User:Merrilee/sandbox

Mary Lou Breslin

Mary Lou Breslin is the co-founder of the Berkeley's Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and advocate on behalf of people with disabilities in the U.S. and around the world.

Born in xxx in xxx. At age twelve she contracted polio and spent months at the rehabilitation center in Warm Springs, Georgia. After returning to high school in Louisville, she spent four years at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and became interested in political movements while attending college. Arrival in California in 1973. Major disability legislation, e.g., Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and several Supreme Court cases inform her discussion, providing understanding of her motives and activities. This includes her role in the 504 sit-in in 1977, her subsequent leadership of the training program for Section 504, and the struggle against deregulation in 1981; the development of DREDF'S three-pronged strategy of grassroots organizing, policy reform, and litigation; the establishment of alliances with civil rights leaders and key government officials.

Her efforts to promote disability civil rights began in the 1970's when she organized and trained thousands of people with disabilities about the new federal disability rights law, Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. In 1979 she co-founded DREDF, the nation's first cross-disability civil rights law and policy center. Received the Henry B. Betts Award in 2002. [press release at http://www.dredf.org/press/betts.html ]

Oral history: http://ark.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt8r29n9sp&query=&brand=calisphere -- link to University of

Other items I'm interested in
http://jasonwdean.tumblr.com/post/43080396850/prince-s-fred-some-butterflies-and-other

http://belton.indiana.edu/~belton/collection/about

Thanks for coming!
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