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Úvodní stránka / Alba 26
Datum zveřejnění / 2018 / Listopad / 8
ADAPT (642)
Tim Cook, ADAPT's attorney, stands, hands on hips, in the middle of a very large group of ADAPT protesters. He is wearing a red tie and has his jacket slung on one arm with his briefcase.
ADAPT (643)
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those the suppress." Fredrick Douglas, 1849
ADAPT (645)
Two lines of cars fill a street. Some drivers are in their cars, others stand beside them. A crowd of people stands in front of the cars, An ADAPT flag is in the middle and just visible among some are wheelchairs blocking the road. On the other side of the road lush green lawn and trees form a backdrop.
ADAPT (646)
[Headline] Radical disabled activists resist 'warehousing' By MARY JOHNSON Special to the Guardian Baltimore-- The feisty disabled-rights activists of ADAPT have a new target. Having declared victory in the battle over access to public transit, they are applying their well-honed direct-action strategy to changing the U.S. policy of warehousing disabled people in nursing homes. The enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990 prompted the group to move on from their 8-year bus battle since the new law requires wheelchair lilts on all new buses. (The shift of targets has required a name change: formerly called American Disabled for Action on Public Transit, the group now makes its acronym stand for American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.) Many question the Bush administration's commitment to disability rights under the disability rights act as long as disabled people are forced to live in nursing homes against their will. Despite the publicity last year surrounding Larry McAfee. the severely disabled Georgia man who sought court permission to end his life rather than live in a nursing home. the Bush administration has refused to examine the government policy of funding nursing-home stays over in-home assistance. In a news conference last May, the president would only say, "We ought to take a look at changing it." [Subheading] DIRECT-ACTION STRATEGY' "I wouldn't hold my breath." says Allan Bergman, United Cerebral Palsy's national deputy director for governmental activities. Even before the passage of the act, Bergman was interested in turning up the heat on the nursing home issue with what he called "a different kind of strategy." Nearly 300 severely disabled activists descended on this city during the last week-end in April to do just that. Many of them were among the group that shut down the Capitol Rotunda in March 1990 calling for passage of the disability rights law. On April 29 and 30, ADAPT surrounded the health care administration and Social Security offices here, at one point snarling rush-hour traffic at a nearby intersection for over an hour, and at another blocking an employee parking lot. forcing police to cut a fence and bulldoze a makeshift exit so workers could leave. There were no arrests, however. ADAPT turned its attention on May I to the Department of Health and Human Services offices in Washington, disrupting a press conference for Health Care Financing Administration head Gail Wilensky. Another culprit. as ADAPT sees it, is the nursing home industry's trade group, the American Health Care Association. ADAPT says the association has been able to convince the administration that Medicaid funds earmarked for the disabled should go to nursing homes instead of paying for vastly less expensive and more dignified in-home services. ADAPT organizer Mike Auberger believes it will take 3 to 4 years to organize enough people around the issue to see a change, but points out that the bus battle took 8 years. "This issue affects almost everyone who's disabled," he says, unlike the transit issue, which wasn't relevant to people who could afford their own transportation. "This cuts across all levels. Everybody can relate to needing to get up and get dressed." "The entire force of the disability rights community must he brought to bear on an effort to get a national attendant services program," says Charles Cam director of an independent living center in Massachusetts. Carr worries that ADAPT's agenda is too narrow and focuses only on people in wheelchairs: he believes things like interpreters for deaf people and readers for blind people should he pan of the definition of "attendant services." Still, what drives many in working on this issue is avoiding nursing homes. "Nobody wants to go into a nursing home. That should tell us something." says ADAPT's Wade Blank. "That's a real unity-builder." Medicaid's requirement that disability funds he used in institutions isn't written into the law. says attorney and ADAPT organizer Diane Coleman. Rather. she says, it's due to the American Health Care Association's lobbying efforts that the vast hulk of Medicaid and Medicare money is allotted to nursing homes. Last year people in this country shelled out over $46 billion for nursing home stays—half of that coming from either Medicare or Medicaid. The Long Term Care Campaign and other groups put the Lost or an average nursing home stay at between $30.000 and $60,000 a year. Yet disability groups. including the World Institute on Disability, say a