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Home / Albums / Tag civil rights 51
- ADAPT (527)
Tips & Trends The President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities vol.2, No. 4, April 1990 (This article continues on 519 but is transcribed here for reading ease.) The Civil Rights March of 1990 On March 12, hundreds of people from across the United States joined a march for the Americans with Disabilities Act that would give America's 43 million people with disabilities rights that other minorities have had for years. Beginning at the White House and ending at the United States Capitol, the demonstrators marched the 19 city blocks chanting ”Access is our Civil Right" and other slogans in favor of ADA’s immediate passage with no weakening amendments. The procession moved slowly in the 89-degree heat as individuals with disabilities and advocates made their way along the streets of the Nation's Capital. Aside from many demonstrators in wheelchairs, banners, handmade signs and colorful tee-shirts made the procession a media extravaganza, as representatives of national, local and many independent news services from around the country covered the event. Camera crews kept focus on the demonstration well after arrival at the Capitol, where a brief ceremony was held. Mike Auberger, an ADAPT organizer and leader of the march, introduced Justin Dart, Chairman of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities and Chairman of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. He gave a rousing address, followed by remarks from Evan Kemp, Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Congressman Major Owens (D-NY), who marched in the rally, Representative Patricia Schroeder (D-CO), Dr. I. King Jordan, President of Gallaudet University, Jim Brady, former Press Secretary and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, and Bob Silverstein, Staff Director of the Senate Subcommittee on Disability Policy. Following the formal ceremony, activists in wheelchairs crawled up four flights of stairs to the Capitol building in a dramatic display of commitment to their cause. Each carried with them a copy of the "Disabled People's Bill of Rights”, a document generated by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT). PHOTO (on 527) - Three people in wheelchairs (Joe Carle, Walter Hart, and Mike Muehy) PHOTOS: Photo 1(on 519) (by Monica Hall): A crowd of people covers the plaza between the two staircases on the side of the Capitol facing the mall. In the distant background you can see House office buildings. Caption reads: Ceremony Assembly at Capitol. Photo 2 (on 519) (by Monica Hall): A small throng of people, many in wheelchairs, head over to the rally area from the march. In the background the Capitol building rises majestically. In the foreground Wade Blank hugs Patty Leffingwell who wears a baseball type cap. Caption reads: After the March. Photo 3 (on 519): Julie Farrar and Jennifer Keelan climb the Capitol steps as about 10 people watch. They are 5 steps from the top. Jennifer who is about 8 years old is crawling on her hands and knees while Julie is doing the backwards scooch up step by step on the butt maneuver. There is a man walking beside Jennifer with a box that appears to be a camera and at the top of the steps there is a person holding a professional mike, like a film crew would use. Julie and Jennifer are carrying scrolls. BULLETIN: Executive Director Jay Rochlin announces his retirement. Story page 3 - ADAPT (255)
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. " - ADAPT (271)
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. - ADAPT (41)
Rocky Mountain News Sunday March 27, 1977 Disabled are limited by society's attitudes By Alan Cunningham PHOTO by John Gordon, News: A young man (Larry Ruiz) sits in a wheelchair in front of a building. The shot shows his whole body and wheelchair and is looking up at Larry's smiling face. (For those who knew Larry, it's a classic Larry smile.) Caption reads: Larry Ruiz is one of those leading better lives of the Atlantis community. Nobody seems to know exactly how many disabled Americans there are - or even how one should define them. In Colorado, the figures are even more sketchy than they are nationally. But one estimate, based on federal statistics, suggests there may be as many as 350,000 disabled citizens in this state. If true, that would mean that 14 percent of the population suffers from some disability. The same projection indicates that as many as 83,000 of these persons as unable to work, keep house or go to school. Gov. Dick Lamm sometimes uses a more conservative figure of 10 percent. But even if that is closer to the truth, it shows that the plight of the disabled is a major problem. It also offers a clue as to why the disabled seem sure to emerge soon as the country's newest civil rights lobby. The have the numbers to make themselves heard - and seen - if they can begin to speak out with a unified voice, demanding their fair share of the American Pie. Until now, they've suffered the fate of most minority groups: invisibility. This is ironic, since most are highly visible if anyone chooses to see them. But for many reasons - not the least a sense of guilt - the able-bodied tend to turn away from those with crutches, wheelchairs and seeing eye dogs. And those who plan public facilities and services often reflect this attitude. It is politically safe for them to ignore the needs of the disabled pretending such persons make up a tiny fraction of the population and thus don't deserve a major share of attention. A myth to be sure. But it is only one of several myths which the Atlantis community, a group home for handicapped persons, in a minority report to the upcoming White House Conference on Handicapped