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Leathaineach abhaile / Albums 355
Creation date / 2013 / Week 30
- ADAPT (1759)
Head and shoulders picture of Wade Blank holding a glass in toast to something. He is smiling, and wearing a denim shirt and his roundish, tinted glasses. His long blonde hair, grey at the temples, falls below his shoulders. - ADAPT (1795)
Mainstream Magazine, April 1993 issue [This article continues in ADAPT 1974, but is included here in its entirety for easier reading.] Photo: Wade Blank, in sneakers, jeans and an ADAPT T-shirt over a long sleeved shirt, walks with other ADAPTers in a march down a city street. Beside him is George Roberts, behind George is Diane Coleman and behind her is Anita Cameron. Behind Wade's left side is Chris Hronis, and behind him Bill Henning carries a banner. Caption for picture reads: Wade Blank takes to the streets of San Francisco with ADAPT in October 1992 Title: Wade Blank, 1940 to 1993 Co founder of Adapt [sic] Pursued A Vision Of Justice For People With Disabilities By Laura Hershey When a college friend dared Wade Blank to march with Martin Luther King. Jr. in Selma, Alabama. Wade didn't know what to expect. However, the experience imbued him with a vision of civil rights which he would never forget. Later. working in the youth wing of a nursing home, he understood clearly that the same issues, freedom. equality, and justice, were at stake for people with severe disabilities. Throughout his life, Wade Blank strove to obtain independent living opportunities and equal access for people who had lone been denied these basic civil rights. Wade died at age 52 on Feb. l5. I993. in a swimming accident in Todos Santos, Mexico, where he was vacationing with his family. He was trying to save his 8 year old son. Lincoln. An undertow made the rescue impossible; both Wade and Lincoln drowned. Wade is survived by his wife, Mollie; his daughter. Caitlin, 6; and his adopted daughter, Heather, 22, who has a disability. All members of the Blank family were actively involved in the disability rights movements that Wade helped launch. On Feb. 2l. a memorial service drew 1,100 people to Denver's Radisson Hotel. the site of the first national protest by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, or ADAPT. the grass roots, direct action disability rights movement Wade co-founded. Wade and Lincoln were remembered as spirited, loving people committed to social change. A neighbor remembered Wade helping her fix a broken lock late one night; she recalled Lincoln leading other children in a rousing chant during a make-believe demonstration on his front porch. Wade's colleague Shel Trapp quipped. “lf Heaven is inaccessible. God is in big trouble." Wade believed in the leadership potential of even the most severely disabled activists. He pushed his followers to take charge of the movement, even when it would have been easier to dominate it himself. His ability to alternate between a directive role and a supportive role from manager to attendant. from mentor to messenger kept Wade close to his people. lt also had a tactical value: At a 1991 demonstration in Colorado. police were vainly searching for someone to hold responsible for several dozen unstoppable wheelchair wielding protesters. An officer asked Wade. “Are you in charge here?" "No." Wade answered. “I just help people go to the bathroom." Drawing on his background as a pastor of a diverse and active parish, Wade taught the value of community. He brought people together across disabilities, classes, races, ideologies and other differences. ln ADAPT. Wade created a true community. welcoming anyone committed to the movement's vision of justice. During national actions, people from across the country exchange experiences and expertise. offer each other encouragement and strength, meet friends and even start romances. Just getting to the sites of national protests requires enormous energy expenditures and a myriad of logistical details for people with disabilities, many of whom use wheelchairs. On long. grueling caravan drives across country. Wade met those needs with humor and gentleness. He drove tirelessly, navigated, did attendant care, pumped gas, made fast food runs, hauled suitcases and battery chargers, repaired wheelchairs, even brought coffee to everyone’s rooms in the mornings. When we grew exhausted and short-tempered. he buoyed us with affectionate teasing and terrible, recycled puns. He kept the troops moving, both on the road and during protests. with encouragement, bad jokes. and calm confidence. Protests will be tougher without Wade's bold