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Home / Album 18
Data d'invio / 2017 / Settimana 39
ADAPT (314)
This is a continuation of the story in ADAPT 322. The entire text is included there for easier reading.
ADAPT (313)
The Phoenix Gazette, April 11th 1987 Title: Disabled Protestors Released From Jail Sixteen members of an activist disabled group were released from Maricopa County Jail Friday amid further protests that they were mistreated while behind bars. The releases came after the 16 of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation pleaded guilty charges including trespassing and blocking a public thoroughfare and were sentenced to time served by a city judge, according to Maricopa County sheriff’s spokesman Cpl. Joe Rossano. The releases were part of a plea agreement reached by public defenders and prosecutors, Rossano said. He said the ADAPT members planned to return today to their hometowns after they spent a week in Phoenix to demonstrate during the convention of the American Public Transportation Association. ADAPT wants all buses in the nation to be equipped with lifts for wheelchairs. The group continued Friday to complain about the treatment its members received while in jail. Many of those jailed since Tuesday said they received inadequate medical care and were not given necessary medication. Rossano said the complaints were groundless. He said all the medical needs of the disabled inmates were met “and then some.” “Everyone who needed medication received it,” Rossano said. “Some were given double mattresses and others who were prone to bedsores slept on sheepskin. They have no right to complain.”
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SF Chronicle 9/29/87 PHOTO: BY SYEVE RINGMAN/THE CHRONICLE Four police hold down Lonnie Johnson in his manual wheelchair. They are dressed in dark uniforms, he is in white shirt and pants. His very thin body is lying on his chair, his legs somewhat extended and arms out to the sides in a crucifix-like position. The policeman behind his head has his arm around Lonnie's neck in a choke hold. Caption reads: San Francisco police officers subdued on unidentified demonstrator outside Moscone Center. Title: Transit Demonstrations Cops Bust Disabled Protesters By L. A. Chung Thirty-four disabled people, deliberately blocking streets in a bitter demand for better access to public transit, were arrested yesterday by San Francisco police officers. Twenty-five protesters, many in wheelchairs, blocked Howard Street yesterday morning outside the Moscone Center where the American Public Transit Association is meeting through tomorrow. Then. in the afternoon, nine more disabled people blocked the street outside the downtown Hilton Hotel, where the transit officials are staying. On Sunday 22 protesters were arrested making a total of 56 cited in two days. Calling themselves the September Alliance tor Accessible Transit, the disabled wheeled themselves a mile to Moscone Center, under police escort, to protest, chanting, "Up with Access! Down with APTA!" For more than 10 years disabled people nationwide have pressed for wheelchair access to local buses and trains. However, APTA, in 1981, managed to overturn a federal mandate requiring wheelchair lifts on all new buses. APTA, instead, got a “local option" allowing each transit organization to determine the best way to serve the disabled. At yesterday morning's protest, Judy Heumann of the Berkeley-based World institute on Disability, said, “It‘s a very emotional issue for disabled people to have to come out here and do this." She was not arrested. Police gave the protesters outside Moscone Center three warnings to disperse, then started arresting them. They were taken to the Hall of Justice in a specially equipped Municipal Railway bus that had a wheelchair lift. A special police van with a lift handled the protesters outside the Hilton Hotel. All those arrested for blocking a street and falling to disperse were cited and then released. The protesters said they will be back demonstrating until the convention ends tomorrow. More than 11,000 public transit officials from across the United States and about 50 countries are attending the convention.