individuals, hopes to destroy. For instance, there is the idea that nursing homes are primarily heavens for the aged and the infirm. The opposite side of that assumption is set forth in the opening chapter of the Atlantis report. Few realize that our nation's institutions also house a great many disabled young persons, some in their early teens. THESE ARE THE victims of our society's response to children and young adults who have muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, birth defects, blindness, and neurological disorders, or have survived accidents of varying kinds. But they are there by the thousands, many simply because they were labeled by physicians and psychologists as "retarded" and unable to function normally. It is difficult to imagine a more stifling or inappropriate atmosphere for a young person. It is inhumane to shackle and imprison youthful energy and curiosity into the nursing home routine. Such repressive living leads to anger, hostility and finally to the withdrawal and waste of a battered ego. As the report goes on to explain, the Atlantis group has fought to get more than 30 young men and women out of nursing homes and institutions so as to demonstrate that they can reverse this pattern if given a chance. But, even as it begins to reverse, new problems emerge. Most have to do with obstacles which the world has placed in the way of the disabled person. Again, it has a lot do with society's tendency to act as if he doesn't exist. Funds for rehabilitation programs, both public and private, are so scarce that only a small fraction of the disabled ever benefit from them. A prime example of this comes from State Rehabilitation Director Glenn Crawford, who says his division has determined that 135,000 persons in Colorado are potentially eligible for its services. Yet, in 1976, the division served about 14,300 persons. The figure will inch its way up to 16,000 this year. Such private facilities as the widely acclaimed Craig Hospital also have finite resources. They apply guidelines to decide which applicants will be accepted and which won't. Needless to say, a lawyer whose only disability is the loss of his legs has a better chance than a 19-year-old with no schooling who has lain on his back for most of his life. Funds and facilities for handicapped scarce Those who don't get the help often wind up in the category that Wade Blank of Atlantis refers to as "the losers." He contends that those who work with the disabled have too quickly given up on this group of people consigning them to lives of hopelessness. And he further argues that the implications of this have narrowed opportunities not only for the severely disabled, but for many others with less serious problems. For even those who have escaped the awful label of the "loser" run into obstacles every day. The Atlantis report focuses on many of these obstacles. These are some of the observations: EDUCATION. Many disabled youngsters in the past have failed to get adequate schooling either because they were in institutions or because their families assumed they would never be able to lead normal lives as adults and consequently didn't need to be trained for careers. Even those who went to school often were sidelined into special programs for the handicapped. While academic standards were high in such programs, the students were poorly prepared either intellectually or emotionally, to get along in a world of able-bodied persons. The recommended solution, "mainstreaming"- that is, letting disabled youngsters and adults go to school in the same classroom with everyone else. MONEY. The complexities of the various welfare programs on the county, state and federal level often conspire to keep disabled persons in nursing homes. Counties often find they have to pay more money if a man or woman is living in his own apartments, or in a facility, such as Atlantis, than they do if he or she is in a nursing home. That's because the federal government pays the bulk of the nursing home fee. Likewise, assistance payments are cut off if a disabled person earns more than a pittance in a month's time. The cutoff can be as low as $65. The "maximum level of income"from federal state and county assistance payments is $185. This means many disabled persons are living below the poverty level as it has been defined for other underprivileged groups. The solution as viewed by those who put together the Atlantis report, is to simplify and integrate the complicated payments system. But even more important, to increase payments so that everyone gets the same amount of money whether he is in an institution or out. TRANSPORTATION. The report talks about a number of things here including electric wheelchairs and curb cuts, but is main statement under this heading is that bus systems such as the Regional Transportation District (RTD) should become fully accessible to the disabled. RTD, it contends, has been unresponsive to the needs of disabled would be riders for transportation to work, school and for pleasure trips. Even the special HandiRide service - which RTD often boasts is a frontrunner in the nation - is given poor marks. LAWS. [not legible...] Colorado concerning the disabled in general and the severely physically disabled in particular, the report states. Furthermore, it is not realistic to think that the disabled will get effective legislation passed without having government officials sensitized to the disabled's problems. This may already be changing. Largely due to lobbying by Atlantis, hearings were underway in the General Assembly this week on two bills aimed at helping the disabled. One, a Senate bill now in committee, would allow more Coloradans to receive payments so they could hire home attendants. The other, a House bill, is a "civil