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Tuis / Albums / San Diego & San Antonio, Spring 1985 27
Skep datum / 2013 / Julie / 11
ADAPT (222)
This is a continuation of the story in ADAPT 223 and is contained there in its entirety for reading ease.
ADAPT (220)
continued from ADAPT 222, and starts on 223. The entire story is contained in 223 for reading ease.
ADAPT (190)
This article is a continuation of the one in ADAPT 191. The text and description of the photo are included there for ease of reading.
ADAPT (185)
The contents of ADAPT 185 are included in ADAPT 186 because it is a continuation of that article and by combining, reading is easier.
ADAPT (182)
[Image] HOTO p.8 June 1985 (photographer and source not identified) Looking down from above, a large group of people with disabilities in wheelchairs sit in a loose set of concentric circles in front of a hotel desk. Two people work behind the counter, apparently ignoring the group. Standing in front of them, leaning on the counter is a TV camera person and his colleague. The folks in the circles hold papers in their laps and many have signes with messages like "We will ride", "...Give a damn", "Access Forever", "No More Segreg..", "APTA discriminates". From the central circle in a clockwise direction, starting at 3 o'clock, is Mark Ball, someone in a hat squatting beside him, a quad who drives with his joy stick in a box in front of his mouth (Mickey Rodriguez?) and his hands laid on his knees, a man with a pony tail in a power chair - Mike Aubeger, two man seated in regular chairs with their legs crossed (apparently APTA spokespeople), someone in a manual sports chair in overalls and with dark hair and holding papers in his lap (maybe Bob Kafka), a man in a cowboy hat in a power chair, a man in a scooter in a fishing type hat with his hands crossed in his lap (maybe Jack from Ohio?), another cameraman standing pointing his camera at two of the ADAPT spokespeople, Laura Hershey sitting in her power chair facing directly at the APTA people, and Jean Stewart in a manual chair turning slighting and looking over her shoulder. Behind Jean sits Ken Heard in his power chair with it's left footrest drive, several women are standing around him. Behind Laura is George Florum and to his left are three other people one sitting on a table and two in armchairs. Behind the cameraman isa lanky person in a manual chair (Jim Parker?). More people in wheelchairs sit behind them but their faces are shadowed so it is difficult to see who they are.
ADAPT (181)
[Headline] Buses for handicapped S. A. Lighht 4/25/85 There shouldn't be anyone who does not support the cause of the members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (APTA), that of providing the fullest available mass transit facilities for handicapped people. Ironically, San Antonio has done far more than most other major American cities in trying to meet that need. The para-transit, door-to-door handilift system which VIA Metropolitan Transit has devised is used to a greater extent by handicapped persons in San Antonio than is used by handicapped citizens in Seattle, where the city spend a phenomenal sum of money putting lifts on each city cus. Yet, in San Antonio, APTA chose to bring is national traveling corps of protesters (none from San Antonio) and demonstrate at the meeting of the American Public Transit Association and to disurpt business at the VIA offices here for four hours. Those are valuable hours wasted in serving not only handicapped, as well. Wayne Cook, VIA's general manager, has handled the protests well. He has agreed to establish any type of forum for both handicapped and non-handicapped bus riders to discuss what more might be done to serve bus customers here. The door-to-door system VIA uses for handicapped citizens is not perfect, and Cook recognizes that. He wants to make it better. San Antonians can do that without the intervention of APTA members who have no concern for San Antonio.
ADAPT (192)
PHOTO by unknown person: A large GMC city bus sits on the street in front of the Three Americans Building. It is blocked by Claude Holcomb sitting bare chested and in shorts and hiking boots, in his motorized wheelchair in front of the center of the bus. To Claude's right, Joe Carle in his jean vest and cowboy style hat moves toward the right front corner of the bus. To Claude's left, another man on a scooter wearing a cowboy hat is rolling along the left front side of the bus. The bus appears empty, aside from the driver who is in shadow, but on the right front windshield is a sign that reads "APTA Western Conference."
