ANIL LEWIS: This is indeed my honor, I was happy to take executive privilege and frame out this particular portion of the agenda for me.
The keynote speaker I like to think of as a very different [audio not captured] I was able to look back and track corresponding on a professional level back in 2011 but I'm almost certain I knew her prior to that. I'll give you the formal. She's just now transitioning into a new role. She's the president and CEO of Disability Rights Advocates. It is a tremendous fit for her based on her experience. She spent six years working at Wells Fargo as the senior vice president and head of disability and strategy for Wells Fargo. I think that she helped move them to a different space.
Anyone who's served into the capacity of being an advocate recognize what a significant struggle that. Is I'm glad that we had someone like Kathy to take the lead in that.
Prior to that, she was the assistant secretary of the office of employment policy for the Department of Labor. Through her efficacy, she supported the whole employment first philosophy. She helped move toward getting people with disabilities employed in integrated work environments and to that, a whole population of people are significantly in her debt for the work she's done.
She's had a whole lot of roles in the disability context. National council on disability, U.S. institute of peace, I could go on with that. I like to make sure that when we have the opportunity to have someone with such a diverse, lived experience as Kathy, that people recognize that she stands alone ... not alone but in a very small group of individuals who have really dedicated their lives not only specifically to the cause of empowering people with disabilities but also serving on the frontline in so many new spaces where our voices need to be heard.
I appreciate her as a friend, I've come to respect her as a professional and I'm so pleased she accepted our invitation to speak with us at our disability law symposium. I reacquaint her to others in her new role as the president and CEO of Disability Rights Advocates. Bringing to the microphone, Miss Kathy Martinez. Thank you for joining us.
KATHY MARTINEZ: Hi, Anil. Can you hear me and can some of you see me? I've been asked to describe myself the best I can. I'm an older adult in my 60s. I'm blind. I'm wearing a blue ... it has been described as a teal jacket with a necklace. I have salt and pepper hair.
And I'm sitting in an office with pictures behind me. Anyway, it's just an amazing honor to be part of a lineup that includes not only my colleagues from DRA but Milton Reynolds and Kathy Kudlick and all of the folks that are presenting and are going to make a difference in moving the needle.
Each year, this event allows us the opportunity to recognize progress that's been made to ensure that people with disabilities, people like me can "live in the world fully with dignity and equity." But most importantly, it allows us an opportunity to look ahead and to really determine what changes are needed in the context of the world as it is today. And as it will be tomorrow.
So how to bring about those changes? This is a complex question and we addressed it a little bit today. The world is always changing, of course. But there are times when the rate of change and its potential impact is more profound than others. We're living in one of those times. A time when, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, we're now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. A time when we are confronted this is quoting him again, we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now! I was compelled to use these quotes. Over the past year, as Mark mentioned, once in a century pandemic has disproportionately impacted people with disabilities and people of color, laying painfully bare the inequities the challenges.
We're seeing this force at work in the killing of George Floyd and that incident really served as a catalyst for many people. As individuals and as a nation, to look at both what goes on around us and more importantly, within us. And to really understand the bias and prejudice as systemic.
And Milton mentioned this and I just want to emphasize that the word here is systemic. We absolutely are understanding hopefully more and more that eliminating these biases requires something from all of us. Each and every one of us. It might be a change in how we react or how we act. But it might be also a change in our capacity to believe that change can happen and really let it unfold with an open mind.
And that has been my struggle in the last few months. I have been very dismayed about things. So I'm rejuvenating my hope. I have a story to tell you about a phenomenon that happens on a smaller level every day. It happens ... it happens to us all the time. I want to talk about an incident that happened in my family when I was relatively young. I was a teenager. It really impressed upon me that change is possible and systemic change is possible.
I have to take a big breath for this because it is a little emotional for me. My father was an alcoholic and as it does in many families, his alcoholic caused much grief for my mom, my siblings, for me and most especially for him.
It created unhealthy family dynamics as you can imagine. It was used as an excuse for a lot of things. Actually for everything. Anything that went wrong, we would just blame on dad because, of course, he was the villain. He was the drinker, right? That's how it was for years, growing up my first years.
