In various roles including editor, publisher, and president of Mainstream Magazine of the Able-Disabled Cynthia Jones was one of a small number of journalists with disabilities to use the media as a tool to promote opportunities for others with disabilities during the 1980s and 1990s. During its seventeen-year publication, she developed Mainstream from a four-page newsletter to a four-color glossy magazine, using it as a forum to dispel myths about disability and to showcase current issues that were important to the disability rights and independent living movement. Not only was Ms. Jones a practicing journalist, she was also a community activist. She worked with consumer groups around the country on advocacy and empowerment issues and also acted as advisor on disability issues to numerous private, government, and community groups. She was a member of a select group of disability media representatives to discuss disability rights issues with former President George Bush, Sr., on the eve of the passage of the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. From her vantage point as a journalist, Ms. Jones observed the disability movement nationally during its formative years, chronicling and documenting many of the most important events that took place in California and nationwide. William "Bill" Stothers was interviewed for the documentation project, Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement, for several reasons. First, he was a student on the Berkeley campus in the late 1960s, a wheelchair user, aware of the Cowell Residence program, but not a participant. His route to awareness of independent living is important for comparative purposes.