ADAPT (198)
[Headline] Disabled Advocates Are Rolling on San Antonio This story is a continuation of the article in ADAPT 200 and the entire story is included in 200 for ease of reading. PHOTO: Two bearded, bare chested wheelchair activists (Jim Parker, and [I think] Mike Auberger) are in the foreground. Parker, his shoulder length hair tied back with a bandanna, sits with his foot up on his opposite knee, hands in his fingerless gloves. The two are facing away from the camera and talking with another man who is kneeling down beside them looking up at them. Caption reads: Jim Parker (center) of ADAPT-El Paso meets with a newsman during a picket of McDonald's. Many disabled persons objected to the fast food chain's refusal to immediately retrofit all of its restaurants so that they would be accessible to wheelchair patrons. Parker is currently involved in helping organize a demonstration at the Western Regional Convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) in San Antonio Oct. 20 - 24.
ADAPT (183)
San Antonio Light, 4/25/85 [Headline] Disabled protesters claim win After three days of public protests, members of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit said they believe they have accomplished their goal of drawing the public’s attention to the transportation problems they encounter. The organization called off planned demonstrations yesterday after receiving a pledge from Mayor Henry Cisneros that he would seek improvements in local transit services. More than 50 members of ADAPT, who were staying at The Convent of the Holy Spirit, were expected to leave San Antonio and return to their homes in other states. “We have raised the issue substantially," said ADAPT spokesman Wade Blank. “Our issue is a mobility problem for more than 10,000 people in San Antonio," he added. “They are a ‘hidden minority." Sunday, ADAPT members blocked the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel where the American Public Transit Association was holding a regional meeting. Monday, ADAPT members moved into the VIA Metropolitan Transit offices on Myrtle Street and remained for several hours until they met with association officials. And Tuesday, the organization's members blocked VIA buses at several downtown intersections. Two ADAPT members were given citations for obstructing traffic, but no arrests were made. No disabled San Antonians joined the protests during which ADAPT members demanded that VIA buses be equipped with wheelchair lifts. VIA operates a special van transportation service for the disabled. Blank, who charged there is a lack of leadership and organization within the San Antonio disabled community, said it would be up to the people here to take up the issue now. The ADAPT spokesman said San Antonio police officers who dealt with the three days of demonstrations were the “most friendly, and, level-headed police in any city” in which the group has demonstrated.
ADAPT (201)
San Antonio Light Wednesday April 24, 1985 Front page Street Final [1?]04th year, No.93 The Largest and Best Newspaper in South Texas [Headline] Disabled Block Buses 50 protesters in wheelchairs clog downtown S.A. traffic. See Below. PHOTO by Roberta Barnes, San Antonio Light: On a city street a bare-chested man (Claude Holcolm) in a power chair sits in front of a GMC city bus blocking it. On Claude's left a man in a manual chair (Joe Carle?) rolls toward the back of the bus. On Claude's right a man on a scooter rolls down the other side of the bus. Inside the windshield of the bus is a sign that says "APTA." Caption reads: Stopping The Bus: Three Wheelchair-bound protesters block the path of a bus downtown as part of a protest over access for the disabled.
