Video Transcript

Voiceover:

The game plan is a production of Disability Rights California. A space to strategize, organize, and posterize for the future of the disability rights movement. For more information on our work, please visit us at disabilityrightsca.org.   

Eric Harris:

All right. Welcome everyone. This is Eric Harris and we are with The Game Plan, and with our special guest, Andy Imparato, the CEO of Disability Rights California. And, uh, really looking forward to this conversation. This is our second ever episode. We are really excited to have Andy here, talk a little bit about disability in California, and advocacy and some of the work that, that we do. So welcome, Andy.

Andy Imparato:

Thank you. Great to be here.

Eric Harris:

Absolutely. So to get us started with kind of an opening tip, if you will, can you say a little bit something that that you experienced either as a kid or as an adult that really inspired you to do what you do? And made a big difference in terms of the direction of your of your life's work.

Andy Imparato:

Sure, um well, first let me just say I'm so excited about this podcast. I'm excited that it's called The Game Plan. Tapping into your elite athletic roots as a wheelchair basketball player. I wore my, referee shirt, in your honor. And in honor of the team, and, yeah, I mean, so I think you know the story, but, when I started in law school, I was inspired by my classmates at the time. To think about a lot of issues that I hadn't thought about before and they really made me feel like they were going to change the world. They had it. They had a plan. And, I kind of very quickly went from not having a lot of direction in law school to knowing that I wanted to do social justice work.

And the first kind of disability job I had was doing SSI advocacy for adults with disabilities at Cambridge. At Somerville Legal Services. And then I ended up working on those implementing a Supreme Court decision that made it easier for kids to qualify. For SSI, and while I was doing that work, I started being out about my own experience with bipolar disorder and kind of integrating my lived experience with the community that I was working with and advocating on behalf of. So, I kind of feel like I'm kind of doing what I was put on the planet to do.

Another thing that just sticks out for me—in law school, I listened to a lot of Tracy Chapman, and, she came out with her second album right around the time when I was making a decision about my career, and she had a song called “All That You Have Is Your Soul.” And the refrain in the song was something like, “don't be tempted by the shiny apple. Don't you eat the forbidden fruit. Hunger only for a taste of justice, hunger only for a world of truth. All that you have is your soul.” And that I felt like when I was listening to that, it was God speaking to me, “Don't go work at a big law firm.”

Eric Harris:

Wow. That's fascinating. And it's interesting because, you know, in my experience going to law school, I had, you know, the the fortune of having a dad who, is a civil rights lawyer but very flexible and able to do a lot of different things. And I saw that growing up. And I was like, yeah, maybe a big law firm where you're spending a ton of hours, you know, working for, for, working on a number of different issues, but it just didn't fit, like my personality type. And it seems like, you know, similar for you. It was, personality driven and, you know, lived, experience driven and also what you were inspired to do. So that's that's really wonderful.

So you've been now the CEO of Disability Rights California for, for five years, over five years now. What was it that kind of drove you to come back to California? And what were your expectations when you came to California?

Andy Imparato:

Yeah. So, you know, I lived in Boston for four years, started my my career in Boston and worked for a similar organization in Boston, was called the Disability Law Center. But that's the federally funded protection and advocacy agency similar to Disability Rights California. And then I was work in DC for 26 years, and the whole 30 years I was on the East Coast, I felt a little bit like I was in exile.

So, you know, I, I grew up in Los Angeles. I went back to the West Coast a lot for lots of reasons. And in 2019, when I applied for this job, my oldest son was in Los Angeles trying to have a career as a writer producer. And my youngest son was at Pomona College, also in Southern California.

So my wife and I didn't like being 3000 miles away from both of our sons. You know, the time zones. It seemed like we never called at the right time. So, yeah, we were both motivated to try to get back to the West coast, get closer to our children, and there just weren't that many jobs in California that were attractive to me.

At that point in my career, I was running a national organization called the Association for University Centers on Disabilities, and, I knew that Disabilities California was a huge organization. I knew the prior CEO, Catherine Blakemore. I met her early in my career, so I knew her for a long time. And when I saw the announcement that she was retiring, I just said, well, this is a good opportunity to test out, you know, at this at that point, I was 54 years old. I didn't know if I was too old to be competitive for a job like this. But I felt like, why not throw my hat in the ring? And then I reached out to a couple of lawyers that were good friends to, like, be my job coaches, because it had been a while since I had applied for a job that was as legally-centric as this job was. So one of them rewrote my resume for me, and they both, uh, helped me get ready for the interview. And the rest is history.