disabled person living in their own home and paving an attendant for personal services like help with dressing, bathing and getting in and out of bed aced spend only about $15,000 a year. This is not for 24-hour attention, and it isn't for the services of a highly trained nurse. But. ADAPT organizer Wade Blank points to a Feb. 28 New England Journal of Medicine editorial, which noted that most people in nursing homes receive the equivalent of only 3 to 4 hours of care a day in the loon of simple personal assistance, not "nursing care." What ADAPT wants. they say. is simple: They want Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan to transfer $5 billion from the $23 billion in federal funds now going to nursing homes and direct it to a national "attendant services" program. Such a program would allow disabled people to receive assistance in their own homes rather than being forced into a nursing home because they need help with things like bathing, dressing and eating. Disabled rights activists are convinced that the medical approach to home care drives up prices and insist that disabled people need simple assistance, not nursing care. Activists therefore maintain that "attendant services" must allow disabled people to do their own hiring and firing and he in control of their own care, if they so choose. Sullivan has so far refused to meet with ADAPT, though they've followed him around the country, confronting him in Nashville. Tenn., in January and at his alma mater, Atlanta's Morehouse College, last fall. [Subheading] A $50 BILLION-A-YEAR INDUSTRY ADAPT representatives did meet with American Health Care Association Director Paul Willging in Denver a few months ago. Willging was frank in telling the group that the nursing home business was "a $50 billion-a-year industry." If ADAPT wanted to take money from them to fund attendant services. they'd oppose it. he said. "Right now attendant services are a matter of states' rights." says Coleman. Though some states have waivers from current Medicare rules to allow disabled people to receive services in their homes, the Health Care Financing Administration in recent years has granted fewer and fewer of these waivers. A coalition of disability and seniors groups in Tennessee, including Tennessee ADAPT, pressed the Tennessee Medicaid Commission recently to file a waiver request, but the group was turned down. A group in Mississippi pressed the Mississippi Medicaid Commission last fal to file a waiver request with the Health Care Financing Administration to start a tiny program for in-home service. They did, but the administration has denied the request three times—over the protests of the Mississippi congressional delegation. In November the delegation sent a letter to the administration objecting to the denial. "We are convinced." they wrote, "that a consumer-directed model is the kind of program we need to have in our state." Though ADAPT does not represent the entire disability rights movement. their [image] [image caption] After winning the 8-year battle for wheelchair lifts on its new buses, disability activists in ADAPT shifted their focus to target the government policy of funding nursing homes over cheaper and more dignified home care. [text continues] direct-action strategy has been hard to ignore. "I don't agree with their tactics," says Mike Yeager of Disability Focus. a public policy group. "they're real aggressive. But somebody has to he. There aren't really enough groups willing to make a loud noise." Shel Trapp of National People's Action. a group that does direct-action training. is impressed with ADAPT. "This movement mast not be as broad-reaching as the civil rights movement in terms of numbers," Trapp says, "but I think the accomplishments will ultimately equal those of the civil rights movement." ADAPT members say they've never been opposed to making noise. "Were not going away." promises ADAPT's Mark Johnson. "We're gonna win this one—sooner or later." For more information: ADAPT, 12 Broadway, Denver, Colo. 80203; (303) 733-9324. For coverage of the disability rights movement: The Disability Rag (monthly), P.O. Box 145, Louisville, Ky. (502) 459-5343. Mary Johnson is editor of The Disability Rag. [Boxed text] Small Press Center 20 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036 Free Readings at the Small Press Center Tues. April 9-1pm Writer Donna Ratajczak (Purgatory Pie Press) and poet Barbara Unger (Thorntrce Press) Tues. May 14 -1pm Sal Salasin (Another Chicago Press) and writer Hans Koning (Monthly Review Press) Tues. June 11-1pm Writer Coco Gordon (Water Mark Press) and author Grace Paley (The Feminist Press) These readings are also broadcast on WNYE (91.5 FM). Please call the Center at (212) 764-7021 for broadcast dates. Special Lectures Free Fri. April 26 — 6:30pm Slide Lecture — by the artist/printers of Purgatory Pic Press Fri. June 14 — 7:00pm Slide Lecture on Papermaking and Artists' Books by Coco Gordon from Water Mark Press Small Press Exhibits April — Purgatory Pie Press May — Monthly Review Press June — Water Mark Press For more information on all Small Press Events, please contact the Center at (212) 764-7021. The Center is open Monday to Thursday from 9 to 6pm and Friday from 9 to 5 pm — the Center is closed during July.
