Independent Living
The idea of independent living is very simple, but it is also very powerful. Independent living is a way
of life for people with disabilities. Basically, it is about you making your own decisions about your own
life.
When you are the one deciding what you will do each day, where you will go and how you will live, you are in
control. You make your own decisions about your career, your money, your home, your dating life, your
family and how you spend your down time. That is independent living.
When your caseworkers, parents, teachers, doctors or other people make decisions about how you should live,
that is not independent living.
Independent living is also about living in the community, not in a nursing home, group home or
institution. Instead of having to live outside your own home to get services, services should come to
you. That is why places like Access Living and other Centers for Independent Living are set up.
Centers for Independent Living help people with disabilities get what they need to live on their own. They
help with peer support, information, advocacy and independent living skills.
How did the idea of independent living get started?
Back in the 1960s, a group of students with severe disabilities were going to college at the University of
California, Berkeley. The problem was, they weren't living in dorms like the other students. They
were living in the on-campus hospital! At that time, they didn't have accessible dorms. So they lived
in the hospital and hired personal assistants.
The first of these students was named Ed Roberts, and he was a quad who had had polio. Every day he went
to class in a wheelchair pushed by an assistant, and every night he came back to the hospital to sleep in an
"iron lung," which is a breathing machine. Eventually, Ed got a power chair and learned karate! Ed
became friends with the other students with disabilities who came on campus after him. He and his friends
called themselves the "Rolling Quads."
The students figured out that it would be easier to meet their needs if the school had a disabled students
program that could coordinate everyone's personal assistants and help with access barriers. Ed and his
friends wrote a grant and helped set up what they called the Physically Disabled Students Program
(PDSP) the first of its kind in the nation.
As the Rolling Quads finished college, they started thinking about what kinds of jobs they were going to
have after college, and where they were going to live. Also, PDSP was getting a LOT of calls from people
with disabilities who were not students, who wanted to know if they could get personal assistance and other
services too. So Ed and his friends applied for another grant from the government, and they used the money
to set up the Berkeley Center for Independent Living back in 1972.
The Berkeley Center for Independent Living was the first center of its kind anywhere in the world. At
CIL, as it was called, people with disabilities worked together to make sure people with disabilities had the
power to make decisions in their own lives. People worked together to find personal assistants and housing,
and fought for better transportation and jobs.
People with disabilities started visiting Berkeley and seeing the kind of life that was possible for
them. Many took the idea of CIL back to their home cities and set up their own CILs there. Marca
Bristo from Chicago visited CIL and brought the idea back to Chicago, where she helped start Access Living with
the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC).
Today, there are hundreds of Centers for Independent Living across the United States and there are some in
other countries. Ed Roberts is now known as the "Father of Independent Living."
Independent living is all about freedom. Today, thousands of people everywhere are still fighting for
that freedom, including many young people. We still have a lot of barriers and a lot of people who think
that disability is a bad thing. Freedom is about being able to make good choices for yourself, and to
live accepted just because you're you.
For more about independent living, check out these websites!
History of Independent Living, by Gina McDonald and Mike Oxford
http://www.acils.com/acil/ilhistory.html
Independent Living on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_living
A People's History of the Independent Living Movement, by Chava Willig Levy
http://www.independentliving.org/docs5/ILhistory.html
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