Title:
Pushing Forward with Eric Harris: From the Court to Capitol
Subtitle:
The Game Plan: Eric Harris on Sports, Advocacy, and Policy
Transcript:
Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.
Let’s go.
Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia. And I’m gonna start with a question. Have you ever wondered who is turning disability policy from talk into action? We’ve got the guest for you today. He has moved his way from national titles on the basketball court to policy wins at the Capitol.
Eric Harris keeps pushing the ball forward in so many ways. He was born in Berkeley, he was raised in Sacramento. He’s turned early medical hurdles into momentum finding his lane in wheelchair basketball. I can’t wait to talk about the sports part of you because I love sports, too. He’s won national championships.
He attended University of Arizona on a scholarship, and then went on to law school, I believe, at the University of Oregon. Wow. He has founded the Sacramento Rolling Kings. He just launched a podcast called The Game Plan. Can’t wait to hear about it. And he, off of the court, is just making so many impressive and important moves working with representatives in California, was working with the Democratic National Committee. Worked with several organizations before joining the Disability Rights California, (DRC). I’m just gonna let you dive into all of this because the lists go on and on. Eric, congratulations for having such an impressive life and career.
Welcome to the show.
Eric Harris: Thank you so much, Alycia. It’s great to be on. And it’s funny because you just live life and you do things, and opportunities come, and you try to do the best you can. So it’s been a wonderful journey so far.
Alycia Anderson: You feel like that kind of person now. You have so many accomplishments that we were talking about this before we started. When I was going through your bio and researching you, it was like one after the next. I’m gonna assume something, and you can tell me if I’m wrong, or right, or somewhere in between.
But you seem like the kind of person, like I’m competitive with myself. And you achieve something, you’re like, “Okay, what’s next? What’s next?” And then you accumulate this list, it’s, ” Oh, wow.”
Eric Harris: I think that’s exactly right. I come from a competitive family. A lot of athletes, a lot of competitive folks involved in their scholastic journey, education, and the like. And it’s funny, because sports was a huge part of that competitiveness for a really long time. And then it shifted to other things, wanting to be competitive in school, wanting to be competitive within advocacy and trying to do right for others. And it just continues to go.
Alycia Anderson: I think that’s a good lesson for our community that’s listening to this, is that drive. You could have seasons of life that drive you to go further in that moment. So I think that’s a really powerful thing to share. Let’s look back, let’s start with sports.
Little, young, Eric, growing up with a disability. Can you talk about how your life was growing up as a little boy with a disability, and how sports and the intersection of your identity, and all the things have driven you to where you are today? How are they your building blocks?
Eric Harris: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s interesting. Growing up, I was always interested in sports. I loved all types of sports and I grew up in a very supportive family. Both of my parents, very supportive of me, and trying, and doing anything that I wanted to do. I was in an environment where I was wearing leg braces as a kid. But every time I would go in to get my braces or get measured for braces, I would always push the folks who were helping me with my braces. And I would say, “I’m really trying to play sports. I really want to be active. I want to play basketball. I wanna play baseball. I want to be active.” And I would be coming in, it seemed like every other week, with a cracked brace. That was back in the day, when the braces were made largely of plastic, with a little bit of metal. I would break a brace here and crack a brace here. They would ask me, “Do you need a backup brace?” So even very early on, this is the space I wanted to be in. This is where all my friends were. This is what I got energy from. So growing up in Sacramento, that was where I got my start. It was in sports, and in school, and wanting to be with all the other kids, eventually leading to adaptive sports. But early on, it was mostly just able-bodied sports with everybody else, with all my other friends.
Alycia Anderson: Marty’s got that same story. You know my husband Marty. You knew him before you knew me, and he grew up with braces. They would wrap his brace in soccer with puffy plastic,
Eric Harris: Right.
Alycia Anderson: so he wouldn’t hurt the other kids with it. Did you have those experiences?