ADAPT (199)
[Headline] PROTEST: VIA demonstration PROTEST/from B1 door-to-door service,” Cook said. “It’s an effective way to provide transportation. That’s why you don’t see a lot of San Antonians joining you.” But some people speculated the lack of local participation meant the San Antonio handicapped community either is afraid to speak out or did not have transportation to get to the demonstration by ADAPT members from other parts of the country, including Denver and New York. While yesterday’s demonstrators did not include San Antonians, a local handicapped man was summoned by Police Chief Charles Rodriguez to help mediate. "There is a definitely a problem here in San Antonio,” said Tommy Leifester, who calls himself a local leading handicapped rights activist. He said the city’s van system that transports the handicapped has several inadequacies, including a requirement that users must request service up to a week in advance. “If I don’t have a medical certificate and prior approval by VIA Transit, then I don’t ride,” he said. “There’s a judge and a jury who says you can ride a bus. A normal person doesn’t need a medical qualification to ride a bus.” ADAPT leaders said they have asked transit association leaders to introduce a resolution to the full APTA membership proposing the handicapped be provided equal accessibility to public transportation. Ford told the demonstrators the APA board’s policy allows officials from various transit authorities to decide the best ways of serving handicapped people in their separate communities. “APTA has no power to force its attitudes on its members,” he said. “The local option makes sense.” Ford yesterday did grant ADAPT leaders their request to publish an article in APTA’s trade magazine by September. “We got one tiny concession out of the president, ADAPT leader Jean Stewart said after the meeting. “They are utterly in contempt of the needs of the disabled.” The protesters requested VIA officials endorse the resolution to provide public transportation to the disabled and to establish a forum in which the disabled community would be allowed to participate. Cook promised to plan a forum. Stewart said the local community has long supported ADAPT’s proposal of a multi-modal system with both lift equipped buses and door-to-door service.
ADAPT (194)
San Antonio Express News 4/24/85 PHOTO by Joe Barrera JR: A very intense looking older woman (Edith Harris), hair pulled back in a woman's headband, determinedly grasps the windshield wiper of a city bus. A police officer in a motorcycle helmet with a gun on his hip, grasps her wrist in his gloved hand, trying to get her to let go. Behind them another officer in sun glasses watches them, and behind him you can see another policeman's arm. Caption reads: Edith Harris grabs on to a bus windshield wiper as police try to remove the protester. [Headline] Buses blocked by protesters by Gary Martin, Express-News Staff Writer Handicapped protesters rolled their wheelchairs in front of VIA buses Tuesday morning, demanding access to all public transportation and a meeting with Mayor Henry Cisneros. About 40 members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT) - most from other cities or states - blocked buses at five downtown intersections, creating massive traffic jams. Police called to clear the streets had to remove some of the protesters, who clung to bus windshield wipers or bumpers. Police issued citations charging two protesters with blocking traffic. The misdemeanor charges were filed against a woman from Poughkeepsie. N.Y., and a man from Austin. The protest marked the third day of by ADAPT members. The group is in San Antonio to voice opinions at a conference of the American Public Transportation Association, which regulates interstate and intrastate public transportation. The conference closes Wednesday afternoon with a discussion in the Regency Ballroom West on serving the handicapped. Cisneros met with the protesters Tuesday afternoon at the Convention Center. “I think it's a productive thing you're doing in this city," he said. He told the group his father, who recently suffered a stroke, is a patron of VIAtrans, a system of 20 vans designed to carry people in wheelchairs. ADAPT members criticized the VIA system, saying it is inaccessible to the handicapped. They also denounced VIAtrans, saying service must be arranged 24 hours in advance. Cisneros said he favors l00 percent accessibility to public transportation. But he said the goal cannot be met immediately because of the cost of installing wheelchair lifts on all of the buses. He proposed adding lifts to buses on certain routes. But ADAPT rejected the proposal, saying it would amount to segregation. After hearing a list of demands, Cisneros promised to write letters to Texas congressmen and to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, seeking support from the group's cause. The protesters asked Cisneros to write to President Reagan asking for the reinstatement of federal regulations mandating wheelchair lifts on all buses purchased in the future. But Cisneros said he will not send the letter unless financial assistance is made available to local and state governments. The ADAPT members said they could not promise that they will not hold another street protest. During the Tuesday demonstration. protestors blocked buses from ll a.m. to noon. Police had to remove Edith Harris of Hartford, Conn., who refused to let go of a windshield wiper blade. They unhooked the battery on her motorized scooter and carried her to a sidewalk. Police directed traffic as people poured out of offices to watch.