Then my dad became sober and he started going to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was his choice to go and although I know it is not for everybody, he really gained a lot from this experience. My dad became healthier. He had supporters ... he had sponsors who really helped him work his twelve steps. And he became a better person. He was a good person. I have to say my dad was a really good guy. But this really helped round him out.
These folks played a really big role because before, a lot of his life was really tied up in who he drank with and what he did when he drank.
But the thing that happened ... my dad, because he pulled out one of the legs of our family's stool, so to speak, he was part of our ecosystem, our family.
And so in order to support his change and his work that he did for years, the whole ecosystem had to change. And at the beginning, it was really difficult because we were still saying this is all dad's fault. But when dad didn't create opportunities for us to blame him, then we had to look at ourselves.
So we had ... we no longer had a ready excuse for things we didn't want to deal with. Believe me, my family is not perfect. But that incident did move us in a good direction. We had to look at ourselves. We had to look at the entire system and how it was ... it wasn't working.
My mom, in particular, could no longer play the blame game. My dad was more confident. He began working more, taking weekend jobs, which meant more money for the family which was desperately necessary. And he changed.
This was when I was a teenager and the experience had a significant impact on me and how I viewed the possibility of change going forward. I was forced, for the first time, to reckon with the fact that my dad was not the only one who needed to change and had things to work on.
So to support his change, we all had to change, as I said. Fortunately, we did. And like I said, the family isn't perfect but we certainly treat each other better and were, I hope, most of us [audio not captured] very large family ... are able to look within ourselves and not just look externally for how things can change.
We're seeing this type of action in corporate America today. Businesses, both individually and collectively are re examining how they approach diversity and inclusion in the workplace and in the marketplace. So they're assessing their policies. I know I just went through this with a company. They're assessing their policies in practices to see where they may be contributing to a problem by not reflecting the changes that they claim to want to see.
We need to support them as much as possible in my view. But we also I wanted to say we also do not want to be co-opted because very often, it is very kind of appealing and alluring, I think, for those of us who have been able to make a little money and those of us who have been able to kind of mix it up with the leaders of big companies and government, corporations, nonprofit, to get a little soft and to get a little comfortable. And to get a little ... I don't know ... just I'll say not comfortable, okay.
So I want to say that I think for many of us who have been there, we have to remind ourselves to stay hungry. I'm quoting Steve Jobs. When these corporations, foundations, nonprofits, do infuse diversity and inclusion into their ecosystems, we have to make sure that disability is part of those. Part of the diversity agendas.
I used to talk about being on the special shelf. So often, disability has been part of the "special shelf." We've been ... we're thought of as a charity. The right thing. That's BS. It is the necessary thing. Disability into the ecosystem of diversity is good business and companies are starting to realize this. It is no longer the "right thing to do" because that puts distance between the people with power and people who don't have power. It just makes them feel good. They can write a check, kind of like the telethon mentality. Write a check and go back into the closet for a year and we come out for our telethon. Obviously things change.
I mentioned my family's change and growth when I was a teenager, a process that had a huge impact on me. And I really started after my dad became sober, I really started to view things in a very different way. In my family, I come from a very large family of six kids. The two middle kids are blind. My sister Peggy is blind. And there's still no reason why. We don't know. And my parents, like all parents, certainly experienced their grief and sadness when I was born then of course when Peggy was born and being the Latino family that we are, everybody blamed my mom, why do you have two disabled kids. That's a whole other conversation. As we were growing up, my parents decided that they wanted us to stay in the neighborhood. So we went to mainstream school.
The thing I want to talk about there is how that all worked out. I began school as a kindergartener and the kids had never dealt with a disabled person before. They had never been around people with disabilities. I was at the ... for the first time, I was the only blind person in that little ecosystem, right, in the kindergarten class of 15 to 20 and I had no [audio not captured] I was plopped in there. With all good intentions and the hope that special education would work, right? It was in the '60s, there were no laws but we were hoping they allowed me to go to the regular school, were just hoping. This is an experiment.
