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Accueil / Albums / Orlando, fall 1991 29
ADAPT (693)
An ADAPT woman (Julie Nolan)0 crawls under a truck being used as part of a barrier to keep ADAPT out. Behind the truck is a security guard holding up a table to keep folks out, but he is looking back over his shoulder as Julie slips through.
ADAPT (694)
Title: ADAPT activists and nursing home operators Face to Face: Photo by Tom Olin: A woman in a power chair [Laura Hershey] has a huge sign taped to her front "Give America A Choice in Long Term Care." She has a tube going up to her mouth and she is staring at some people in suits who are looking at the ground in front of themselves. Behind her more people are walking around. Story is on ADAPT 671, 678 and 670 and text is entirely in 671 for easier reading.
ADAPT (696)
Title: Disabled storm convention by the New York Times [handwritten: Denver Post 10/7/91] ORLANDO, Fla. — Seeking to redirect federal money toward in-home care and away from nursing homes, more than 300 advocates for the disabled yesterday stormed a hotel in Orlando, Fla., where representatives of the nursing home industry are holding their annual convention. The demonstrators, most of them in wheelchairs and many with severe disabilities, broke through police lines and blocked the entrance to the hotel for miore than an hour. The hotel is the site of the annual convention of the American Health Care Association, the trade organization for the nation’s mursing homes. Police arrested 50 protesters on charges of trespassing. The demonstration was part of a campaign by American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT, a militant group based in Denver. Under the Medicaid program, the federal government annually pays nursing homes more than $20 billion. The group wants 25 per-cent of that money diverted to pay for personal attendants who would help severely disabled people take care of basic needs. Officials of the American Health Care Association say that while they support the notion of more long-term care in the home, they believe that ADAPT’s demands are unrealistic.
ADAPT (676)
Photo by Tom Olin?: Shot through horizontal bars down and dark cinderblock hallway, a cameraman stands shooting footage of a few protesters rolling out of the hall into the sunlight. In front of them a couple of other camera men and some other people in wheelchairs are waiting for them. It is the ADAPT folks being let out of jail.
ADAPT (678)
This story starts on 671 and continues on ADAPT 670 but the entire text is included on 671 for easier reading. Photo by Tom Olin: Three Orlando police officers lift a thin woman [Rona Schnall] up to sholder height as they load her into a vehicle. One officer has her leg, another has his arm between her legs in her crotch.
ADAPT (687)
Title: Convention to attract protesters (from ADAPT B-1) This is a continuation of the article that starts in ADAPT 692. For easier reading the text of the entire article is included there.
ADAPT (723)
[This page continues the article from Image 681. Full text is available on 681 for easier reading.]
ADAPT (670)
This story starts on 671, continues on ADAPT 678 and ends here on 670 but the entire text is included on 671 for easier reading. Photo by Tom Olin: A huge crowd of people in wheelchairs and walking goes down a suburban road as far as you can see. Motorcycle police and media cameramen are on the sides of the group. In the front row, five people in wheelchairs (left to right: Lillibeth Navarro, Diane Coleman, Jimmy Small behnd her, a woman in a manual being pushed by someone, and Claude Holcomb) fill the front of the frame and are presumably the front of the march. Lillibeth has a sign that reads "Thousands of my people are drugged in nursing homes", and Diane has one that reads " Nursing homes USA Apartheid of older and disabled." They are chanting as are other marchers. including a woman wearing a Life Worthy of Life T-shirt.