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Disability Rag September/October 1987 RAGOUT WHAT'S COOKIN' [This article continues in ADAPT 305 but all the text has been included here for easier reading.] At the bottom of the page is a cute cartoon of a bus driving along crammed full of folks. “There's been more public discussion in 5 days than there’d been in 5 years" “Now we’re taken more seriously” —As time for ADAPT demonstrations in San Francisco draw near, this story of how one local disability group responded to the influx of ADAPT members from all over the country shows how ADAPT’s style of direct action can work with local disability groups more accustomed to working “within the system." - ed. When ADAPT members from all over the country began descending on Phoenix this spring to protest at the American Public Transit Association’s regional meeting, staff of the Arizona Bridge to Independent Living felt some anxiety over where our loyalties lay. The City of Phoenix had been receptive to the disability community. They'd purchased only accessible buses the last three years. Phoenix's Regional Public Transportation Association had spent hundreds of hours working with us. Yet we also knew from brief interaction with ADAPT that their strongly-worded opinions best expressed our frustration and anger at the system's unwillingness to commit to 100% accessibility. ABIL decided to work with both groups. Prior to their coming, we discussed with ADAPT the guidelines they’d follow in deciding what level of civil disobedience would be involved. We found ADAPT’s demand — that cities purchase only accessible buses in the normal course of replacing a fleet — a reasonable one. ADAPT wasn’t demanding bus systems retrofit their buses, or that they immediately replace all their buses with lift-equipped ones — just a long-term commitment to change. " A month before the APTA meeting, ABIL met with RPTA officials to discuss our and ADAPT's demands for accessibility. To our surprise, RPTA suggested their commitment be put in writing and adopted by their board! ADAPT was already having an effect — and they weren't even in town yet! The day before, ADAPT arrived. ABIL hosted a meeting for those disabled people from all over the community who were most likely to be contacted by media or others regarding the APTA/ADAPT confrontation. A consensus emerged that the disability community would maintain a united front; that the local community's interests were the same as ADAPT’s and that any public discussion beyond that — especially regarding ADAPT's "techniques" — would simply distract from the central issue: accessible mass transit. This single act of meeting and making these decisions was the thing most responsible for the success of our efforts. By spreading the word, we were able to keep from being forced into a public debate over the differences between persons with disabilities rather than focusing the debate on our common interest —- accessible public transit. Negative comments from a few individuals in the community were lost among the events of the next several days. ABIL found itself taking an increasingly larger role as protests and police reaction escalated, with some of us participating in the demonstrations, others calling politicians and media, putting pressure on local bureaucrats and helping to keep lines of communication open. The mayor of Phoenix, in the midst of the media barrage, made a public statement supporting the purchase of accessible buses. After APTA and ADAPT had left Phoenix, ABIL set up a meeting between the Mayor and local ADAPT members. It was the first time the Mayor had sat down with members of the disability community to discuss transportation. Although he and some transit system officials were still angry about the demonstrations, they were taking us more seriously. That's a tradeoff we’re willing to make. The ADAPT experience was a positive one for ABIL and the disability community in Phoenix. The events caused more public discussion about accessible public transit in those five days than there had been in Phoenix in the past five years. The longer the topic stayed in the news, the greater appreciation the public had for the need for accessible public transit. — Robert E. Michaels Executive Director Arizona Bridge to Independent Living, ABIL.
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A screen full of people marching. Many are wearing the green ADAPT t-shirt with the old no step logo. In the center Diane Coleman in her motorized wheelchair is carrying a giant white poster behind her that reads "We the people..." over her head. Beside her Cindy Keelan pushes her daughter Jennifer's wheelchair. Diane looks very determined.
