Pacifica board member fought against disablity rights

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From "THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF LISTENER SPONSORED RADIO" by Elombe Brath

(full article at www.savewbai.tao.ca)

Ken Ford, PNB Vice-Chairman, Executive Committee term is supposed to expire
this month and his board term actually was supposed to expire last June, is
a lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders, "the third
largest trade association political action committee in the U.S. [which]
raises more than $2 million each election cycle", according to Josie Byzek
in an article entitled "Living in the Past"which appeared in the May/June
1998 edition of the Ragged Edge. Based in Washington, D.C., the NAHB boasts
that it is expanding its headquarters, projecting the doubling of the
building to nine stories, while covertly, as attorney Rosenberg points out,
"is spending big bucks to prevent any legislation on the state level that
might mandate any access features for the disabled."

Indeed, as Byzek has written, the "NAHB has used its sources to fight the
Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act and its access
guidelines - and fair housing compliance in general...successfully
[defeating in 1998] access legislation sought by disability organizations,
including Independent Living Centers, in Virginia, Georgia and Illinois."

Ford and his friends at the NAHB have persistently fought against such
"basic access standards, universal design, or a 'visitable' single family
home provides for at least one no-step entrance, wider doorways and
passageways through ground floor rooms so as to accommodate a wheelchair
user, an accessible bathroom at ground level with bathroom walls that would
support grab bars. Universal design permits all people, including people
with disabilities, to enter and function. It permits people to age in
place, live independently and avoid institutionalization."

Having a sense of Mr. Ford and his associate's work-related past practice,
it is both understandable and tremendously important to remember that the
question of NAHB's disregard for the rights of the disabled having access
to his or her domain, or the rights of all tenants to decent and affordable
housing, would indeed be a target of a noncommercial radio station like
WBAI - and vice versa.

More directly to our concern about Ford's relation to WBAI is the fact that
he was reported in the New York Times to having complained that WBAI
loyalists are "mired in the 1960s", adding whose opinions are currently
"not only insignificant but irrelevant" in today's media market. Not so
insignificant but extremely relevant to us is that Ford's opinion seems to
be based more on wishful thinking than on historical fact.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org