Henry was evicted from his upper Manhattan apartment within a few months after receiving an eviction notice.  He had been living in the apartment for over 12 years and because of an administrative error not due to Henry, his bank bounced his checks.  Then, Henry’s landlord reacted in summary fashion, issuing the notice of eviction and failing to inquire why, after a dozen years, Henry was behind on his rent. When the eviction notice was placed on Henry’s door, Henry discarded it. I know that you ask: “how do you discard an eviction notice?” Henry does not understand very much English; he never graduated high school; and he appears to have a cognitive disability, in addition to being nearly fully deaf, so that the legal notice, like the bounced checks reflected in his unopened monthly bank statements, held no meaning for Henry.

Henry’s landlord won an order of eviction and placed his personal belongings in a warehouse in the Bronx and changed the locks that Henry held keys to for the last dozen years. As I write this short piece, I glance at the list of Henry’s inventory carted off to the warehouse. Soap. Shampoo. Glass jars. Pots.  Plates. Duffle bag. Glass lion. Cups.  Four Pillows. Four hearing aids. Vase. Shoes. Broom. Glass coffee maker. Blankets. Cookie sheets. Birth certificate. Lease. This is the inventory of a life lived on the margins-a life touched by near deafness and cognitive disability. A life where education is limited; work non-existent; and home and a glass lion and a few other personal belongings means everything to this deaf man who celebrated turning fifty years old a few weeks after his ignoble eviction.

We were fortunate to advance legal arguments that led to Henry’s return to home and the recovery of his modest belongings.  Not all tenants are so lucky.  I walk into housing courtrooms every month and there are hundreds of tenants, many with young children who wait, without legal representation, for a moment with a judge; and a moment to beg for more time to cobble together a few more dollars to remain at home and avoid a homeless shelter. “Another thirty days please, Your Honor, and we will find the money to pay our arrears.

Now in our seventh year as a public interest law center, we report that we are proud of the work that we do on a daily basis. We are a bridge between instability and a safer world.  If you are reflecting upon charitable giving before the end of this calendar year, kindly consider a gift to the New York Center for Law and Justice.

Or consider joining us for an informative, inspirational and elegant evening next month when we celebrate our accomplishments and reflect upon the meaning of disability at our annual event at Danese/Corey Gallery, in Chelsea, just beneath the High Line.

We attach a copy of our invitation.

All the best, Bruce

A deaf woman who sued the District of Columbia Superior Court claiming she was unlawfully denied an interpreter for grand jury service has received an apology from the chief judge.

Michelle Koplitz on Wednesday voluntarily withdrew her lawsuit accusing the court of violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. In a letter to Koplitz sent Sept. 19, Chief Judge Lee Satterfield expressed his “profound regret” at what happened.

“Please be assured that it is the policy of the Superior Court—and it has been so for many years—to provid[e] all citizens the ability to perform grand and petit jury service,” Satterfield wrote.

One of Koplitz’s lawyers, Joseph Espo of Brown Goldstein Levy, said on Wednesday that the court and the D.C. government’s “response was very prompt, in no way defensive or attempting to suggest that what happened should have happened or was permissible.

“It just should be a reminder that public entities not only need appropriate policies, but they need to do training sufficient so that everyone who’s involved in implementing those policies implements them properly,” Espo said.

Satterfield said in an interview on Wednesday that the incident was an “unfortunate mistake.” He said there was no indication that the jury office previously told prospective jurors that the court wouldn’t pay for an interpreter. Please see the National Law Journal here to read the full post.

The fight for justice can wear on the body. That is something that Clint Barton, the member of Marvel’s Avengers known as the archer Hawkeye, is going to have to learn to cope with. In issue No. 19 of “Hawkeye,” which arrives in stores on July 30, the writer Matt Fraction and the artist David Aja show the aftereffects of a battle that has left their hero with profound ear damage.

The story strives to connect readers with what he is experiencing: when he can’t hear, the word balloons on the page are blank. The comic also makes extensive use of sign language, but provides no key to interpreting them. “If nothing else, it’s an opportunity for hearing people to get a taste of what it might be like to be deaf,” Mr. Fraction said.

Drawing the issue was “very difficult,” Mr. Aja said. Without the traditional dialogue, his ability to convey gestures was even more critical. Mr. Aja also had to devise ways to depict certain signs that required multiple movements in a clear way. “There’s so much subtlety and expression on the page,” said Sana Amanat, the book’s editor. “You can understand what’s going on even without the balloons.”

The story builds on past adventures, including one where Hawkeye inflicted ear damage on himself to defeat a foe. (The hero’s reluctance to let on that he relied on a hearing aid once led him to demand interview questions in advance of an appearance on “Late Night with David Letterman.”)