ADAPT (689)
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1991 DISCLOSURE/5 NEIGHBORHOOD BY NEIGHBORHOOD! [Headline] ADAPT Hits Nursing "Home" Lobby in Orlando ORLANDO, FL.--When Health and Human Services Secretary Luis Sullivan refuses to meet with you, what do you do? If you are an ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) activist you take your grievance from the public to the private sector. From Sunday October 6th. to Thursday October 10th. 450 ADAPT activists from 25 states converged on the Annual Convention of the American Health Care Association (AHCA), the nation's largest nursing home lobby. The lack of a national policy to fund attendant home care services for people with disabilities is ADAPT's issue. ADAPT was targeting the AHCA directly with their proposal to redirect a minimum 25% of Medicaid's $23 billion budget to establish a national program of community-based attendant home care. ADAPT targeted the AHCA because of HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan's refusal to meet with ADAPT representatives to work out a comprehensive attendant home care program ADAPT's grievance to the AHCA is that its lobbying on behalf of the nursing "home" industry serves to keep disabled citizens that would be able to live in a home environment trapped in an institutional environment. A disproportionally larger share of the Medicaid budget goes to nursing homes instead of community-based programs such as attendant home care. "The AHCA represents 95% of the 10,000 nursing homes in the U.S. Together, these institutions collect 6C% of their income from Medicaid. They end up making a profit from people's disabilities," explains Mike Auberger, with Denver ADAPT. Until Louis "Dr. NO" (nicknamed because of his continuing refusal to meet with ADAPT) Sullivan makes time to meet with disabled citizens, ADAPT will continue to battle the nursing home industry on their own. Auberger continues, "These people are not cattle that you can charge so much for. We'd like to get rid of the profiteering and instead provide a creative humane system in people's homes." ADAPT activists were attempting to block the entrances to Orlando's Peabody Hotel & Convention Center with their wheelchairs when the Orlando Police Department intervened. The OPD had busses equipped with lifts brought in to arrest any demonstrator that attempted to block the en-trances to the convention center. And arrested they were. On Sunday 73 ADAPT activists were arrested and imprisoned in accessible cells. Most were arrested for attempting to block the entrances to the convention center, however many were [boxed text] "The money should follow the people. When it comes to nursing homes, the people want out Attendant home care is the solution," Mark Jackson, Atlanta ADAPT. [image] [image caption] In lieu of HHS Secretary Luis "Dr. NO" Sullivan, ADAPT activists march to the Orlando convention center to challenge the nursing "home" industry lobby. (Photo by Tom Olin) [text resumes] also arrested for blocking the arrival and departure of the lift-equipped buses. The activists, many of which are low-income, refused to post the $1,000 bail and were finally released on Friday. By blocking the door and refusing to pay the bail, the activists were illustrating to the convention-goers the plight of residents trapped in the almost prison-like conditions in nursing homes. The demonstrations and the subsequent arrests brought the issue of attendant home care to the forefront of the nursing home industry and the general public. Mark Jackson, with Atlanta ADAPT, described the media situation. "Every time we do an action in a new city, we get more people involved. This was the first time ADAPT hit Florida. Everyone in the general public can relate to nursing homes, they know someone, family or friend, that has been put in a nursing home. These people can relate to the fact that people don't want to be institutionalized." Auberger agrees, "There are 2 million people in Orlando that now under-stand the issue. This is a population that has an opinion, and that makes a difference." The attendant home care issue is actually very simple according to ADAPT. A disproportionate amount of the budget for disabled citizen's services goes to funding the nursing home industry instead of attendant health care. For every person you can [text cuts off] to in a nursing "home", you can provide attendant home care for two in the community. Attendant home care is a cost effective way of providing disabled citizens with a stable home environment, one with dignity, instead of forcing them them to languish in a nursing "home". According to ADAPT, there are 1.6 million disabled citizens that remain "imprisoned" in the nursing "home" system that could be living fuller lives in their own homes. The fundamental debate centers on the quality of life for disabled people. Quality of life is higher for those who remain at home, with an attendant assisting them with household maintenance. Nursing "homes" resemble prisons, in numerous ways, most importantly in that residents do not have control over their own lives, in terms of eating, sleeping, recreation, etc. It is this lack of control that damages the self-esteem, dignity, and