So when I grew up, my parents expected Peggy and I to work, much to our chagrin, we were expected to do chores. We grew up with the concept of inclusion. My parents were both athletic. Peggy and I were each there were three ... one parent, three kids, competing basketball teams, my parents did. Peggy and I would have to shoot from various places on the court. And so we were definitely included. So when I got to kindergarten, I had no idea how this was all going to work out and neither did anybody else.
The kids were incredible. They were the ones to design a situation which meant that everybody kind of had to adapt. We had to learn how to navigate an environment that really wasn't built for us. But our presence at the school also required our teachers and peers to adapt to change. Change the environment to support us in every way they could at that time.
As often is the case, the kids were much quicker to do this than the adults. Just as people aren't born racist, they're not born ableists and the unstructured time at school, when the kids were really ... was when the kids kind of set the rules. The kids made the rules during unstructured time. They really illustrated this.
And during recess, my peers came up with amazing ways to include me. They weren't told that they had to, right? They just did. They figured out how I could play tetherball, foursquare and how I could run the bases. Sure, I ran into things and sure, there were times when kids were not kind. But overall, they figured out how to accommodate me. I think Francis west uses the word authentic accommodations.
That was a time when I realized, as a kid, wow, I'm part of this ecosystem. I can contribute. I'm part of the team. As a child, I did feel woven in. I had some incredible teachers, mentors, people that insisted that I read Braille.
So those were gifts that I can never ... you can't really say or estimate the value. Because I had teachers that understood as a blind person, Braille was very important. That I would learn how to read in my own voice. I learned how to spell. Well sort of. But that was a gift that I was given.
I was included. I was expected to contribute. Like at home, I wasn't all that special. My Braille books were just a normal part ... they were kind of a neutralized part of our classroom. They took up a lot of space as you probably know. Those of who you are older blind people. And the kids were interested in it.
So moving on, my education provided me with a strong foundation for the future. As is not uncommon story, I still face challenges becoming successfully employed when I was a young adult. At the time I was joining the workforce, it seemed that a blind woman could basically be one of three things. At least this is how we were kind of channeled with our rehabilitation system. We could be a rehabilitation counselor, a telephone PBX operator which I'm sure nobody knows what that is anymore or a typist in a typing pool or a teacher for the mentally handicapped.
Interestingly, when I was assessed by my career counselors, during high school, I was channeled toward factory jobs. And ended up working in a lock factory. Quickset locks. The factory is still there. It was a very dangerous work environment. I'm kind of surprised now they would never put somebody in that job. If you can believe it, I ran a punch press. It was very dirty. It was very dangerous. But for some reason, I wasn't tracked into the typical jobs that other blind women were encouraged to pursue. I'm not sure why. But it was what it was, I guess.
Fortunately over time, I did find my calling. I eventually quit the lock factory and was able to channel my skills and experiences into meaningful work. My passion, as many of you know, economic justice and employment for people with disabilities. And I became, like many of you, a disability rights advocate and hopefully a change agent for inclusion and equity.
To do this, I've had to really embrace change, step out of my comfort zone over and over again. Those in my ecosystem had to step out of their comfort zones over and over again. It took me 13 years to graduate from college. Primarily because my partner at the time and I adopted our son and my rehab case had closed because they had "placed me into a job" and that was the lock factory job. We got through that. Eventually I became the executive director of the World Institute on Disability, I served as Anil said, the secretary of labor, at the office of disability employment policy and I worked for a corporation. Everybody asked me why did you go to a corporation? Section 503 had just been established. I was telling everybody else to go to corporations. We had this utilization contract clause that we had to fulfill. Wanted to get qualified people with disabilities into corporations. Here I am telling everybody what to do. I should try it!
I will say it was the ... probably the biggest learning experience of my life. Because remember, I left the disability bubble. I was assistant secretary where everybody understood the concept of accommodations. They understood the concept of how to do sighted guide and descriptions and so I left this really plush, killer job and went to a bank that was willing to receive me and there was amazing folks there. But "A," I didn't know diddly about financial services. And I knew a little more about marketing but not much.
