Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

Greyhound Settles with the Department of Justice Over ADA Violations

Greyhound Lines to Resolve ADA Violations

 

February 8, 2016

Source: U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)

 

Under the terms of a consent decree filed by the Justice Department today, Greyhound Lines Inc., the nations largest provider of intercity bus transportation, will implement a series of systemic reforms to resolve allegations that it repeatedly violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Greyhound will pay $300,000 in compensation to certain passengers with disabilities identified by the department and will retain a claims administrator to compensate an uncapped number of additional passengers who have experienced disability discrimination.

 

The consent decree, pending approval by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, resolves the departments complaint that Greyhound engaged in a nationwide pattern or practice of violating the ADA by failing to provide full and equal transportation services to passengers with disabilities.

The alleged violations include failing to maintain accessibility features on its bus fleet such as lifts and securement devices, failing to provide passengers with disabilities assistance boarding and exiting buses at rest stops; and failing to allow customers traveling in wheelchairs to complete their reservations online.

 

“The ADA guarantees people with disabilities equal access to transportation services so that they can travel freely and enjoy autonomy,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. “Todays agreement marks a major step toward fulfilling the promise of the ADA, and we applaud Greyhound for entering the consent decree.” “We are fully committed to ensuring equal access to all opportunities society has to offer, including transportation services,” said U.S. Attorney Charles M. Oberly III of the District of Delaware.

 

Under the terms of the agreement, Greyhound – which serves more than 3,800 destinations and more than 18 million passengers each year across North America – will compensate several classes of passengers who faced barriers because of their disabilities. Through a claims administrator, Greyhound will compensate individuals who experienced barriers based on disability during the three years prior to todays filing. There is no cap on the number of individuals who may submit claims or on the total amount to be disbursed by Greyhound through this process. In addition, Greyhound will be required to pay a total of $300,000 among specific individuals identified by the department who experienced ADA violations. Greyhound will also pay a civil penalty to the United States in the amount of $75,000.

 

In addition, the agreement mandates that Greyhound implement a series of systemic reforms, including the following:

 

list of 5 items

  • hire an ADA Compliance Manager;
  • require all employees and contractors who may interact with the public to attend annual in-person training on the ADA;
  • provide technical training to all employees and contractors on the proper operation of accessibility features of Greyhounds fleet;
  • report every three months to the department on its compliance efforts; and
  • ensure that persons with disabilities can make reservations for travel, and lodge disability-related requests, through its online booking system.

list end

 

Individuals who experienced disability-related discrimination while traveling or attempting to travel on Greyhound buses during the previous three years may be eligible to receive a monetary award. The claims administrator for the fund will be posted on Greyhounds website, and on the departments Disability Rights Sections website at www.ada.gov following entry of the consent decree by the court. Questions about making claims should be directed to the claims administrator.

 

To read the consent decree and complaint, please visit www.ada.gov

For more information about the ADA, call the departments toll-free ADA Information Line at 800-514-0301 (TDD 800-514-0383) or access the ADA website at www.ada.gov

 

 

To read the Greyhound Consent Decree visit:

 

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/greyhound-lines-resolve-americans-disabilities-violations

 

 

 

 

 

The Darkling Book

Open your hands, here comes a book. Pretend for the sake of the soul its an orphaned book, some hand me down. Perhaps it’s a prison book. Certainly you weren’t planning to read it. But it’s a printed volume and it’s all you have. Outside rain batters the windows.
 
 This was the original circumstance of literate people. Without privilege of choice one simply had to read a hand me down book. It was as true for Shakespeare as it was for Lincoln or Malcolm X.
 
 The creative writing business (of which I’m a product) presumes both choice and leisure as coefficients to the act of reading. Accordingly few American writers read as though their lives depend on it. But what I call “darkling reading”–the reading we do when life is constrained, when we’re isolated by poverty or disablement, by race, by refugee status, this is separate from matters of taste or what’s called “canon formation.” The darkling book is what’s at hand and it’s what you’ll make of it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 – Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Farewell Jeb Bush, Hello Again Ira Glass

I am greeting the announcement of Jeb Bush’s withdrawal from the Republican presidential campaign with more than passing sorrow–a term I never use lightly but it’s apt in this case since Jeb is the only GOP candidate who cares about disabled Americans. Be assured: the rest of the pack wishes ardently that the lame and the halt will go away.
 
 The GOP’s only remaining narrative concerning disability is the US is filled with fake cripples who right now are stealing from good old you and me–a story that received considerable traction two years ago when the redoubtable radio hipster Ira Glass rebroadcast (without journalistic fact checking) a spurious story from Planet Money asserting that phony social security disability claims are officially out of control in America. The provenance of the story hardly mattered to Glass, who, when confronted with its falsehoods simply declared himself a journalist and shrugged. It mattered not at all to the doyen of “This American Life” that the tale was largely the dream child of a notorious rightist think tank, or that the outright falsehoods contained in the broadcast might do tremendous damage to the disabled.
 
