Attacking Sack

ALMOST everyone around Harvard Square has heard the throaty cry of "wheelchair basketball" and seen a now-familiar man asking patiently for donations. The man's name is James Brooks, and he is involved in much more than basketball Brooks leads the Disabled people's Liberation Front, which for years has been losing a struggle to make more Boston movie theaters accessible to the disabled.

Brooks and his group gather every other Friday night to picket the Sack Beacon Hill cinema, asking customers to boycott Sack theaters for that evening. Their grievance: Many of Boston's Sack theaters, which carry all the most popular first-run films, are inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, on braces, or otherwise disabled.

The Sack Beacon Hill theater is the most glaring example Disabled people can see movies there only if they are carried down a long and perilously steep flight of stairs, an experience they find terrifying and humiliating. To make matters worse, exclusive engagements are often shown at the Beacon Hill rathe than at one of the area's few accessible movie houses. Members of Brooks's group point out that even films of special interest to the disabled, such as Coming Home and Whose Life Is It Anyway?, have been inaccessibly screened.

Technically, the Sack chain is under no legal obligation to make all its theaters accessible. It escaped the current law, passed in 1977, that requires all public structures to be accessible to the handicapped. But the moral obligation to make theaters as accessible as possible is compelling and inescapable. The group points out that seeing movies is particularly important to the disabled, since it may let them experience vicariously what they otherwise cannot.

Particularly disturbing in the Sack case has been the insensitivity of the Sack management towards the rights of the disabled A Alan Friedberg, who owns all Boston's Sack theaters and more than 60 screens in New England, has bluntly refused to install ramps and elevators in more theaters. "If I give them ramps, "he once said in a radio interview, "they will be wanting medication and heart machines in there next."

Besides their obvious cruelty, such remarks needlessly block the possibility of compromise. Even in theaters where renovations leading to complete access would be costly or architecturally difficult, negotiations might well lead to a workable middle ground. At the Beacon Hill, for example, architects estimate that installing an elevator is prohibitively expensive, but handicapped groups say a chairlift next to the stairs would cost much less.

Brooks and his group deserve support but have had little success so far, in part because local papers have not adequately covered the boycott. Citizens should support the efforts of the disabled to gain dignified access to Boston movie theaters. Even better would be letters to the Sack management or to newspapers demanding a bit more civic-mindedness.