Gore's for the little people, right?
fl.mlive.com
Gore folks push reporter's wheelchair out of race for story
Tuesday, September 5, 2000
By Chad Swiatecki
Flint Journal column
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It was supposed to be a dream assignment.
When word came down last week that presidential hopeful Al Gore was planning a trip to Flint, and when the job of covering Gore's and running mate Joseph I. Lieberman's visit got handed to yours truly, it brought with it a chance to write about the man who could be the next president of the United States.
No one gave a thought as to whether my wheelchair would be a problem.
This was a job reporters here at the Journal vied heavily for, offering to give up part of their holiday weekends to get close to Al and Joe and pick their brains on all things Flint.
And here I was, four months out of college and barely a modicum of political expertise, getting all the Gore I could handle simply by virtue of being the paper's Sunday reporter.
Though it sets me apart from every other reporter at the Journal, the wheelchair I use, before Sunday, had caused me little or no difficulty in covering the suburban communities I'm responsible for during the week.
Soon, however, I learned that wasn't the case when it came down to rubbing elbows with Al and Joe.
While in Flint, the Gore campaign was to make a stop at an undisclosed location that its spokespeople said was inaccessible to wheelchairs.
The campaign said it couldn't allow me to follow the motor pool in my car to the location and the vans for the rest of the press corps couldn't accommodate my wheelchair.
Going it alone would have drastically limited the scope of what I could cover to just the Hurley visit, making the story I could write inferior to what other papers and media could deliver.
Not wanting to compromise the story for our readers, my editors and I agreed it would be best to have another reporter come in to follow Gore to his other appearance, which turned out to be at the GM Truck and Bus plant.
Though I was glad to have backup, especially given my status as a political novice, the situation irked me into action to find out why the man who wants to be my next president wasn't willing to meet my needs.
I wanted answers.
Unfortunately, talking to Gore staffers to try to get an explanation for their lack of preparation yielded nothing more than a pert assistant saying, with as big a smile as possible, "We've never run into a situation like this before."
Needless to say, I wasn't smiling.
I suppose I could take that as a compliment, the fact that by trying to do my job I'm - hopefully - alerting a presidential hopeful that he needs to be prepared on all fronts all the time.
But I'm more inclined to think that a candidate who doesn't have enough foresight or flexibility to let an extra car into the motor pool or make sure a campaign stop has a wheelchair ramp isn't the candidate I'd be inclined to vote for come November.
This is something new for me, since I've always thought myself akin to Booker T. Washington where it concerns the disability movement, preferring to make as little noise as possible and effect change on a small scale instead of fighting tooth-and-nail for large-scale reform.
But now I'm starting to rethink that stance.
After all, they say the squeaky wheel is the one that gets greased.
Well, Al, I've got four of them. Can you hear them yet?
Chad Swiatecki covers the Linden and Holly areas. He can be reached at (810)766-6237 or by e-mail at cswiatecki@flintjournal.com. |
