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DISABILITY RIGHTS HERO COMPLETES HIS MISSION
JUSTIN DART, JR. August 29, 1930 - June 22, 2002
June 22, 2002
In an uncharacteristically quiet moment, Justin Dart, Jr., died this morning with his wife and partner, Yoshiko Dart, at his side. Best known as the father of the Americans with Disabilities Act and often called the Martin Luther King of the disability civil rights movement, he thought of himself in much more humble terms - simply as a soldier of justice. After nearly 50 years of advocacy for the civil rights of oppressed people in America and around the world, Mr. Dart spent his final days at home completing his manifesto. His tenacious impatience and unwavering voice of empowerment will continue in the hearts and minds of all who fight for justice. He left the disability community with this final message.
"I AM WITH YOU. I LOVE YOU. LEAD ON."
Dearly Beloved:
Listen to the heart of this old soldier. As with all of us the time comes when body and mind are battered and weary. But I do not go quietly into the night. I do not give up struggling to be a responsible contributor to the sacred continuum of human life. I do not give up struggling to overcome my weakness, to conform my life - and that part of my life called death - to the great values of the human dream.
Death is not a tragedy. It is not an evil from which we must escape. Death is as natural as birth. Like childbirth, death is often a time of fear and pain, but also of profound beauty, of celebration of the mystery and majesty which is life pushing its horizons toward oneness with the truth of mother universe. The days of dying carry a special responsibility.
There is a great potential to communicate values in a uniquely powerful way - the person who dies demonstrating for civil rights. Let my final actions thunder of love, solidarity, protest - of empowerment. I adamantly protest the richest culture in the history of the world, a culture which has the obvious potential to create a golden age of science and democracy dedicated to maximizing the quality of life of every person, but which still squanders the majority of its human and physical capital on modern versions of primitive symbols of power and prestige.
I adamantly protest the richest culture in the history of the world which still incarcerates millions of humans with and without disabilities in barbaric institutions, backrooms and worse, windowless cells of oppressive perceptions, for the lack of the most elementary empowerment supports.
I call for solidarity among all who love justice, all who love life, to create a revolution that will empower every single human being to govern his or her life, to govern the society and to be fully productive of life quality for self and for all.
I do so love all the patriots of this and every nation who have fought and sacrificed to bring us to the threshold of this beautiful human dream. I do so love America the beautiful and our wild, creative, beautiful people. I do so love you, my beautiful colleagues in the disability and civil rights movement.
My relationship with Yoshiko Dart includes, but also transcends, love as the word is normally defined. She is my wife, my partner, my mentor, my leader and my inspiration to believe that the human dream can live. She is the greatest human being I ever known.
Yoshiko, beloved colleagues, I am the luckiest man in the world to have been associated with you. Thanks to you, I die free. Thanks to you, I die in the joy of struggle. Thanks to you, I die in the beautiful belief that the revolution of empowerment will go on. I love you so much.
I'm with you always. Lead on! Lead on!
-- Justin Dart
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