The idea of using sign language came from a source closer to home. “When my wife and I had children, we taught them to sign,” Mr. Fraction said. “It cut down on their frustration immensely because they can tell you want they’re thinking.” He consulted with Rachel Coleman, who founded Signing Time, which sells instructional programs aimed at infants and children learning to sign, on how to approach the story’s use of signing. “There was a different grammatical and idiomatic structure,” he said. “Facial expressions were very important.”

Please see the New York Times here to read the full post.

YAKIMA, Wash. — A federal judge has ordered Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences in Yakima to accommodate a deaf student this fall after the man filed a lawsuit claiming the school discriminated against him by withdrawing his acceptance.

In a preliminary injunction issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Salvador Mendoza said PNWU’s defense that accepting the student, Zachary Featherstone, would be a fundamental change for the university was “wholly speculative” and lacking in merit.

“The patient safety and clinical program concerns raised by PNWU are unfounded, based upon the growing trend of successful deaf health care professionals,” Mendoza wrote. “While PNWU is a small, new medical school, when they opened their doors to providing students an education, they, like other schools, have to obey legal obligations that come with providing those services.”

The injunction was granted after oral arguments Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Eastern District, in Yakima. Please see the Yakima Herald to read the full post.

We placed a small flyer on the door of a social service agency in the Bronx with our name — New York Center for Law and Justice — offering a workshop that we were sponsoring on the subject of legal rights of the disabled.  Over twenty deaf individuals from across the Bronx walked through the doors of the agency one cold and sunny early December morning. As we were preparing to leave, two hours later, a middle-aged man and his aging mother walked through the door. “Can you help my son, who is deaf,” the woman asked. “What is the legal problem?” “There is no legal problem,” the woman responded.  “Then why are you here,” we asked a bit puzzled. The woman responded: “I saw the word ‘Justice’ on the flyer so I am here.”

For the next half hour, we spoke with Nancy, a retired kindergarten teacher, born on the island of St. John, and now a forty-year proud resident of the Bronx. Nancy had contracted German measles when she was pregnant with her son, David, and although Nancy was not certain, she thought that David could have been born deaf. After several months, David did not appear to respond to oral cues, so Nancy brought David to the local hospital in St. John and hospital personnel injected David with medication. As it turns out, in a possible tragic twist of fate, like destinies that change so suddenly with late summer storms in the Caribbean, Nancy learned later that it may have been the injections that caused David’s deafness.

Most days, David stays home with his mom, although he fiercely wishes to be independent. David worked for a fast food chain years ago, “cleaning around the counters, putting knives and forks in receptacles,” according to Nancy, but he was let go. Nancy has tried to secure vocational training for David, but there have been obstacles. Meantime, David smiles at us and through sign language tells us that he wants to work. Nancy wants David to work too; he needs a job, Nancy explains, both for his sense of dignity and because Nancy is worried that at home David may be regressing. David is so dedicated to working, in fact, that he often leaves home and volunteers to hand out flyers for businesses on the streets of the Bronx, “just to do something.”

As an organization, the law center did not intend, initially, to provide social services to the deaf community. But eager individuals like David continue to pass through our doors seeking justice, and searching for access to full and complete participation in our world. And Nancy has made a New Year’s resolution: she resolves to find David a job in this New Year. We will strive to help.

We are nearly upon January, and the symbol of the Roman god— Janus — who is associated with doors and gateways and new beginnings, presses upon our collective consciousness at the law center. Indeed, there are appointed times in the year when we are reminded of the chance to begin again, a hope embraced by Nancy, who brought David to a modest office in the Bronx just because of a sign that she read on a door that included the word, “Justice.” From all of us at the New York Center for Law and Justice, we thank you for your great generosity and support over this past year and we wish you a healthy and happy new year — a year filled with the abundance of promise that arrives with all new beginnings.

We should have been home for Christmas,” Henry tells me as we speak one week before Christmas at the law center. “When you don’t have housing, you don’t have nothing,” he adds. This is a short story about Henry and his deaf brother.  The two men grew up in Harlem, near the Apollo Theater, over fifty years ago.  They attended respected public schools; their mom was a nurse at a fine Manhattan hospital; and their dad had a coveted job, as a supervisor, for the New York City Transit Authority. Their parents died when Henry was in his early twenties; and Henry cared for his deaf teenage brother. Over the years, the landlord of their rent stabilized home induced them to leave; the brothers were unable to find affordable housing; and then Henry became ill and could no longer work and support both himself and his brother, who struggles to find full employment due to his disability.

