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Tuis / Albums / Sleutelwoorde civil rights
+ ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation 13
ADAPT (367)
San Francisco Examiner 10/1/87 Photo by Examiner/Gordon Stone: The frame of the picture is filled with people in wheelchairs, and people standing. All are protesters and in the center is a woman wearing glasses raises her hand in a power fist with a piece of paper in it, above her head. In front of him is a woman laying back in her chair (Laurie ___ from Chicago). Everyone is facing forward. Caption reads: CAROL RAUGUST, WITH FLYER, IS AMONG WHEELCHAIR ACTIVISTS They have a quarrel with public transit officials, convening in S.F. Title: Handicapped activists get day in court By John D. O'Connor OF THE EXAMINER STAFF The Hall of Justice resounded with victory whoops and the whirl of motorized wheelchairs as 43 'handicapped activists arrested for blockading the Powell Street cable car line got their day in court. Protesters used their arraignment Wednesday before Municipal Court Judge Philip Moscone as a platform for a new attack against the American Public Transit Association, which they say has not done enough to provide the handicapped with access to public transit. Moscone allowed designated speakers to address the court after each group of blockaders entered no contest pleas to charges of obstructing a public thoroughfare. The $50 fine the charge carried was dropped as Moscone credited the night the 43 demonstrator spent in jail as "time served." A second charge of failing to disperse was dropped "in the interest of justice," according to Deputy District Attorney Randall Knox. Jane Jackson, who spoke on behalf the first group of 14 wheelchair-bound demonstrators arraigned Wednesday, seized the opportunity to charge APTA with denying handicapped citizens of their civil rights. "It is for this reason that we believe Jack Gilstrap (APTA executive Ace president) should be asked to resign or should be forced to resign," Jackson said. "APTA is not acting in good faith." More than 15,000 public transit officials from around North America attended the four-day convention. Officials of the transit group have said they feel the access question should be handled on a local level. Jackson also said the coalition of handicapped-rights groups, which captured national media attention with four days of protests and blockades across the city, was pulling out of a scheduled meeting with APTA officials Thursday. "It's the only move left open to us," Jackson said later while members of the September Alliance for Accessible Transit and American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation cheered her and the other blockaders as they exited the courtroom. About 75 wheelchair-bound protesters lined the hallway outside the courtroom, chanting and clapping in approval and support as each group of blockaders were arraigned and allowed to leave. "They're our heroes," said Connie Arnold of San Rafael. "They're standing up for us." During the arraignments, police, sheriff's and emergency medical personnel stood by as defendants were wheeled in or entered the courtroom under their own power. Jennifer Keelan, a 6-year-old girl from Tempe, Ariz., whose bouncy enthusiasm and apparent unconcern over her handicap captivated the press and boosted the resolve of protesters, was wheeled in by a sheriff's deputy and sat writing her name over and over again in a small notebook. Unlike the group's earlier demonstrations, Wednesday's action was peaceful and there were no arrests. Protesters had staged noisy and sometimes violent demonstrations outside the APIA convention at Moscone Center Monday and on the steps of City Hall Sunday night. Handicapped-rights group organizers said Wednesday was their last day in The City as the APTA convention at Moscone Center ended a four-day conference and transit officials left town. But protesters declared the string of rallies and blockades a success. "We made our point," said Marilyn Golden of Oakland. "Now maybe they will listen."
ADAPT (367)
San Francisco Examiner 10/1/87 Photo by Examiner/Gordon Stone: The frame of the picture is filled with people in wheelchairs, and people standing. All are protesters and in the center a woman wearing glasses raises her hand in a power fist with a piece of paper in it, above her head. In front of him is a woman laying back in her chair (Laurie ___ from Chicago). Everyone is facing forward. Caption reads: CAROL RAUGUST, WITH FLYER, IS AMONG WHEELCHAIR ACTIVISTS They have a quarrel with public transit officials, convening in S.F. Title: Handicapped activists get day in court By John D. O'Connor OF THE EXAMINER STAFF The Hall of Justice resounded with victory whoops and the whirl of motorized wheelchairs as 43 'handicapped activists arrested for blockading the Powell Street cable car line got their day in court. Protesters used their arraignment Wednesday before Municipal Court Judge Philip Moscone as a platform for a new attack against the American Public Transit Association, which they say has not done enough to provide the handicapped with access to public transit. Moscone allowed designated speakers to address the court after each group of blockaders entered no contest pleas to charges of obstructing a public thoroughfare. The $50 fine the charge carried was dropped as Moscone credited the night the 43 demonstrator spent in jail as "time served." A second charge of failing to disperse was dropped "in the interest of justice," according to Deputy District Attorney Randall Knox. Jane Jackson, who spoke on behalf the first group of 14 wheelchair-bound demonstrators arraigned Wednesday, seized the opportunity to charge APTA with denying handicapped citizens of their civil rights. "It is for this reason that we believe Jack Gilstrap (APTA executive vice president) should be asked to resign or should be forced to resign," Jackson said. "APTA is not acting in good faith." More than 15,000 public transit officials from around North America attended the four-day convention. Officials of the transit group have said they feel the access question should be handled on a local level. Jackson also said the coalition of handicapped-rights `groups`, which captured national media attention with four days of protests and blockades across the city, was pulling out of a scheduled meeting with APTA officials Thursday. "It's the only move left open to us," Jackson said later while members of the September Alliance for Accessible Transit and American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation cheered her and the other blockaders as they exited the courtroom. About 75 wheelchair-bound protesters lined the hallway outside the courtroom, chanting and clapping in approval and support as each group of blockaders were arraigned and allowed to leave. "They're our heroes," said Connie Arnold of San Rafael. "They're standing up for us." During the arraignments, police, sheriff's and emergency medical personnel stood by as defendants were wheeled in or entered the courtroom under their own power. Jennifer Keelan, a 6-year-old girl from Tempe, Ariz., whose bouncy enthusiasm and apparent unconcern over her handicap captivated the press and boosted the resolve of protesters, was wheeled in by a sheriff's deputy and sat writing her name over and over again in a small notebook. Unlike the group's earlier demonstrations, Wednesday's action was peaceful and there were no arrests. Protesters had staged noisy and sometimes violent demonstrations outside the APTA convention at Moscone Center Monday and on the steps of City Hall Sunday night. Handicapped-rights group organizers said Wednesday was their last day in The City as the APTA convention at Moscone Center ended a four-day conference and transit officials left town. But protesters declared the string of rallies and blockades a success. "We made our point," said Marilyn Golden of Oakland. "Now maybe they will listen."