creativity, irrepressible sense of humor, and reassuring presence. But the movement won’t die with Wade. He knew that. “King‘s organization’s mistake was that they hung it all around his neck,” he told an interviewer last November. “What happened to the movement? It lost its definition. King gave it its definition. If I would get knocked off tomorrow or die of a heart attack, it wouldn’t slow us down a bit. We know what we’re about, and the movement would go on with the same intensity.” In 1971, Rev. Wade Blank arrived in Denver after 10 years of preaching and organizing in the Midwest. He had graduate degrees in divinity and was an ordained Presbyterian minister. But his radical activities had gotten him in trouble with the church authorities and he had been fired from his parish. His experiences had included hosting meetings of the Kent State chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); helping Vietnam War draftees flee to Canada; and organizing African American youths to demand community water and sewage systems in conservative Twinsburg Heights, OH. Wade was burned out and not sure what he wanted to do next. He ended up at Denver’s Heritage House nursing home, where he tried to make institutional life bearable for young disabled people. He quickly realized that such confinement could never be acceptable. He was fired from his job, but stayed in touch with several of the young residents. Eventually he helped 11 of them move into their own apartments. At first, Wade himself provided all his clients’ attendant care, until finally the State of Colorado agreed to fund home health care services for people living independently. This was the beginning of the Atlantis Community (named for a forgotten continent), today a thriving independent living center in Denver. Even in their newly won freedom, the Atlantis founders discovered barriers to independence all around them. Public buses were inaccessible, so the community members became activists. One July 5, 1978, with Wade’s support and guidance, 19 disabled people blocked buses overnight in the busy intersection at Colfax and Broadway to demonstrate their demand for lifts on buses. Protests continued until, in June 1983, Denver committed itself to a fully accessible bus system. Last summer, the city laid a plaque at the Colfax-Broadway intersection, engraved with the 19 activists’ names. Characteristically downplaying his own key role in the demonstration, Wade asked that his name not appear on the plaque. Wade once described his role this way: “That’s what my job is, to assist my people in gaining the power to make change." Throughout his years of service to “my people,” Wade worked to build strength and leadership among disability activists. Emboldened by success, the Denver activists carried their demands for bus access to the entire nation. Wade‘s vigorous encouragement and organizing skills had helped to transform a group of powerless nursing home "patients" into a band of effective revolutionaries. Now that same savvy spirit found a warm reception among disabled people who were tired of segregation and exclusion. A new movement was born, with the fitting acronym ADAPT, or American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. The first national ADAPT protest took place at the Radisson in October, 1983. The nation's transit officials were meeting at the hotel when disabled protesters blocked every entrance. Similar demonstrations throughout the country, involving the blocking of hotels, office buildings, and buses, focused public attention on the fact that access to transportation was a basic civil right denied to people with disabilities. Subsequent protests refined ADAPT ’s brand of protest. With his 1960s civil rights experience, Wade taught his followers how to stage protests that were non violent but direct and confrontational. In the hands of people with severe disabilities, these tactics were astonishingly effective. ADAPT activists baffled police officers, and filled jail cells, in dozens of cities. The public, and ultimately the powers that be, had to respond. The idea of people with severe disabilities, and their allies (including Wade), risking arrest again and again some as many as 20 or 30 times proved not only impressive, but persuasive. After nearly a decade of such protests, ADAPT achieved its goals for the nation’s transit systems. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) included mandates for bus and rail services. All new bus purchases must now be lift equipped, just as Wade and his cohorts had demanded. But before it passed, the ADA became stalled in the U.S. Senate and was in danger of being defeated or weakened by amendments. Wade organized a “Wheels of Justice” campaign that included three days of marching, demonstrating, and civil disobedience. Some 150 people were arrested in the Capitol rotunda. Within a few weeks, the ADA passed the full Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush on July 26, 1990. But Wade and ADAPT spent little time celebrating. They knew there was still much to be done. With over a million people still languishing in nursing homes, ADAPT immediately launched its new campaign, demanding the shifting of federal Medicare/Medicaid funds from nursing homes to in home attendant services that would allow people disabled by birth, accident, illness, or age to live independently. The meaning of the acronym, ADAPT, did just that it adapted. The letters now stand for American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. The old battle cry, “We Will Ride!,“ was replaced with a new one: “Free Our People NOW!” In a recent interview, Wade said, “My whole commitment in life is to eradicate those nursing homes, to destroy them, bring them down. We will.” He didn’t live to see that goal realized, but he shared that vision with hundreds of others. In the process he helped create a movement that will continue the fight to “Free Our People.” Laura Hershey, freelance writer and poet, is an ADAPT activist. Inserted in box: A memorial will be held May 9, I993 at the Lincoln Memorial as part of an ADAPT action in Washington DC. Contributions may be sent to The Family of Wade Blank Memorial Fund at The First National Bank of Denver, 300 S. Federal Blvd., Denver, CO 80206. A trust fund has also been established in the name of Wade Blank. Contributions can be sent to Atlantis/ADAPT c/o Evan Kemp, 2500 Q St. N.W I21, Washington, DC 20007. - ADAPT (1769)
Front cover of AWARE News spring 1993, There is a big headline: In memory of Wade Blank, ADAPT Leader, disability rights activist. Below is a photo by Tom Olin of a group of people in wheelchairs sitting in a group talking with Wade Blank and Rev. Willie Smith, and Shel Trapp. Behind them is some fancy stone wall. George Roberts is at the back of the group, closest to the camera. - ADAPT (1849)
[image] [image caption] "The police and the officials wanted us to give up and go away. We don't give up and we don't go away. We'll always be here." Bob Varely [image 2] [image 2 caption] "My wheelchair is my legs. I get mixed reaction when I ride buses. Some people get mad at me that I hold up the bus, but some like the idea." Greg Buchanan - ADAPT (1780)
Wade is standing, hands on hips looking down at Claude Holcomb who is spelling out a message on his letter board. Behind them someone is bent over doing something. Claude is in a wheelchair and has the letter board resting on his lap and armrest, as usual. It's a newer board laminated black with white letters and numbers. Before computer communication devices. people used these boards to spell out the words they were saying. - ADAPT (1773)
the Beacon Review May 3, 1991 [This contains the text from ADAPT 1773 and 1772 for easier reading.] Title: Local activists making an impact on our daily lives Drawing of the heads of three people: Beth Gallegos, Sam Lusky and Wade Blank. Their names are printed beside their heads. Title: Striving to make a difference by Kerri S. Smlth According to a recently released national survey, most Americans are moral bankrupt, and many live in an existential waste. We're a nation of liars and cheaters, according to the survey results. Twenty five percent of the survey respondents even said they'd abandon families for $10 million. But there are still people who spend their time fighting for what they believe ls right and just. The Beacon took a quick head count this week, and came up with dozens of local activists trying to make a difference. Three are profiled below. WADE Blank Last week hundreds of demonstrators led by Denverite Wade Blank, a 50 year old minister who's made a career out of civil disobedience. invaded the Baltimore headquarters of the federal Health Care Finance Administration, waving signs, shouting demands; and honking horns. Most of the demonstrators, who belong to Denver based American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT), rode wheelchairs into battle with the federal government . Blank is founder and co director of ADAPT. Their aim: to up divert aid dollars to a national home care program, so that disabled and elderly people can remain at home instead of in a nursing home. It's a controversial, but then Blank ls no stranger controversy. He