The two brothers were compelled to move to a homeless shelter over a year ago. There, they shared a small room with a bunk bed. Henry tells us that the room lacked a dresser or a desk to write. After living at the shelter for nearly 8 months, the shelter personnel “logged out” the brothers because they were late in returning to the shelter, having just attended a computer-training program at a prominent university, late at night, leading to college admission. It is not a good thing to be logged out of a shelter: it means that you lose your privilege to live there. Accordingly, the two brothers have been “couch diving” at friends for the past six months.

It is the Christmas season and Henry is determined to affirm the spirit of Christmas. Henry teaches us: “Christmas is not about gifts, luxuries-right now people are going through a crisis; people don’t have a place to stay.” How does Henry advance the spirit of Christmas? Henry explains: “For me, the thing about Christmas is to give to needy people who don’t have nothing.” So Henry is involved in a toy drive for children at a New York hospital who suffer from Down Syndrome; he sings Christmas carols to comfort this community of children (Henry states that it “could have been me”); he brings books to senior citizens at nursing homes and reads those nursing home residents stories and gives out Girl Scout cookies; and he hands out Selective Service brochures for youth looking for a future.

When we ask Henry how we can help him, he tells us: “Please, that’s all I ask for, a place to stay. Every human being deserves to have a key to turn a lock.” And so today, Henry has been accepted as a client of the law center.  We will find Henry and his brother a home, as it should be. This is not a traditional Christmas story, and in truth, Henry is not coming home for Christmas this season.  But Henry has taught us something perhaps more deeply important: it is possible to come home to Christmas, if not for Christmas, in spite of narrow circumstances. Through giving, like Henry, we return to a place that can be called home — a place in time, if not space, that offers the potential for a redemptive world. We wish you a happy holiday season from all of us at the New York Center for Law and Justice.

The 50th Biennial Conference of the National Association of the Deaf, Philadelphia, PA

July 9th, 2011

The first thing that I notice yesterday when I enter Franklin Meeting Room Four on the third floor of the Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia, at the 50th Biennial Conference for the National Association of the Deaf, is the deaf, blind woman with white hair and sunglasses sitting in the corner. She is about sixty-five years old and wears a khaki-colored aviator-style jacket with a black, cotton shirt beneath it. She is facing the door, although the speaker on stage, who is discussing making drive-thru services accessible to the deaf community, is behind her.

The person who is actually facing the speaker on stage is, instead, the interpreter for the deaf, blind woman. The interpreter is listening to the speaker and using her hands and the hands of the deaf, blind woman to communicate.  There is an intricate choreography of movement between the hands of the interpreter and the hands of the woman. The four hands are locked in an elegant dance of words as their fingers glide effortlessly over each other.  This is the world of tactile signing. The receiver’s hands appear to be placed ever so lightly on the back of the hands of the other person who interprets.

The beautiful action of yesterday’s hands in motion reminds me of the intensely personal movement of Yo-Yo Ma’s hands when playing cello. Ma’s music is not only about, however, his virtuosity, but also his orientation to others.  In an interview that Ma gave after he released his album, Songs of Joy & Peace, Ma comments on the track, Vassourinhos where he plays with Brazilian guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad.

In order to form a bond with the Brazilian musicians, Ma focuses on the “precision and intimacy of their sound” and Ma adjusts the “physical nature of playing in order to blend with their sounds.” Ma’s desire to achieve harmony with his fellow musicians echoes the precision and intimacy that the interpreter appears to reach for in communicating with the deaf, blind woman. For the interpreter, who smiles often while interpreting, her time at the biennial convention must be a labor of love. Similarly, for Sergio Assad who collaborates with Ma, there is a pleasure of being with Ma and this gives Assad joy because “you share good moments” and “this is what life is about.”

What animates Ma’s and Assad’s work and what inspires all good work? When asked how Assad approaches the arrangement or transcription of a piece, he states: “I think the first thing is that I have to be in love with the piece.” Like Assad, the tactile sign language interpreter is in love with her vocation-she is helping the deaf, blind woman in the aviator jacket to understand the details contained within the ideas that are expressed in our complex world.

I attended many workshops at yesterday’s convention: accessibility of drive-thru windows; how to explain to certain deaf Americans the procedure for filing taxes on April 15th; and the sense of marginalization that the deaf community feels due to a dominant, American culture. The central lesson that I drew from the conference, however, is that, like Sergio Assad’s musical arrangements, you have to be in love with the piece to bring beautiful hues of harmony and melody to the world.  In interpreting Assad’s assertion so that it can be understood in the world of deaf, legal services, I was reminded yesterday that you have to be in love with the great privilege that we have as Americans to promote access to, and equality under, the law; then, justice and beauty will follow.