ADAPT (647)
Policeman with helmet directs traffic from one parking lot across grass into another. A makeshift ramp has been placed to allow cars off the curb into the other parking lot. ADAPT dubbed this jerry rigged exit "Wade's Way."
ADAPT (648)
[Headline] ADAPT hits Baltimore to press nursing home issue with Sullivan In ADAPT's largest action yet on behalf of attendant services, more than 225 wheelchair activists rolled into Baltimore and Washington, D.C., at the end of April, where they seized control of two federal buildings and brought traffic to a standstill at Baltimore's busiest intersection at the height of the rush hour. Demonstrators had hoped to force a meeting with Dr. Louis Sullivan, secretary for Health and Human Resources, but as usual Sullivan refused to discuss ADAPT's demand that Medicaid monies be transferred from nursing home pro-grams to attendant services. On the first day of the action, demonstrators blocked the 44 entrances leading into a Social Security Administration building in Baltimore. Some four or five wheelchair pickets blocked each entrance until police started moving in at 3 p.m. "There was no way we could continue to block that many doors if they started hauling us away," ADAPT spokesman Wade Blank said. "So we announced we were heading back for our hotel. The cops were real pleased it ended that easily." It didn't, though. Instead of returning to the hotel, the 225 activists wheeled their way into a nearby busy intersection and brought traffic to a halt until 7 p.m., when the demonstrators decided to call it a night. It was three days before traffic got back to normal on those roads," Blank said. On the second day, ADAPT targeted another Social Security building, one that had only two entrances, although the parking lot held nearly 3,000 cars. While police officers in what appeared to be SWAT uniforms and riot gear watched, ADAPT blocked the two doors and refused to allow workers inside to leave the building. Some of the federal employees corn-plained that they had children to pick up and should be allowed to pass through the pickets. "Now you know how disabled people who are locked up in nursing homes feel," they were told. On the third day, ADAPT boarded buses and headed into Washington, D.C. where they set up pickets outside the Hubert H. Humphrey federal build-ing. A line of 225 wheelchair activists stretched from corner to corner in the street opposite the front of the building. Police countered by establishing a barrier of police cars in front of the building with officers filling the spaces between the cars to stop any attempt by ADAPT to rush the building. A signal was given and all 225 demonstrators started rolling toward the building. But when they reached the police barricade, the 225 pulled them-selves out of their chairs and began to crawl over the police cars, chanting: "We want Sullivan! We want Sullivan!" The police had earlier decided on a non-arrest strategy and while they were pondering a response, several of the activists sneaked around the lines and kryptonited the locks of the building doors which effectively knocked them out of commission. "The press went nuts," Blank said. At 6 p.m. ADAPT leaders explained their demands in a live news conference that was carried on all three of the network affiliates. "The nursing home industry knows now that it is going to have to take us seriously," Blank said. Blank said that many of the 225 demonstrators were residents of nursing homes. Others were unable to participate in the action because the homes told them they would be locked out if they participated in an anti-nursing home demonstration.
ADAPT (649)
On the plaza in front of HHS Headquarters on Independence Ave in Washington DC, a row of police cars is lined up in front of the building. Empty wheelchairs are littered in front of the police cars, and on the ground by the cars, ADAPT activists lie and sit. A large man sits on the hood of one of the police vehicles. Police and security guards stnd by the cars and near the front door. On one of the empty wheelchairs closest to the camera is a poster that reads "Louis, Louis shame shame shame."
ADAPT (650)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand." Fredrick Douglass, 1849
ADAPT (651)
A black and white, slightly blurry, picture of ADAPTers sitting side by side in the crosswalks, blocking the intersection leading into the Social Security national Headquarters. In the background you can see media trucks and plain clothes police.