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San Francisco Chronicle 9/28/87 S.F Protest For Disabled Turns Violent By Evelynn C. White A peaceful demonstration for the rights of the disabled to use public transit turned violent last night when 23 people were arrested, one of them on charges of assaulting a police officer. Following a rally at Union Square, 500 demonstrators converged on City Hall, where members of the American Public Transportation Association were holding a dinner meeting. Police said the melee broke out when demonstrators tried to block members from entering in the meeting. San Francisco police officer Michael Travis, 40, who was thrown down the City Halls steps in the scuffle, was treated for a possible concussion and released. Arrested in the assaulted was Alan Shipley, 40, of San Francisco, who police said is not disabled. Shipley was booked at city jail on charges of assaulted and battery on an officer and resisting arrest. The other 22 demonstrators, 19 of them wheelchair-bound were cited for failure to disperse, blocking a sidewalk and resisting arrest. They were released. Earlier in the day, 250 demonstrators at Union Square, 80 percent in wheelchairs, made a plea for better access to public transit. “In most cities, a person who is disabled can’t go to work, can’t go to school, can’t function,” said Laverne Chase, a wheelchair-bound resident of Washington, D.C. “I am here because I believe that disabled people should have equal access to everything that the mind can imagine, starting with public transportation.” The protest, sponsored by the September Alliance for Accessible Transit, was held in opposition to the APTA, which is convening in the city through the week. In the early 1980s, APTA fought to rescind federal regulations that would have required wheelchair lifts in all newly purchased transit buses and handicapped accessibility to all new rail systems. The organization instead lobbied for a “local option” alternative that allows individual transit systems to determine the best way to serve the handicapped. On Wednesday, the association plans to hold a session concerning the needs of the disabled. “I’m one of the lucky ones because I have a van,” said French. “But other wheelchair-bound people have to impose on friends and family plan weeks in advance to get where they need to go. They should be able to go down to a corner and get on a bus, to live their lives spontaneously.”
ADAPT (307)
SMITH BY JEFF SMITH Title: ROLL MODELS Civil disobedience tends to be a cyclical form of political expression. It only comes into flower every few years, even decades, and during the intermissions of its popularity, the great masses in the political middle tend to forget what an important tool it is. Indeed, civil disobedience is the only legitimate means of effecting change on behalf of minority needs. Mull it over: • A minority with a valid and pressing need to see some public policy created or changed has the option of going to the polls along with everyone else . . . and losing. because it is, after all, a minority. Or: • Its members could arm themselves and turn their minority cause into a guerilla war, which the majority would agree is hardly a legitimate solution. Or: • They could employ the classic, nonviolent, Gandhian stratagem of civil disobedience. Bingo. Which is why I endorse the protest staged recently by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT). About 200 members of the Denver-based group, most of them in their primary means of transportation — wheelchairs— came here and raised hell a couple of weeks ago with the national convention of the American Public Transportation Association. It was a classic sit-in. Gimps are good at that. But it's been quite a while—a peaceful, soporific, almost brain-dead while—since the civil-rights movement and the Vietnam War era, when sit-ins, protest marches and similar styles of civil disobedience were at all common. And six years of Reagan, four of Carter and three of Ford have turned many of us into conservatives like Phoenix City Councilman Howard Adams, who sympathize the problems of certain minorities, but object to the only tactic they really can use to solve those problems. Adams doesn't think cripples ought to be blocking restaurant and hotel entrances, impeding the comings and goings of conventioneers and blockading buses in order to make their point that most public transit is inaccessible to people in wheelchairs and those rendered nearly immobile by the need for canes and crutches. Adams is not an unsympathetic man: He has both sympathy and empathy for the disabled. In case you didn't know it, Howard Adams is a gimp himself. He was crippled in a swimming accident twenty years ago. And in case you think my characterizations mark me as a churl, know that I'm a gimp, too, coming on six years in a wheelchair after a motorcycle crash. (I got to be churlish independent of paralysis.) So both Howard and I know something of the subject. I simply know more than he does