Ben’s D.C. Travel Diary, Part 2
by Rachel
I’m pleased to present Part 2 of former adult representative Ben Trockman’s D.C. visit diary. Ben recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. where he met with legislators and members of the disability community in his mission to make airline travel more accessible.
My D.C. Travel Diary, Part 2
by Ben Trockman
Wednesday, May 15
Our second day of meetings started with Lee Perselay and Andy Imparato, who are two top staffers to Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. Sen. Harkin was the Chief Senate sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the main author.
Our meeting with Lee and Andy was absolutely the most informative and overall the best meeting we had while in D.C. They gave us information about a similar project that had started with a man in Oregon, working with Boeing on creating a more accessible airliner.
They also gave us additional “inside” information on the true difficulty of passing legislation of this sort and what it will really take to convince the airlines that this change is necessary. We also discussed different strategies of publicizing the issue.
Overall, we left that meeting with a lot of great ideas on the next steps on whom to contact and how to proceed.
We then had a quick lunch with Tony Young, who is the involved with NISH, which is an organization dedicated to improving employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Although, the NISH mission does not directly correlate with our cause, Tony is also a quadriplegic and he has traveled via the airlines numerous times. Therefore, we had some time to share a few stories while just simply making a genuine connection for future discussion.
We then took the Russell buildings’ elevator upstairs to meet with the Chief of Staff to Sen. Dan Coats. I once again pitched my idea, and we had a semi-brief discussion on different issues relating to my proposal.
Our final meeting of the trip was with a few folks from the Department of Transportation. The DOT building is about a 15 minute Metro ride across town right near the D.C. Nationals baseball park.
Now, as much as we wanted our last meeting to be the most positive, in this case, it was not. We could certainly tell that the DOT folks directly follow the rulebook.
They brought up safety concerns (something we expected), the issue of how much it would cost to upgrade the airliners, and they even threw in information on how the airplane floor is probably not equipped for the weight of a power wheelchair. They also asked what the demand might be for an improvement such as this, although I was thinking to myself that this is more of a human rights issue than a demand issue.
If anything, the meeting with the Department of Transportation certainly leveled out our expectations for the future. It is going to be a long fight to improve the airlines for individuals like myself with disabilities.
There are many steps ahead, but this is something that I will never give up on. It is a change that has to be made, a change that my family and I were willing to drive 12 hours to the nation’s capital to speak with these leaders about.
Although, this may not happen as fast as we all may want it to, the initial steps have been taken. We are spreading the word and reopening the issue; the conversation has been started. I look forward to reporting back more positive news in the future.
Never give up, never slow down and always move forward.
May 28th, 2013 at 7:55 pm
Congratulations to Ben on his accomplishments. He is a great representative for Easter Seals. Best wishes to him and his family!