ADAPT (203)
San Antonio Light, Tuesday, 4/23/85 Metro [Headline] Demonstration at VIA offices PHOTO by Marianne Thomas/San Antonio Light: Top down view of a mass of protesters, mostly in wheelchairs, in a rough circle in front of a reception type desk. This lobby area is filled with protesters. Some have signs taped to the front of their chairs, some are in manual wheelchairs, others in power chairs, at least one person is on a vent. Caption reads: PROTEST: Members of ADAPT ---- American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation ---- occupy the VIA Metropolitan Transit offices during demonstration yesterday. [Headline] Disabled protest special bus rules By Laura A. Lambeth, Staff writer Sixty handicapped people rolled their wheelchairs into VIA Metropolitan Transit administrative and rode the elevator to the second floor, where they stage a four-hour demonstration yesterday. The protest, by members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, caused 90 bus company employees to lock themselves in their offices for an hour until officials with VIA and the American Public Transit Association agreed to meet the demonstrators who wanted to express their rights to ride buses. The protesters found themselves sitting calmly in the hallways from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.. because the APTA leader could not be located. At least 20 police officers surrounded the building on West Myrtle Street to keep the peace as the demonstrators waited until their demands worn heard by VIA General Manager Wayne Cook and Bernie Ford, head of the APTA, which is meeting in San Antonio this week. None of the demonstrator were from San Antonio, which prompted VIA officials to say yesterday's protest was aimed at the national leaders. "The San Antonio community has told us to put transportation dollars into a para-transit system, with Please turn to PROTEST/B6
ADAPT (204)
[Headline] Disabled riders hopeful after meeting transport officials San Diego Union By Ric Bucher, Staff Writer 2/11/85 Mike Auberger and Dana Jackson were not smiling when they wheeled out of the Hilton Hotel's Capri Room, but they were hopeful. Auberger and Jackson, along with 13 other wheelchaired members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, asked board members of the American Public Transportation Association to endorse full accessibility for the disabled to all public transit vehicles. And they aimed their plea at the board members’ hearts rather than their budget. “I think we really shook them up,” Jackson said. “They have come a long way,” Auberger said. “Two years ago, they didn't want us in the room. This time they asked questions.” One of those questions, posed by John Pingree, transit manager of Salt Lake City, Utah, personalized one of APTA’s primary disagreements with the ADAPT group. The transit manager said he has an autistic child whom handicap requires the use of specially equipped vans presently available to the handicapped in most cities. The cost of fitting public transportation system with wheelchair lifts, ramps and wider doorways would take away funds currently subsidizing these van services, APTA members claim. ADAPT members say, however, that the van service method is severely handicapped itself. Van service must be reserved 24 hours in advance for a specific time and destination, and ADAPT members say the vans segregate them from the rest of the public. “Imagine if you had to program your car 24 hours in advance every time you wanted to go anywhere, and that was the only way you could get there,” Jackson said. Jackson is the ADAPT transportation coordinator in Washington, D.C. Wade Blank, who helped found ADAPT 12 years ago, said the group's appeal focused on “the moral imperative” aspect of equal access, instead of “costs and everything else.” Blank, who is not disabled, feels the transit system discriminates against the disabled now as it once did against black people. Blank believes the presentation created a rift between transit managers who have superior handicap access – Seattle was cited as the best – and those with lesser facilities. San Diego is one of the worst, according to Auberger. APTA’s executive vice president, Jack Gilstrap, said the APTA board has appointed a committee to study the ADAPT and give a report, tomorrow. Gilstrap said the main purpose of the meeting here is to address the severe budget cuts planned for the Department of Transportation by the government.