on account of I'm smarter. So listen up: Neither Howard Adams nor Yr. Obdt. Svt. is a decent role model for anyone with ambitions of becoming disabled. I am far too pretty and talented; Howard Adams is too powerful and prosperous. It is way too easy for someone like Adams or me to say, Hey, why don't the rest of you gimps just get your own car or van, like me? Adams is a quadriplegic with a specially equipped van. It is his own rig, but he must get someone else to drive it for him. When he's on city business, or going to and from his Phoenix City Council office, the city provides the driver. I am a paraplegic, somewhat less handicapped than Adams, so I drive myself in a station wagon with hand controls. Now you might think owning a car is virtually within the reach of anyone. Even the poorest hovel might have a Caddy parked outside. And you might say that since Smith and Adams manage so commendably, anybody can work and support a family, and get around to do [missing text here] unaffordable. Sensible people of limited means may own one old beater which one spouse takes to work, while the other rides the bus. Consider that even for Homo erectus, hoofing to the bus stop on hind feet in Hush Puppies and making the necessary connections to get from home in Phoenix to work in Tempe can be a major pain in the ass and add several hours to the workday. Now try it from a wheelchair. Listen: I am about as adapted, chipper and successful a gimp as you're likely to meet, and I don't go to Circle K's anymore. How familiar the ritual: You're driving home and you get a lech for a cold one. You hang a quick right, don't even shut off the engine, you're in and out in a flash, and buzzing nicely on your second beer before you've hit the next stoplight. When you're in a wheelchair you don't do stuff like this anymore. It is simply too much bother. Even for a gimp like me, with great strong arms, catlike grace and his own automobile. I run wheelchair marathons, lift weights three times a week, have the cardiovascular system of a twelve-year-old, but I do not visit Circle K's. It takes too long, requires too much exertion, inflicts too much pain, and maybe there's no ramp. Screw it. If I had to call two days, or as much as a week in advance to arrange to have a special van pick me up—just to make a doctor's appointment or go buy - groceries—I don't know if I could cope. If Howard Adams had to plan his daily schedule around Phoenix bus schedules, which provide wheelchair service on only six of 54 bus routes, I wonder if he would be able to discharge his duties as a councilman. I suppose he would, being the Type A he is. "I haven't showcased my activities," Adams told me, "but I am interested in this issue." Indeed, Adams has just been appointed to President Reagan's Architecture and Transportation . Compliance Board, which oversees enforcement of federal access regulation. Adams said he thinks Phoenix is doing well on handicap access, but if he lived in, say, New York, he might be frustrated and angry. Then would he resort to civil disobedience? "Probably not," he said. "I'd work the [missing text here] That might work for Howard Adams, - but not for all of Jerry's kids. I've learned a lot of stuff about gimps since becoming one — stuff that contradicts most of what I thought I knew before. No two of us are alike. Being paralyzed doesn't mean blessed forgetfulness of the concerns of your formerly functional physiology. You can experience constant pain from the paralyzed parts. You can have involuntary muscles spasms that make it impossible to sit still, and even more difficult to haul around those parts that would be tough enough to move if they just lay there like deadwood. You can run out of popcorn and have to get rest before the day is half done. You can spend two hours getting bathed and dressed to go out in public, only to get just out the door and find you've pissed your pants and have to go back and start all over. Think about these things the next time you scoff at the demands of the disabled for better access to public transportation, for ramps at street corners, for rest rooms with doors wide enough for a wheelchair, for wider aisles in airplanes, elevators in two-story buildings. Think what it means when a six-inch curb is as impassable a barrier as a prison wall. Not figuratively. In fact. Think about these things and think about one thing further: Disability is a very Eighties fashion of affliction, tres chic you could say. With speed sports like sail-boarding, off-roading and even sidewalk surfing being so trendy, lots more of you hip, yuppie dudes and dudettes will be joining me on wheels in the very near future. Think of handicapped access as an investment in your own future. Think of all this the next time you find yourself staring at the convenience market — the one with the cold can of beer— from across a lane of oncoming traffic, and you decide it's just too inconvenient to make a left-hand turn. Believe thee me: You don't have a clue as to what inconvenience is.