marched with civil rights leader Martin Luther King, demonstrated against the Vietnam War and saw the birth of the feminist movement at Kent State before moving to Colorado in 1971. "I call myself a person who teaches empowerment," Blank explained. "As an able boded‘ man, l set the pace and target issues, and then hand the power over to others." The process apparently works. Before July of 1978, Denver, like most cities, lacked wheelchair accessible public transit. ADAPT activists commandeered two buses and shut down the Colfax Broadway intersection long enough to get the job done. "We slept in the streets for two nights while supporters sent over sandwiches," Blank recalled. Today, wheelchair accessible public transit is the law of the land, and Japan and other countries are following the American example. Blank's metamorphosis from minister to leader of the disabled people's civil rights movement occurred when he worked at a Lakewood nursing home ln the early 70s.‘ "I moved here to lick my wounds after the shootings at Kent State," Blank said, [missing text] ...ing my Volkswagen behind a U Haul. My family thought I'd gone berserk, because, I had, a master's degree in theology and was working as a nursing home orderly." He didn't like what he saw there. ‘I tried to make life bearable by reforming the system, but by 1974 I gave up and tried moving residents into ' apartments,” Blank said. A Legal Aid lawyer helped Blank and disabled residents sue the facility, along with the federal and state governments, Thirteen years later, in 1987, the disabled plaintiffs won a class action suit and collected $26 million. While the lawsuit dragged on, Blank founded “The Atlantis Community,” a home health care company currently serving around l50 disabled and elderly Coloradans; The company also runs a home health aide certification “training program. ADAPT activists also influenced the l988 national nursing home reform bill (Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) that protects residents‘ rights, among other things. And last summer President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, another ADAPT driven initiative. The bill requires all restaurants to be wheelchair accessible by January 1992. In the meantime, Blank said he and other ADAPT activists will “keep hitting the streets until the government changes national policies towards disabled and elderly people. - ADAPT (1763)
This article continues from ADAPT 1764 and is included there in its entirety for easier reading. Photo by Tom Olin: Wade Blank and Mike Auberger sitting on either side of the plaque honoring the Gang of 19. Caption reads: Co-Directors Wade Blank and Mike Auberger reflect on the past decade of organizing and activism. - ADAPT (1822)
[This page continues the article from Image 1824. Full text is available on 1824 for easier reading.] - ADAPT (1820)
[This page continues the article from Image 1824. Full text is available on 1824 for easier reading.] - ADAPT (1786)
This is a continuation of the article in 1789 and the content has been included there for easier reading. - ADAPT (1818)
[This page continues the article from Image 1824. Full text is available on 1824 for easier reading.] - ADAPT (1854)
[Headline] Hike on hold [Subheading] PUC stalls Trailways bid for higher fares; hearings set By MARK THOMAS Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer [Image] [Image caption] Beverly Furnice of Denver was one of several people and groups at a PUC hearing to protest a proposed rate increase hike by the Trailways Bus Co. ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS STAFF PHOTO BY JAY KOELZER 12/27/84 The Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday suspended a rate increase by Trailways Bus Co. that would have raised fares up to 321 percent starting Jan. 7, officials said. Dale Cunningham, a PUC spokesman, said the PUC has received more than 2,500 letters and petition signatures from Trailways customers opposing the increases. Cunningham said the commission will hold public state-wide hearings on the proposed increases. He said no dates have been set. Trailways filed for the increases Oct. 25, but the date they would've gone into effect was delayed to Jan. 7 because the company failed to post proper notices at its bus terminals, Cunningham said. Unless the PUC rules on the fare increases by Feb. 20 120 days after the Oct. 25 filing date — Trailways can ask the Interstate Commerce Commission to approve them, Cunningham said. Under the rate hikes asked by Trailways, fares on all the company's routes in the state would rise an average of 140 percent. For example, the Colorado -Springs-to-Denver fare would jump from $4.80 to $11, while the Denver-to-Pueblo fare would go from $7.80 to $20. The cost for the Denver-to-Glenwood Springs route would be hiked from $11.85 to $31. And a passenger would pay $40 for a trip from Denver to Grand Junction instead of the current $17.90. The largest increase would be levied for trips of less than 20 miles, which would go up from 98 cents to $4. - ADAPT (1776)
