Fight for rights
Richard Pimentel, a key player in the fight for rights for people with disabilities, began his advocacy work in the 1970s when he was a student at Portland State.
He was freshly back from Vietnam and disabled with hearing loss, a traumatic brain injury and Agent Orange poisoning.
As part of a class project at PSU, Pimentel trained supervisors at US Bank and Tektronix on disabilities issues, which significantly increased the number of people with disabilities hired by these firms. Following this success, Pimentel traveled across the country training managers and workers at businesses and government agencies.
Pimentel’s training sessions laid fundamental groundwork for the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was signed into law in 1990 and celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2020.
One of the people who influenced him at Portland State in the early ’70s was fellow student Art Honeyman who had cerebral palsy and was deeply involved in social and political causes in Portland.
A 2007 film about Pimentel’s life, "Music Within," was shot on the PSU campus and starred actors Ron Livingston as Pimentel and Michael Sheen as the late Honeyman.
“When I saw how unfairly Art was treated and excluded by society at that time, I became angry,” Pimentel says. “I also saw how badly disabled Vietnam vets were being treated. When we came back from Vietnam, we were often told we ‘deserved’ to be disabled because we went to fight in an unjust war. Art once asked me how I would like to fight in a just one: civil rights for persons with disabilities.”
After the ADA was passed, Pimentel’s job was to promote employer acceptance and support for the passage of the law. To change attitudes, he developed and presented interactive training for employers, vocational rehabilitation programs, government agencies and people with disabilities.
“My disabilities have at times been inconvenient and occasionally frustrating, but they have always been my best mentor,” he says. “They have taught me confidence, tenacity, creativity, empathy, patience, courage and self-advocacy. The ADA has given generations of young people with disabilities the opportunity to see their challenges as not something they ‘play down’ but as something they live up to and learn from.”
In 2008, Pimentel delivered PSU’s commencement address and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree.
Now he is training employers on resilience during the pandemic and how to support COVID-19 survivors who have new impairments and disabilities from the virus.
“I know that without the experiences and support received at Portland State,” he says, “I never would have had the privilege of being a part of this journey.”