Coalition for Community Integration - Steering Committee Organizations

The Center for Disability Rights, Inc.

The Center for Disability Rights, Inc. (CDR) is a not-for-profit, community-based advocacy and service organization for people with all types of disabilities. Incorporated as an all volunteer organization in 1990, CDR began providing services and grew throughout the 1990s. CDR became an independent organization on September 1, 1998.

Since 1998, CDR has been recognized as an Independent Living Center by the National Council on Independent Living, making CDR part of a national network of Independent Living Centers that provide non-residential and non-medical services. CDR uses a peer model where people with disabilities show other people with disabilities how to live independently and advocate for themselves. The Center for Disability Rights, Inc. continues to be a unique fusion of advocacy and supportive services. Bruce Darling, CDR's CEO serves as the lead for the project.

The Regional Center for Independent Living

In August 1966, Governor Nelson Rockefeller came to the Rochester War Memorial to be nominated by the Republican Party for another term as Governor of New York, several Rochesterians with disabilities were there to meet him. They were high school students who had found that all the campuses of the State University of New York, which had been greatly expanded and improved by Governor Rockefeller, were inaccessible to disabled students. They carried picket signs at the War Memorial when Rockefeller arrived, asking him to make the State's campuses accessible, and they were able to speak briefly with him. These disability rights leaders founded an organization that would be one of the first federally-funded Centers for Independent Living in the country.

Today, Regional Center for Independent Living promotes a society in which people with disabilities enjoy full integration, independence, and civil rights. RCIL supports individuals’ independence by providing information and assistance with housing, transportation, personal assistance services, securing benefits and other services.

ADAPT

Atlantis ADAPT is the original group that was founded by Wade Blank that grew into the National ADAPT. Its first extended campaign focused on accessibility of public transit. After all, disabled people pay the same taxes as everyone else. An inaccessible, tax-funded public transit system is patently unfair and discriminatory. Through public protests, marches, picketing, and other forms of civil disobedience, ADAPT actions brought discrimination in public transit systems to light in various cities throughout the USA. This resulted in many cities—Denver being the first—recreating their public transit system with full accessibility in mind. ADAPT actions were also invaluable to the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. To this day Atlantis ADAPT continues its national and local campaigns. They now focus on integrated, accessible housing and dismantling the overwhelming influence of the nursing home industry over the lives of the elderly and disabled.