All the best,

Bruce

Bruce J. Gitlin

Founder and Executive Director

New York Center for Law and Justice

2095 Broadway

Suite 411 New York, NY 10023

Last month, our law center had the privilege of representing one of our most treasured clients: Grace.  Mother of three children, immigrant from the horn of Africa, middle-aged, profoundly deaf and without assets, Grace has lived in a single’s shelter for the past three seasons. Grace has been hoping that in living in the single’s shelter she would be awarded a voucher called “Advantage.” The Advantage voucher would permit Grace to reside in an apartment with her children for at least one year as she trains for, and seeks, full time employment.

Homeless shelters are surely difficult spaces to navigate for anyone who rests there for even one evening.  We are certain that the shelter system is more unforgiving if you are deaf and living there for months.  Throughout most of the past half year, Grace has had to shuffle among different shelters, in various boroughs- once even in the middle of the night-most often without the benefit of having an American Sign Language interpreter serve as a translator between Grace and City employees. Although required to provide interpreters, we believe that the City has fallen far short of fulfilling all of its obligations.

Several weeks ago, in what we believe is a turn of good luck, Grace receives an assignment to a Brooklyn family shelter.  Grace is relieved, as she has lived apart from her children since August. Meantime, even better luck appears to strike: the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) represents to us that Grace will shortly receive an Advantage voucher. With the Advantage voucher, Grace will transition from a shelter to an apartment, as she receives vocational training and cobbles together skill sets that will make her a more competitive candidate for employment in our challenged economy.

Unfortunately, all does not go accordingly to plan. In a bitter twist of fate, DHS cancels the Advantage program this past Monday, on the eve of Grace about to receive her long awaited voucher.  As I write, Grace and her children remain indefinitely in a homeless shelter-no funding available to provide her with the head start that she earnestly seeks.

The situation is equally dire for those New Yorkers who presently have an apartment under the Advantage program. The Associate Press reports that DHS is notifying 15,000 formerly homeless individuals and families that the Advantage program will apparently be cancelled as it relates to them. DHS expects that perhaps as many as 4,400 families will return to the shelter system. DHS claims, moreover, that it is cancelling the program due to anticipated state budget cuts, while a spokesman for Governor Cuomo asserts that the City can afford to pay for the program if it desires.

* * * * * * * *

The Department of Homeless Services for the City of New York reports that there are presently 37,800 individuals who are served within the citywide shelter system. This statistic apparently does not include 3,111 unsheltered individuals who live on the streets. The 3, 111 people who reside on the streets of our city-our dear neighbors-represent an increase of 783 more unsheltered individuals than last year.

On March 25, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills and spoke before the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement.  The conversation between King and the rabbis is remarkable for so many reasons, including of course that this historic meeting occurred only ten (10) days before King’s assassination in Memphis. In reading the transcript of the proceeding most recently, however, I am struck by Dr. King’s response to one rabbi’s question regarding how the members of the assembly could assist King in achieving social justice.

King responded by indicating that there were concrete steps that the rabbis could take subsequent to the assembly. King then spent a few minutes explaining his vision for a march on Washington to be held in May, 1968 and requested financial support and offers to host the thousands of residents from Marks, Mississippi who would be traveling to Washington to speak about their condition of abject poverty and unequal access to opportunity.

King never lived to see this march, although Robert Abernathy, who had succeeded Dr. King as leader of the SCLC, decided to fulfill the dream of the slain civil rights leader. Thousands of people converged on the capital and lived in tents on the National Mall in what was known as “Resurrection City.” Many commentators who covered the march include in their reporting their observations of the consistent rain and mud puddles that marked the march during May and June. While camping out in mud puddles on the mall, moreover, the residents of Resurrection City sadly learned that Robert Kennedy had been assassinated.

Assessments of the gains made during this moment in history are mixed, at best, with commentators suggesting that the march may not have created much movement in stemming the subsequent rising tide of millions born into poverty. Many of the leaders and participants wistfully recalled, furthermore, the charisma of King, assessing a loss of opportunity following King’s death, and raising questions how the movement might ever achieve its goals.

Like the powerful national and personal narrative of Dr. King, so many narratives begun in our own lives will only bear completion, if at all, in the lives of our successors. This is because the path to achieving nearly impossible goals-peace or equality of opportunity, for example-is often unclear and there are more questions about how to find the road than answers how to navigate it once the destination is clear.  Yet, raising the critical question of what is required of us-personally and nationally-is actually the very beginning of achievement, and we are fortunate if we can then start to articulate answers to our questions and act upon our responses. Many of the great questions formulated during the course of Dr. King’s short lifetime continue to remain unanswered today, particularly as they relate to matters of national community, including our response to poverty and lack of access to justice-matters that are especially precious to our law center. Let us find inspiration in Dr. King’s life and work. Let us resolve, further, to utter the beginning of an answer to the profound questions, first raised by Dr. King, that continue to resonate in our own time.