rights bill for the handicapped." It would bar discrimination against the disabled. Backers of the latter bill point out that it's needed because the federal civil rights laws, while dealing with the rights of racial minorities and women, have never guaranteed these same rights to disabled citizens. Idealy, says the Atlantis report, Congress and the state legislatures need to weed out laws which are confusing and contradictory, often creating "disincentives"for the disabled to pursue more normal lives. A wholistic approach is needed. JOBS. Virtually every problem mentioned above, plus all the others catalogued in the report, tend to stand in the way of the disabled person who seriously wants to go to work in spite of the lip service paid to the slogan, "Hire the handicapped," many find the doors still closed. The reasons are many and the problems complex. Lack of schooling is a factor. Some disabled persons have languished in sheltered workshops, counting fish hooks and getting paid $10 a month for it, the report says. Others have an education but find that architectural barriers, or the lack of adequate bus service, keep them from getting to jobs they could perform. And attitudes often stand in the way when physical barriers are moved aside. "Perhaps the greatest barrier of all is in the minds of men," the report notes. It advocates more and better training programs, plus affirmative action plans to assure that larger numbers of disabled workers are hired by public and private employers. In an elaborate ceremony several weeks ago, the Atlantis report was presented to Mayor Bill McNichols. But privately some of those connected with the report conceded they didn't expect to see much action on the local level until public policies in Washington and throughout the nation begin to change significantly. That's why the Atlantis group is placing much emphasis on its efforts to make an impression on the Carter administration during its formative period. The time seems ripe for a coalition of disabled groups around the country to launch a concerted civil rights drive on behalf of their "invisible" constituents. And the first test may come April 5, when many groups have threatened to stage a sit-in at offices of the Department of Health Education and Welfare, including the regional office in Denver, if new HEW Secretary Joseph Califano hasn't issued new regulations to implement laws for the disabled. "The disabled have been ignored far too long in this society," declares the Atlantis report. "We are demanding that our rights be addressed. We are giving you, the policy makers, our findings and recommendations on how to solve the inequities in the system. "The next is yours." Such words, when voiced by other groups, have inevitably been followed by major social changes. It seems likely the same pattern will apply here. PHOTO by John Gordon, News: A man lies in a hospital bed, covered by sheets. Photo is very dark and hard to make out. Caption reads: Shooting victim [unreadable] from nursing home [unreadable] he said [unreadable] has been paralyzed since [unreadable]. - ADAPT (581)
New York Times NATIONAL Tuesday March 13, 1990 Bill Barring Discrimination Against Disabled Hits Snag By STEVEN A. HOLMES, Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, March 12 — Having strongly supported a comprehensive bill in the Senate to extend civil rights protections to 43 million Americans with physical and mental disabilities, the Bush Administration is balking at efforts to toughen penalties against businesses that do not comply. Officially, the White House has not withdrawn its support for the bill, which would require all new buildings and services used by the public to accommodate the disabled. “We do support the legislation," the White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said today. "We‘re very supportive of their rights and their cause." But other Administration officials said President Bush was reluctant to support the measure if its backers persisted in seeking penalties for job discrimination that are harsher than those in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law bars discrimination on the basis of race, sex and national origin and limits penalties to court injunctions directing a business to stop discriminating and to reinstatement and back pay for those dismissed or not promoted as a result of bias. Both the disabilities bill passed by the Senate and one pending in the House state that penalties for violating the anti-discrimination provisions will be the same as those in the Civil Rights Act. Letter From Attorney General But a new bill introduced in both the House and the Senate last month would toughen the penalties in the 1964 law to allow for compensatory and punitive damages. Thus it would affect those in the disabilities bill as well. Sponsors say chances for passage of the proposed changes in the Civil Rights Act are good. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, in a letter sent tonight to Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, the chief sponsor of the House bill, said the Administration would seek to amend the disabilities bill to delete any link to the 1964 act and to lay out specifically what the employer sanctions would be. A spokesman for Mr.Thornburgh, David Runkel, said tonight that the Administration does not want the penalties in the disabilities act to go beyond the court injunctions and reinstatement and back pay now in the 1964 law. Senior Administration officials said the White House may withdraw its support from the bill if it is unable to delete any reference to the 1964 legislation. The disabilities measure, which passed the Senate in September by a vote of 76 to 8, has 246 sponsors in the House and passage seems virtually assured. Alixe