Susan Weiss, a longtime advocate for the physically and mentally disabled, opened a workshop at the recent Women and Disability Conference in Albuquerque with the disclosure that she is the editor of the newspaper Bridges. The assembled group of women clapped enthusiastically.

"The spontaneous applause felt great,"Weiss recalls. "It shows we're doing some good."

Weiss has been editing Bridges, a newspaper providing resources for people with disabilities, for two years. The newspaper is published every two months, and each issue has a theme. The March/April issue was devoted to resources for the deaf community.

"A lot of people are uninformed about people with disabilities," Weiss states. "Bridges tries to transform this understanding by showing disabled life from different perspectives."

Weiss conducted the "breakout" session on employment rights during the Women and Disability Conference at the Albuquerque Hilton in late April. Sponsors of the conference included the University of New Mexico Women's Resource Center and the New Mexico Department of Education Special Education Office.

At the workshop Weiss explained that she has been a consumer of physical and mental healthcare. She had chronic fatigue related to a diagnosis of sarcoidosis she received in 1988 when a granuloma, atumor-like mass, was discovered in her lung. Sarcoidosis is a rare disease of unknown origin in which inflammations occur in body tissues. Weiss suffered complications including thickening of the lung tissues and painful joints.

Weiss is virtually asymptomatic at present, but she occasionally has fatigue. As the result of a learning disability, she uses an adding machine or calculator to perform mathematical computations. "It's important that people realize that just because you don't excel in one skill, that your gifts can lie in other places."

Weiss was born in the Bronx, New York, and brought up in Maryland and New Jersey. As an 11-year-old, she worked in the McGovern presidential campaign. At 19 she owned and operated the "Whooz Café, a restaurant catering to college students, where her specialties were quiche and stuffed mushrooms.

She attended the Richard Stockton State College of New Jersey. She remembers herself as a "rabble-rouser"in college. She and other students protested the lack of a healthcare facility on campus. They also challenged a college plan to construct a high-rise dormitory on the banks of a pristine lake. The college backed down and did not build the dorm on that site.

Weiss began her disability career in California. After an assault by one of her clients resulted in serious back and neck injuries, she came to Albuquerque in 1987 to recuperate.

She began working at Career Services, a contractor with the New Mexico Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) that provides employment services for people with disabilities. In 1994 she started a for-profit business of her own, "Catalysts for Change,"in which she again contracted with DVR to place people with disabilities in jobs. She still works with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation on contract. She offers employment-related advocacy, personal and professional coaching, and remedial one-on-one computer training to people with and without disabilities. Weiss also serves as a part-time assistant in the University of New Mexico's History Department.

Weiss has since disbanded "Catalysts for Change."Her new venture, "Works-In-Progress,"is an evolving idea. Her dream is to help peopl make available their skills to others without the use of money by creating a barter directory. She also plans to set up an entrepreneurial resource center to involve people with disabilities in small businesses and part-time jobs.

Her advice to her clients: "Find your passion and make it work for you. Get your goals in order; get to your passion."

For mental health consumers with disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, she recommends temporary work until they are stable. Then if they are not feeling well, they can stop working without incurring long-term consequences.

Weiss advises employers considering hiring employees with disabilities to be open to creative options. She says that employees with conditions like multiple sclerosis that deplete their stamina do very well with job sharing.

"Accommodations for the disabled can often be done for a low price," she advises. "Employers should be educated as to the resources that exist and to the fact that the DVR is eager to work with them to employ workers with disabilities."

"In the next 25 years the entire population will be aging, and we will all begin to experience some type of disability,"Weiss explains. "Employers should tap into the resources of the disabled community."

Weiss has seen many positive changes in the Albuquerque disabled community since coming here in 1987. "There is more emphasis on consumer-driven activities and services. Folks in this particular place understand how important it is for people with disabilities to be mentors. They need to be able to get their stories out, to be able to get ahead and make things happen."

"As provincial as New Mexico may seem, it has a much more progressive and creative attitude toward providing services than many other states. It may not have the money other states have, but here individuals and groups have the ability to get involved politically and make themselves heard,"Weiss states. "The developmentally disabled and the mental health organizations such as the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of New Mexico have powerful lobbies in Santa Fe."

She has seen an entirely different attitude emerge toward people with disabilities in Albuquerque, which she calls "an infusion of self-esteem."

"Women like Ann Forts who delivered the opening statement at the Women and Disability Conference are taking control over their lives,"Weiss states. Forts, who has Down's syndrome, is a major fundraiser in the fight against developmental disability and a member of the President's Committee on Mental Retardation.

"The changes I've seen in Albuquerque are profound, but there's still a long way to go,"says Weiss.

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