Denver City Council Member Speaks Out After Being Asked to Get Out of His Wheelchair to Participate in Debate

Denver City Council member Chris Hinds is speaking out after being asked earlier this week to get out of his wheelchair and pull himself on to a stage in order to participate in a debate. Hinds, who is the incumbent in his race for the city's District 10 council seat, is paralyzed from the chest down.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Hinds said debate organizers struggled with determining how the councilman could get on to the stage once he arrived, as the stage had no ramp. Ultimately, he told the post, organizers asked him, "Well, how about you get out of your chair?"

Chris Hinds/Twitter

As the Post reports, Hinds then used his hands to try and lift himself out of his chair and on to the stage, as 100 onlookers and the other candidates looked on. After failed attempts by organizers to try and lift his wheelchair on to the stage, they ultimately moved the other candidates off the stage and on to the ground floor, where the debate was held.

"I felt like a circus monkey," Hinds told the outlet.

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Now, Hinds says the event should "be a teachable moment," telling the Post: "We shouldn't be asking for accommodations for things that should already have been the law."

The Post reports that the debate venue, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, had said in an application to host the debate that it was in compliance with accessibility requirements mandated by the Americans With Disabilities Act. But it was the theater — and not the stage itself — that was accessible to those with disabilities.

Denver clerk Paul López said in a statement that he had apologized to Councilman Hinds, adding: "No one should have that experience."

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Hinds himself has since also issued a statement, thanking those who have "reached out and shared their support, disappointment, and stories of how the lack of accessibility has impacted their own lives."

It was Hinds' activism for disability rights that first brought him to politics. After sustaining a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed in a 2009 cycling accident, Hinds began advocating for more parking for those with disabilities and in 2018, a law named for him — the Chris Hinds Act — was signed in to law.

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The bill "exempts an individual with a disability from paying for parking" if that person is physically unable to do so. The same year the law passed, Hinds ran for office and was elected for city council, only to discover that the council chambers were not wheelchair accessible.

Since his election, the chambers (and restrooms at city hall) are now accessible to those with disabilities and Hinds is continuing to work to make other venues accessible, as well.