Arizona legislator Jennifer Longdon delivers personal story, gun reform plea in Washington

Jen Longdon delivers speech to congress
State Rep. Jennifer Longdon, D-Phoenix, didn’t need to tell congressional lawmakers Thursday about the harm firearms can do: She showed them, when she rolled her wheelchair into a House hearing on the costs of gun violence.

State Rep. Jennifer Longdon, D-Phoenix, was one of eight legislators, advocates and medical professionals who shared sobering stories about the costs of gun violence at a congressional hearing last week in an effort to urge members of the House Ways and Means committee to take legislative action on gun control.

Longdon is paralyzed from the chest down, and her ex-fiancé lives with brain trauma and blindness, after they were struck by five stray bullets as bystanders during a 2004 shooting.

Click here to continue reading Megan U. Boyanton’s story on Cronkite News / Arizona PBS about Longdon’s participation in the hearing, which took place as Democrats press for action on gun-control bills in the wake of mass shootings that took dozens of lives in August.

Arizona legislator Jennifer Longdon has to roll home following late-night budget talks

After a recent legislative session ended at 2 a.m., Rep. Jennifer Longdon, D-Phoenix, a wheelchair user and NCDJ board member, had no choice but to roll 1.5 miles home from the Capitol. Longdon’s difficulty getting home illustrates the lack of accessible public transit options in Phoenix. How can people who rely on public transportation be productive or work late, if needed, in a city that doesn’t have a 24-hour bus system?

Several colleagues and a police officer accompanied Longdon on her roll home, but, as Longdon pointed out, many people with disabilities wouldn’t be able to access the kind of help that she [as an elected state representative] could.

Click here to read more about this news story in the Arizona Republic.


Above: Rep. Jennifer Longdon thanks Phoenix police and tells her colleagues about her travails getting home on May 24, 2019. (Video: Robbie Sherwood / azcentral.com)