ADAPT (328)
The Phoenix Gazette Monday, April 6, 1987 Photo by James Garcia, The Phoenix Gazette: Woman stands with arm raised, chanting. Behind her people in wheelchairs form a picket line in front of a large building. Caption: JoAnn Brown of Colorado Springs leads a protest by wheelchair-bound activists at the Hyatt Regency Sunday. Title: Wheelchair activists block restaurants Compiled by The Gazette About 100 members of a militant group of wheelchair-bound activists blocked the roads and entrances to a restaurant Sunday night in an attempt to keep people from attending a steak fry put on by the American Public Transit Association. Phoenix police arrested 27 protesters. They were taken away in handicapped-accessible vans, cited for trespassing and released, police said. Police were continuing to monitor the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit groups today, with a command post at the Civic Plaza. Adams Street, next to the Hyatt, remained blocked and about 20 officers were stationed there. Chanting and carrying placards Sunday, members of ADAPT lined up across two roads, a stairway and the doors, including the handicapped entrance to the restaurant at The Pointe at South Mountain resort. The 450 people attending the APTA convention arrived in six Phoenix buses. Some were forced to scramble up a steep gravel incline and enter through the kitchen. Others walked up the back driveway. “We plan to be here all week and to inconvenience you as much as we can,” called out one protester, who was blocking the stairs. Earlier in the day, protesters had picketed at the Hyatt Regency, where the conventioneers are staying. The protesting group, known for demonstrations on behalf of the handicapped, wants all public transit to be accessible to the wheelchair-bound. “I think they have a just cause, but I think they are carrying it to an extreme,” said Bob Hocken, general manager of the Phoenix Transit System, who walked up the hill from the lower parking lot because the stairway was blocked. After speaking to the restaurant’s manager, the group agreed to let staff, supplies, and the restaurant’s shuttle buses pass. The restaurant sent a waitress out to serve ice water. Richard Worth, a spokesman for the Regional Public Transportation Authority in Phoenix, said all of the buses currently on order “will offer wheelchair accessibility.” Of the 54 bus routes in metropolitan Phoenix, eight offer wheelchair accessibility, Worth said, and 49 of the city’s 350 buses, or 14 percent, are wheelchair accessible. Handicapped ridership on Phoenix’s routes is estimated at 509,000 per year, or 3 percent of total ridership, he said.
ADAPT (322)
Logo of a sun. The Arizona Republic April 13, 1987, Phoenix, Arizona [This story continues in ADAPT 314 but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] PHOTO by David Petkiewicz/Republic: A large group of people are standing, heading into the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Among those standing some people in wheelchairs are visible, and a reporter is there with a camera. Caption reads: Wheelchair-bound protesters and their supporters gather at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix. The group converged on the American Public Transit Association's convention at the hotel last week. Title: Driven by anger, disabled man has fought long, hard for access. By CHUCK HAWLEY The Arizona Republic Mike Landwehr pushes his own wheelchair, but it's really anger that drives the wheels. "Every day, my anger is brought forward again when l have to push my wheelchair 10 blocks in my own hometown,“ said Landwehr, a Chicago man who has been arrested a dozen or more times since 1978 while demonstrating for access to public transportation for the disabled. “I'm running out of patience.” Landwehr spent much of last week in Phoenix as a spokesman for American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. The Denver-based group has a reputation of “getting in the face" of public officials by creating ruckuses at meetings of the American Public Transit Association, a group Landwehr describes as "the enemy." Surrounding hotels, restaurants and buses where transportation officials meet, ADAPT members express demands in rhythmic chants: “What do we want? "Access! “When do we want it? "Now!" It is, the group says, a civil-rights demonstration. Howard Adams is not driven by anger, although he was paralyzed from the neck down in a swimming accident 20 years ago. Adams, a Phoenix councilman, said disability is something he lives with, but he doesn't thrive on it. "I‘m not an expert on it,“ Adams said, “it's not the most important thing in my life." He disagrees with the civil-disobedience tactics used by ADAPT. "I guess I pour my anger into other things," he said. Adams, who served in the Arizona Legislature before his election to the City Council, recently was appointed by President Reagan to the 22-member Architectural and Transportation Compliance Board. The board oversees enforcement of federal regulations governing access for the disabled. It can recommend withholding federal funds from any organization or local government that fails to meet