So I get there, I have to not only learn through a fire hose about what I'm supposed to be doing but meeting and accessibility strategy for financial services, corporation with 250,000, but I will to learn by technology because I didn't really use it like I should. Having worked at the Department of Labor, I had an assistant. So just learning how to count unemployment was traumatic. I was weighing on my comfort zone. Why did I do this? This is crazy. Why didn't I just stay? The disability bubble. Just stay happy. But ultimately, it was worth every ounce of stress and pain that I suffered.
And now I'm going through another change. Having just assumed a new position with Disability Rights Advocates which I'm super proud about or better known as DRA, I'm thrilled to have joined DRA because I think it really brings many of the past experiences together. It coalesces as my colleague says. My passion and DRA's mission to improve social and economic injustice for people with disabilities. Including people of color.
This concept of intersectionality, we know that Americans of color experience higher rates of disability because of health care, because of higher injury jobs, because of HIV. So for so many reasons, because of poverty, we know that poverty is both a cause and a consequence of disability and vice versa, I guess you could say it the other way.
So if we're not considering these experiences of folks who are multiply marginalized, we're not advocating for change, we're not doing our job.
The concept of intersectionality is close to my heart given that I am a person with a disability. I'm Latina, a woman and I happen to be a lesbian. So I feel like this is obviously very critical to me. I think of the experiences that we have of being multiply marginalized. I remember having school administrators speak louder and louder to my mom because her English wasn't great. Seeing how he was disrespected just killed me. I was shaped by the experience of the immigration services officers coming to our home and pounding on our door, demanding my parent's birth certificates. They wanted proof citizenship.
Someone in our community had called immigration. It was just bizarre. So through these experiences, I learned that people face discrimination and prejudice based on factors other than disability. And that people can, in fact, be multiply marginalized. That was a concept I didn't really understand for a long time because as a kid, did my Latina-ness matter? The fact I was a woman mattered? I worked in social justice movements to promote [audio not captured] to work for the advancement of farm workers. Then I joined the women's movement. Hear me roar. Then finally family disability rights movement. For me, people react to my disability more than they react to any other of my multiple identities. I try to keep them in balance.
At DRA, I'm proud to be a part of a team that works to advance equal rights and opportunities for all types of people with all types of disabilities.
As you know, the work that we do is very much in line with the work that you all do. Over DRA, 30 years, there's been some really critical cases that have really impacted folks of color and have resulted in increased equity for folks with disabilities.
One example we litigated a case related to conditions because of COVID. And there were folks with disabilities and other immune situations in the immigration customs enforcement detention facilities. So as a result, thousands of people were released from detention and those who remained have better care, treatment and prevention protocols.
I'll just talk about a couple more. We've handled a number of cases leading to much needed reform in the juvenile justice system as well as the New York City education system.
I want to end by saying I think it's so amazing to see the conversation happening around disability justice. And I want to just call out in the last five years, there's been a huge movement of people who are young people of color, really claiming their identity, really celebrating their identity. And really ... I don't know promoting the concept of pride and disability pride.
We're at a really critical point now and I would say that every one of you, keep fighting, keep working. And we talked about calling each other out or somebody mentioned that earlier today. I want to quote Rebecca Coakley who is leading the Ford foundation's first disability, she's the first program officer for the Ford foundation. She led the justice initiative at the center for American progress. And she said something quite a while back that has always stuck with me. We're no longer calling people out. We're calling people in. So thank you very much. I'm happy to take questions. And again, it is an honor to be here.
ANIL LEWIS: Kathy, this is Anil. I want to thank you for sharing. I want to take the time we have left to pull a little more out of you.
KATHY MARTINEZ: Hold on. I have to turn you up. Go ahead.
ANIL LEWIS: Thank you for sharing. I want to take the time left to pull a little bit more out of you. I hope you feel comfortable with that.
KATHY MARTINEZ: I'm a river giver. Excellent.
