Bishop William J. Barber II, the well-known civil rights leader, is still upset that he received the old fire hazard treatment.
There has been a lot of media coverage about how, on the day after Christmas, Barber was just trying to go see the movie The Color Purple with his ninety-one-year-old mother at an AMC theater in Greenville, North Carolina, and it turned into a brouhaha. That’s because Barber brought along a chair to sit in that he wanted to put in the theater’s wheelchair section. Barber often brings this chair with him when he goes places because he has a mobility disability called ankylosing spondylitis and says sitting in that specific chair reduces his pain. But Barber complained that he was told by theater staff that he couldn’t bring his chair inside the theater because it would be a fire hazard. The police were even called by theater staff, and Barber eventually left without incident.
When I heard about all of this, I just wanted to say, “Welcome to the club.” Disabled people are called a fire hazard so often that it has become a bit of an inside joke among us. I have not met a disabled person who doesn’t have a horrifyingly funny story about a time they were told in a public venue that they would have to leave or move because they were a fire hazard.
It’s insulting and degrading when someone calls me a fire hazard.
It’s happened to me more than once. The time I most clearly recall was also in a movie theater. It was early in my courtship of the woman who would eventually become my first wife. There was nowhere for anyone in a wheelchair to sit except in the aisles. So I pulled up next to her in the aisle and I was trying my best to impress her when this whiny young usher came up to me and said, “Sir, you can’t sit there. You’re a fire hazard.” I told him to buzz off, in so many words, and he said, “Sir, if the fire marshal comes in here, he’ll shut the place down.” I said I was confident that the fire marshal had more important things to do than go around looking for movie theaters to shut down because there’s someone in a wheelchair sitting in the aisle, and I told him to buzz off again. He left and didn’t return. Fortunately for me, the woman I was trying to impress found it all very amusing.
It’s insulting and degrading when someone calls me a fire hazard. First, that person is saying that my presence is a nuisance and the solution is for me to leave (either that or they’re afraid I’ll spontaneously combust). Second, do they think that I’m so stupid and helpless that I would just sit there and burn up? If fire breaks out, follow me and you’ll be the second one out.
I’m sorry Barber had to go through this, but I’m glad it happened to a famous person and the issue is finally getting some attention. It’s like when the Britney Spears case showed how outrageously oppressive guardianship laws can be. It’s nothing new. Thousands of disabled people live under the thumb of guardianship laws. All the awareness and sympathy that her case generated has resulted in no major systemic change to the screwed up guardianship system.
At least Barber seems determined not to let that happen. AMC CEO Adam Aron publicly apologized to Barber for the way he was treated and offered to meet with him. Barber then held a press conference on January 8 to express deep disappointment in how the meeting went with Aron and to introduce the lawyer he was retaining to handle all further negotiating with AMC. Barber’s goal, he said, was to bring about “systemic change” so that “when people see [the letters] A-M-C, it means to them, ‘I know they will accommodate me carefully and cordially.’ ”
It would be nice to know that AMC theaters might become a place where I’ll never be called a fire hazard.