reduces the quality of life for the disabled. Thousands of people with disabilities, old and young, are locked away in institutions and nursing homes or trapped at home because no effective community options exist. For thousands of other people with disabilities, the fear of being placed in a nursing home or some other institution is an everyday reality. It doesn't matter the age or disability, race or sex, whether employed or not, institutions for many are the only option. "The AHCA says that we don't want to negotiate, that we don't want to meet. Well, ADAPT is not going to have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. We sent them our '25%' proposal, and we gave them a resolution to vote on at their convention. They refused to discuss either one. Until they are willing to sit down at the table and hold a serious discussion on our proposals or their own alternative, we're going to keep the heat on," maintains Jackson. ADAPT maintains that the nursing "home" industry has too much influence over how services are delivered, Disabled people are treated like commodities by a corporate nursing "home industry that is more concerned with profit than need. There is an institutional bias in most privately and publicly funded programs. The majority of funding is being spent for nursing homes and other institutions because of the influence of the American Health Care Association and other lobbying groups. "When you take a look at the budget to provide long-term services to the disabled community...most of the money goes to institutions. Why is that? The nursing 'home' lobby is very powerful, and that pressure keeps the money flowing into the nursing 'home' industry. People are forced to follow. the money, and we want this to change. The money should follow the people, and the people want out," concludes Auberger. ADAPT pledges to continue to demonstrate for attendant home care until all of the disabled citizens that can be removed from the oppressive nursing "home" industry are returned to their homes and provided with attendant home care. ADAPT will also continue to press HHS Secretary Sullivan for a meeting to present their "25%" attendant home care proposal.
ADAPT (681)
The Socialist November 1991 [Headline] Campaigning From Jail By J. Quinn, Socialist Party Candidate for President Shortly before I flew to Florida on the afternoon of October 4, I received by first printed campaign literature, some palm cards with Bill Edwards' and my name on them along with some highlights of the 1992 Socialist Party platform. By the afternoon of October 6, I had joined more than seventy demonstrators for the rights of the disabled in the Orange County, Fla., jail, where we stayed for the next three days. Thus I joined the grand tradition of Eugene V. Debs, who spent his entire 1920 campaign in Atlanta Prison for his opposition to World War I, and of Norman Thomas, who was jailed during his 1936 campaign for helping CIO organizers fight for free speech in Boss Frank Hague's Jersey City. It is tradition I would rather honor in the breach than in observance, but sometimes a candidate has no choice. The police arrested me for trespass just outside the front door of the Peabody Hotel in Orlando. I was with nearly 300 other members of ADAPT, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, who were trying to present our views to members of the American Health Care Association staying at the hotel. AHCA is the lobbying group for the big nursing home chains, which have become enormously profitable since the enactment of Medicare legislation in 1965. AHCA is currently suing Louis Sullivan, Bush' secretary of health and human services, to get more money distributed through the states to nursing homes in order to warehouse more disabled and elderly persons. [image] [image caption] Orlando police arresting a disability activist. Photo by Tom Olin [text cut off] 1.6 million severely disabled people can live independently at home, work-ing at whatever jobs are within their capacity, and providing pay for the family members and friends who are their primary care givers. AHCA and the Bush administration have no use for programs which would interfere with the publicly-funded private profits of the nursing homes. More than half the ADAPT members in Orlando were attending their first public protest. They are a politically varied group. Some are still grateful to Bush for signing the Americans with Disabilities Act last year, which climaxed a battle for accessible public transportation and access to buildings. Of course Bush signed it reluctantly, and his predecessor Reagan worked very hard to prevent its passage. It is ADAPT and similar militants who deserve credit for the act. The first demonstrations against inaccessible buses began in 1978 in Denver, where ADAPT is still centered. Some of you may recall the article I wrote for The Socialist about the deaf-blind and wheelchair-bound Socialist Dennis Schreiber and his Chicago group, Dis-abled Americans Rally for Equality. DARE and other groups of disabled led off the 20th anniversary March on Washington in 1983 at the invitation of Coretta King. Dennis and several comrades from that march were with me in Orlando, continuing the militant