Eric Harris:

Nice, nice. That's fantastic. You know, there's a lot, you know, positives, neutral negatives about, some of the recent especially experiences here in California. Let's start with the positive.

Andy Imparato:

I thought you were going to say there's a lot of positive, neutral, negative about my five years in the job.

Eric Harris:

No, no, this isn’t, this isn’t a kind of, an evaluation, if you will, of Andy’s job and Disability Rights California. No, but but, you know, California can be such a wonderful place for so many of us, especially who are from here, some of us for generations, you know, have had family in California.

And then, you know, there are some things that are that are more challenging. But I want to start with the positives. If we could, what are some of the positives that you see in California for disabled people.

Andy Imparato:

Well, there are so many, you know, I mean, for me, what's kept me in this field for my whole career, I feel like I've done kind of the same job my whole career. I see myself as a soldier in a movement. And California, just, you know, going back decades has been a place with incredible leaders. So, you know, you go back to Ed Roberts, go back to the time that Judy Heumann spent in California, you know, up to the present. You look at people like Alice Wong or Haben Girma or Andrea Labonte. I mean, there are so many leaders that either kind of made their mark in California or made their mark somewhere else and then came to California. You know, some people see California as the birthplace of the global independent living movement. As you know, the longest sit in and, you know, the history of the United States in San Francisco around the 504 protest.

So there's just, you know, in some ways, California is, A place where people have changed the narrative and changed the trajectory of what's possible for people with disabilities. That's a proud legacy. The fact that Ed Roberts had so many different jobs, including commissioner of the Department of Rehabilitation, after being a very loud critic of the Department of Rehabilitation, to me is just a sign that we have a government, at least we have a history of having government leaders that are not afraid to innovate, not afraid to take chances, not afraid to do things differently. And I think we need to kind of recall that history as we think about the future.

Eric Harris:

Yep, no, that's right. And I think, you know, you talk about innovation and talk about kind of positivity, hope, freedom, all of these things that that California has to offer for all people with disabilities and without disabilities. So the opportunities are right there. What would you say are some of the more frustrating pieces of being in California, especially, you know, over the last several years are in this moment, if you will.

Andy Imparato:

You know, I had a month in the office before we shut everything down for the pandemic. I started in February of 2020. So I remember in my first month when we were all coming to this office, I asked our policy director at the time, Curt Child. I said, who does Governor Newsom talk to about disability issues? And he said, Mayor Steinberg, who was the mayor of Sacramento at the time. And I said, well, why is he talking to the mayor of Sacramento and not talking to disability leaders? Because because the mayor of Sacramento is a parent, was a parent, who had been a leader on mental health issues in the state legislature and on autism and other issues. But he didn't have a strong disability identity. And I don't think he would have wanted to be the spokesperson for the entire disability community. But he was the person that the governor was comfortable talking to about disability issues.

So I just took that as a sign early in my time here, you know, coming from DC where I was used to our champions and our and the, you know, the key leaders in DC actually talking to the head of the American Association of People with disabilities, or the head of the National Council on independent living, or the National Federation of the Blind, or the National Association of the D/deaf. Like, I just I feel like there's something wrong with this picture.

And I think what I came to realize, especially after the governor started promoting policies that were not supported by the disability community, is that we as a community don't have a lot of political power. We don't have a lot of political clout. We don't have the right relationships, and we don't know how to leverage those relationships to make big, hard things happen. So, that may sound really negative. I want to, I think you know, in order to do policy work, you have to be an optimist. And I am optimistic about the future. But I'm trying to be clear eyed. And right now, based on all these unanimous votes on bills that we oppose, it doesn't feel like we have a lot of power.

Eric Harris:

And I think that's an experience that a lot of disability leaders in California and disability organizations have been really frustrated about. Where do you see potential opportunity, with it being so frustrating, the political climate being what it is, where do you see windows of opportunity or, kind of possibilities for growth, if you will.

Andy Imparato:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like the moment that we're living through right now reminds me of Covid in some ways, in the sense that it feels unprecedented. It's not clear how long it's going to last. And, it feels important to kind of pace ourselves and to compartmentalize, otherwise it's easy to get overwhelmed. And all of that, for me, feels a lot like trying to be a leader during Covid. But, you know, we had to kind of make stuff up.

