About Us
Michele Magar.jpg)
Founding Executive Director
michele.magar@ratifynow.org
I first became familiar with the international disability rights movement in 1985, when I traveled to Kenya as a journalist to cover the accomplishments of women with disabilities who gathered in Nairobi to participate in the United Nations Decade for Women conference. While there I also learned about the lives of Kenyans with disabilities, and became determined to work to advance disability rights internationally.
By the time I traveled to Kenya, I had become the first U.S. national news reporter to develop a disability rights beat during my tenure at National Public Radio. The Americans with Disabilities Act had not been enacted yet, and my job provided a front row seat to the U.S. disability rights movement.
Inspired by the advocates I was covering, I moved to California in 1992 to become a disability rights lawyer. After graduating from Stanford Law School three years later, I represented clients with disabilities as a staff attorney with legal aid and Protection & Advocacy agencies in the San Francisco area. In 2001 I began a private disability rights practice, and I also continued my work as a journalist.
A few years ago, I got my chance to return to international disability rights advocacy when I traveled to the United Nations to work with the International Disability Caucus and persuade delegates to write a strong and effective disability rights treaty. (A more detailed account of my experience appears at [insert link here].) On March 30, 2007, the U.N. asked its members to sign the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and a record number of nations did so.
A few months later, I co-founded RatifyNow to provide multi-faceted support to grassroots advocates worldwide working to persuade their nation to ratify, implement, and enforce the treaty. Although RatifyNow has and will continue to engage in a wide range of advocacy efforts to support the treaty, my personal goal is to work with others to spark and nurture indigenous disability rights movements in nations that have none, while simultaneously working to ensure that my own country ratifies the treaty.
As RatifyNow’s Executive Director, my work is informed by my experience as a person with a disability, and my training as an attorney and an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. My family background and bi-cultural upbringing also contribute to my work: I was born in Egypt and came to the U.S. as a child when my family moved here as refugees to escape discrimination.
Working at the United Nations to help write the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities changed my life. It convinced me that people with disabilities can transcend geography, language, culture, class, and other divisions to collaborate together in an international cross-disability movement for equality and self-determination.
I invite you to use RatifyNow’s website and listserve to learn about the treaty, share ideas and best practices, and join us as we work together to achieve justice.
JEFF ROSEN.jpg)
Chief Financial Officer
jeff.rosen@ratifynow.org
I am a third generation deaf person who was raised in an environment where I received mixed messages. My deaf family said I was fully of the world and cherished for who I am with absolutely no limitations on my aspirations. In my family and the deaf community, I experienced pride and joy in a rich tradition of shared identity and culture. On the other hand, society found me deficient. Growing up in a public school and in my neighborhood, along with my first attempts to work, I was consistently told that my difference left me short of the mark. My life has been a struggle to reconcile the conflicting values.
From an early age I was determined to be an attorney to gain better control of my reality. In the absence of disability related literature and media, I turned to the insightful and empowering works of African-American authors who talked about the oppression of their people and ways they overcame negative attitudes and limited opportunities. Their voices taught me that the greatest disability is not of the body, but of a closed mind. I also learned about the value of and need in to participate in a movement, using the power of collective thinking and action to transform people’s minds and hearts about the place people with disabilities have in society. My life was then dedicated to learning and using the law as a tool to support this movement in changing people’s lives.
In my current position as the General Counsel and Vice President of Governmental Affairs at Aequus Technologies Corporation (http://www.aequustechnologies.com/), I support the development and provision of technology solutions for students and professionals with sensory and cognitive disabilities. In addition, Aequus provides under the brand name Snap!VRS (www.snapvrs.com) video relay services through which deaf and hard of hearing people can engage in telecommunications using sign language and video interpreters.
As the General Counsel and Director of Policy of the National Council on Disability (www.ncd.gov), I helped the Council structure and carry out its policy and research work through three principal conceptual frameworks: The Civil Rights Monitoring Project, which evaluated and made recommendations for strengthening the federal implementation and enforcement of several major national disability rights laws; Investing in Independence, which involved several reports focusing on programs and policies supporting the independence of people with disabilities; and Livable Communities, a holistic approach to providing people with an environment to live and work as they choose.
I also take pride in having been involved in Gallaudet University’s Deaf President Now movement, which brought great exposure to the interest in self-determination and served as one catalyst for Congress in undertaking its consideration of the ADA. My recent focus has been on international disability rights, particularly the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). I am a Co-Founder of RatifyNow (www.ratifynow.org), a grassroots effort to promote the ratification of the CRPD and a Board Member of USICD (http://www.usicd.org), a disability oriented organization supporting human rights.
Joe VanderVeer
Secretary/Webmaster
joe.vanderveer@ratifynow.org
I’m a 39 year old disability rights advocate/activist from Portland, Oregon.
When I was 4 years old, I was killed in a high speed head-on collision. I was clinically dead on the scene for 15 minutes, and in a coma for 6 weeks. As a result, I suffered a traumatic brain injury characterized by severe motor impairment. Essentially, my condition is much like cerebral palsy.
In 1992, I married my wife Pam and, with her fulltime assistance, I am able to live a relatively normal and independent life. However, others with my degree of impairment, are not usually so fortunate…
For many people with severe mobility impairments like me, institutionalization is often inevitable. Accompanying such a situation is a nearly complete loss of one’s basic rights and independence. For that reason, the focus of my advocacy work centers on deinstitutionalization and the creation of needed community support services. The CRPD speaks right to the core of why I do the work that I do.
When it came to my attention last April that the US did not sign the CRPD, I was compelled to join the effort to gain local support from communities at the grassroots level. After reading the resolution passed by the city of Santa Cruz supporting the treaty, my wife and I knew we wouldn’t rest until we got our own local governments to follow suit (the City of Portland, Oregon and Multnomah County).
Toward the end of July, 2007, while in the middle of the process of encouraging our local governments to formally endorse the CRPD, we joined the newly formed RatifyNow. Its mission was then as it is now: to provide multi-faceted support to grassroots advocates worldwide who are working to persuade their nation to first ratify then enforce the treaty.
My interest in the CRPD comes largely from being part of the struggle for deinstitutionalization, community inclusion, and basic opportunities in our society. I know that US citizens with disabilities would benefit greatly from US ratification. The CRPD is both more sophisticated than the ADA and broader in scope.
Being part of this effort to promote this landmark treaty is giving me a front row seat to the emergence of a new age in human rights.