Obama Statement on the Seventeenth Anniversary of the ADA

Obama Statement on the Seventeenth Anniversary of the ADA

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 26, 2007
Contact: Obama Press Office 312-819-2423 

CHICAGO, IL  Senator Barack Obama today released the following 
statement on the Seventeenth Anniversary of the Americans with 
Disabilities Act (ADA): 

"On July 26, 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a law 
that aimed to ensure that Americans with disabilities have equal 
access to the American Dream, was signed into law. As a former 
civil rights lawyer, I know firsthand the importance of strong 
legal protections against discrimination and an abiding commitment 
to equal opportunity. As we celebrate the ADA's anniversary today, 
we must also re-commit ourselves to strengthening the law and 
enforcing it more vigorously and effectively.

"The ADA declared that people with disabilities are welcome 
throughout American society. The ADA assumed, rather than doubted, 
that people with disabilities can be productive workers 
contributing to our economy and the support of their families. 
Perhaps most important, the ADA was a formal acknowledgment that 
people with disabilities are American citizens with the same 
rights as other Americans: a right to belong, a right to 
participate fully in the American experience, and a right to have 
dignity and respect in the workplace and beyond.

"This right is not just something to celebrate today, it's 
something we must work to uphold in the months to come. We must 
overcome the Supreme Court decisions that have weakened this right 
by making the ADA Restoration Act the law of the land  a law that 
will bring us closer to the ADA's ideal of barring discrimination 
against anyone on the basis of disability."

SOURCE: Obama for America
________________________________________________________________

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