Eric Harris: It was always an adventure. I would just push them. I would be like, “So can we add a little bit more here and a little bit more there?” Definitely, I had to adjust over time with making sure that my braces could support me, and that they wouldn’t be in a space where they could injure anybody else.
So, yeah, that was definitely part of the process. Sacramento, of course, has Shriners Hospital for kids, and that’s a big hospital that I would go to often to get surgeries and to have braces done and equipment. I still try to stay as connected as I can with Shriners, but that’s been a big part of the journey.
Alycia Anderson: Can you explain, whatever you’re comfortable with, what your disability is for our listeners that might not be watching us on YouTube?
Eric Harris: Absolutely. So, I was born with congenital hip dislocation. So, essentially, I was born with a dislocated hip. From that, I had other disabilities. My dislocated hip had an impact on my whole left leg, and then my right foot and right ankle. So growing up, I still walked, ran with the supportive braces. And then even now, I can still walk and run, but I use a wheelchair for the last 15 years of my life, 20 years almost. It’s been so much easier for me to get around. And that is what led to wheelchair sports and everything else. But that’s the experience that I’ve had.
Alycia Anderson: Okay. I love it. You mentioned wheelchair sports, so let’s fast forward a little bit, because you’ve got quite a resume of accomplishments. Why basketball? How did that happen? And talk about how you excelled in it? I believe it took you into university, correct?
Eric Harris: Correct, correct. So, for me it was interesting because one of the sports that I really enjoyed playing as a kid, still enjoy it to a certain level, is golf. And I tried out for my high school golf team, and I didn’t make it. It was frustrating. I was devastated, and I was just like, “This was the thing I really wanted to do.” When I didn’t make it, my dad actually looked up adaptive sports in Northern California. And he found BORP, Bay Area Outreach Recreation Program out of Berkeley. At first, I was like, “That’s not really what I want to do, Dad. I’ve never used a wheelchair before. That’s not really for me. Maybe it’s for other kids.” And he said, “Let’s just go check it out. Let’s go look at it and meet some of the folks who are involved, and see what you think.” So I went, checked it out, and I fell in love. I saw players that came from similar communities, environments, had the same competitiveness that I had. So that’s really where I got started. And I was really lucky because the team that I was on was one of the top teams in the country, and we were able to travel all over the place and do some amazing things together. And then eventually getting into college playing wheelchair basketball at the University of Arizona.
So, all of that just opened up my whole experience with travel, competitiveness, meeting world class, wheelchair basketball, and other adaptive athletes. Folks who I stay close with to this day, including many Paralympians, that are still competing at the highest levels.
Alycia Anderson: So cool. Tennis was that for me. And when I went to college, there was no such thing as going to college and playing. So it’s been really fun to see the progression and the opportunity that’s opened up from a collegiate standpoint, and just from a competitive standpoint. But more than anything, that social interaction, and going, and playing hard with your community that’s at a similar level, it feels good. It’s awesome. Yeah. That’s so cool.
You were traveling around the world or?
Eric Harris: Yeah. So I was able to play, when I was young, on a under-20 Junior USA team to travel to Australia and play there. And then I tried out for other teams, under-23 USA teams. And it was funny because I joke about it with some of the guys who played on, and still play for Team USA on the USA men’s wheelchair basketball team.
That was the fork in the road for me. The under-23 USA tryout where I didn’t make it. And I had to make the decision.
I can either stay at this and really try to compete, and try to work out, and be the best player that I can be, or I can make the choice to go towards law school and really focus on my education and my career. And that’s what I ultimately decided to do. It was the right decision for me just because the opportunities that resulted into have been wonderful, but still staying close and being in touch with folks who made the decision to stay competitive. I really lift up them, and appreciate them as well.
Alycia Anderson: Me too. Okay, you just mentioned law school and your career. So let’s talk about where you are today, and I wanna look back a little bit. So today, you are Associate Executive Director of External Affairs at DRC, a Governor Newsom Appointee to the State Independent Living Council, and a board member at Resource of Independent Living. Holy moly. Wow. You are one of the big names in California, maybe president, are you gonna run for president? We’re looking for one.