ADAPT (354)
Austin American-Statesman Sunday, October 25, 1987 Lifestyle section Title: Streetcars and Desire Activist couple dedicate lives to tearing down walls between city buses and the disabled By Carlos Vidal Greth, American-Statesman Staff (This is a compilation of the article that is on ADAPT 354 and ADAPT 353. The content is all included here for easier reading.) Most visitors to the Bay Area relish the opportunity to hop a cable car and "climb halfway to the stars," as Tony Bennett croons in his signature song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Stephanie Thomas, organizer for Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, had other ideas. "To mobility-impaired people, keeping those historic symbols of public transit alive memorializes inaccessibility and makes it seem like a positive thing," she said. ADAPT, a national civil-rights group, strives to make it easier for disabled people to ride city buses. They differ from mainstream disability-rights groups in that members sometimes commit acts of civil disobedience when the usual political channels clog or hit a dead end. Thomas, her husband Bob Kafka, and eight other Austinites went to San Francisco in late September to conduct a protest during the national convention of the American Public Transit Association, a lobbying organization. Kafka and 15 others were arrested when they climbed out of their wheelchairs and staged a sit-in at the cable car turnaround at Powell and Market streets. Thomas was arrested twice, once for blocking a shuttle bus and once for blocking a cable car. "I've been arrested eight times or so," she said. "I've lost count. Bob has been arrested 14 times. The police are usually aware it's a demonstration about civil rights, and that we're not out to hurt their city. But it's scary. We're not automatons. Some members break down and cry when they go to prison." As far as Thomas is concerned, the suffering has been worth it. "The demonstrations got national exposure. More important, we got the transit association's attention. They are beginning to listen." Thomas, who is also executive director of the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities, could sit for a poster portrait of the committed political activist. Her shock of amber hair shifts of its own accord like the wind ruffling a field of grain. Wide, blue eyes fix visitors with the riveting gaze of a woman who believes she fights for what is right. She was born 30 years ago in New York to parents who fought for justice in their way. Her father organized political campaigns and worked for arms control. Her mother, a writer, was involved in the women's movement. "Mom taught me to question people's perceptions," Thomas said. "The women's and disabled movements have something in common: We're defined by our bodies. You have to fight that all the time." Her first protest occurred when she was in elementary school. Mothers in the apartment building where her family lived wanted to establish a day-care center. The owners didn't want to provide the space. "Women and children took over the building," Thomas said. "We weren't angry college protestors. We were non-threatening moms and kids. But our presence made a difference." Despite her progressive upbringing, she was a shy girl who hid from the world behind the covers of books. When she was 17, her legs were paralyzed when she fell off a farm tractor while doing chores. What could have been a tragedy turned her life around. "I realized that life doesn't go on forever, and that you need to make the most of every moment," Thomas said. Thomas attended Harvard, where she and other disabled students organized a group to help make campus more accessible. "When I look back, I see we were very tame,” she said. “We were polite but usually got what we asked for.” Over the years, Thomas became increasingly active in disability rights. She got involved in independent living centers, communities of disabled people supporting one another so they can live with dignity outside institutions. In the early 1980s, she joined the Austin Resources Center for Independent Living. She went to work for the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities in 1985. The 9-year-old coalition lobbies for, represents and coordinates 90 organizations (including ADAPT) concerned with disabilities, as well as the more than 2 million disabled Texans. “It is the collective voice for the disabled in Texas,” said Kaye Beneke, spokeswoman for the Texas Rehabilitation Commission. "They’re committed - the members live every day with the problems they try to solve. “Stephanie understands there’s a spectrum of political views in the coalition, which tend to be more middle-of-the-road than ADAPT. She takes responsibility for the representing of all those views. But don’t call the coalition passive. They’ve had their way in the legislature and on the local level.” As a leader in two of Texas major disability-rights organizations, Thomas has her hands full. It helps having Bob Kafka, who broke his back in a car accident in 1973, at her side. The experienced trouble maker -- albeit trouble for a good cause -- has made a name for himself. He won the Governor’s Citation for Meritorious Service in 1986. Appropriately, Kafka met Thomas at a disability-rights conference. “Stephanie was real involved, real committed and real attractive,” he said. Sharing home and office has increased their commitment to the cause they serve- and to each other. “Bob and I are an activist couple,” Thomas said. “It’s intense because we work so closely. But it’s rewarding. It has made us an incredibly tight couple.” Thomas has to rework her concept of activism when she joined ADAPT. “Demonstrations force the public to look at disabled people in a different light,” she said. “The cripple is the epitome of powerlessness. We say we’re sorry if it scares you to look at me, but we have to live our lives.” Confrontation, however can cost allies as well as foes. This year, the Paralyzed Veterans of America severed ties with ADAPT and any organization "advocating illegal civil disobedience.” “Our charter states that we must act in accordance with the laws of the land,” said Phil Rabin, director of education. “To act otherwise would be to violate our charter. “The veterans and ADAPT members share first-hand the frustration of living in a society that is not accessible to the disabled. We don’t want to fight ADAPT. It’s a waste of precious resources to divert our energies.” Though Thomas’ group is controversial, it has achieved many of its goals. Albert Engleken, deputy executive director for the American Public Transit Association in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that ADAPT’s street theater has had some effect. In September his organization created a task force to study the issue of providing service for disabled, he said. Engelken, however is not a convert to their cause. “ADAPT wants a lift on every transit bus in the country,” Engelken said. “We believe it should be left to local transit authorities to decide how to handle transportation for disabled people. Transit officials are not robber barons. We’re paid by the public to provide the most mobility for the most people.” Thomas knows how to work within the system. Ben Gomez, director of development for Capital Metro, said ADAPT members have been effective on the Mobility Impaired Service Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations on service to the transit authority board of directors. “They’re well-organized,” Gomez said. “We don’t always agree on the approach and issues. We’ve made many of the adjustments they’ve asked for, but not always within their time frame.” The concessions have been gratifying, but Thomas has only begun to fight. “ADAPT took a dead issue änd made it hot again,” she said. For information on American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, write to ADAPT of Texas, 2810 Pearl, Austin 78705/ To learn more about the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities, call 443-8252, or write to P.O. Box 4709, Austin 78765. [curator note: addresses and phone numbers no longer valid] Staff Photo by Mike Boroff: A man (Bob Kafka) with Canadian (wrist cuff) crutches, a plaid shirt, light colored jeans and sneakers sits in the lap of a woman (Stephanie Thomas) with wild big hair and a button down shirt. She is sitting in a manual wheelchair. Caption reads: "Bob and I are an activist couple,” says Stephanie Thomas who met Bob Kafka at a rights conference. “It’s intense because we work so closely. But it’s rewarding.” Photo by Russ Curtis: A group of protesters are looking up at something over their heads and their mouths are open shouting. In the front of the picture a woman in a manual wheelchair (Stephanie Thomas) is sitting on a line on the pavement that reads passenger zone. She has her finger raised pointing and is wearing a t-shirt with the ADAPT no-steps logo. Beside her is a man (Jim Parker) with a headband looking back over his shoulder, beside him another man in a wheelchair. Behind Jim stands a woman (Babs Johnson) with her arms by her sides and her mouth open yelling. Behind her a line of other protesters is arriving. Caption reads: ADAPT organizer Stephanie Thomas traveled to San Francisco to participate in a rally protesting the policies of the American Public Transit Association.