federal requirements for access, Adams said. Although Adams does not use city buses regularly, he said, he has used them and believes Phoenix "is in pretty good shape" with respect to disabled people. The demonstrators, he says, have a beef with the American Public Transportation Association, not with Phoenix. "The goal has always been equal opportunity and to participate in all aspects of life as best as they can," Adams said. "I agree with their goals, but I don't agree with their tactics. "They were not here to point a finger at Phoenix. They were here to protest to a group that provides public transportation to people around the country." Public transportation in Phoenix is inadequate for all people, not just the disabled, Adams said. "If I wanted to go to the council chambers right now, (8:30 p.m.) I couldn't get there on the bus anyway," he said. "If I were in a city with a higher population density, such as Chicago or New York, it would be a different story. I would expect to be able to." Adams said there appear to be "some people who are professionally disabled just like there are people who will always be soldiers in World War II." "We all carry burdens with us, but we have to overcome them," he said. "You can't take away all of the problems everybody has; you just can't. "But, to the extent that society has created barriers, you have to remove them, and I think we are doing it here." Because he uses a lift-equipped van, Adams does not ride Phoenix buses often, but he said he is not unfamiliar with the difficulty of getting from one city to another. In Los Angeles recently, he said, he was told that he could board a plane in a folding wheelchair and that his battery-operated machine would have to be left behind for a later flight in a baggage compartment. "I have trouble with airlines," he said. "They don't care. They just want to get you out of there." When his motorized chair arrived in Phoenix on a later plane, he said, "there was $2,000 in damage to it." Landwehr, 43, was born with spinal bifida, a severe birth defect that now often is correctable. New surgical techniques came too late for him, however. He lost the use of his legs during surgery when he was 12 years old. Landwehr remembers that he once tried to deny his disability, shun his wheelchair and be like everyone else. "I would get myself seated in a restaurant and ask the waitress to take my chair away and fold it up in a corner," he said. "It was a way of being like everyone else. Deep down, disabled people strive to appear not disabled.” It was painful, he said, when his parents had to move from Chicago because he could not attend public high schools there with able-bodied teen-agers. The family moved 60 miles to the suburbs after rejecting the Chicago school system's offer to provide a special bus to pick him up and deliver him to a school for the handicapped, the only school he said school officials would allow him to attend. "Thank God they (his parents) knew I would only learn to live in an institution," he said. In the suburbs, Landwehr said, he struggled to lift himself into a school bus unequipped for handicapped people. Daily, he lifted himself up the school steps as other teen-agers watched. "I know what it is like to be stared at," he said. "It's painful." It also is painful, he said, that Chicago, the nation's third-most-populous city, after New York and Los Angeles, has no city buses with wheelchair lifts for the disabled. Landwehr said that the daily difficulty of overcoming obstacles just to gain access to places others take for granted has hardened his stance for total access. He is militant. Arrests and abuse do not appear to faze him. Embarrassing others and taking the risk of alienating the public also do not seem to faze him. "There is nobody more alienated than people living in little rooms in institutions," Landwehr said. "We want to expose the public to the full range of people who are disabled. "I think our presence here at least gives the public the opportunity to reflect upon their perceptions of disabilities and disabled people. "We hope that a byproduct of our presence will give us some leverage with local politicians." Landwehr, who studied journalism and psychology at the University of Illinois but didn't earn a degree, is unemployed. He once worked with the Disability Rights Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., until federal funding for the group was cut. "We fooled them, though," he said. "Twenty-two of us started collecting Social Security disability checks and just kept on working, doing what we had been doing until the money ran out." Public officials sometimes complain that the cost of total access for the disabled is too great and the need too small. Landwehr says he doesn't believe it. For example, Milwaukee once touted the purchase of lift-equipped buses but operated them randomly on unannounced routes. Photos above: head shots of Howard Adams in white shirt and tie, and Mike Landwher with flannel shirt and mustache. Caption reads: Howard Adams (left) and Mike Landwehr both are disabled, but Adams disagrees with the civil-disobedience tactics used by Landwehr's group.
