Scot Danforth, author of An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights (University of California Press), joins Dr. Victor Pineda to go beyond the history most people know — the Rolling Quads at UC Berkeley, the founding of the first Center for Independent Living — and get at who Ed Roberts really was.

Scot and Victor trace Roberts’s journey from polio survivor to movement architect: how a “no” from UC Berkeley and outright discrimination forged a strategist who built peer-led independent living services from scratch, how the philosophy of self-determination through interdependence took shape, and how local activists across the country — not just Roberts — carried the movement into the 504 Sit-Ins and the ADA. The conversation also covers a side of Roberts rarely discussed: his insistence on being seen as a full person, including his sexuality, and why that mattered as much as any policy win.

This episode is a reminder that a movement isn’t the story of one man, but of the people who came together to meet the moment — and a call to action for the leaders doing that work today.