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Becomes an activist

Jacobson

Why did you join?

Saviola

Because I was beginning to become an activist. I had started to get involved in Goldwater at trying to make the environment at Goldwater better. Getting us a new special unit where the younger patients with goals of obtaining an education or getting vocational training would be in the same area. The younger people in Goldwater were patients were scattered throughout a hospital in an environment which was designed for frail elderly people. Therefore the whole emphasis of living in Goldwater was designed to meet that population's needs . But the whole emphasis that we needed was different. It was on vocation and education and getting people out. And my friends who had worked at the hospital were all involved in antiwar stuff and things like that.

So it kind of all got swept up into it. It all kind of made sense. You know, we were all involved in Vietnam antiwar, activities on campus but we were also about we need our civil rights too," and I remember, we had one goal, it was to make the campus accessible. It had nothing to do about anything outside of the university. We never thought about what happened when we left. At that point, we're just making the campus accessible. And that's when we met some of the people who would form DIA, Disabled in Action. Some of those characters, who weren't on campus. Like Pat and Denise Figueroa, Denise McQuade, people who never went to LIU.

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Saviola

I remember trying--wanting to organize to help Judy with the Board of Ed stuff and things like that. And I remember ABC, which was the group that kind of started me as an activist and the disability rights movement in New York City. At that same time, you remember the Architectural Barriers Committee?

Jacobson

Yes.

Saviola

With Julie Shaw and Anna Fay and all those people?

Jacobson

Yes.

Saviola

And that kind of concurrently was going on while we were doing this stuff at LIU. Maybe it even preceded it a little, I think. So, we didn't like the way in which our needs were being ignored by the City. So we organized and began to see that we were powerful when we joined together. This was empowering. For the first time in my life I actually felt that I was part of a social movement that would be changing the way in which people with a disability participated in society. One of the people involved in your movement was Julius Goldberg. Do you remember him? I heard that his wife died recently.

Jacobson

Oh, really?

Saviola

Yes, someone had told me that a couple of months ago. But I remember, we felt that they were very conservative, that all they were looking at were very narrow issues.

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That all they were interested in was removing physical barriers. We were much more interested in fighting for equality and our place in society. They weren't very militant, and we wanted to be more militant.

Jacobson

Well, weren't they older?

Saviola

They were, they were about ten years older than us, I think. And then people like Phyllis and Anna kind of agreed with our broader goals.

Jacobson

Phyllis?

Saviola

--Rubenfield, and Anna Fay kind of broke away from them, too. And they formed NPF, the National Paraplegic Foundation.

And there were all these groups kind of loosely floating around. I don't remember the order, because we were forming so many things. There was ACCD [American Coalition of Citizens With Disabilities] that came out of a group of activists including us who were participating in meetings of the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.

Jacobson

That came later.

Saviola

I remember meeting in my house, in my apartment. We used to have lots of meetings in my apartment.

Jacobson

Yes. Where is it?

Saviola

Downtown Brooklyn, right across the street from Long Island University.

Jacobson

So you were living in the same building as Judy?

Saviola

Yes. Even though I saw much less of Judy after I moved in. Because, she was then in a graduate program and getting ready to move. I graduated LIU in '70, went to NYU, New York University, for my master's, but didn't move into my apartment until 1973. So, I was kind of out of it a little bit, or just tangentially involved for that two year period, when I was in graduate school.

And I think what kind of happened is when DIA started, Judy came to me and said, "Can we have the meetings in your apartment," or something like that, because my apartment was larger than hers and she had roommates. She was always having different roommates.