Born in an era when disabled people were routinely institutionalized, Zukas fought for – and won – access to transportation and better urban design
His recent death prompted an outpouring of tributes and remembrances for a pioneer who helped lead a revolution that opened up public spaces, transportation and services to people with disabilities.
“We lost a giant,” said Chris Peeples, a transit official who first met Hale when he chained himself to the bumper of a Greyhound bus at a protest in San Francisco in the 1980s.Hale Zukas’ remarkable life began in a time when few rights for people with disabilities existed. He was born in He said Zukas and other students fought for the rights and the resources to live in the community, founding the Center for Independent Living, which became a worldwide model.
Zukas didn’t just focus on public transit. In the 1980s he turned his attention to Greyhound Lines, which said at the time that, as a private company, it didn’t have to make its buses accessible to people in wheelchairs. Zukas and other activists disagreed forcefully, and staged a protest in San Francisco during which they chained their wheelchairs to buses.
With a characteristic twinkle of humor in his eye, Zukas had no qualms about making a scene to get his political point across. And he was an active lobbyist in Washington DC and the California statehouse in Sacramento. “We’d spend a whole day catching the train as it went past various junctions and then flooring it to the next junction so we could see the train again,” he said.
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