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January / February 1987 METRO Magazine [Headline] Handicapped Rights and APTA Highlighted text: A seeming fixture at APTA conventions is a demonstration by the handicapped. In this exclusive interview with METRO Magazine,Rev. Wade Blank describes the movement’s goals and objectives. Shortly before the APTA Annual Meeting in Detroit last October, the General Assembly of the Denver Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church unanimously passed a resolution favoring 100% accessibility to all publicly funded transit buses. The resolution calls upon the" U.S. DOT “to mandate that all public buses bought with federal monies be accessible to all people, specifically including those persons who use wheelchairs for mobility." The resolution declares that equal access to public transportation is a basic human right. It urges the American Public Transit Association to support total accessibility, and calls on all public transit systems to work toward the goal as well. According to sponsors of the resolution, 14% of U.S. citizens are disabled and thus denied full access. The resolution also recommends to all churches and church agencies to consider adding equal access facilities to all their church buses and vans. Wade Blank, a Presbyterian minister and leader in the disability rights movement for 11 years, said the resolution is the latest effort in the struggle to enable disabled Americans to integrate into their communities. According to Blank, disability rights is a civil rights movement similar to the black political movement of the 1950's and 60's. Blank is a leader of ADAPT, the Denver-based American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, an organization which has demonstrated on behalf of disability rights at several APTA conventions in recent years. Blank said his organization has about 800 people who actively support it, though he believes many thousands more wheelchair-bound people would do so if they could. What follows is an interview with Rev. Blank conducted in Detroit during the APTA Annual Meeting there during which 18 disabled individuals were arrested for demonstrating at the city hall. METRO: Mr. Blank, what is your organization trying to accomplish at this APTA meeting? Blank: First of all, in 1983 we introduced a resolution before APTA in Denver, Colorado, in which we said that we wanted APTA to vote in favor of having public transportation accessible to people in wheelchairs. That resolution said three things. First, that APTA should inform all its members that it will now endorse accessibility; second, that they should take a public vote member by member (about the issue); and third, that they should inform the transportation industry that accessibility is their position. They have refused since 1983 to act on the resolution, so we assume that that means they don't favor accessible public transit. Now as to what we are doing here. Whenever APTA goes into a community (to hold a convention) we do two things: we demonstrate against APTA, and we use the occasion to illustrate to the public that their local transit system is not wheelchair accessible, in other words, every bus being wheelchair accessible. METRO: Over the years your organization has demonstrated at a number of APTA meetings and very often the demonstrations have been very disruptive. Do you think that your activities have paid off? Blank: They've paid off in the sense that first they are directed to other people with disabilities in order to raise their consciousness about their rights. Our group has grown three times over the last few years. Secondly, it tells the able-bodied public that people in wheelchairs cannot board transit, which most people never even think about. And thirdly, it teaches the community at large that our political movement is in fact a civil rights movement. METRO: Your organization demonstrates against APTA. But isn't it true that you're also hoping for action on the local level wherever you mount a demonstration? Blank: Yes. In effect, APTA does our organizing for us by picking the cities it goes into. We follow and go in and raise consciousness for our cause. I don’t think anyone can understand how alienating it is (to be disabled). My daughter is in a wheelchair. If she goes to a bus stop and the doors open and shut and the bus drives off without her, there's no way of expressing to people how alienated, how shut out that makes her feel. Of course, the transit people want to make it an economic argument...but that didn't cut it with the black movement and it's not going to cut it with the disabled movement either. METRO: How is ADAPT funded? And what is your annual budget? Blank: Mainly from the Roman Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans and the United Church of Christ. ADAPT itself doesn't have a budget per se. A trip like this (to Detroit) will run us approximately $15,000 for all the logistics involved, hotels, food, attendant care, just the logistics of moving that large number of disabled. METRO: How big is your staff? Blank: We don't have a staff, we don't have bylaws, we don't even have officers. It's just a consensus group. For example, in Denver, the disabled groups each do their own thing, and there's a lot of individuals who have joined ADAPT by simply saying, I want to be part of it. That's all it takes. We have a list of names of who those people are. METRO: You mentioned the logistics of moving the disabled. Do you bring people along with you to do the demonstrating, or do you seek to have local disabled join in? How does this work? Blank: In July we flew here with some disabled and met with the local disabled. They basically said they'd recently filed suit and were trying to get access to the buses, but that they didn't believe they could support any demonstrations because they'd be afraid to lose what they have now. That's almost to the letter the situation in every community we go into. The disabled are very afraid to lose what little they have. Plus, a disabled person in a wheelchair is by definition passive about the way they see themselves. But before we leave Detroit we will have a few people who will dare. By seeing the press, they'll see it's pretty amazing and they want to be a part of this. It changes the way they view themselves. That's how we recruit members. METRO: Tell me how the organization started? Blank: It started in Denver in 1975 when we announced we were going to make the transit system there accessible. Everybody laughed at us. We had about 20 members. We filed suit and lost. On July 5, 1978, the day after the suit was lost, we went down and blocked the first two buses in the whole movement. We held those buses for two days, sleeping on the streets. The battle in Denver went on in spurts. We started in 1978. In 1979 (Denver RTD) announced they'd make their transit buses accessible, but in 1980 when Reagan took office they went to a posture of inaccessibility. We hit the streets again and they reverted back to accessibility. In 1982, they finally signed an agreement with us that they would be totally accessible. So then other groups asked us: how did you do that? we'd like you to teach us how. Rather than just sit in Denver and enjoy our system, we decided to export what we'd won there using the same tactics on a national basis. METRO: You said earlier that the economic argument against accessibility doesn't fly. Yet to APTA and the transit industry the economic argument is very real. After all, the funds to pay for accessibility come out of their budgets. They can cite some very dramatic statistics of how much subsidy each handicapped ride costs. So how can you say the economic argument doesn't carry weight? Blank: Because those figures are not true. Denver, for example, bought 160 buses. The lowest bidders (for that contract) bid accessible buses. Neoplan undercut everybody else’s bid and they bid accessible. So you can't go just by the lifts themselves, you go by the total cost of the bus. METRO: But you also have to consider the maintenance costs and personnel costs too. In San Francisco. for example, one of the agencies there has two maintenance workers who do nothing but service the lifts, that's all those individuals do. Blank: That's true. But they have people who work on the motors, and people who work on the brakes, and people who work on every aspect of the buses that service the able bodied. The figures out of Seattle and Denver on maintenance per lift is under $400 a year, if they do preventive maintenance. Now that's a lot lower than APTA's figures of $2,500 per lift (per year). That figure is correct if you don't ever fix the lifts. In other words if you drive around and they break down and they're all gummed up, then you have to put new hydraulics in because you haven’t changed the oil. Then you're going to top out at $2,500 the same way if you don't keep your car up. METRO: During his remarks to APTA, CBS correspondent Ed Bradley charged your organization had mounted a mailgram campaign against his coming. He went on to give a presentation about apartheid in South Africa Your comments? Blank: The disabled community in the United States is suffering from a form of apartheid. The disabled live in section 8 housing, high-rise housing which is for disabled and elderly, They live in nursing homes. They go to workshops like Goodwill where they're segregated, and they are paid under 10 cents an hour in the average workshop in the United States. That's what the salary is. The disabled can't ride public transportation, so you have a form of apartheid. METRO: Thank you.
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The Cincinnati Post Tuesday, May 20, 1986 Lighthouse logo of Scripps Howard and the motto: "Give light and the people will find their own way." Editor Paul F. Knue, Editorial Page Editor Claudia Winkler, Managing Editor J. Stephen Fagan, Associate Editor James L. Adams 125 East Court Street, Cincinnati. OH 45202 (513)352-2000 Editorials Title: Buses and the disabled Shades of the civil rights movement returned to Cincinnati yesterday when members of ADAPT, which stands for American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, interfered with the operation of Queen City Metro buses. One latched onto a wheel well, and two others boarded and refused to leave. The protesters say members of the American Public Transit Association, who are meeting here this week, are moving slowly or not at all toward making all buses and trains fully accessible for the handicapped. They point to Metro, which has many buses without wheelchair lifts and 87 with lifts that it refuses to operate, as a microcosm of the problem nationwide. Some may condemn the protesters’ tactics of interrupting normal transit service, albeit by relatively non-violent means. The larger question, however, is whether the transit systems are going out of their way to leave the handicapped at curbside. That's certainly not the case with Metro. Metro has contracted with a private company to provide door-to-door (more accurately, curb-to-curb) service for the handicapped within Cincinnati. The system isn't perfect, but it is growing. Complaints abounds that scheduling the Access vans is difficult, and Metro has failed to meet a five-year goal of providing van service to all of Hamilton County, says general manager Tony Kouneski. The problem, here and elsewhere, is one of money. ADAPT wants the lifts as well as the door-to-door service. It’s tough to have it both ways, especially since federal dollars for mass transit have been cut almost 25 percent by the Reagan administration. States have been hard-pressed to fill that gap, and a sales tax increase for Metro failed miserably in 1980. Kouneski says if Metro did, indeed, have an extra $350,000 for operating and maintaining the 87 wheelchair lifts, the money would be better spent on door-to-door service. That's a decision that groups such as the Greater Cincinnati Coalition of People With Disabilities and Metro's own advisory council for the handicapped should help make and implement. Members of national groups such as ADAPT, meanwhile, have made their point. They should now turn their efforts to such things as legal parades and peaceful picketing. Instead of continuing their Cincinnati protest, they should devote their energies to lobbying Washington and the legislatures to fund their full-access plan before someone is seriously injured.