ADAPT (189)
San Antonio Light, April 21, 1985 Viewpoint Thomas F. Brereton [Headline] Give handicapped the transit they deserve PHOTO: Head shot of a man in suit and tie, with a beard and moustach. He is smiling, and he appears to be Brereton. San Antonio's convention calendar features an unwanted bonus this weekend: some out of town demonstrators who have vowed to disrupt a conference at the Hyatt, in order to focus attention on a neglected national issue. The American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) are the unwelcome guests at the American Public Transit Association's western regional conference. They have been similarly unwelcome guests at APTA conferences in Denver, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., where 28 members were arrested for civil disobedience last October. So now San Antonio's VIA Metropolitan Transit gets to take its turn playing cat's paw to make their point. ADAPT's demand is a simple one: civil rights for the handicapped, specifically the right to ride the same bus as everyone else. This means requiring public transit systems to make all of their mainline services fully accessible, particularly by installing wheelchair lifts instead of relying exclusively on separate “para-transit” services like VIA-Trans. They contend that this dual service system is a segregationist anachronism: 25 years ago blacks could at least ride in the back of the bus: today the handicapped still can't even get on board. At first blush, it may seem hard to believe that a person who is wheelchair-bound would really prefer to struggle to and from the bus stop in order to ride a regular bus, rather than being picked up and delivered door-to-door in a specially equipped van. But there are some real problems with a van service which makes it inherently less usable than full access to the regular transit network. First there is the matter of registration. In order to ride VIA-Trans, you have to be certified by a physician or a social service agency as completely unable to use the regular bus. As a result, there are only about 7000 people registered in Bexar County. Estimates of the potentially eligible “mobility-impaired" population range from 12,000 to 52,000, depending on whose definition you accept. Out of town visitors, of course, have a special difficulty of making arrangements in advance. Then there is the matter of time. You have to call and make a reservation at least two hours ahead, and preferably a couple of days. This may be okay if you know you have a doctors appointment every Wednesday at 2 o'clock. but it is no way to go out drinking with your friends on the spur of the moment. And since this is a shared-ride system, you will probably have to leave a lot earlier than you would like, and then to endure a long, circuitous journey to your destination, while other passengers are picked up and dropped off en route. So imagine yourself now in a wheelchair. Which would you rather do: Wheel yourself down to the nearest bus stop to get on a bus and go whereever it takes you, or call VIA-Trans a couple of days in advance to make a reservation? You don't have to buy ADAPT's tactics in order to see their point. Handicapped people naturally want to be as independent as possible, with a minimum of degrading “special privileges." On the other side, transit authority spokesmen ridicule the demand for wheelchair lifts as economically prohibitive and technically impractical. A study by the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board estimates the total additional cost of operating a fully accessible fixed-route bus system at about $2,000 per year per lift-equipped bus. But unlike VIA-Trans, where more riders automatically mean more vans and drivers - at an average actual cost of $l0.70 per trip — this cost does not increase appreciably with greater use by the handicapped. Opponents of accessible transit also object that the wheelchair lifts break down too often. And, you would have to take some regular seats out of the bus, to provide space to secure the wheelchairs. And the requirements of operating the lift would throw the bus off schedule, because the driver would have to take extra time to assist the passenger. In reality, the actual number of times per day you would have to stop the bus to use this lift makes nonsense of this argument. But what about the problem of getting to and from the bus stop, along streets without curb cuts and often without sidewalks? This objection is an excuse for not solving one problem because there are other problems beyond it. If you were in a wheelchair, you would probably need to live in a different house, too. You would consider this a factor before you moved. Note that this is not an either/or proposition, between specialized vans and lift-equipped buses. The same study by the Transportation Research Board estimates that only 30 percent of the "severely transportation handicapped" could use an accessible fixed-route bus. The other 70 percent — those on medication, with mental impairments or multiple handicaps — would still need to rely on VIA-Trans, taxicabs, or other means to get around. To me. this whole argument is pretty one-sided. The real clincher is the simple fact that other cities have already done what VIA says is impossible: to provide full accessibility on their mainline services. The old excuses won't wash anymore. it's time we stopped putting a price tag on people's dignity and independence. Tom Brereton is a former professor of urban studies at Trinity University.