ANIL LEWIS: First, I want to say I really appreciate the M.L.K. quote. I love the urgency of now. There is something about that that is internally motivating for me. I appreciate you sharing that because it kept me in there.
You shared a lot of your lived experience and I love the way that you disclosed about your father, et cetera. Because I think that many times, the conversation that we as people with disabilities have, seems to revolve significantly and solely around our disability. But your sharing your father and the way that he impacted your family, do you find that sharing more of those lived experiences outside of the disability context helps normalize disability in many other arenas that you've kind of been working in?
KATHY MARTINEZ: That's a really good question I'm not sure if I would use the word "normalize" but I think we all have a lot of experience. We're all a bundle of multiple identities, right? So I think it helps. I think it does. A lot of people can relate to having a family member who is an addict. Any experience that builds a bridge is helpful. And it also is a sense of our disability is not all that we are. It is not only about my disability.
It is the fact that I'm a mother. It is about the fact that I adopted a kid in Mexico. It is about the fact that I worked on a prison case which completely changed my life. I was an expert witness in a prison case where I went to every prison in California except pelican bay and that was like [audio not captured] the case had a lot to do with disability but the experience I had, meeting these prisoners and it just opened a whole new world that I had never thought about in my life, ever. And how I got to do those is a blessing, really, by the universe.
I think any kind of shared experience that builds a bridge is a good thing and moves us further.
ANIL LEWIS: Agreed. One of the other things you talk about, you went right through it, you talked about the kids. You did say that in some instances, the kids were not kind, just in a peripheral statement. Was there learning when you dealt with the kids that were unkind?
KATHY MARTINEZ: You know, yes. There was. It was hard. It is hard to be teased, of course. It is hard to be ... to get things thrown at you. But the thing that ultimately happened ... no situation is perfect. And I didn't mean to imply in any way that I was in this utopia of high consciousness kids. But I kind of was because it really prepared me for the world.
I think the learning experience for me was that the kids that usually [audio not captured] I was an easy target so if they wanted to throw an Apple at me, they did. But usually those were kids who were in a lot of their own pain. I didn't really understand that as a kid, believe me, because it pissed me off to have an Apple thrown at me. I would typically try to chase them and catch them. If I caught them, watch out! It did help me understand that mine is not the only pain as a kid that I [audio not captured] pain is a shared thing. I got to know some of the kids that originally were vicious toward me.
And actually two of them are still my friends. 40 years later, 50 years later.
ANIL LEWIS: Wow! That's really important. In a lot of the mentoring work we do in the federation, the skill we get people to understand is they have to recognize that although it is aspirational a that we want to live in a world where everyone appreciates everyone else, that's not the real world. We're working on teaching them how to cope with the attitudes. Some of them are negative experiences that we want to give them that skill set to really be able to deal effectively in the environments in which they travel. That's really why I wanted to bring that out.
KATHY MARTINEZ: Yes.
ANIL LEWIS: Some of the feedback as President Riccobono said, one of the things I've found as feedback that I shared is there were several other respondents that said that sometimes our disability law symposium, we focus too much on the lawyers. Not saying anything negative about lawyers. I love lawyers. I appreciate the fact that we have individuals who are able to be advocates, zealots and passionate zealots around the cause. But my comfort space is more around the advocacy, developing relationships, getting people to move to a place where we can find those collaborations and work together. And then save the lawyers for that hammer. I have seen some lawyers that are able to do both, Goldstein stands out as the person who, in a roomful of people can threaten to sue them but come out being the best of friends. I don't possess that skill set.
So in thinking of that, that's why I was pleased that you were going to be our keynote today because you're not a lawyer. Can you speak to that benefit that you may be able to bring, especially from the lived experience you've expressed through the various environments of working in government, corporations and your new role with DRA?