ADAPT (267)
THE PLAIN DEALER, THURSDAY, MAY 22; 1986 page 19-A PHOTO by AP: Four policemen in their fancy police hats are "rolling" a man (Rick James) up a 150 degree (ie. almost vertical) "ramp" into a van. Rick is sitting with his hands up by his chest. His hat is missing and his hair is flying out in all directions. His expression is a mix of amazement, disgust and resignation. Caption reads: Cincinnati policemen push Rick James of Salt Lake City, Utah, up a ramp into a van after he was arrested outside a downtown hotel as part of a demonstration by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. Title: Cincy arrests disabled in protest of bus access By BILL SLOAT STAFF writer CINCINNATI — Police arrested l7 disabled people yesterday after they blockaded the entrance to a downtown hotel or chained themselves to the doorway of an adjoining office building that houses Queen City Metro, this city’s public bus service. Eleven of them refused to post bond and were in Hamilton County Justice Center under cash bonds ranging from $1,500 to $3,000. Five were released late yesterday on personal bonds. One pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and was found guilty. Sixteen were in wheelchairs from polio, paralyzing spinal accidents, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and amputations. One was blind and walked carrying a white cane. The arrests were made during a non-violent, noon demonstration that challenged lack of access to city buses here and around the nation. Chants of “We will ride" and “Access now” came from about 52 demonstrators outside the Westin Hotel. Some removed footstands from their wheelchairs and banged on metal barricades. Police stood behind the barricades and refused to let the demonstrators into the hotel. All 17 taken to jail said they were members of a national handicapped rights organization called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. “This is a civil disobedience action," said Wade Blank, 47, a Presbyterian minister who helped organize yesterday's protest. Blank, who now lives in Denver, was involved in anti-war demonstrations at Kent State University in the 1960s when he lived in Akron. Several of the people loaded onto vans and hauled away to the Hamilton County Justice Center on disorderly conduct charges compared Cincinnati to Selma and Montgomery, two Alabama cities where civil rights activists were jailed by authorities in the 1960s. “The message needs to be sent out that we can’t ride a bus because we're handicapped,” said Glenn Horton, 46, of El Paso, Texas. "It's discrimination it’s segregation and it’s appalling that it could still be happening in this country." Horton said he had been confined to a wheelchair since age 9, when he fell and broke his back. Bill Bolte, 54, of Los Angeles, said handicapped people needed mainline bus service to get to jobs, movies, dates, shopping, banks and anywhere else they might want to go. “We're already in prison," said Bolte, who had polio 51 years ago. “We're going to see that what few rights we have are not going to be taken away. Our rights to public transportation are being deprived, and we will not sit for it." Organizers of the protest said they took to the streets because about 600 executives of public and private transit companies in the eastern United States and Canada were attending a convention in the hotel that ends today. Protesters said the convention should adopt a resolution supporting the installation of wheelchair lifts on all public buses in the nation. Many came from Denver, which has such lifts in use on its bus fleet. The demonstration also came a day after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced in Washington, D.C., a new regulation that allows transit authorities to establish alternative services for the disabled instead of putting lifts on regularly scheduled buses. Demonstrators complained the rule meant that buses, subways and rail lines wouldn't be made accessible to people in wheelchairs. Police Chief Lawrence Whalen said the comparisons with Alabama in the 1960s were unfair when it came to the police. Police in the South during the civil rights era often brutalized protesters. Whalen yesterday said, “Our officers handled themselves very admirably. The group has had their chance to protest and get their point across." He said the police assigned to make arrests had attended special briefings on how to handle disabled people and were instructed to ask the people in custody the best way to lift them into vans. “We wanted to be sensitive to their special needs." Whalen said. Three of those arrested yesterday were out on $3,000 bond after incidents Monday when two climbed aboard city buses, paid fares and refused to leave when ordered off by Queen City Metro officials. The third interfered with a bus. The three, Robert A. Kafka, 40, of Austin, Texas; George Cooper, 58, of Irving, Texas; and Michael W. Auberger, 32, of Denver, were charged yesterday with Criminal trespassing when they chained themselves to the entranceway of Queen City Metro's offices. Police Capt. Dale Menkhaus told his men to use bolt cutters to get them out of the building. Kafka, Cooper and Auberger had been ordered Tuesday not to set foot in Cincinnati by a Municipal judge at the time they posted bond, but another Municipal judge lifted the banning order shortly before yesterday's protests started. Police Chief Lawrence Whalen said 14 others were charged with disorderly conduct for their activities outside the hotel. Bond was set at $3,000 each, a Hamilton County Municipal Court official said. Before the demonstration began, the group gathered in a Newport, Ky., motel for a strategy session on civil disobedience. They agreed not to carry anything but identification with them when they confronted police in downtown Cincinnati and they voted not to post bail. None of the people arrested were from Ohio. The 11 who refused to post bond and were in jail last night are: Bolte; Bob Conrad of Denver; Joe Carle of Denver; Auberger; Horton; Jim Parker of El Paso, Texas; Cooper; George Roberts of Denver; Earnest Taylor of Hartford, Conn.; Lonnie Smith of Denver; Kafka. Kelly Bates of Denver pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days in jail, which she is to start serving tomorrow. Those released on personal bond are Ken Heard of Denver; George Florman of Colorado Springs, Colo.; Frank Lozano of El Paso, Texas; Rick James of Salt Lake City, Utah; and Arthur Campbell of Louisville, Ky.
