Gary Karp Asks President Obama about his Plans for Employing People with a Disability

Today Aaron and I were supposed to meet for lunch with Gary Karp, who promotes the integration of people with disabilities in the workforce – www.garykarpspeaks.com, but he had to cancel unexpectedly as he received a last minute invitation  to President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in LA. Moreover, he even got the opportunity to ask Obama the all important question listed further down below along with Obama’s response. I am glad that Gary was able to ask his question. That was much more important than our luncheon, which we have already rescheduled for next Friday anyway. Now, I’ll get the add-on bonus of hearing about his Obama experience when I meet with him next week.

How did Gary end up at President Obama’s town hall meeting?

Gary Karp was a member of Barack Obama’s Disability Advisory Committee during the campaign and Kareem Dale was the lead liaison from his group to the campaign, and now Kareem is Obama’s White House advisor on disability policy.

On Monday, March 16, Gary got an email from Kareem offering him a ticket to the event.

He was on a 6 a.m. flight to LAX from San Francisco Thursday morning, and at around 2:00 p.m. he found himself holding a microphone, looking the President of the United States in the eye (from about 30 feet), and asking his question.

Gary’s question and President Obama’s answer

The following is an excerpt from the White House transcript.

GARY’S QUESTION: I’m Gary Karp, and Mr. President, thank God for you. (Applause.) Sir, my question regards the true renaissance that’s happening with people with disabilities. They are an emerging population — millions of people who are more mobile, more educated, more healthy, more empowered by technology, and with more potential than ever before in history. But they are still trapped in very, very old social models that see them in terms of tragedy and charity and need and care. And the modern population of people with disabilities simply does not fit that model.

And as your plan succeeds and you generate these jobs, and as baby boomers retire, we’re going to need every single person of capacity to work that we can. And that must include many, many, many thousands, if not millions, of people with disabilities. (Applause.)

So – I see you nodding your head, so my first question is, do you subscribe to what I’m saying, and next of all, can you talk about how your disability agenda will release this emerging potential that’s currently wasted and untapped?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, you are exactly right, that we need everybody. And every program that we have has to be thinking on the front end, how do we make sure that it is inclusive, and building into it our ability to draw on the capacities of persons with disabilities.

That’s true on the education front, where our recovery package increases funding for children with disabilities. It is true in terms of how Hilda Solis, our Secretary of Labor, will be thinking about our training programs, to make sure that we are not excluding from training for high-tech jobs, the new jobs of the future, persons with disability.

It means enforcing the ADA and fighting back on some court opinions that have tried to narrow in ways that I think are inappropriate the original intent of that legislation.

So one of the things that I think is important is to make sure, as you pointed out, that we don’t see this as an afterthought, a segregated program, but we are infusing every department, every agency, every act that we take with a mindfulness about the importance of persons with disabilities, their skills, their talents, their capacity.

That I think is the approach that my administration is going to take, and we hope that by taking that approach that attitude will infuse state and local governments that are also receiving federal money. Okay? (Applause.)

Luc’s final comment

My kudos to Gary for asking President Obama this great question. Now, let’s hope Obama will follow through on his response.