Disability honors handed out

The Disability Law Center recently celebrated 30 years of advocating mainstream acceptance of Utah's more than 400,000 people with disabilities.

A reception at the Utah Law and Justice Center honored a few in particular:

• Barbara Toomer is the center's Advocate of the Year.

Toomer was among a contingent of Utahns with disabilities who set up the first-ever tent city at a major government agency in Washington, D.C., this past spring to protest a lack of federal funding for affordable housing.

DUH City, the acronym spelled backwards for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developmeent, was intended to raise public awareness of what Toomer claims is continuing neglect by the agency. Toomer, who has led protest gatherings such as overnight occupation of the Capitol and picket lines at care centers in the area, said the group took direct action against HUD to try to break down the "single largest barrier to freeing our people — affordable, accessible, integrated housing."

• Cathy Chambless and Pollie Price, co-founders of the graduate certificate program in disability studies at the University of Utah, received the Innovative Community Partner award.

• Rep. Jim Gowans, D-Tooele, received the Leader in Government award.

• Carla Gourdin, a visual artist, received the Image award.

The Disability Law Center bases its public policy views on the belief that people with disabilities have the constitutional right to fully participate in a democratic society. The main objective of the center is to protect and defend this right and the other rights that flow from it.

The center is the only statewide disability agency in Utah that provides self-advocacy assistance, legal services, disability rights education and public policy advocacy.

The center has broad statutory powers to safeguard the rights of people with disabilities. Some of the legal services provided to individuals with disabilities by the DLC are in the areas of abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities, accessibility, housing discrimination, voting access, Medicaid or insurance denial of assistive technology and disabilities education issues.