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8B The Cincinnati Post, Monday,May19,1986 Title: Disabled activist group faces arrest By Edwina Blackwell, Post staff reporter Cincinnati police will arrest members of a national handicapped activist group today if they fulfill a vow to block and chain themselves to Queen City Metro buses to protest the inaccessibility of buses to the handicapped. Michael Auberger, community organizer for American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT). said the group's civil disobedience will take a more disruptive turn as the week progresses. “Whatever it, takes to disable the bus, that's what we'll do to show that the bus is inaccessible," Auberger said during a Sunday protest by the group at the downtown Westin Hotel, where public transit officials are meeting. However, Police Capt. Dale Menkhaus said extra officers will patrol the downtown streets where protesters say they will block buses and chain themselves to bumpers while the buses are stopped for traffic lights. “We're prepared to do whatever necessary to protect them (the protesters) and the general public. If they elect to violate the law, they will pay the consequences," Menkhaus said. About 85 ADAPT members - who have been arrested during similar protests in other cities — made their way Sunday afternoon from the Newport Travelodge to the Westin Hotel, where the American Public Transit Association is meeting. With most of its members confined to wheelchairs, some of the protesters relied upon able-bodied members to push them through the streets. Several of the protesters were draped with chains and locks that they plan to use to chain themselves to buses. Extra Cincinnati police officers guided the march and some were waiting for the group at the Westin, where the protesters were greeted with barricades at each of the hotel's entrances. The demonstrators arrived at the Westin and picketed in front of the hotel's entrances on Vine, Fifth and Walnut streets. “We will ride!“ they chanted. There were no arrests Sunday, although police warned pickets they would be arrested if they blocked the hotel's entrances. Menkhaus met with the protesters Sunday and cautioned that they would be arrested if they disrupted bus traffic. Auberger, a former Cincinnatian who now lives in Denver, was pleased with Sunday's protest. Leaning back in his wheelchair with a lock and chain around his neck, he said, "I think we made a strong statement to APTA and Cincinnati that disabled people aren't powerless." Murray Bond, assistant general manager for Queen City Metro, said the city-owned transit company has been working with police for several weeks in anticipation of protests by ADAPT. Members of ADAPT, a Denver—based organization, arrived in Cincinnati to coincide with the eastern education and training conference of the APTA. Nearly 600 transit officials are attending the five-day meeting, which ends Thursday. The convention's general session was to begin this morning. U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo. D-Minn., will give the keynote address. On Wednesday, the conference will address the transportation needs of the disabled during a 2 p.m. workshop. Auberger said the risk the group's members take shows how important it is to them to be able to use public transportation at will. "The point is so vital to make," he said. Bond said Queen City Metro knows of the tactics used in other cities. “Our chief concern is for the safety of the people and our riders," he said. In Cincinnati, ADAPT wants Queen City Metro to operate the wheelchair lifts currently soldered into place on 87 buses. The group also wants all buses purchased in the future to be equipped with wheelchair lifts. At present, 19 vans are used to pick up handicapped individuals in Cincinnati through a contracted service called Access. Judith Van Ginkel, director of communications for Queen City Metro, said the service was recently expanded to include three more neighborhoods and [unreadable] for those who don't need wheelchair lifts. She added it would cost Queen City Metro $350,000 to make the lifts on the 87 buses operational. Albert Engelken, APTA deputy executive director, said money problems being faced by transit systems are at the root of transportation for the handicapped. "We don't see this as a civil rights issue," he said. "We see this as a funding issue." ADAPT disagrees. Jerry Eubanks lost his legs to gangrene as a child. On Sunday, he served as a group cheerleader pushing for what he sees as a civil right for the handicapped. "When you make transportation, it's public. It's for everyone," said Eubanks, a Chicago resident. “We're only fighting for what's already here. "
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The Cincinnati Enquirer Wednesday, May 21, 1, '86 p14—A Title: The handicapped Bus service that can meet special needs is the answer The handicapped demonstrators who are demanding greater access to transportation systems could find that, even if they succeed, they may not like what they get. About '75 members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) have been in Cincinnati for the regional meeting of the American Public Transit Association (APTA). Their purpose has been to protest what they see as a violation of their civil rights. They want to be able to use all modes of public transportation as others do. ADAPT is focusing on bus systems, asking that all buses — on a progressive basis -- be provided with lifts for the handicapped. That might be a valid answer, if the money were available, but the experience of states such as California and Michigan shows that the handicapped prefer a more personalized service, such as the Access shuttles that Metro provides. Both California and Michigan have state laws requiring fully accessible systems, but the use of regular buses is negligible. Most of the handicapped prefer the “Dial-a-Ride” services that supplement the regular system. That service seems the best way. With Cincinnati's hilly terrain for example, how would the handicapped reach the bus stops? How far would they have to go to reach a "regular" bus stop? How far must they travel when they get off? What happens in chilly, stormy or snowy weather? From the bus service's standpoint, how do buses keep schedules? How many areas on a bus would have to be cleared for handicapped equipment? What would be the costs? How would those costs be met? APTA officials say their policy is to recommend that local services do what is best, considering their terrain, climate, resources and needs -— always in consultation with the community served. Metro’s Access has had its troubles meeting the needs of the handicapped. Last year, the demand was so great that the handicapped had to wait for as long as a week before they could schedule a ride. Although the problem has been helped somewhat, Metro’s officials frankly agree that it is not ideal. Improvement is needed. The handicapped must have freedom of movement. The question is, what is best for them and what is possible? The problem won't be easily solved. More bus service is needed in many areas of Greater Cincinnati, and with the cut in federal funds, money will be hard to come by. But Cincinnati's coalition of the handicapped has found negotiation preferable to confrontation. Although the coalition is upset about the limitations of Access, it still sees co-operative decisions as the wisest course. And it is. Together with Metro, they must find a practical answer to their needs.
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Friday. May 45, I986, Gazette Telegraph -- A3 headlines Gazette Telegraph wire services the nation Title: Cincinnati called civil rights battleground CINCINNATI — Leaders of 17 wheelchair-bound protesters who were arrested while demonstrating for access to public transit buses say Cincinnati has become a civil rights battleground. “This is the Selma, Ala., of the disabled civil rights movement,” said the Rev. Wade Blank of Denver, a co-founder of the group American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, which staged this week's protests. Seventeen protesters from Texas, Colorado and Utah were arrested Wednesday, when the American Public Transit Association concluded its regional meeting. Some boarded buses and declined requests that they get off. Others blocked a parking entrance to the hotel where the association met, while three others chained themselves together to block a doorway in the Queen City Metro headquarters.
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Los Angeles Times 4/10/85 PHOTO by Vince Compagnone, Los Angeles Times: A Trailways bus sits surrounded by half a dozen or more people in wheelchairs. One man in a manual chair with a golf style cap sits alone at the back left corner of the bus. One the right side of the bus, closest to the camera are three other people in manual chairs. They appear to be talking with Bob Conrad and a few others up at the front right side of the bus, by the entrance. Renata Conrad is in the white coat. On the back of the bus is a sign that reads "Got a Group? Charter this Bus. 1-800-527-1566." Caption reads: Handicapped people surround a Trailways bus Saturday, delaying its departure by two hours. [Headline] Disabled People Block Bus at Terminal by Kathleen H. Cooley, Times Staff Writer About 20 disabled people blocked a Trailways bus for more than two hours Saturday at the downtown terminal until the terminal manager agreed to ask a company executive to meet with the disabled group concerning difficulties wheelchair-bound people have with bus travel. The group which represents American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT), was in town to meet with members of the American Public Transit Assn. today. Representatives of ADAPT said they want a legislation requiring all new buses operated by private companies such as Greyhound and Trailways to be equipped with wider doors, lifts and ramps. Most public transportation operators, including San Diego Transit, provide wheelchair lifts on at least some buses. ADAPT member Claude Holcom bought a ticket to Los Angeles, but when Trailways' personnel told him they would have to fold his wheelchair and carry him to his seat, Holcom declined to board the bus. "We don't think a person should have to be carried aboard a bus," said Wade Blank, one of the protest's organizers. “It's very dehumanizing. They’re taking away their legs." Blank and fellow ADAPT member Mike Auberger said the group is trying to draw attention to the frustrations of traveling by bus and being in a wheelchair. Although both Trailways and Greyhound buses are not equipped to handle wheelchairs, Blank said ADAPT met with Greyhound officials last week to discuss the possibility of fitting new buses with lifts. “This is a symbolic protest, just like the civil rights protests of the '60s, but we have the right to travel the same as anybody else," Blank said. "The wheelchair is like somebody's legs." The Los Angeles bus, with its two passengers, was scheduled to leave the C Street station at 4:15 p.m., but by the time terminal manager Fred Kroner arrived and negotiated with the ADAPT members, it was nearly 7 o'clock before it departed. The two passengers appeared surprised and baffled by the protest and by queries from members of the news media. One man opted to go to the Greyhound terminal two blocks away and catch another bus rather than wait out the protest. The other passenger, Mich Galloway, 23, said he was sympathetic to the group wanting equal access to buses and waited patiently until the protesters dispersed. “I see where they are coming from." Galloway said. "I hope something is done about it." After several phone calls to the Trailways corporate offices in Dallas proved fruitless. the ADAPT members agreed to accept from Koner the name, address and phone number of the company‘s public relations officer. who they intend to call Monday. "l really can't do anything about the situation. l'm just this terminal's manager." Koner said.