KATHY MARTINEZ: With all due respect to my lawyer colleagues, my job is not to litigate. There's wonderful, fabulous lawyers on the DRA team that know how to do that. I see my job as a bridge builder. I see my job as somebody who is passionate about disability justice and who, hopefully will build bridges between DRA and the social justice community who can [audio not captured] to use all of the experience I've gotten because I'm not ready to retire. I'll tell you that. I've got a lot of energy. But really to make a difference for people of color with disabilities.
Like I said, we've already ... we're moving in that direction with the work that Becca is doing and you'll be talking with Lydia who is brilliant and way smarter than me but who has a very fascinating approach to intersectionality. I think it is good to hear different points of view. My goal is to build bridges, to really strengthen, if possible, the ecosystem at DRA so we are as inclusive as we can be. And to weave this in as part of our DNA.
One of the things I want to stress, disability is often bolted on, right? It is not baked in. I know there's companies that are working very hard to weave both physical access, digital and online access and just as importantly, cultural access. Because if there is an awareness around different types of disabilities, then it still remains a charity issue within the corporation. I saw the development at Wells Fargo. It was slow but it happened. It's not perfect. It is a journey. It is about the right. But culturally, the awareness did increase. And there were many more conversations about not evident disabilities, about the how ... like how the hell do you do that, kind of thing. That really opened up a lot of heart gates to having more conversations. So I still believe that more people should go into corporate, by the way, just in case anybody is wondering. Because when you mix it up ... I was on my team ... and I was the only person who identified as having a disability. This was the diversity team. Marketing. The rest of the team ... I just think that ... I'm going back to answer your question but I think as a non lawyer, I can help the legal community with bridge building and just a different point of view. Sorry it was a round about answer.
ANIL LEWIS: It set the stage. I had two follow ups. One was about DOL and the other was Wells Fargo. You set the stage for my Wells Fargo question. As you stated, you talked about you were definitely part of the marketing team. I'm a curious, as we interact with our corporate partners, a lot of them focusing in on diversity, equity and inclusion. But in so many instances, I see disability not being in that drive. I would like to hear your thoughts about disability as part of the DEI and do you think Wells Fargo were doing a good job?
KATHY MARTINEZ: I'm not going to go there. What I would say is the needle did move. This is a journey, right. It is a marathon, not a sprint. So I think it's critical. We've got to get our brothers and sisters of color who are leaders of this movement to understand the disability impacts us as Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, at a higher level. This is not a "they" issue, it is a "we" issue. And vice versa. I would love to see more people of color as leaders in the disability community. This community was started ... I use the analogy of a train ... a train on the car of civil rights. And that we are [audio not captured] we learn a lot from the civil rights movement. And so here we are going down the track. The African Americans, women, LGBT and disability. If we really want to make change, we're going to have to start, in my mind, we've got to start working together more and disability absolutely must be woven into the diversity agendas everywhere, not just corporations but here.
We're doing some really serious work at DRA around DEI and we're a small organization. This happened before I came. I cannot take credit for it. They decided this was necessary and they got on it. The board agreed and they're doing the work. I think that it's hard because everybody has their own issues like race is more important or gender is more important. In fact, anybody can join the disability community at any time. I think there are leaders in the social justice community that get that disability has to get woven in.
Laney Feingold uses the analogy of you can't add blueberries to the top of the muffin, you have to bake them in. People say that but do they actually do it?
To answer your question, I think Wells Fargo ... I think the needle did move. That's all I'm going to say right now.
ANIL LEWIS: I respect that. One last question around Wells Fargo, and I appreciate you encouraging other people with disabilities to move into the corporate space to make that difference. In order to prepare them for that particular call to action, what would you want to let them know is probably going to be one of the most significant challenges on being successful in that front?
KATHY MARTINEZ: First thing I would say is learn from my mistake. Get to know your technology as much as possible. That is going to be a huge help. Because what I was doing [audio not captured] not only I did have to learn the business, right, and learn how to navigate through the political channels at Wells and learn how to deal with a team that, at the beginning, did not remember [audio not captured] oh, yeah, sorry. Oh, yeah, we forgot to make [audio not captured] sorry. But they got better! I have to say learn your technology! Know that it's likely not going to be an easy road. That's the value of it. Nothing worth it is easy. Well maybe sometimes like if you win the lottery. But it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. I would go back to corporate in a moment [audio not captured] well, not really. Not now.