Eric Harris: Oh my goodness. It’s been a journey. And for me, being an advocate is something that I feel like I was meant to do, even early on when I made the decision to go to law school. Some people go to law school for all different types of reasons. Sometimes it’s career stability, sometimes it’s a lifelong journey, love of the law, making money. It could be a whole bunch of different things. And not to say that those aren’t all really important. And not to say that some of those aren’t still important to me to this day. But for me, I knew that I always wanted to be an advocate.
I always wanted to be a voice for communities, disabled folks, black folks, underrepresented communities. And so that’s the kind of space that I feel most comfortable in. And I think it was largely, just one of those journeys that was meant to happen that way.
Alycia Anderson: So let’s talk about the journey, because you are one of the few disabled leaders in high-level policy, executive roles. You’re around the boardroom tables using your voice, helping decisions being made. How do you get there?
Eric Harris: Whew. That’s a good question. I think the way you get there, at least for me, for my journey. And what I always try to tell folks is to never turn down an opportunity. It’s hard because I know we’re all busy, and I know that it’s hard to choose which one’s right and which one’s wrong.
And for me, a lot of the spaces that I was in early on, that helped me get to this space. Unpaid, volunteer, campaigns, helping folks, helping other people run for office. It gave me an opportunity to learn from people who had been there. It gave me an opportunity to learn from decision makers. And always take from it, not always take from them what they were doing, but often how they operated, how they led, how they made sure that everybody on their team felt important, and felt that their voice was important. I feel like that was a really important piece for me. And I mentioned not turning down opportunities. Sometimes you hear, “Oh man, it’s a volunteer opportunity, or it’s an unpaid opportunity.” And you wanna say, “I don’t really have time for that. I gotta figure out a way to make more money, or I gotta figure out a way to be seen. I want to be front and center.” And for some, that is the right journey. I think for me, and if you want to be an advocate and want to be a public servant, doing some of these things behind the scenes is an important way to do it. For many of us, the example is being a staffer. Not everybody wants to be a staffer. That’s part of the journey in policy and politics, that you get told what to do by an elected official all the time.
That’s not fun, right? But, I think that when you’ve experienced being a staffer, you know all levels, so you know what the member or elected official is like, and what their perspective might be. You also know maybe what an intern or somebody who’s a volunteer, what their journey can be. And it’s a good staffer’s role to make sure that they carry with them the voices of both the member and the voices of the intern. So I think that’s been a really helpful piece for me. And it’s funny because in a lot of the interviews and conversations that I’ve had, that, combined with the sports piece, is what has separated me from maybe other similar folks at the board meetings, or in policy meetings. I can bring in the experience that I had as an athlete, and still talk about what it’s like, both as a policy person and an athlete, and combine the two.
Alycia Anderson: And so what’s the message there? What’s the tie? What’s the lesson?
Eric Harris: I think the message for me is the sports piece, the competitiveness, the teamwork, the overcoming obstacles, the never quitting until the clocks hit zero. That being a big part of it, as well as everybody has a role to play. The cool thing about team sports is, and especially in disability sports, adaptive sports, not everybody can do every single thing.
You’re not gonna ask, for example, of course, a single amputee, who’s six-foot-three and huge, to do the exact same thing as somebody who has a high-level spinal cord injury on a basketball court. Those are two different disabilities. They’re two different positions on a court. So you’re gonna ask them to play different roles, to do different things, both trying to accomplish the same goal. And I think that carried over very easy for me with my work that not everybody has to do the exact same thing, but certain things need to get done and we really need a person, whoever that’s gonna be, to do that really well. And in policy, you need somebody who can be a voice and outward-facing person on an issue. You need somebody who can do research.