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Different TIMES, September 24, 1990, p. 6 ADAPT fights for attendant services (Reprinted with permission from the Disability Rag; Box 145; Louisville, KY 40201.) [This story continues on 623 but the text is included here in full, for ease of reading.] “People with disabilities have the civil and human right to dependable attendant services that meet our daily needs in the location and manner of our choice." This simple declaration, made in Denver this summer, signaled the offensive being launched by ADAPT against “the nursing home lobby feeding off peoples' lives." It's ironic, says ADAPT member Mark Johnson. "Here we've finally got our rights now, in a law, and here you have more and more severely disabled people wanting to kill themselves—literally kill themselves—because they're being forced into nursing homes." “That Ken Bergstedt in Nevada [who petitioned the court in May to disconnect his respirator] is literally saying, “l'll end my life before I'll go in a nursing home," Johnson said. “What do you expect when people only have institutionalization to look forward to?" adds actress Nancy Becker Kennedy, one of the group that conducted a hunger strike in Los Angeles in July to protest the cut of California’s In Home Supportive Services. “Their attempts to stay in their homes are thwarted." lt’s the same with Georgia's highly publicized Larry McAfee, who was just put into a “group home," says ADAPT. Even after all the publicity, the State of Georgia will not put any money into funding attendant services in one's own home. And ADAPT is fed up. Recalling the phrase the transit industry used to argue that each city should decide whether or not to put lifts on buses, ADAPT calls the patchwork system of funding in-home services “the old ‘local option’ stuff all over again." “We're sick of it,"says Johnson. There needs to be a national commitment. In California, activists battled for several months to restore their In Home Support Services program which had been entirely cut from the state budget—and succeeded only in restoring it to its former level, which allows a disabled person to hire an attendant only at minimum wage and for no more than eight hours a day. People who need an attendant around the clock, like Ken Bergstedt, have little hope of avoiding a nursing home even in California, often cited as the state with the best attendant services program in the nation. Yet such battles sap the energy of disability activists for the larger fight for a national commitment. ADAPT has modified its former name, “American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation" to “American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today" to reflect its new focus. ADAPT says attendant services are a right. The group wants the program it's calling for to make attendant services available "based on functional need" rather than “whether a person can work or not." They don't want "employability" to be a "condition for getting services. And they don't want eligibility based on any specific disability, as it is in many states now. They want it to be available “to people of all ages, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with back-up emergency services."They stress they're not asking for “someone to hold your hand" but are speaking of the realistic needs of people like McAfee, Rick Tauscher, and Bergstedt who need an attendant available around the clock. They also say a program that allows the disabled person maximum control over an attendant is mandatory. Maybe a disabled person won’t want that control; maybe they'll want someone else to handle the paperwork and hiring decisions. That should be the disabled person‘s option, they say. There’s a quality-control issue here, they insist; they want to make sure disabled people get quality care but are allowed maximum say over personal services they receive—which is all too often not the case today as home "health" agencies muscle their way into the home "care" field. They‘re sick of the word “care.” They want a program that doesn’t keep anyone from services because they make too much money; they're willing, they say, to deal with a sliding scale for fees for such a program; but they want it available to anyone who needs it—regardless of income. It's a right, and cost is simply not an issue, they say. Keeping disabled people in institutions is ludicrously more expensive than providing in-home services in this country today. They blame that lack for the problems Larry MeAfee's constantly found himself in; they blame the nursing home industry for siphoning off the money that could go to fund such services. And they charge that home health agencies are nothing more than “the new nursing homes." Home health agencies “take people on Medicare and give them services and then bill them for $60 a pop," says ADAPT organizer Wade Blank. “Then when their Medicare coverage runs out after six months, they drop ‘em." The group says it’s also targeting “the big insurance companies like Prudential" and health maintenance organizations, who they say have a vested interest in keeping the system like it is. “We're saying that ethically and morally, nursing homes are not the place to go," says Blank. “When I see my severely disabled friends, living in their own homes, when l visit them in their apartments, listen with them to records or order in a pizza—and then I see my friends living in nursing homes, wasting away, waiting to die, I get very, very angry,” said Southern California ADAPT member Lilibeth Navarro. A survey of ADAPT members through their newsletter, Incitement, led them to decide to shift the focus to attendant services, said Navarro. And they're emphatic about the term too. “It’s not ‘attendant care‘ anymore," said Blank. “Whenever anybody said ‘care’ everybody booed,“ he added. It is fitting that ADAPT, whose original members came from Denver‘s Atlantis Community, will focus on attendant services. It was that need which led to the start of Atlantis, a “community” of disabled people and attendants. Atlantis “has a neat system,"agrees Navarro, noting that the 24-hour rotary attendant services allows any Atlantis person to have an attendant available whenever it's needed. “We could call an attendant at 11:30 p.m. and have somebody here," she said. “People who are having trouble with attendants can call and get an emergency back-up." Navarro, like others, said she knew of people “who endured abuse because they were afraid to lose their attendant"—"because it's so hard to find somebody, and nobody to turn to in an emergency situation." She related the story of a man whose attendant simply walked out on him and left him, unable even to reach a phone, for four days. “If his father hadn't checked on him, he'd be dead." “Only a national attendant program," she stressed, “will free us from emotional slavery Nancy Becker Kennedy agreed with Navarro. “The linchpin for independent living is in-home attendant services. It’s humane; it gives us a future." The group has sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan demanding a meeting in Atlanta Oct. 1; they've given Sullivan until Aug. 15 to reply. ADAPT activists from around the nation will descend on Atlanta the first week of October to launch the fight. They’ll be calling for a quarter of the money now going to the nursing home industry to “go into a pot for attendant services." As usual, ADAPT doesn’t expect this to happen without a fight -- primarily from the “nursing home lobby.” “This October," says Blank, “we will serve notice on those groups who are the enemies of a national attendant services program." TEXT BOX: ADAPT will converge on Atlanta — home of Morehouse College, HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan’s alma mater — on Sept. 28 for week-long direct action protest and training. Nationally known organizer Shel Trapp will conduct the session Saturday, Sept. 29. For more information on travel and hotel arrangements, contact ADAPT in Denver at (303) 936-1110. — Reprinted with permission from the Disability Rag; Box 145; Louisville, KY 40201.