 Falsehoods about the powerless play well in the GOP.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 – Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ubu Trump

Sounds like Trump?

“The central character is notorious for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self-gratification.”

—Jane Taylor on Ubu Roi

Alfred Jarry’s woodcut of Ubu Roi…

**

Watching the spectacle of Donald trump one is reminded of the opening of Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death:

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.”

**

America is now fully a cartoon culture. We have cartoon families, cartoon immigrants, stick figure women, logos for cripples, cartoon news shows, and of course, the cartoon web.

In a cartoon society issues of oppression—the forces of oppression—no longer need to correct and punish deviants, for “these people” are fully written off like Goebbel’s schoolbook cartoony jews.

Everyone is a cartoon.

And because people know it, even the least literate, they suspect they are the victims of a joke.

This is Donald Trumps signature line. That America is a joke.

Building a wall to keep out the Mexican hordes is both a Fascist party line and a crowd pleaser. Just watch! They won’t be laughing at our wall!

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

 

Shaking My Fist at the Wind

The wind has not loved me, never has, old particulate father, busy body. He’s in my blind face alright. With his extravagant liquors. His jeweler’s brush. Bragging he has no material possessions. My numb friend. Telling me how futile are my necessary green mortal hopes. Once, on the big lake, I shook my first at him. Told him to stay away from my shadow. Said I was happy with my shameful life. I fought him off alright. But wind has all the chips. Knows when we encounter the approach of twilight we’ll ache for his lullaby for we fear the leaden dusk. Consolations from the heartless are better than none.

Dog. Man. East 61st St.

A woman approaches me on East 61st St. in Manhattan. “My dog died,” she says. “Oh dear,” I say. I know about this. I do. She’s attracted by my guide dog and a switch has tripped in her grief gizmo and all she can think about is her loss. If I was walking with a white cane she wouldn’t have said a thing. “My poor dog died,” she says again, as if saying it once wasn’t sufficient to convey the awfulness of the story. And I’m frozen on the sidewalk. This isn’t the first time. For years strangers have invaded my happy thought bubble to share their dog death stories.

She starts to cry, this stranger, and she reaches out. “Can I touch your dog?” she asks, half weeping, half speaking. The process has taken just a few seconds. I’m reminded that four seconds can be immense. Satan fell from Heaven to Hell in just that time. I understand we’re having an unplanned and wholly unscripted spiritual moment. I can’t allow myself to freeze. A decision must be made. If you have a guide dog you’re not supposed to let strangers touch her (or even friends for that matter.) A working dog is doing just that. It’s not looking for love in all the wrong places. When you’re at home, voila, the harness comes off, and love is all the rage. But not on the sidewalk, not at a street crossing. You’re a team, the two of you, a survival unit. That’s just the way it is. “Yes,” I say, “you can touch my dog.”

And this woman, this strange weeping woman, drops to her knees, pushes her tear streaked face into my Labrador’s face, my surprised dog, and she actually moans.

There are so many corners to grief. So many lofty defeats inside each of us. So many exhaustions, facts, deserts, infinities, unexplored planets.

The non-existence of a dog has incited a vast, soft, exploration here, beside a row of parked delivery trucks outside the Hotel Pierre on a windy autumn day with dead leaves flying in circles like butterflies returned from the after life and she’s weeping into my dog’s thick fur.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but we have to go now.” And I back up. Corky looks at me, as if to assess how far the grief has traveled. I think she wants to know if I’m OK.

I tell her to go forward. We move away. We enter the silent invasion of the future.

I think of her often, this woman, who loved her dog, who is drowning in the stone pool of her loss.

I think of the dismal routine of New York City or any city.

I think of the unselfish nature of chance encounters.

 

Old Man Cliche Takes Out a Personals Ad

One day you find you’re a cliche. For one thing you’re old, and though people say things like “sixty is the new forty” and “you’re only as old as you feel” the truth is, you’re not susceptible to the old optimisms. You console yourself, say things like: “I’m not a quisling cliche—like Ronald Reagan who foreswore his progressive youth to be a corporate shill and a commie hunter. No, I’m still left of center, and probably more left than your average reader of The Nation. And then I remember I’m a cliche, for I’m old now and therefore out of touch.

It happens. You’re no longer interested in pop music, though you think Kanye West’s new album “The Life of Pablo” is pretty interesting. And you don’t give a shit about novels with titles that start” “The Girl Who…” though you like George Eliot more than you can say, and once you went all the way to Highgate Cemetery in London to place flowers at her tomb. You also put flowers on the steps of Karl Marx’s tomb. And for good measure you put some at the grave of Beatrix Potter. (Highgate is a one stop devotional place.)