ADAPT (316)
The Phoenix Gazette, Wed. April 8, 1987 B-5 37 more arrested in protests by handicapped By Scott Craven The Phoenix Gazette Police arrested 37 members of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, most of them for trespassing after they refused to leave the Phoenix bus depot until they were able to board a bus. That brings to 69 the number of arrests police have made since the group arrived in Phoenix Saturday to protest the policies of the American Public Transit Association. Most of those arrested Tuesday were booked into the Towers facility of the Maricopa County Jail, where they were expected to stay the night because they could not raise bail, according to police spokesman Sgt. Ken Johnson. He said the typical bond for trespassing is $206. Although some ADAPT members were arrested at the state Capitol and the downtown Hyatt Regency, site of the convention, most were taken into custody at the bus terminal at Washington Street and Central Avenue. The ADAPT members were attempting to board buses, none of which were equipped with lifts for the disabled. The group is protesting because it wants all buses nationwide to be equipped to handle wheelchair-bound people. ADAPT organizer Mike Auberger said it was a frustrating battle. “Here we are, tourists in the middle of Phoenix, and we can't get a bus to see the rest of the city,” he said at the terminal. “No one else has that problem. We should have the same rights as everybody else." Police arrested 27 ADAPT members Sunday after they blocked the driveway to Rustler's Rooste at the Pointe South Mountain. They were cited and released.
ADAPT (319)
The Arizona Republic, Monday April 8, 1987 Title: Handicapped Hold Protest Photo by Pete Peters/Republic: People in wheelchairs in ADAPT T-shirts form a picket line in front of a hotel, the Regency Phoenix. They are holding posters. Behind them, in the shadows of the entrance-way to the hotel people are standing looking on. Caption reads: Members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit picket before the Hyatt Regency. The ADAPT demonstrators have targeted a meeting by the American Public Transit Association. Photo top right Photo by Pete Peters/Republic: A woman standing uses a sprayer to cool a woman in a wheelchair holding a large poster. caption reads: Carla Montez squirts Kelli Bates with cool water. They traveled to Phoenix from Denver to participate in an ADAPT protest. subtitle: Disrupt event; ask transit access By Chuck Hawley The Arizona Republic About 100 members of a militant group of wheelchair-bound activists blocked the roads and entrances to Rustler’s Roost on Sunday night in an attempt to stop those attending a steak fry for the American Public Transit Association’s convention. Chanting and carrying place cards members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit lined up across the two roads, a stairway leading form a lower parking lot and the doors including the handicapped entrance to the restaurant, which is at the Pointe at South Mountain. Police monitored the protest. The 450 people attending the weeklong convention arrived in six Phoenix buses. Some were forced to scramble up a steep gravel incline and enter through the kitchen. Others walked up the back driveway. “We plan to be here all week and to inconvenience you as much as we can,” called out one protestor, who was blocking the stairs. Earlier in the day, protestor had picketed at the Hyatt Regency, where the conventioneers are staying. The protestors at the restaurant carried placards that said, “Police wagons accessible; buses not,” and chanted, “What do we want? Access. When do we want it? Now.” The group, well-known for militant protests across the country, wants all public transit to be accessible to the wheelchair-bound. “I think they have a just cause, but I think they are carrying it to an extreme,” said Bob Hicken, general manager of the Phoenix Transit System, who walked up the hill from the lower parking lot. “We’d like to serve them all, but we can’t. If there were enough money in the world, we could do everything we wanted to.”
