wagner  

Berkeley 

Poems can be protest 

Editor: 

How did I spend this Inauguration Day after spending Bill Clinton’s special days in 1993 and 1997 waving my United Nations flag among the tens of thousands on the Mall? I didn’t seem to need to be among the George W. protesters in San Francisco or D.C. 

I know! Since the best thing about both of those events was Maya Angelou reading her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” I spent 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. downtown between BART and the Farmer’s Market giving people a chance to read or hear her still inspiring and very much-needed words.  

My sometimes Berkeley Daily Planet cart, my UN flag and my Berkeley Millennium Peace Bell seem like good ways to attract attention to Maya’s still beautiful words of hope.  

Bill Trampleasure 

Berkeley 

Spend funds on housing not hotels 

Editor: 

Like many others I have spent some time homeless in Berkeley as an unsuccessful gutter poet and painter. I’ve got a lot of opinions but I have one creative one: I went to the City Council meetings last winter to see about a hotel voucher for the homeless issue. I was a bit too frightened by the cameras and people to talk but I think it’s stupid to think that tens of thousands of dollars is granted so that a homeless person can stay in a hotel a few nights with a referral. Sounds like a good plan for some one with a hotel.  

Berkeley is my favorite place in the United States and I think it’s very advanced with its own order to it. If that money could be organized into low maintenance housing instead of stuffed up shelters. This is all I asked for as a teenage panhandler there. I wanted a closet to store my stuff and sleep safely, and a order of dollar Chinese everyday.  

Berkeley has a very warm and tolerant way of dealing with things but I think there is potential to make things better. Homelessness is becoming obsolete but there isn’t much of an alternative for people who aren’t stable enough to pay $500 a month for rent.  

My point is grant money going to hotels is wasteful and no solution to the problem. 

-dZel 

Berkeley