Advocacy Team
Senators Duckworth and Durbin Meet with Amtrak CEO to Discuss #AmtrakAccessNow
Dear Access Living friends and allies,
Regular readers already know that Access Living has been pressing Amtrak to improve its accommodation policies for groups of wheelchair users. U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, as well as U.S. Representative Chuy Garcia, joined Access Living in urging Amtrak’s CEO, Richard Anderson, to meet to discuss the issues involved.
We are happy to report that Anderson met with Senators Duckworth and Durbin, as reported by the Hill. Access Living will continue to work with our elected officials and Amtrak to ensure that Amtrak develops meaningful policies across the board to serve customers with disabilities. We thank our members of Congress for urging Amtrak to do the right thing. The members of Congress released a statement that can be found at this link.
The story of the $25,000 attempted charge to Access Living hit a nerve with thousands of people nationwide. It sparked the hashtag #AmtrakAccessNow on social media. The freedom to travel on an equal basis with everyone else has been a core part of the disability movement, and that fight continues today.
We’d also like to share a blog post by the “Amtrak in the Heartland” blogger Craig Sanders, which goes into some in depth analysis. We thank all of you and our allies who have been closely tracking this story, as originally broken by NPR’s Joe Shapiro.
The hard work is not over…in this 30th anniversary year of the ADA, we are determined that WE WILL RIDE!