Eric Harris:

Yes.

Andy Imparato:

So I think for me, the disruption that we're seeing at the federal level, does create an opportunity for us to create something better. And I look at the New York City mayor's race as an example. The person that ended up getting the most votes in the primary was an outsider candidate who was putting things on the table that a lot of insiders in the Democratic Party would have said, oh, that's we'll never be able to achieve that. It's too radical. You'll never get elected with that platform.

So that makes me feel like in this upcoming gubernatorial race, there's a lane for somebody to say, I want to do something about housing affordability that nobody's done. I want I want to create more resources by raising taxes in a way that nobody was willing to try to do in recent years, and for voters to realize that that kind of leadership, which is courageous and transformational, is exactly what our state needs right now. It feels like we're stuck in all these patterns, and the patterns are moving us into less and less livability, less and less affordability, to the point where the state is not going to be sustainable.

Eric Harris:

That's right, that's right. Well, you know, Disability Rights California being as large as we are, and I think we talk about it all the time, how unique it is to have a disability rights organization have 300-plus staff, have 100-plus lawyers have a, you know, budget that's tens of millions of dollars. What would you say the role of Disability Rights California can be in trying to address some of the concerns that we have in trying to make California better, as it relates to, you know, folks with disabilities?

Andy Imparato:

When I applied for the Executive Director job, they changed my title this year to Chief Executive Officer, but it's pretty much the same concept. But when I applied for the job, the advertisement said that we were the largest disability rights organization in the world, which is an interesting frame. I’m not sure if it's completely accurate, although I do think if you consider a disability rights advocacy organization to be one that doesn't provide kind of direct services but is doing advocacy, it may be accurate. I don't know that there are pure advocacy organizations that are bigger than us, but I bring that up just to say that we have a big responsibility that goes with that claim. If we're the largest disability rights advocacy organization in the world, our state should be the best place for people with disabilities in the world. Our state policies should be the best policies for people with disabilities in the world, and we should be a place that innovates that other people are copying to try to do better for their population.

And if you look at some of the issues that you and I have worked on together since I've been here, some minimum wage, a bunch of other states got rid of seven ways for people with disability before we did. We should have been the first. Solitary confinement. New York State got rid of solitary confinement for people with disabilities. We got it to the governor's desk and he vetoed it. So I feel like there's a lot of areas where we are behind and we need to be ahead. And that's why we did the state of the state document last year to just lay out an agenda. Here's all the ways in which we're lagging behind other states for people with disabilities. And here's what we need to do to change that.

Eric Harris:

That's right. So far, you know, we've talked about some of the positives, some of the frustrations. Has there been anything that has surprised you? Um, um, and I know some of it, some of the political stuff, certainly, I'm sure has surprised you, but anything else that you can think of in this experience, coming back to California in this role that has particularly jumped out as a, as a surprise for you?

Andy Imparato:

I would say Disability Rights California is by far the largest organization that I have run. I ran the American Association of People with disabilities. When I started their budget was tiny, $200,000 a year. When I left, it was three million. It's still tiny compared to Disability Rights California isn't. AUCD was a little bit bigger. But again, you know, nowhere near the size of the budget. So I wasn't sure in this context how it would be for me as a CEO. And I have found that it's dramatically easier. You know, I think when you have a smaller organization or like when I was at APD, that my analogy was you were running a restaurant, and you had to do everything. You answered the phone, you know, you did the media work, you did the fundraising, you figured out the finances, whatever it was, recruiting, whatever you needed.

An organization like Disabilities California. We have so much talent on this staff that a big part of my job is to just find the talent and let the talent apply itself and stay out of the way, and that's just a very different management challenge. So, I have really enjoyed the size of the organization. There are times where I feel bad that I don't I don't get to work with the staff more closely, but I very much appreciate how much talent we have. I really, really appreciate the diversity of our staff and the diversity of the population in California.

You know, I lived in Baltimore most of the time that I worked in D.C. and Baltimore had a large Black middle class. It was a majority Black population. We had a growing Latino community, relatively small Asian Pacific Islander community. But if you look at the demographics of California or the demographics of Sacramento, where you and I are right now, it's just much more diverse. And I feel like that diversity leads to better policies and leads to more holistic thinking about what people with disabilities need. Why is immigration policy a disability issue? Why is solitary confinement a disability issue? All these things that some people in D.C. would say, “well, those are disability issues.” I think in California we're very quick to realize they're all disability issues.