This is the cover of the April 1993 issue of Mainstream Magazine with an almost full page picture of Wade Blank in an ADAPT cap with his hair blowing behind him, his trademark round tinted glasses. He's wearing an ADAPT shirt with a square pattern of Free Our People around the Free Our People logo. Across the upper left corner of the picture is a diagonal banner that reads Wade Blank 1940 to 1993. - ADAPT (1850)
The Handicapped Coloradan vol.7, No 6 Boulder, Colorado January 1985 [comic] [no comic caption] [Headline] $300 Versus $10 Trip Sparks PUC Hearing Like a lot of other young adults living away from home, Ernie Butts wanted to go home to spend the Christmas holidays with his parents. But Butts is severely handicapped and uses an electric wheelchair for mobility. He can't climb the stairs onto a Continental Trailways bus, and neither Trailways nor its primary competitor Greyhound are willing to build wheelchair lifts in their buses. So Butts approached Denver Mobility, a non-profit paratransit agency that transports people in wheelchair vans, who said they could take him from Denver to Colorado Springs--for $300 a round trip. The same trip on Continental Trailways costs an able-bodied rider less than $10. A local wheelchair activist group the AmericanDisabled for Public Transit (ADAPT), has asked the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to hold a hearing on the matter. ADAPT wants the PUC "to take a moral stand that services provided for the public serve all the citizens with the price of a fare without discrimination." ADAPT estimates that there are 20,000 wheelchair users in the Denver area (90 percent of whom are in the low income category) who are prohibited from traveling by bus. ADAPT requested that the PUC "deny the bus companies' request for rate hikes until they have wheelchair accessible buses that can serve everyone." Most of the major bus manufacturers have refused to build lifts into such over the road coaches. - ADAPT (1853)
8A The Denver Post/Thursday. Dec. 27. 1984 REGION [Image] [Image caption] Beverly Furnice displays sign during PUC hearing to bring attention to the difficulties that riding Trailways buses pose for the disabled. The Denver Post / Brian Brainerd [Headline] PUC suspends proposed bus fare increases By Kit Miniclier Denver Post Stan Writer Protests from more than 1,800 people have prompted the Colo-rado Public Utilities Commission to suspend proposed bus fare hikes of 140 percent to 300 percent. The commission now plans to hold public hearings on the fare hike plans. The fare increases, sought by the parent Trailways Bus Co. and its Colorado subsidiaries, American Buslines Inc., Denver-Colorado Springs-Pueblo Motor Way Inc., Trailways Bus System Inc. and Trailways Inc. were scheduled to become effective Jan. 7. Some sample one-way fare in-creases in the proposal include: from $17.95 to $40 for travel be-tween Grand Junction and Den-ver; from $8.55 to $20 between Sterling and Denver; from $7.80 to $20 between Pueblo and Denver; from $4.80 to $13 between Denver and Colorado Springs; from $8.30 to $20 between Lamar and Pueblo. The round-trip fare between Denver and Alamosa would jump from $31.10 to $70. "I don't think people on the Western Slope are fully aware of the impact of the proposed rate hikes:" said Eugene Eckhardt, su-pervising rate analyst. As of last Friday, Eckhardt told the -commission Wednesday, he had received 890 protests from Pueblo, 795 from Alamosa, and 178 from La Junta. He told the three-member commission that the average rate hike requested is 140 percent. However, the fare for a trip of less than 13 miles, some of which now go for 95 cents or a dollar, would jump to a flat $4, representing an increase of more than 300 percent, Eckhardt said. Harry Galligan, the commission's executive secretary, said a formal order suspending the rate increase and setting dates for public hearings will be prepared later this week. The commission acted after nine wheelchair-bound citizens rolled into the hearing room and distributed fliers asking the PUC to "deny the bus companies' request for rate hikes until they have wheelchair-accessible buses that can serve everyone."