Socialist tradition of Helen Keller. Most of the ADAPT members liked the Socialist platform highlights I showed them. We are, of course, for equal rights regardless of disability, for a complete socialized health care system, and for a restructured housing industry which would make it easy to modify living space for the disabled. Our foreign policy planks are appeal-ing to those who became disabled while fighting senseless wars to protect foreign profits. Although anyone can suddenly find themselves in the ranks of the disabled, the poor and disadvantaged are disproportionately victims of industrial accidents, random violence, a deteriorating environment, and preventible disease. Unlike the reforms advocated by the major parties in order to stifle dissent, our demands are in-solubly linked and interdependent be-cause of our basic socialist message. Perhaps a few of those I talked to are beginning to understand that. Nothing radicalizes a group faster than a brutal and stupid opponent, and we had that in Orlando. The police bugged our meeting rooms, studied tapes of previous ADAPT demonstrations so that they would know which leaders to arrest, and tried to arrest as many able-bodied attendants as possible in order to immobilize the rest of the group. ACHA devoted five out of six hand-outs in their press kit to attacks on us, nearly all of them lies. Orlando has become the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country through the tourist and convention business engendered since the opening of Disney World in 1970, and the chamber of commerce was obviously leaning on the police to see that AHCA had an incident-free convention. This conspiracy did not succeed. Our arrests made for some of the most spectacular television since Bull Connor's, Birmingham. A vigil, of our comrades continued outside the jail for the entire time that we were inside. Demonstrations outside the AHCA meetings in the Orange County Convention Center also continued. We were released after three days ready to demonstrate again. A court order threatening arrest for any of us who stepped outside our hotel stopped our last attempt to reach the AHCA delegates who were meeting with their legislative friends, but we were able to show our symbol of a wheelchair chained on a cross to a press conference anyhow. The jail was unequipped to handle so many disabled persons. It took them 14 hours to process us. The over-crowded women's section never had enough bottom bunks. Needed medical treatments were unavailable or behind schedule. Guards and trustees bent the rules for us, allowing me writing materials and the use of my cane, for instance, but even the jailers most ashamed of themselves were unable to revolt against the system of which they were a part. We were given no chance in court to defend our actions. The judge allowed us to plead no contest, sentenced us to time served plus $100 court costs apiece, and warned us not to be outside agitators again in his jurisdiction. This jailing was nowhere near so rough as some of those I endured in the South during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and it made a spectacular opening for the 1992 campaign, but it seemed downright unfair for me to be jailed while George Bush, who was in Orlando the week before, got to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Disney World by shaking hands with Mickey Mouse. Of course he and Quayle look more natural doing that sort of thing than Bill Edwards, my running mate, and I do.
ADAPT (672)
The Orlando Sentinel, Thursday, October 17, 1991 ORS [Headline] ADAPT protesters' firm stance did alI disabled people proud Last week,' disabled protesters disrupted the Southern chard of Orlando, "The" City Beautiful." Some called the protesters derelicts, others said they were nothing more than a ragtag bunch. I call them soldiers. They are activists in a civil rights movement, and the banner they, fight under is ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendants Programs Today.) Their action is for freedom of choice for people with disabilities. They believe that those who are not completely independent (including those disabled by age) should have the right to stay in their homes with the help of an attendant -- a non-medical helper who provides personal care at the disabled person's direction. ADAPT members estimate that millions of people are in nursing homes rather than living independently That's because nursing homes have always been the sole solution to helping people who were not totally self-sufficient. ADAPT's forces want to change that. Some of the disabled activists I met during the four days of protests in Orlando were not pretty. Others were beautiful and handsome and could have been movie stars. Most were severely disabled. Some had able-bodied helpers, without whose assistance the disabled protesters could not have gotten out of bed in the morning. Many had bodies that bore witness to the power of disease or accident. Some were paralyzed. A few struggled to get each word out, fighting against the problems that short-circuited their voices and limbs. They were men and women, old and young, black and white, rich and poor. Despite their disabilities, they possessed the same