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RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Monday APRIL 10, 1989 [Headline] 49 disabled protesters arrested in Sparks Photo by Cralg Sallor/Gazette-Journal: Two men in wheelchairs are being arrested by police in the middle of the street. The man on the left, Bob Kafka, is being bent forward in his chair and being handcuffed behind his back. Across his legs he has a poster but it is not readable from this copy. The man on the left, Bill Bolte, is sitting up hold a sign about Rights in front of his chest. The policeman is standing beside him bending forward to do something to his chair it seems. caption reads: CONFRONTATION: Sparks police arrested Bob Kafka, left, of Austin, Texas, and Bill Bolte of Los Angeles. Text box has the quote: 'My rights are worth fighting for.’ Bill Bolte/demonstrator [Headline] Public transit meeting draws demands for accessibility By Darcy De Leon/Gazelle-Journal Sparks police arrested 49 disabled protesters demanding accessibility to public buses during a protest Sunday aimed at national transit officials meeting at John Ascuaga's Nugget. About 75 wheelchair-bound members of Denver-based American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT) rushed two entrances of the hotel—casino about 3:15 p.m., but Nugget security officers and police inside blocked the doorways. ADAPT activists chanting, “Access is a civil right,” struggled to open the doors an confront officials with the American Public Transit Association (APTA) attending a five-day convention through Wednesday. Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas, and Bill Bolte, a Los Angeles resident, were the first protesters to he arrested. "My rights are worth fighting for," said Bolte, 57. “APTA is discriminating against us," said Kafka, who has used a wheelchair since breaking his neck in a car accident at the age of 26. "We feel that APTA is to the disabled what the KKK is to the black community.“ At the height of the protest police dragged away three demonstrators lying in the casino entrance. No injuries were reported, police said. Sparks police Lt. Tony Zamboni said that as of late Sunday night, five of the 49 demonstrators arrested had been transferred to the Washoe County jail, after their arraignment in Sparks Municipal Court. They were being held in lieu of $1,025 bond for investigation of obstructing traffic, obstructing a police officer an blocking a fire exit, Zamboni said. Arraignments continued Sunday night for the remaining protesters. Disabled residents from Reno and 30 other cities throughout the country joined in the protest of an expected appeal of a federal court order that requires all public bus systems to be equipped for wheelchairs. ADAPT filed a lawsuit asking for the decision last year. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in favor of the group in February. Demonstrators Sunday hoped to persuade the transit officials to work against the appeal, expected to be made by the U.S. Department of Transportation today. APTA spokesman Albert Engelken said the group's protests are “compelling and heart-rending." But he said APTA cannot afford a national mandate for the lifts, which cost $15,000 to install and even more to maintain. Engelken also cited low usage of the buses and suggested the lift requirement be a local option instead of a state mandate. “We're for accessible transportation for the disabled, and we do have it, but the local transit systems and the local disabled communities should decide what is needed because they know what's best." Reno’s Citifare would not be affected by the decision because transit officials already have made a commitment toward a 100 percent wheelchair-equipped bus system, said Bill Derrick, planning manager for the Regional Transportation Commission. All Citifare buses bought since 1984 are wheelchair-equipped, he said, and all non-equipped buses will be replaced by 1996. Mike Auberger, ADAPT founder and protest organizer, said the group has staged at least 14 demonstrations at APTA conferences during the last seven years throughout the United States and Canada. Auberger, 33, of Denver, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a bobsled accident 17 years ago, said demonstrators will follow APTA convention-goers for as long as it takes. “We’re not fighting Reno or any other city. We're fighting APTA,” he said. “We will go to jail, we'll get arrested, but so what — it's a misdemeanor. We'll do it again." Citifare accommodates the disabled more than some other cities, said Reno resident Dottie Spinnetta, 51, who suffers from muscular dystrophy and rides the buses five days a week. But RTC could improve the system by offering additional wheelchair space on the buses and bus pickups every 30 minutes instead of every hour. “I should be able to get around as everyone else can and not have to ask,” she said. “That’s what everybody wants — to be independent." The only drawbacks of using Citifare for John Civitello, 21, is that he has to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a 6 a.m. bus that takes him to his job with American Handicapped Workers. He then waits outside the office another hour until his workday begins at 8 a.m. PHOTO by Joanne Haskin: Two policemen are standing one behind the other, facing a third and behind him is a fourth officer who is using what looks like a video camera. All the police wear hats and are looking down. From their midst, the wild head of Arthur Campbell sticks out, his long white hair flying in different directions, a strange grin on his face and his intense eyebrows above his dark eyes. The police seem to be cradling him, and look down at him. Caption reads: Protest scuffle—Sparks police detain one of the ADAPT protesters that blocked the entrance to John Ascuaga's Nugget during a demonstration Sunday afternoon. Sparks police made a total of 49 arrests during the protest.
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US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT Sept. 18, 1989 [This story appears in ADAPT 595, 590 and 602. It is included in its entirety here for ease of reading.] [Headline] Liberation day for the disabled by Joseph P. Shapiro Forty-three million will soon win basic civil-rights protections. Their growing movement has brushed aside the opposition and is changing America The day before the Senate passed historic legislation to protect the civil rights of disabled people, Mary Jane Owen got another rude reminder of the daily discrimination that faces people like her. Owen, a writer who is blind and uses a wheelchair, was lobbying senators for the disability-rights bill. But when she moved onto Constitution Avenue to go home, a taxi driver at curbside sped away rather than pick up a woman in a wheelchair. It is similar acts, repeated hundreds of thousands of times a day to the nation's 43 million disabled, that fueled an angry political movement that has brought the nation to a path-breaking moment. In a few weeks President Bush is expected to sign the Americans with Disabilities Act, a broad statement that will extend to the disabled the same protections against discrimination that were given to blacks and women in the 1960s and 1970s. The Senate passed the measure 76 to 8 last week, and the House is likely to approve it next month. The bill is a profound rethinking of how this country views disabled people, defined as anyone with a physical or mental impairment that "substantially limits" everyday living. For the first time, America is saying the biggest problem facing disabled people is not their own blindness, deafness or other physical condition but discrimination. The bill, says Senate sponsor Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), is "an emancipation proclamation for people with handicaps" that will fundamentally change their lives, getting more of them out of their homes and institutions and into full participation in society. Under the new law, restaurants, stores, hotels and theaters can no longer turn away a person with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, AIDS or any other disability. Employers would be prohibited from rejecting qualified workers just because they are disabled, and they would be required to fashion generally inexpensive modifications to the workplace to make it accessible to the disabled, such as putting a desk on blocks to raise it for a wheelchair user. It would also require that new buses be equipped with lifts so that wheelchair users could get on public transit. New buildings, or those undergoing major reconstruction, would have to be made accessible to disabled people, with elevators installed in shopping malls and new structures higher than two stories. Telephone companies would have to hire operators who could take a message typed by a deaf person on a Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) and then relay it orally to a hearing person on another phone. [Subheading] Cost of Access. Businesses, particularly small ones, are wary of the changes. John Sloan, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, complained that the bill will impose costly requirements on businesses" and is "so broadly written" that it is unclear how far, and to what expense, a business will have to go to avoid being open to a lawsuit. Sponsors of the bill said estimates that its implementation might cost billions of dollars were wildly exaggerated. Past experience shows they may be correct. When Congress in 1973 protected disabled people from discrimination by institutions that receive federal funding, North Carolina education officials estimated it would cost them $15 billion to make state university buildings accessible, says architect Ronald Mace of Barrier Free Environments. Instead, many changes were simple and cheap. To accommodate students in wheelchairs, classes were moved to ground floors rather than installing elevators to carry them to top floors. The cost so far has totaled $l5 million, says Mace. Similarly, a 1982 study for the Labor Department found that half the accommodations made in the workplace cost little or nothing. For example, it was easy for companies to change a wheelchair user's work hours to conform with the schedule of lift-equipped buses. Another 30 percent of the accommodations were achieved for between $100 and $500. That included such changes as giving a telephone head-set to a quadriplegic telephone operator. Despite the concerns of business groups, their opposition to a bill that would open them up to a new spate of lawsuits was surprisingly muted and not nearly as vociferous as their fight against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For one thing, no one wanted to look like a bigot fighting a civil-rights bill, particularly one that was rushing through Congress. More important, businesses in the last few years have seen disabled people as a new source of labor and customers. “If they can get to the stores, business is going to increase" says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce‘s Nancy Fulco, who nonetheless lobbied to limit the rights bill's impact on business. [Subheading] Hidden Army. The mixed feelings of business groups underscored how disability rights is a civil-rights movement different from any other. Unlike the black and women's movements, disability-rights groups have never filled the streets with hundreds of thousands of marchers. Instead, the disability movement boasts “a hidden army,“ says former Representative Tony Coelho, who has epilepsy. Since a fifth of the nation's population has some form of disability, ranging from mental retardation to severe arthritis, Coelho argues, “disability impacts practically every family.