You need somebody who has the lived experience, who can explain why an issue is really important to them. And you need somebody who can pull it all together in a communication strategy that makes sense to the average person. So, all of those pieces, I think, have been really helpful and beneficial to the work that I’ve done.
Alycia Anderson: I feel like I’ve got a question here, was gonna ask you about authentic collaboration from the political realm into the community space. And I think that just answered the entire thing. It is a collaboration, and then coming together to achieve the goal. That was really well said.
Eric Harris: Yeah. And it’s interesting. I have a physical disability.We’re a cross-disability organization, so I can’t say, “Oh, I have a physical disability, so I can’t advocate for somebody with a mental health disability,” for example. Or somebody who’s deaf, or somebody who has an intellectual or developmental disability. I have to put myself in a position where I build relationships with all different types of folks, with all different types of disabilities, and that helps me be a better policy advocate across the board.
Alycia Anderson: You know what? I love that. This is gonna really minimize this. But even this podcast for me, I’ve become such a better advocate by immersing myself in every other kind of disability besides mine.
Eric Harris: Yeah.
Alycia Anderson: And it’s created such a, selfishly, a comfortable space now for me to be able to represent that, and not feel like I don’t know what I don’t know. Awesome. That’s really amazing. But the podcast is not at all a good comparison.
Eric Harris: I wanna push back on that a little bit. I’ve checked out your podcast. I feel like we need storytelling. A storytelling piece is as important as any other part of what I do, of what advocates do throughout the country and around the world. And what you do, interviewing, talking to people about their experiences, what their journey has been like. It’s so crucial because we need the lay person, we need the average person out there who doesn’t think that they have any connection to disability to realize, “Oh my gosh, listening to this one podcast, I’ve realized that I work with people with disabilities every day, or I have a disabled person as my neighbor that I need to be conscious of.” So it is important, and I’m glad to have this opportunity. I’m glad that you’re in the space that you’re in because more and more people need to learn about disability.
Alycia Anderson: Yeah, and I think storytelling is the number one gateway in. It’s where you find emotional attachment and you understand things that might seem intimidating, and all of that. And so I agree with you. I think that’s also a nice lesson for other people. No matter if you’re in the boardroom, or around an executive table, or you’re just chitchatting with someone, we’re all humans that wanna learn something that we don’t know.
And when you’re storytelling, it’s possible in any environment, really. So from your seat, at Disability Rights California,
Eric Harris: Yeah.
Alycia Anderson: What are some of the most pressing disability rights issues in California right now?
Eric Harris: Whew. Okay.
Alycia Anderson: That’s a big question.
Eric Harris: That’s a big question. I’ll give you a couple.
Alycia Anderson: Okay.
Eric Harris: I won’t get too deep into them. Number one, the current homelessness crisis in California. And I say it’s number one because most people can visualize the homelessness in cities throughout the state and really throughout the country, but definitely throughout the state. And I think that we need to pull all the pieces and think about it holistically, because somebody, of course, doesn’t just become unhoused. The cost of living in California is out of control. The employment situation, for many, is very challenging, especially if you have a disability. The circumstances around mental health and the services that are needed are dire, and at a point where we all recognize that the state and cities need to be doing better. So I say that as one huge issue that has a lot of smaller parts around it. So that’s one. The second, I think, is healthcare for all disabled folks. And it’s interesting because it’s both a national issue, as you’ve seen with Medicaid and the decisions that have been made to cut Medicaid, but it’s also a statewide issue. You have Medi-Cal in California. You have in-home support services, long-term support services. All of these are really important pieces.