ADAPT (652)
/CAPE COD TIMES THURSDAY, MAY 2 1991 [Headline] Protesters demand home-care funding [Subheading] FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS WASHINGTON --- Disabled activists, including a small group of Cape Codders and more than 100 people in wheelchairs, blocked entrances to the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department yesterday to protest policies that they said favor nursing tomes over home care. It was the third straight day of protests by the group. When police cars surrounded the group yesterday, some of them jumped out of their wheelchairs and tried to crawl under the police cars," Kent Killam, a program coordinator with Cape Organization for Rights of the Disabled (CORD), said in a telephone interview from Washington. Other activists tried to squeeze past the legs of police officers who stood in front of the entrances. There were no arrests. "To people like myself, this is a life and death matter," said Lee Sanders of Houston, who crawled out of his wheelchair and lay on the ground. "It's the difference between living in a nursing home and living at home." For most of the afternoon, access to the Hubert Humphrey Building was limited to underground tunnels that connect it with other buildings. Cars also were unable to leave the parking lot under the HHS headquarters building, just a couple of blocks from the Capitol. The protesters were trying to create an institutional-like setting, with people unable to leave the building or the parking lot, said Lisa Nikula, a CORD program coordinator. She did not attend the protest, but talked on the phone yesterday to members in Washington. "They tried to create that feeling everywhere they went, so people feel trapped inside a building and can't get out," Ms. Nikula said, comparing the situation to that of disabled people who are unnecessarily institutionalized. The demonstration ended about 6:30 p.m. and full access to the building was restored. The approximately 175 protesters, organized by a group called American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT, want the Medicaid program to redirect 25 percent of the $23 billion it currently spends on nursing homes. They want this amount, about $5.5 billion, to be spent on establishment of community-based attendant service programs that would give disabled people the chance to stay at home rather than enter a nursing home. Gail Wilensky, head of the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medic-aid, said many of the problems the group is angry about are not handled by the Medicaid program.
ADAPT (653)
[Headline] 300 activists protest at U.S. agency [Subheading] ■Increased funding for at-home care of disabled sought. By Meredith Schlow Evening Sun Staff Mike Auberger says he'd rather be jailed than placed in a nursing home. "At least I know when I get out of jail it's a seven-day sentence, a 10-day sentence," the 36-year-old quadriplegic said. "When you go into a nursing home, it's a life sentence." Auberger and approximately 300 other disabled activists from 25 states picketed outside the Health Care Financing Administration in Woodlawn yesterday, protesting the lack of national policy to fund personal attendant services. The protesters, members of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, want 25 percent of Medicaid's $23 billion, currently budgeted "in favor of nursing homes, to instead be budgeted for the establishment of community-based national attendant service programs. Such programs, they say, would allow people with disabilities and the elderly to live independently in their own homes rather than in nursing homes. There are about 43 million disabled people in the United States, 1.5 million of whom would live in the community if attendant/personal assistance support services were available. Auberger, who traveled from Denver for the protest, runs a home health care agency that employs about 90 people and provides care for approximately 150 disabled and elderly people in Denver and Colorado Springs. [image] [image caption] By Bo Rader — Evening Sun Staff. Members of ADAPT block entrances to the Health Care Financing Administration in Woodlawn during protest. The fewer than half the states, including Maryland, have programs for in-home attendant services, according to Ellen Leiserson, an independent social worker who was previously program manager for the In-Home Aids Services for the state Department of Human Resources. Leiserson said that in Maryland, there are long waiting lists for those who wish to employ attendants. "My level of disability would cost $60,000" a year in a nursing home, Auberger said. "Using attendant services, it costs $2,000 per month." "We are not going to take it any longer," Wade Blank, co-founder of ADAPT, shouted through a speaker to an enthusiastic crowd. "We will not be ignored . . . we will come again and again and again until nursing homes begin to lose their funding and people are allowed to live in their own homes." A picket who identified himself only as "Bob," said that, while he isn't immediately in need of home attendant care, he doesn't know what the future holds. "I don't want to give up my house I don't want to give up my garden," said the full-time engineer. "I can't even visualize doing my job from a nursing home . . . they wouldn't even let me come and go without signed permission." [image] [image caption] ADAPT members block the sole exit to the HHS Disability Determination Unit at closing time Tuesday, April 30 [image] [image caption] Bob and Renate Conrad of Colorado Springs are dragged off their positions blocking HHS driveway Wednesday, May 1. ADAPT intends to pursue Sullivan until he sits down with the group and agrees to rewrite Medicaid rules. The group may be having some effect: Recently, Tennessee ADAPT was able to wrest from HCFA a waiver for "home based service options for older and disabled" Tennesseans which had been tabled as recently as a month