No, you’re a cliche, old as dirt, darkened by the smudges of a thousand fingers, wounded by all the razor-y tongues, discrimination, listless committees, and the bloviation complex—advertising, military spending, random doorbell ringings from religious zealots, elections rigged, corruption like fluoride in the water, or lead.

You became a cliche the honorable way. You lived. You tasted the morning air and found it promising. You smelled the turds and leather of a policeman’s horse and thought it was good because you were nostalgic, you thought there was a time of honor, somewhere back there, until you remembered the three principle pogroms in Russia, how they inspired the Prussians, how the Prussians inspired the Arabs, and now the policeman’s horse doesn’t smell good and you shake your fist because the world has stolen your childhood joy. And you can’t blame it on Freud or Paul deMann or even PeeWee Herman, though you’d like to. You’d like to blame them. But then you’d sound like an old man. “You kids get away from those magazines, you’ll get the pages all sticky!” You’ll sound like Paul Krugman. What could be worse.

Last night you dreamt you were in a beautiful hotel. It was very white. Everything was clean.

Then, in the way of dreams, people you didn’t like turned up. They crowded into your room. Even in your dreams you can’t get away with purity. Your frigging dreams are soiled. You’re a cliche alright. You’ve turned into Saul Bellow’s Herzog. Your antediluvian cane has blood and feathers on its tip. You want to wake up from the dream but of course you can’t. When you do wake up your feet are tangled in the sheets. The real sheets are not as white as the ones in your dream.

You’re a cliche. You don’t believe Bernie Sanders any more than you believe Noam Chomsky. You’d never want Noam Chomsky to take care of your dog. Bernie might be OK with your dog but you kind of doubt it.

You’re a cliche. You trust people based not on intangibles but in terms of what you can see without an intermediary text. I’ve a friend who is doing everything he can to help rebuild Syracuse, New York, one of America’s poorest cities. He also pushes poetry.

I trust people like that.

I no longer trust people who use the word “revolution” seventeen times per hour.

On Electability

A few days ago I posted some opinions on Facebook, arguing vehemently Bernie Sanders can't be elected despite the overwhelming enthusiasm of his supporters. My view isn't driven by polling and Sanders supporters have pointed me to public opinion findings showing Sanders doing well against Trump or Cruz. As Huck Finn would say, “I don’t take no stock” in these polls because I've been through so many democratic (small “d”) disappointments. I’m skeptical of wishful thinking. I bitterly recall how Jimmy Carter lead Reagan in the polls until just a month before the election; remember Mondale leading Reagan by double digits and losing dramatically after he argued for a tax hike; remember perhaps most sadly how Ted Kennedy failed to oust Jimmy Carter—I saw Kennedy’s campaign the way Bernie people view their candidate's effort now, as a push to restore the Democratic party to its liberal roots. Carter after all, was the man who pushed neoliberalism to the forefront of our politics, so much so Reagan had only to pick up where Jimmy left off. I’ve always voted for the most liberal wing of the party. I voted for Jesse Jackson, preferred Paul Tsongis to Bill Clinton. I’ve no dispute with Bernie and his supporters, save that I sincerely believe he can’t win. I think so because middle Americans (who do not think as I do) will never vote for a man who proposes more government regulation and higher taxes—even if those taxes are part of a beneficial vision of single payer health care. It’s possible they might vote for someone like FDR but Roosevelt was a genial plutocrat, the kind middle Americans trust. Sanders is not FDR, which means at the core he likely won't get the broader votes he'll need to defeat the GOP.

 

When I say this I'm told with confidence the right will batter Hillary Clinton just as much if not more so than Sanders and I'm sure this is true but Clinton has the potential and even the likelihood of getting some of the business vote, a thing that FDR managed and which is essential for any candidate hoping to reach the White House. Saying so does not make me a neoliberal quisling or a cynic.

 

The Flowering

This was a tangled day, one of those turns around the sun that feels like a week though I can’t put your finger on exactly why. I spoke to a student who believes in human rights and wants to research the ways and means for intellectually disabled people to live with self-determination.

i attended a largely depressing meeting but accomplished a small good as a result. I made a lonesome foreign student happy by letting him pet my guide dog. I walked home uphill in the bitter cold of February. And the day went by without glory. I’m a day older. As the poet Robert Bly once wrote: “so this is how my life passes before the grave.”

Early, before morning got started I thought of my mother who as a little girl believed she could step out of a row boat and walk on the water lilies. She stepped right out and sank straight away. I often think how beauty is best when untested. An abstract beauty, unpronounced, enacted only in the mind is often superior to our actions. This is the kind of knowledge that makes one smile instead of laugh; whisper instead of shout. Sometimes it feels like a defeat knowing the loveliest imaginings are best when they’re not enacted.

Such thoughts come close to an achievement concerning envy—that foregoing a bolder beauty one might be gently happy, as when lying in a field of yellow, flowering weeds.