And again, connected to employment, which again, connects to some of these other issues. So I’d say healthcare is another huge one. And the last one, education broadly, not just special education, but education of disabled students. I know that we’ve all, as disabled folks, have had different experiences as young folks being educated either in traditional circumstances, special education. Sometimes the teachers knew how to work with us. Sometimes they didn’t. You have circumstances where deaf students learn in different environments than other students. So I think education and what we’re doing relating to educating disabled students is really crucial. And again, a way that it all ties back together. When disabled students aren’t educated properly, or when a school or teachers don’t really address educating disabled students, they’ll often kick them outta class. They’ll suspend them. They’ll say, “This student is acting out. I can’t deal with this today.” And of course, that leads to suspensions or expulsions from school, and that opens up a whole can of worms, potentially, with students not being able to graduate on time, and what that potentially leads to. So, I know that those are three huge issues, but those are the issues that I am constantly thinking about. I know plenty of folks at Disability Rights California, and on our teams, are constantly thinking about as well.
Alycia Anderson: It’s a lot. I think it starts with education, probably, on all of them. I think there’s a big gap there. And from the education standpoint, I think you mentioned this, but I do think the educators are not educated. They have to take a class, or two, on disability, and it makes it very difficult for them to know, or have an idea of how to properly work with all types of kids, with all types of abilities, and you have a major breakdown.
Even just as simple as the little girl, leave her sitting there to watch, ’cause I think she’s gonna get hurt or there’s some bias that’s placed on her that’s probably an assumption. And so, the education is huge.
Eric Harris: That’s right. And we’ve all been there. We’ve had experiences where a teacher just knocked it out of the park. They just got it. And you felt, “Man, I’m excited to go to this class.” And you’ve been there where it’s, “Oh gosh. How are they gonna handle this circumstance? Hopefully they don’t do or say the wrong thing, or put me in a awkward position.” And now, of course, school is long in our rearview mirror, at least for us. But we have loved ones, kids, others in the movement who are coming through. Kids who we care about.
It’s important that they have good experiences in school as well, of course.
Alycia Anderson: I have an issue that I wanna bring up to see if you have any thoughts on it. I’m a small business owner.
Eric Harris: Yeah.
Alycia Anderson: And from a disabled-owned standpoint, I’ve been going through all my certifications and getting all that done. And I have found that there’s no box to actually check off for disabled-owned business, unless you’re a veteran.
Is that some of the work that you do and the advocacy? Is there things like that you’re bringing to the table? There’s gaps, where there’s programs out there, where there’s resources. But when you actually start to go through something like, in this case, a small business certified. I could check women-owned, I could check minority-owned, but there is no disabled-owned.
What about things like that where you start to see gaps as an advocate?
Eric Harris: Yeah.
Alycia Anderson: What’s the solution? Where do you go? What do you do?
Eric Harris: That’s a fantastic question, and I think is a space that Disability Rights California and other similar organizations are involved in. And I’d say there are two initial thoughts. Yes, we definitely need something like that. Because I feel as a disabled person, if I know that there’s a business that is owned by other disabled folks, I’m not only gonna want to go there, but I’m gonna wanna show this is an example that this can be done, et cetera. And that we can support each other. So that, I think, is first of all, a wonderful part of this. I also think that when it comes to these types of ideas, and I know it gets said all the time when it comes to government and politics, but starting local. If Sacramento could start that, or the county of Sacramento could start it and show that it really builds, not only a sense of awareness, but a sense of pride. That, “Oh, Alycia’s doing this and she has a small business. I also have a small business. I wanna lift that up too.” And it hopefully erases some of the stigma around disability that we’ve all experienced that is throughout our society as well. So, I think that is possibly a first step.
And then bringing it forward as a state proposal, or otherwise, I think, would make a lot of sense. And I don’t think it would be overly burdensome on the city, county, or state to think about it and make that happen.
Alycia Anderson: I sit on the Insurance Diversity Task Force for California representing disabled on business enterprise. So I’m starting to find gaps. What do I do with this? So anyways, that’s a problem I’m seeing. We could talk offline. So, if you were to reimagine one system: education, employment, healthcare, housing. You just mentioned them all.
Forward thinking for our interview. To be truly disabled, inclusive, what do you think we need to do? How do we do better? Where do we start? For the advocates that are out there that wanna start using their voices, how do we start thinking out of the box from an innovative, collaborative standpoint?