determination and diligence to fight for freedom that Americans have traditionally given their lives for. I thought of patriots at Valley Forge, Martin Luther King Jr. and the yellow-ribbon heroes of Desert Storm. I smiled at how different, yet how similar, all these activists are. One woman said the disabled protesters were just trying to get attention and they had nothing else to do. As a disabled person, I know her argument is false. Severely disabled people usually attract far more attention than they want or deserve. And most disabled people keep very busy just trying to survive. Someone else said that instead of disrupting the peace, the activists should negotiate and work in committees to make decisions about home care and other important issues. I will admit that as a lifelong advocate for people with disabilities the committee [image] [image caption] Beverly Chapman. Accessing Life approach always made sense to me. I felt that the way to create change was to learn the system and use it. And I have done that many times. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't. Fifteen years ago, lift-equipped public transportation was a big issue disabled people fought for. I sat on advisory committees with other disabled and able-bodied people. We deliberated the pros and cons of making transit buses accessible to people with disabilities. Ultimately we recommended the local transit authority purchase all new buses with lifts. The Orlando City Council voted that city money could be used only to buy buses with lifts. But despite that, transit officials found a way to order buses without equipment to help disabled travelers. In that case, we used the system. And even though we won battles, we lost the war. That experience taught me that too often committee decisions aren't followed because they don't conform to the wishes of those in power. Perhaps ADAPT's methods make some of us uncomfortable. And perhaps in a perfect world, the needs of disadvantaged people would be met, simply because all Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the members of ADAPT by their existence, demonstrate that this is not a perfect world. And they follow their consciences to confrontation because they believe in their cause. The late Robert Kennedy often often quoted Dante when he said, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for people who at times of adversity sit on the sidelines and watch." If that's true, some day the members of ADAPT may look down on all of us from a heavenly place, comfortably entrenched with the rest of humanity's heroes.
ADAPT (680)
A-18 The Orlando Sentinel, Thursday, October 10, 1991 The Orlando Sentinel FOUNDED 1876 633 N. ORANGE AVE., ORLANDO, FLA. 32801-1349 407 420-5000 HAROLD R. LIFVENDAHL, President and Publisher L JOHN HAILE JR. Vice President and Editor • STEPHEN R. VAUGHN, Executive Editor WILLIAM B. DUNN, Managing Editor JANE E. HEALY, Associate Editor JAMES P. TONER, Associate Managing Editor MANNING PYNN, Associate Managing Editor • Deputy Managing Editors MICHAEL W. BALES GEORGE C. BIGGERS III STEVEN L. DOYLE DANA S. EAGLES [Headline] Get realistic about Medicaid Disabled activists attracted considerable attention this week in Orlando with their attempts to disrupt a convention of nursing home operators. They, in turn, countered with slick press packages and media briefings. How inane did the rhetoric get? Well, the disabled called for an end to all nursing homes. And conventioneers painted ridiculously rosy pictures of life in a nursing home and criticized the protesters for refusing to negotiate with them on Medicaid spending. How absurd. The nursing home lobby may be powerful, but it is still the job of government officials to negotiate Medicaid spending. And that's where these demonstrations should have been directed a lawmakers. For despite all the grandstanding this week, both have legitimate concerns that Mate and federal leaders need to address. Nursing home operators, for example, are right to demand that loopholes in Medicaid eligibility be tightened so that more tax dollars can be spent to care for those who truly need it. As for the disabled, they certainly have a worthwhile cause in fighting for cost-effective assistance programs that can help them stay at home instead of in government-funded nursing home beds. Clearly, the Medicaid system is headed for collapse if lawmakers don't start adopting more innovative means to contain sky-rocketing health care costs. Spirited debate and rational ideas are needed to help pull America from the brink of this crisis. Enough rhetoric. Let's all focus on real issues and reasonable answers. [Headline] Job well done Despite the madness and mayhem at the convention center, two organizations are to be commended for the way they conducted themselves this week: The Orange County jail and the sheriffs office. Both groups carefully planned and pre-pared themselves for handling the disabled protesters. Because deputies studied previous protests, they were able to minimize illegal disruptions. More important, they underwent special training and added extra staff and equipment so that the disabled could be properly aired for while in their custody. Looks like a job well done.