Glen, a White House spokeswoman, declined to say whether the President would veto the bill if it continues to be linked to the civil rights laws. Rally by Disabled People The maneuvering over the bill came as more than 250 disabled people, many of them in wheelchairs, held a rally at the White House and then moved on to the steps of the Capitol to press for prompt House passage of the disabled rights bill. "Too often disabled people are seen as objects of charity or pity," Bob Kafka, a quadriplegic from Austin, Tex., said. "We're here to change that image. And we're here to send a message to the President and to Congress that this bill needs to be passed with no weakening amendments." If passed in its current form, the Americans with Disabilities Act would be the most sweeping civil rights law enacted since the landmark 1964 act. It mandates that all new buildings used by the general public, including restaurants, lodgings, places of entertainment, doctors’ offices and other establishments, provide the disabled with the means to enter and exit and that existing businesses make appropriate modifications if that can be done without creating a financial burden. The bill would also require that new railroad and subway cars and buses purchased by public and private transportation companies be accessible to people with disabilities and that telephone companies provide public telephones that can be used by persons with speech or hearing impairments. It was to gain the support of the White House and Senate Republicans that the bill's backers agreed to link the penalty provisions to those in the 1964 civil rights law. The bill's supporters had wanted to allow disabled people who proved they were victims of intentional and willful job discrimination to sue for compensatory and punitive damages. But the Administration argued that the disabled should not receive protections that were greater than those accorded to women and minorities. With the Administration's backing, the Senate approved the bill. But as it worked its way through House committees, a separate measure, the Civil Rights Act of 1990, was introduced in Congress with the backing of a coalition oi civil rights organizations that includes groups representing people with disabilities. The new measure amends the 1964 law to permit compensatory and punitive damages for victims of job discrimination. ENLARGED TEXT INSERTED INTO THE ARTICLE: How tough should the penalties against businesses be? PHOTO (The New York Times/George Tames): Three women in wheelchairs (Paulette Patterson, Christine Coughlin, and Lillibeth Navarro) across a sidewalk roll in front of a large white pillared government building [part of the White House complex]. The closest woman is holding a small bull horn and chanting; she is being pushed by another woman with an ADAPT headband and T-shirt. The other two women are in power chairs, the one in the middle has a placard that says something about Rights, and she is carrying the ADAPT flag and chanting. All four women look very determined and strong. Caption reads: Hundreds of handicapped people demonstrated in Washington yesterday to press for passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. - ADAPT (188)
Dallas Times Herald, Saturday Nov. 24, 1984 [Headline] Wheelchair activist adopt radical tactics Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON — It was a scene reminiscent of the 1960s civii rights demonstrations as angry protesters chanted slogans, picketed the White House and stopped traffic before they were finally dragged away by police. And the series of confrontations that ended with 27 arrests last month all seemed to come down to a similar central issue —- the right to sit on a bus, to have full access to public transportation. There was one striking difference, however. Unlike Rosa Parks and the black civil rights activists who battered down the Jim Crow barriers in the South, these protesters were in wheelchairs, and their goal was equal access for the physically handicapped. "It's a civil right to be able to ride public transportation," says Julia Haraksin, a wheelchair-bound Los Angeles resident who participated in the demonstrations. Organizations representing handicapped persons long have urged Washington to require that all new buses and rail systems built with funds from the Department of Transportation's Urban Mass Transportation Administration be equipped to accommodate handicapped riders. But Haraksin and other handicapped individuals are beginning to press the old arguments with more radical tactics. Frustrated by years of negotiating, lobbying in Washington, going through the courts and staging non-confrontational protests, some handicapped activists now are resorting to confrontations and civil disobedience. Thus, early in October, 100 members of a newly formed coalition called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit confronted a national meeting of city transportation heads here, using the kind of civil disobedience tactics used 20 years earlier by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Protesters were arrested when they blocked entrances and buses of those attending the American Public Transit Association convention. “The strategy was to physically be a barrier because handicapped people have to face barriers all their lives," Wade Blank, a founder of Denver-based ADAPT, said. Calling the protests here “our Selma," leaders of ADAPT claimed a public relations victory and promised their struggle has only begun. They already are focusing their efforts on what they hope will be a larger demonstration at the next meeting of the American Public Transportation Association a year from now in Los Angeles. But their cause may be in for a tough battle. Their opposition comes from