“ Nowhere was that clearer than in Congress and the White House. where key supporters of the rights bill felt a particular need to win the bill‘s passage because they personally know about disabilities. Most important was President Bush, who has two sons with disabilities. Bush's strong statements in support of the bill during the 1988 campaign won him important support in the usually Democratic disability community. Nevertheless, the rights bill was in trouble until mid-June because of business fears about its cost. Then, on the day he left Congress, Coelho called Bush to ask him to renew his commitment to the bill. Within a few weeks, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu convened a strategy session with key senators to negotiate a compromise. That was easy to achieve once sponsors agreed to the White House request they drop the provision that would have allowed the disabled to sue for punitive damages if they were discriminated against. a provision that was the most opposed by business lobbies. From that moment, the compromise bill has been on a fast track. The success of the disability movement is extraordinary because it sprang up with little noise and little notice. One essential ingredient has been the growth of a new class consciousness among the disabled. Seventy-four percent of them feel they share a “common identity” with other disabled people, and 45 percent argue that they are “a minority in the same sense as are blacks and Hispanics,” according to a 1985 poll by Louis Harris & Associates. “All disabled people share one common experience—discrimination,” says Pat Wright of the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund. Often it is crude bigotry. In January, an airline employee in New York who resented having to help a 66-year-old double amputee board a plane instead threw him on a baggage dolly. A New Jersey private-zoo owner a few summers ago refused to admit children with Down syndrome to the monkey house because, he claimed, they upset his chimpanzees. It is that kind of outrage and countless more subtle discriminations that fueled the movement that now wants to change the image of the disabled. Many now reject the traditional attitudes of society that suggested their lives were tragic and pitiful. Many now loathe charitable appeals such as the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon that raised $42 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association over Labor Day weekend. Such extravaganzas seek funds by emphasizing the most desperate cases. That kind of approach, activists say, suggests that disabled people are to be cared for and cannot be contributing members of society. “We don’t want to be dependent any more,” says Lex Friedan of the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research Foundation in Houston, who is a quadriplegic wheelchair user, the result of an automobile accident. “We want to be part of society in every way.” Such new attitudes reflect fundamental changes in the lives of disabled people. Since 1975, when federal law first ensured all disabled children access to schools, hundreds of thousands of disabled students have gotten a better education alongside nondisabled peers. Many grew frustrated after college, when they found there were few such protections to help once they tried to find jobs. A recent Census Bureau study concluded that the gap between the earnings of disabled and their nondisabled co-workers is growing. A disabled worker in 1987 made only 64 percent of what his nondisabled colleagues earned. In 1980, it was 77 percent. The 1985 Harris survey found that 70 percent of working-age disabled people were unemployed. Of those, two thirds said they wanted to work but were prevented from doing so because, among other reasons, they faced discrimination in hiring or lacked transportation. Those who do not work now collect federal disability and welfare checks, costing nearly $60 billion a year. “It doesn’t make sense to maintain people in a dependency state when those people want to be productive, tax-paying citizens,” argues Jay Rochlin of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. Although no one knows precisely how many millions of dollars could be saved by bringing the disabled fully into the work force, Sylvia Piper, an Ankeny, Iowa, mother, says she saved taxpayers $4.8 million by ignoring physicians who urged her to institutionalize her retarded son, Dan, when he was born. Instead, she kept him at home and sent him to public school with non-disabled children, the kind of role models who inspired him to get a job this summer. Dan, now 18, saved $800 from his pay as a drugstore stockroom worker. His first purchase was a gray bedroom rug, upon which he slept the night it arrived. The next morning he was ready for work early and announced, “I've got to work harder and make more money." Once again, says his delighted mother, Dan grew when faced with a challenge. The nation’s changing demographics have added to the urgency of meeting the needs of the disabled. By 1990, there will be 6.2 million elderly Americans with one or more basic disabilities, up from almost 5 million in 1984, according to estimates by the Urban Institute, a research organization. And the explosive growth of the number of those with AIDS and HIV infection has already added hundreds of thousands more disabled to the population. That is why AIDS-policy advocates teamed up with disability groups to make sure civil-rights guarantees under the bill also applied to those with AIDS. People with AIDS had won federal court rulings protecting them under existing disability-rights laws, which apply only to federally funded programs. The new bill will expand that protection to the private sector, so that people with AIDS and HIV infection cannot be fired from jobs or denied service in restaurants. [Subheading] Galvanizing Issue. Along with being better educated and more independent, the new generation of disabled people has become more politically sophisticated. Some 200 independent-living centers, which have sprung up since the 1970s to provide a mix of counseling and support services to severely disabled people, became bases of advocacy. One galvanizing issue came in the early 19805, when a Reagan administration anti-regulation effort tried to eliminate key federal protections that prohibit discrimination by any program or contractor receiving federal funds. Negotiating sessions over the regulation first brought then Vice President Bush face-to-face with Evan Kemp, who headed Ralph Nader’s Disability Rights Center. The regulation was never changed, in part because of Kemp’s advocacy and growing friendship with Bush. Last week, the President named Kemp, a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since 1987, to chair the civil-rights agency, which will handle job-discrimination cases brought under the new law. The disability-rights movement is distinctive, too, because it has never had a Martin Luther King or a Betty Friedan to lead it. Part of the reason is that there are hundreds of different disabilities. Nonetheless, disabled people, such as student protesters who last year gave Gallaudet University its first deaf president, I. King Jordan, are now adopting on a small scale the protest tactics of the civil-rights movement. Thirty members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, which uses tactics of civil disobedience, on Labor Day backed their wheelchairs against buses at the Los Angeles Greyhound terminal and disrupted busy holiday traffic in a protest for wheelchair lifts on buses. As the historic legislation was being debated, there was a curious twist. Watching with interest was a paraplegic visitor from Moscow, Ilya Zaslavski. He made history earlier this year when he won election to the new Soviet national legislature, the first person anywhere in the world to run as a disability candidate. Zaslavski watched the work of Congress and announced plans to introduce SDA—-a Soviets with Disabilities Act. INSERTED TEXT BOX: THE COST FACTOR Businesses are concerned about the costs imposed by the civil-rights bill: BUILDINGS: The cost of making accessible new buildings and those existing structures that are undergoing major renovations runs between 0 and 1 percent of building costs. TRANSIT: Changes required of bus and transit systems to help the disabled over the next 20 years might cost several hundred million dollars. PHONES: It will cost $250 million to $300 million a year to hire operators to work relay systems so deaf people can communicate with those who can hear, according to federal and AT&T estimates. INSERT: PHOTO (Roberta Barnes -- San Antonio Light): A line of people in wheelchairs diagonally crosses the picture. In the front Lonnie Smith Archuleta with his buff physique, in a T-Shirt with a medal-like imprint on the front, wheels his sports chair. Behind him a slight woman (Diane Coleman) with very thin arms and leg braces on her extended legs, rolls her power chair with a flag attached. She wears a straw hat, red ADAPT no steps T-shirt and long red skirt, across which she wears a sign reading "Gentler -n- kinder nation??" Behind her another woman in a power wheelchair (Linda Johnstone) wears a different red ADAPT T-shirt and a sign across her knees reads "We Need a Ride To Work." Behind her is another large woman in a wheelchair (Mary Kay Sanders) in dark sunglasses and a white dress; she carries a white parasol and appears to be chanting. Over the top of the parasol another sign (held by someone walking but obscured from view) written in calligraphy can be seen: "Access is a Civil Right." The line bends back and around out of view. Caption reads: Countless Frustrations. Angry protesters in San Antonio wheel through the streets to protest the lack of accessible public transportation.