ADAPT (685)
The Appalachian Reader Regional News [image] [image caption] Tennessee ADAPT organizer and activist Diane Coleman helps block the entrance to an Orlando hotel where nursing home representatives are meeting. [Headline] Tennessee activists travel to Orlando to protest institutionalizing of disabled Members of ADAPT of Tennessee (Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), along with ADAPT activists from around the country, descended on Orlando, Florida, during the second week in October to protest the warehousing of many of their fellow disabled citizens in nursing homes. The protests, at the hotel where the American Health Care Association was meeting, were held to call attention to the fact that, while millions of dollars are spent each year to institutionalize disabled people, almost nothing is spent to provide attendant services that could enable those people to stay at home in the community, with their families and friends. More than 200 members of ADAPT blocked entrances to the hotel on several different occasions during the week, and many were arrested and jailed. Inside, representatives of most of the nation's nursing homes met to learn how to run them better. Outside, activists insisted that if even one quarter of the money spent by Medicaid on nursing home care were re-channelled into attendant services, thousands of disabled people could be released from the homes' restrictive and often humiliating care. For more information on the actions, or about ADAPT of Tennessee, contact Diane Olin at 1478 Stayton Road, Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee 37051 or call (615) 789-5236.
ADAPT (677)
[Headline] Disabled Group Protests Disrupt AHCA Meetings by Allen Hogg A spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association (AHCA) charged that an organization for people with disabilities demonstrating at its meetings seems to have as its goal "creating confusion and getting publicity. An organizer of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) said she is half right. ADAPT co-founder Mike Auberger acknowledged that publicizing a cause is a primary reason why members of his group have been protesting at AHCA meetings around the country. These protests, which have been taking place throughout 1991, reached a peak at AHCA's annual meeting in Orlando, FL, in early October. Seventy-six of the more than 300 ADAPT members who went to the Orange County Convention Center were jailed for three days after blocking facility entrances, chaining themselves together by the neck, carrying signs and shouting slogans. Demonstrations such as this, said Auberger, result in "a lot of media attention and a lot of people all of a sudden understanding the issue." The issue, as Auberger presents it, is that too much federal money is being spent on long-term care at nursing homes, and not enough for health care provided at home. "We don't want to keep funding nursing homes," he said. "We want to redirect 25 percent of the nursing home Medicaid budget into personal assistant programs." ADAPT, which was founded in 1983, had been called Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation while lobbying for the Americans with Disabilities Act. It adopted its new title after that law was passed. "We moved to this issue because it's probably the single largest issue right now for people with disabilities," Auberger said. He expressed his belief, however, that the redirection of resources ADAPT is advocating would give all taxpayers more bang for their bucks. "Care can pretty typically be pro-vided in the home with a higher level of quality and more economically," he said. "I don't know of anybody that wants to go to a nursing home. Most people have a sense that this is where you go to die." AHCA vice president of public relations Linda Keegan, whose group represents 10,000 non-profit and for-profit nursing homes, of course disagrees. According to Keegan, taking money from nursing homes is hardly a way to deal with "a dramatically expanding population in need of long-term care." "To assume that everybody in a nursing home could be better cared for at home is just unrealistic," she said. "We make choices available." Keegan said it's particularly unfortunate that ADAPT protests disrupt AHCA meetings at which the group's members are trying to learn how to offer better care. "Any deterrent to people trying to get an education is a shame," she commented. In order to quell the protests, AHCA has had meetings with ADAPT representatives several times over the past year at which AHCA has attempted to reach a compromise with the protestors. But to Keegan, ADAPT leaders have seemed uninterested in putting together a position that might lead to real public policy change. "I'm not sure that was ever their objective," she said. Auberger countered that ADAPT does want public policy change, and would be glad to work with AHCA -- if that group agreed that less federal funding should be given to nursing homes. "If they were to support the issue that would be great," he said. In the meantime, he sees little hope of ADAPT members having the clout in Washington that professional lobbyists do. "Grassroots disability people can't afford to pay for lobbying," he commented. Thus the protests at AHCA meetings will continue in the hopes of getting media attention and swaying public support. Auberger said plans to demonstrate at the group's October 1992 meeting in San Francisco are already underway. "When we get to the final end, we'll be victorious," he vowed.