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Tues., April. 7, 1987, The Phoenix Gazette Title: Vice mayor derides disabled group's tactics By Pat Flannery, The Phoenix Gazette Vice Mayor Howard Adams denounced the tactics of a group of wheelchair activists protesting in Phoenix, saying their actions cloud the “tremendous job” the city has done to make public transit accessible to the disabled. The American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit has staged several protests in the city to dramatize its demand that all public transit buses in the nation be equipped with wheelchair lifts. On Monday, about 30 wheelchair-bound protesters blocked two entrances to the Mansion Club in an effort to prevent 40 American Public Transit Association conventioneers’ spouses from attending a luncheon there. The delegation had arrived via a taxpayer-supported Phoenix Transit charter bus. In a later incident at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Phoenix, police said five protesters were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. The were: Marilyn Golden, 33, of Oakland, Calif.; Arthur Campbell Jr., 43, of Louisville, Ky.; Kenneth Heard, 36, of Denver; Chris Hronis, 47, of Haywood, Calif.; and Robert Conrad, 38, of Dallas. ADAPT has staged protests in every city in which the APTA - an industry lobbying group — has held a major convention. The APTA is holding its Western regional conference this week at the downtown Hyatt Regency. “Arizona and Phoenix have absolutely nothin to be ashamed of,” Adams, who himself uses a wheelchair, told the editorial board of The Phoenix Gazette and The Arizona Republic Monday. “At this point, disruption doesn't serve the cause," Adams said. The Phoenix Mayor's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped has taken the same position, saying in a position paper that it endorsed the protesters’ goal but not their methods. “The type of demonstration usually conducted by ADAPT serves only to shed a very negative light on a very worthy cause," committee chairwoman Michelle Goldthwaite wrote. APTA has been ADAPT’s primary target since 1982, when APTA successfully fought a federal regulation requiring all city transit systems to equip at least half their buses with lifts to qualify for federal funds. But Adams said the local protests could unfairly malign the city's efforts to meet the needs of the Valley's disabled. "l would hate for the public to think overall that this is aimed at Phoenix," he said. City transit director Richard Thomas said Phoenix is doing “reasonably well" to accommodate the needs of the disabled through a mix of lift-equipped buses, “dial-a-ride” vehicles and an experimental program in which private transportation for the disabled is subsidized by the city.
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PHOTO by ?: A man in a manual, sports-type, wheelchair (Glenn Horton) has his mouth wide open chanting, and beside him another man in older manual chair (Bernard Baker) chants with him. Behind him two police officers look like they are taking Glenn away. A third officer faces Glenn and looks down at him. The dark police uniforms, cause Glenn to stand out, and his dark sunglasses give him a slightly crazed look. Behind this little group you can see other officers and a TV camera man by a downtown office building.
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Phoenix Gazette September 28, 1987 Photo by UPI (United Press International): A very young girl (Jennifer Keelan) is framed by a gap in the backs of two police officers. Her face is full of concern but not fear. Someone's arm is beside her. Behind her a crowd of other protesters can be seen. Caption reads: Cerebral palsy victim Jennifer Keelan, 6, of Tempe joins demonstrators at protest in San Francisco Sunday. Title: Police arrest 20 in transit protest by handicapped SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Police arrested 20 protestors outside City Hall Sunday, including one man booked for investigation of assaulting a police officer, as 500 handicapped people from around the country demonstrated over restrictive public transportation. Hundreds of disabled people who are demanding access to public transit systems in every U.S. city have threatened to block city streets, hotel lobbies and entrances to the Moscone Convention Center through Wednesday during a national public transit conference. “If it were women or blacks who couldn’t get on the bus it would clearly be a civil rights issue,” said Kitty Cone of Berkeley, a member of September Alliance for Accessible Transit. An unidentified man was arrested for investigation of assault on a police officer when he got into an altercation with officers arresting protestors in wheelchairs who blocked the main entrance to the stately city building. A reception was being held for members of the American Public Transit Association inside. “The officer fell backward and received a slight concussion when he hit his head on the steps,” police spokesman Richard Galliani said. The other 19 people – all of whom were in the wheelchairs – were arrested for investigation of blocking a sidewalk, resisting arrest and failure to disperse, all misdemeanor charges, said Galliani. They were transported to San Francisco jail in several vans equipped to accommodate wheelchairs.
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Six people are sitting on the ground in the street (two others are behind them), on top of the device that turns the famous cable cars around so they can return on their route. In the from row (left to right) are: Patrick ?, Michael Winter, Bob Kafka with young Jennifer Keelan in front of him, and Maryann ?. Behind them stands a woman with a white cane and Jane Jackson is sitting in her wheelchair. A crowd is gathered watching them from the sidewalk which is separted by some kind of flimsy barrier. Police stand in front of the barrier. To the far right in the picture Tim Cook stands (in a green shirt) looking on.