Sally Lucas Takes on Bradley Commission

Thirty five years ago today disability rights activist Sally Lucas took on the Bradley Commission's error in hiring an able-bodied person as director for the LA Commission on Disabilities.

The disabled were there to protest Bradley’s record on disabled issues, most particularly his decision last year to hire a psychologist who is not disabled to run the mayor’s Office for the Disabled. To some disabled people, the hiring was as surprising as if Bradley named a man to run the city Commission on the Status of Women or designated a white aide as his liaison to black neighborhoods in South-Central Los Angeles.
There were also many complaints that the naming of a non-disabled person was insulting in that it suggested that disabled people need someone to take care of them. “We the disabled people of Los Angeles just want to speak for ourselves,” said Sally Lucas, who also resigned in protest Thursday from the city Advisory Council on Disability. “We don’t need somebody else telling us what we need.”

Sally Lucas was an assistant manager at the Westside Center for Independent Living. I covered the rally for LA News Service.



Sally was married to George French, aka "The Wizzard of Venice", who appears in this Pacific Bell ad, which I also filmed.

 

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Thanks for this bit of recent history.

I’ve been by the building hundreds of times, always admiring the mural that faces Beethoven St. The name changed fairly recently — although during Covid I wasn’t out much — and new painting on the exterior.

My husband’s nephew years ago wanted to be there for drug rehabilitation, and asked us for a considerable amount of money saying it was for his residence at the center. As we had learned, money was never to be given to him, but my sister-in-law. When no money was coming directly from us, we never heard another word from him about WCIL.