Prediction: The May 1st "general strike" is going to be an enormous flop.

[suffragette]

127. "In-your-face" like the 504 protests

Those protests were exactly about changing laws for the better, in that case about "They were demanding enforcement of the first major law to bar discrimination against the disabled."

Very much in-your-face and they won.

http://www.npr.org/programs/wesun/features/2002/504/
But in San Francisco at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, protesters didn't give up. One day turned into a second day and then a third. More than 100 disabled demonstrators stayed in the building for weeks, refusing to leave until the regulations were signed.

On April 28, nearly four weeks into the sit-in, HEW Secretary Joseph Califano endorsed the regulations. The protesters had won.


Much, much more at link.



Photographer HolLynn D'Lil wrote a poem about the image:

Through the Glass

Those who wouldn't go outside
Those who couldn't go inside
Shattered the walls.


Edited to add:
Good piece here with retrospective on the above protest and the power of people joining together to effect change:

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/departments/reflections/000499.html#bio

The San Francisco 504 sit-in did not succeed because of a brilliant strategy by a few disability leaders. It succeeded because the Deaf people set up a communication system from the 4th floor windows inside the building to the plaza down below; because the Black Panther Party brought a hot dinner to all 150 participants every single night; because people from community organizing backgrounds taught us how to make collaborative decisions; because friends came and washed our hair in the janitor's closet sink.

The people doing disability rights work in the 1970s rarely agreed on policies, or even on approaches. The successes came because people viewed each other as invaluable resources working towards a common goal.