Eric Harris:

Right, right. I think, you know, you've talked about it before a number of different times, in meetings and whatnot, that we have no choice, if we’re going to be as large as we are in the state that we're in, we have no choice but to get involved in immigration issues, LGBTQIA plus issues.

Andy Imparato:

Prisoners rights.

Eric Harris:

Prisoners rights. Exactly, exactly. And I think one of the exciting things that we've been able to shift in a lot of ways is some of the perception of Disability Rights California for folks living in California, folks who have, over time have worked with Disability Rights California or have worked with other protection and advocacy organizations and kind of felt like that's not really for me. You all are, lawyer centric and don't think about, you know, the average everyday person. And I think one of the things that we've certainly tried to do as much as we can is, center the disability voices and make sure that disabled people are the ones leading the conversation. So I think that, that many, in California talk to us about how, how proud they are of Disability Rights California in that way.

So, transitioning just a little bit to kind of the future. We have the gubernatorial race coming up here, uh, next year. Um, of course, there are other elections between now and then and then, of course, after. But what opportunities do you see with the gubernatorial candidates with where Disability Rights California kind of fits in that? And what are your hopes, expectations, ideas for, for how that can all come together over the next year?

Andy Imparato:

Sure. Well, I think if you look at the California experience with the master plan for aging, I think it's kind of illustrative. You know, Gavin Newsom, when he was running for governor, was asked to endorse that we needed a ten-year master plan for older adults in California, and he endorsed it as a candidate. And then after he was elected, he followed-through and created a taskforce or a process for creating a master plan for aging that included people in his administration and key stakeholders outside of his administration, including Disability Rights California and the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers.

So we worked together inside and outside of government, developed the master plan. Justice In Aging played a big role. And then it kind of set the agenda for the entire Newsom administration related to aging. So I think there's an opportunity for us to do something similar around disability, find, you know, Katie Porter or some other candidate for governor who's willing to commit to doing some things that would be game changing for people with disabilities, willing to commit to working with disabled people, and disability-led organizations to both develop and implement that agenda, and then follow through on it when they get elected, including having somebody senior from our community in the governor's office working directly with the governor, because our issues are cross-cutting, they touch every agency. So that to me is the big opportunity. And I think if we can get commitments from the candidates, you know, during the election before the primary, that positions us well to, you know, have more access and more influence in the next administration.

Eric Harris:

That's right. And I think, you know, one of the pieces that that you and I have passionately been working on, and I know our board members, our staff finding champions on disability issues. In certain circumstances, one champion, a champion, any champion, is kind of it's kind of what we've been hoping for and looking for. And I hope that, you know, this, this race, this gubernatorial race kind of creates an opportunity for that. There are a number of disabled leaders in California, many of which still try to remain hopeful that California can keep getting better. What would your message be to those leaders who feel like “This is really frustrating.”

Andy Imparato:

You know, I think start with just recognizing that every politician is unique. They're not all the same, but sometimes it feels like it.

Eric Harris:

Yeah, that's right.

Andy Imparato:

But, let's not ignore the fact that we have Lateefah Simon in the United States Congress, who I think is the best Congress person with a disability and the best congressperson for people with disabilities in the entire Congress. She represents the East Bay. So she's brand new. Let's celebrate her. Let's lift her up. Let's give her money. That's let's try to help her be as successful and influential as possible. And she's young. She's in her 40s. So by congressional standards, she's a babe, and I she could be there for 30 years. 40 years.

Eric Harris:

That's right.

Andy Imparato:

So I'm very excited about Lateefah Simon. And I think we all should be and then, you know, we have other young leaders like the mayor of Berkeley. You and I were at the celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July at the Ed Roberts campus, which is an extraordinary campus that we're excited to have an office in. We just opened an office there. And the mayor of Berkeley, who I'm embarrassed to say I did not know about it, shows up at the event, speaks at the event. Her name is Adena Ishii, she told us, you know, when we were chatting with her, you know, before she spoke that she has a disability herself. She brought her communications director. Her communications director was in a power wheelchair.

Eric Harris:

That's right.

Andy Imparato:

And she gave a great talk. And I feel like I hope that she's somebody that has a long future in politics in California. And she told us that she was with the League for Women Voters before running for mayor and that she wasn't partisan. She's not. She didn't run to like, be a machine Democrat. She ran to be a transformational leader in an amazing city of Berkeley. And I think she already is a transformational leader. So those are two people in the East Bay to be excited about.