before the Washington demonstrations. [image] [image caption] Police line up as ADAPT members wrap themselves around the 1.08-mile circumference of the HCFA/SSA complex in Baltimore on Tuesday and block its 35 doors. [Subheading] ADAPT protests at HCFA headquarters Over 200 ADAPT activists took their fight against nursing homes to the nation's capital in April. Their targets: The Health Care Financing Administration which doles out Medicaid money to states (and which insists on giving the bulk of the dollars to nursing homes) and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. Over 100 ADAPT wheelchair riders stormed the HCFA/HHS Disability Determination Unit complex in suburban Baltimore on Tuesday, April 30 and blocked the sole exit at closing time, forcing police to cut another road from the parking lot so employees could exit. On Wednesday the group took on HHS headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. There were no arrests during the three-day action, and HHS Secretary Louis H. Sullivan continued to dodge the group. But that didn't stop ADAPT from making their point: that HHS redirect a fourth of its $23 billion budgeted for nursing homes to in-home services. [two images] [caption] Activists try to crawl under police barricades around HHS building Wednesday. Lee Jackson of Atlanta blocks driveway at HHS Unit. Photos by Tom Olin [Subheading] Disabled vets demonstrate [image] [image caption] Some 300 disabled activists from 25 states, including more than 100 in wheelchairs, block entrances to the Hubert Humphrey Building on Independence Avenue SW, headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services, for almost five hours yesterday to protest policies they say favor nursing homes over home care. Photo by Willard Volz The Washington Times THE EVENING SUN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1991 [Headline] Disabled protesters b lock HCFA workers [Subheading] Demonstrators make a point about freedom. By Meredith Schlow Evening Sun Staff Ruth Stringfellow's car was only about 50 feet from the exit of the Social Security Administration and Health Care Financing Administration building when the group of dis-abled demonstrators blocked her in. "I almost made it," she said sadly, looking out toward Woodlawn Road. Yesterday, for the second day in a row, demonstrators protested federal rules that they say relegate many of them to nursing homes when they should be able to live on their own. The government, they said, should shift money in the Medicaid health program, which serves the poor and disabled, away from nursing homes and toward payments to attendants who can care for the disabled in their own homes. Protesters were members of the national group Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. While Monday's demonstration was generally uneventful, yesterday's, which began just before 3 p.m., prevented employees from the two offices from leaving for several hours after their work day was complete. Demonstrators said they wanted to show able-bodied people what it's like to have the privilege of freedom taken away, something they say happens every day inside nursing homes. "It's the same kind of feeling -you can't leave when you want to. You need my permission," said Mike Auberger, who traveled from Denver for the protest. Although employees expressed anger and frustration over their in-ability to leave work, some said that they still felt respect for the protesters' cause. Most said that the demonstration was held in the wrong location, however. "I can understand what they're protesting about, but there's nothing we can do about it here — they should be where the politicians are," said one woman who declined to give her name. "They have a legitimate com-plaint, but I think they should be in D.C.," agreed Pauline DeVance. But protester Nate Butler said the Woodlawn employees are an "integral part of a system that's really oppressive." "I'm sympathetic to all these folks not able 0 get home, but this is a really miner inconvenience com-pared to the inconveniences suffered by those in nursing homes," he said. By 4:30, Baltimore County police had created a makeshift exit behind the building into the Knight's Inn parking lot, through which employees departed, one car at a time. Police were reluctant to arrest protesters because their disabilities make them more difficult to trans port and house, according to Baltimore County police spokesman Sgt Steven Doarnberger.
ADAPT (654)
Frank Lozano lies on the cement ground with a yellow poster that reads "People do not let your grandparents or elderly relatives live in nursing 'homes'." His guide dog Frazier lies beside him on one side. On his other side Lonnie Smith lies with his head resting on a wheelchair cushion. Above their heads Karen Greebon is lying on her side facing away with a partially obscured poster by her head that reads "stop inhuman services." The three are framed by Karen and Lonnie's wheelchairs.
ADAPT (655)
"Blessed the agitator; whose touch makes the dead walk." Thomas McGrath
ADAPT (656)
Left to right, Mike Auberger, Diane Coleman, Rick James and 2 other people block the side entrance to the Health and Human Services offices on Independence Ave. Mike's neck is kryptonite locked to the doors. Diane has a poster that reads "Stop the money to the nursing home lobby!" Behind Rick's head is a very large access symbol sign.
ADAPT (657)
A group of police stand between two police cars. They stare straight ahead, not looking down, with lips pursed, hands on hips. In the background more police are standing around by the HHS building. At the feet of the group in the front ADAPT protesters are crawling around the police officers' legs. One woman is on her side partially beneath a police car, a single above the knee amputee [Julie Nolan] is squeezing between two of the officers, the legs of another person are laid before them, and in the back a fourth person is between two other officers.