It is a different world. I learned different rules, the art of competition a little bit more. Because it's like my technology didn't work. Well, you gotta get your stuff in. So it is just a different world. I think everybody should go through it and hopefully come out in a better place.
ANIL LEWIS: Nice. I would just say on a personal level in my interaction with you and your team at Wells Fargo, one of the things you did well also is you did develop a team that was really supportive of one another. So it wasn't like they were there to provide support for you. It was like there was so much interaction between all of them that supported each other toward that one initiative. I think that's a skill set that is probably helpful in all spaces. So I'll transition to my questions around your work and also disability employment policy.
So you were there at a significant time. Many people participating in the symposium, recognize the fight we fight around section 14C, subminimum wage provision and the fair labor standards act. But you did a lot of internal advocacy and it wasn't in an environment that was completely devoid of individuals who were passionate about supporting 14C. Can you speak to balancing your role as a public official in those spaces where you have both competing arguments coming to you but obviously you had a bias around that? Can you talk to that?
KATHY MARTINEZ: First of all, I had to learn how to shut my mouth at times when I really didn't want to. And these are people [audio not captured] I was across the table. People would come to basically beg the administration not to change the situation with 14C.
And my job, it was "A," to listen. It deserved an audience but also to say, look, is there a way ... can you think of a way that ... because so many people ... this is me, too ... we're all stuck in this is how we always did it. Fortunately, people have thought out of the box because obviously I'm here reading a piece of technology that I'm just getting used to. Somebody's had to think out of the box to develop that.
I would ask people to imagine really how else a job could be done and the value of the people who are doing these jobs. I would say if I lived up to people's expectations, I would be making brooms. And I think a lot of us would be making brooms. So the idea is to recalibrate the expectation because a lot of these people [audio not captured] obviously scared to lose what they had. A lot of the people that came to talk to me were people who benefited. Non disabled people, primarily men but not all, were making a lot of money on these sheltered workshops. And they had a very [audio not captured] a self dealing interest as we call it at the bank, to keep things the status quo.
Parents who didn't want to change how they dealt with their kids, just send them off every day to make fifty cents an hour would say look, there's no way [audio not captured] I have to work. I have to send them off.
I would say imagine a different situation and we would have to go through that with a little compromise and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes people said well all people can't be like you. You just got lucky. And you just ... you used affirmative action to get where you are. I got some pretty rough reactions. But not a lot. Mostly people [audio not captured] we would try to [audio not captured] sometimes we would come to an agreement but at least we can exchange our opinions.
ANIL LEWIS: That's very interesting. One thing I would like to applaud you for is during your time there, in order to help people on the other side of the fence come to understand it better, I love able to offer grants to help those businesses that felt that 14C was a central component to their success and recognized they could change their whole business model so they didn't have to rely on the 14C wages and developing a skill set. That was really wonderful.
KATHY MARTINEZ: I was passionate about that. You've got to provide a bridge to get from where you are to where you're going. And these bridges of money, in this case, help people see through the work [audio not captured] I don't want to start naming names [audio not captured] that you could actually have [audio not captured] you could transform your business. And people could be making minimum or prevailing wage. And everybody was good. Nobody had to ... it didn't have to be like this guy's up and this guy's down. It could be a raising of all boats. I don't want to make it sound Pollyanna-ish because it was hard. It did change a lot of minds. That's really the best thing ever.
ANIL LEWIS: Wonderful. As you know, I appreciate you and consider you one of my close, dear friends. Appreciate you sharing on a real level with the people who are participating here in the Jacobus tenBroek disability law symposium and look forward to the work you'll be doing with us. They made a tremendously good decision in hoping that they recognize that all of the things you've discussed here and so many more we weren't able to discuss, really come into play so we can have more holistic advocacy to secure the rights of people with disabilities. Thank you very much for sharing with us today.
KATHY MARTINEZ: Thank you very much.