And then if you go around the state, then, you know, the person that we honored, the former mayor of Burbank, who's autistic, I mean, there's a number of leaders in the state that are worth cultivating. Isaac Bryan, who is the the chair of the new disability caucus in the state legislature who grew up with siblings with disabilities. Or, you know, Sydney Kamlager who’s in Congress who has a stepchild on the autism spectrum and I just think there's a lot of folks to cultivate in California, and we can't give up on all of them, you know? So I think we need to always we need to be talent scouts. We need to always be looking for good people and cultivate them. And then we also need to take the time to build political power, to build a base of power ourselves, so that we can hold all of them accountable.

Eric Harris:

That’s right.

Andy Imparato:

Ultimately we want people to vote the way we want them to vote, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they're afraid of us. And the only way to get them to be afraid of us is to build real power.

Eric Harris:

That's right, that's right. And I think, you know, a message that we consistently send about our issues isn’t, like you said, isn't, you know, to be paternalistic and pat us on the head, but it’s because it's the right thing to do. These are the issues that we are experts in as disabled people. And we need folks to understand that our expertise carries a lot of value, so.

Andy Imparato:

And if you don't listen to us, not only are you going to make bad policy decisions, but you're going to lose elections.

Eric Harris:

And that's right.

Andy Imparato:

That's where we want to be.

Eric Harris:

That's right, that's right. So no,I really appreciate this, Andy and I and I know, you know, we talked about some positive, talked about some negative talked about the future and hopes and dreams. And now we're going to kind of, end if you will, on kind of a fun question. And it's just: Is there, a piece of art, book, film, song, you know, actor, musician, whatever that you would really, encourage folks to check out something that inspires you right now? And, yeah.

Andy Imparato:

Yeah. I mean, there are many.

Eric Harris:

Absolutely.

Andy Imparato:

I, I want to give a shout out to my friend, Roberto Lugo, who is an artist in Philadelphia and, Roberto, grew up in inner city Philadelphia, started out as a graffiti artist and then became a ceramicist. He produces beautiful pots and he has work in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, has worked in major museums all over the country.

He still produces affordable art that he sells on Instagram. So in my dining room, you've seen it. I have a collection of stuff that he's created. He has diabetes, which he’s open about, he has depression, which is open about, he does spoken word poetry in addition to his ceramic art, and he also does prints and other types of art.

Eric Harris:

Fantastic.

Andy Imparato:

He’s very political, he’s very connected to civil rights and social justice movements and civil rights and social justice leaders. He puts civil rights leaders on his pottery in really interesting ways. So, yeah, I think the first time I saw his work, I was at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and I walked into a room and it had all of his stuff, and I was like, this is amazing, because it kind of combined a lot of things for me. I studied, Italian Renaissance art, and he had stuff that was influenced by Della Robbia, who was an Italian Renaissance ceramicist, so I liked the historic nature of it. And then I like the political nature of it. So I looked him up, I went home, I saw he was on Facebook. I sent him a note, this is probably my hypomania, I sent him a note on Facebook,

Eric Harris:

Right.

Andy Imparato:

And said, I've never been so excited about a living artist. He wrote back to me, I said, I want to come to Philadelphia and have lunch with you on my birthday. And he said, let's do it.

Eric Harris:

I love it, I love it.

Andy Imparato:

I don't know, I just feel like really, more artists like that.

Eric Harris:

No, that’s fantastic. And, we’ll, I hope that we'll lift up Roberto Lugo and and any kind of post that we have about this, as a as a disabled artist. That's fantastic. Well, Andy, thank you so much. For being our second guest here on the show. We really appreciate it. And, this is The Game Plan with Eric Harris. And like I said, our second ever episode. And we're really looking forward, to uplifting this and sharing it out. And just so folks know, this is one of many conversations that I'm sure you'll have on the show and other opportunities to share. But we're really excited to have you this first time around and, and hope folks enjoy it.

Andy Imparato:

Well just in keeping with the theme of the show, I just want to say how proud I am to be on your team. You're an MVP for Disability Rights California. And I'm grateful to be part of your team.

Eric Harris:

Thank you so much. Andy, really appreciate it.

Voiceover:

This has been the game plan. A production of Disability Rights California. Please like, subscribe and comment on the platform of your choice. See you next time.