Joe Luciano Sept. 28, 1938-Feb. 1, 2022, at Monument Health Hospice House
Joe Luciano (Facebook)
A staunch advocate for disability rights has died. Joe Luciano led demonstrations against his local post office in Seymour that was not wheelchair accessible. He was the founder of Disability Rights Action Group, and the creator of the 2014-2018 Underground Travel Guide, listing accessible places to visit in New Haven County via Connecticut ADA paratransit providers.
In 2019, he moved to Rapid City, South Dakota. As he wrote in the Oct. 2020 PAR newsletter, “Last year I moved west from Downtown Seymour Ct after realizing it would never become a Livable Community in my lifetime.”
Unfortunately, South Dakota didn’t live up to his expectations, as you can read in his PAR article Don’t Move to South Dakota. https://par-newhaven.org/2020/09/27/dont-move-to-south-dakota/
A true humanitarian, Joe was concerned about all issues of injustice and focused his fight on the rights of the disabled.
The PAR Planning Committee is grateful for the struggles he led, and the articles he wrote so we could bring the issues to our readers’ attention.
You can read a New Haven Register article about him at:
https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/James-Walker-Bound-a-senior-with-disabilities-13772366.php