Eric Harris: So I think that there are a couple of things. One, I think elected officials should know who we are. There’s no reason. And it doesn’t have to be the president. It doesn’t have to be the highest level in the country. It could be your local city council member, who are elected locally in your community. They should at least know who you are. They should know about the issues that you experience. And I think when elected officials know their constituents and know that disabled people are their constituents, they’ll think a little bit differently before making a vote or before making a decision. And it gives the public an opportunity to hold the elected official accountable, so they can’t say, “Oh, I didn’t realize that not having this meeting accessible is going to impact folks. So I think that’s a really big piece. I also think if the elected official piece makes people a little anxious or makes people a little nervous, there are community-focused groups that are pushing for change in all of these spaces. As a quick example, there are deaf organizations in Northern California, like Northern California Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing that we can all learn more from. We can find out what their priorities are, what issues they care about, and try to be as supportive about what they have going on as we can. And then tell their stories and have them tell their stories, really. Give them an opportunity to come on to newscasts, or write op-eds, or be interviewed for podcast interviews. Because I think that the more our stories are told, as we talked about earlier, the more likely it is that people will process and understand differently the circumstances that we’re all in. Because, homelessness, as an issue that we talked about earlier, we see it on the street, we see it out. And a lot of people might think, “Why is that person out there? Don’t they want to be housed somewhere? Don’t they wanna be in a shelter somewhere?” And I think it’s important for us to actually ask the people who are impacted. Actually ask folks who are unhoused and hear directly from them, “Oh, this is why I choose to be in the space that I’m in. Or this is what has frustrated me about shelters or any number of different things.” And I think that is an important dialogue that we need to continue to have.
Alycia Anderson: The same dialogue that we want as disabled people, for somebody to ask us what we want, and what we need, what we like, and what we’re about. Okay. Did we miss anything?
Eric Harris: I don’t think so. I think we covered a good amount. I just always want to encourage disabled folks, non-disabled folks, to make sure we’re always thinking about who isn’t at the table, who isn’t in the room that needs to be here. Because when we do that, we bring in folks, who it’s necessary to have their perspective, and we get the best outcomes when we get the right folks at the table. The people who aren’t always invited, but need to be. I really think that’s an important part of all the work that we do.
Alycia Anderson: Eric, that was wonderful. That was beautifully said. And before we sign off, first of all, I just wanna thank you so much for all of the work that you’re doing for our community, and showing us your story and what’s possible in our own paths, to be honest with you. You’re very, for lack of better words, motivating, inspiring, and you really do share with our community and beyond that literally anything is possible. So thank you for all the work that you’re doing in our communities, and in advocacy, and in policy, and just in being a cool person, to be honest with you.
As we wrap up, I like to ask a pushing forward moment, which we just had one. But, do you have a little mantra or a little quote, something you live by that you could gift away to our community as we sign off?
Eric Harris: I think that what I would say, it’s not really a quote, but it’s just making sure that the people who are most impacted are making decisions about their lives. Whether it’s nothing about us, without us, whether it’s any of the phrases or advocacy terms folks use. That’s what I would say is really crucial, and I think when we get away from that, we see the results turn out to not be good for communities. I think all disabled people, and all people, just want opportunities to make decisions. Their own decisions for their own lives, live where they wanna live, work where they wanna work, love who they wanna love, and live their lives to the best of their abilities. And for some, that means they would’ve liked to have some support. They’d like to have accommodations, but they still wanna make decisions. So I’d say that, especially, not just for disabled folks, but really for everybody.
Alycia Anderson: Totally. I agree. Thank you so much for coming on our show. What a cool episode. I’m so excited for this to come out. I’m so happy we’re friends, and I just really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Eric Harris: Absolutely. Thank you.
Alycia Anderson: Okay. And thanks to our community, we did it again. This was a good one.
This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Eric, and that is literally how we both roll on this podcast. We will see you next time.