ABSTRACT
On April 28, 1977, nearly 150 disabled activists participated in one of the longest occupations of a federal building in U.S. history. They aimed to push Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano to sign the Section 504 regulations and end discrimination against the disabled from federally funded programs. This research explores press coverage of the Section 504 sit-ins, which expanded to HEW buildings around the country, to highlight how news media represented disabled protestors as well as the strategies they used to cover the protests. This builds on prior research identifying elements of the protest paradigm as well as speaks to the evolution of the language used to describe people with disabilities in news coverage.