the Reagan administration, from many city governments and even from within the handicapped community. And as public attention focuses on the underlying budget choices involved, the opposition may swell with the addition of taxpayers concerned about the possible costs of a national full-access program. ADAPT argues a legal right to full access for the handicapped already exists. Federal law states Urban Mass Transportation Administration funds — which account for about 80 percent of the costs of the equipment in most municipal transportation systems —- cannot be spent on programs that discriminate against, or exclude, the handicapped. The law does not make clear, however, whether handicapped persons must be provided with access to regular bus lines or whether they can instead be provided with alternative transportation systems. Nor does it indicate who should make that decision. Current Department of Transportation policy, which is strongly supported by the American Public Transportation Association, allows each city to make its own decision on what type of transportation it will provide for the handicapped. This is in sharp contrast with Carter administration policy, which in 1979 interpreted federal regulations to mean full access. Members of ADAPT, opposing the separate-but-equal philosophy, argue that paratransit does not meet the needs of the handlcapped and is inherently discriminatory. “lt segregates the disabled people trom the able-bodied community," Mike Auberger, an organizer for ADAPT, said. Because paratransit requires advanced scheduling, sometimes weeks before a ride is needed, he said, “you have to schedule your life according to the transit system." Transit authorities, on the other hand, argue full access can be too expensive, given the low percentage of handicapped riders in many cities. Lift-fitted buses cost an estimated $8,000 to $10,000 more than regular buses. Furthermore, lift systems are often unreliable and time-consuming to operate and maintain, authorities add. In Denver, for example, the transportation district has spent $6.3 million to purchase or retrofit buses with lifts, 80 percent of which was paid for by the federal government, according to spokesman Gene Towne. Since it started mainline access in 1982, the district has spent close to $1 million in maintenance of the lifts and expects to spend an additional $900,000 this year. Yet only 12,000 of the district's 38 million riders use the lifts, according to Towne. ADAPT counters the issue is not cost but civil liberties. "In America, we have a way of hiding our prejudices with pragmatism," said Blank, a Presbyterian minister and veteran of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s who now supports handicapped activists. Across the country, cities are using a variety of approaches to the problems of providing mass transit for the handicapped. ln Los Angeles, mainline access is required by state law. Although 1,850 of the Southern California Rapid Transit District's 2,400 buses are fitted with wheelchair lifts, some local advocates charge that broken lifts, drivers who do not know how to use the equipment or refuse to do so and an overall lack of commitment to providing access limits the system. [Bottom of the page is torn so missing text is included in brackets, as it is just a guess.] In Seattle, 570 of 1,100 buses serve the handicapped, providing about 5,900 rides a month. [The] Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle also contracts with groups to supply paratransit [vans] and half-fare cab service, [providing] 8,400 rides a month. In Denver, 432 of the [city's] buses are lift- or ramp-[equipped] providing more than 1,00[0 rides] per month. The city also [uses] vans and small buses in a transit system that provides [x number of] rides a month. None of Chicago's 2,400 [mainline] buses is fitted with lifts. [Instead] the city provides 42 [paratransit] buses, which offer 12,000 [rides per] month. - ADAPT (297)
THE HANDICAPPED COLORADAN Vol. 9, No. 2, Boulder, Colorado, September 1986 PHOTO: Head and shoulders of a man (Wade Blank) with long straight hair parted in the middle, and wire-rimmed round dark glasses. He is wearing a vest over a button down shirt and undershirt and he is smiling. Caption reads: Wade Blank. Some say he wants another Kent State. Title: Rosa Parks leads Detroit protest march Famous black activist ignores plea from Coleman Young to stay out The faces and forms in the column of marchers behind her were a little different today from those she led 30 years ago, but the woman at the head of the march hasn't changed much. Rosa Parks is 74 now and slowing down a little, but she still radiates the same spirit that helped ignite the black civil rights movement in 1956 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of a Montgomery, Ala., bus. The police put her behind bars that day but within hours a local Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, ]r., orchestrated a bus boycott that was to be the first act of organized protest that would bring an end to segregation in less than 10 years. On Sunday, Oct. 5, 1986, the issue was once again segregation and public buses, but this time there were only a handful of black faces among the marchers who took to the streets of Detroit. Yet it was just as easy today as it was in 1956 to identify what made these protestors different from other people. They were in wheelchairs. Rolling under the banner of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), they had come to Detroit to picket their old nemesis, the American Public Transit Association (APTA), which was holding its annual national convention ln Detroit. APTA represents most of the nation's public transit systems and has steadfastly refused to support—or even to-vote on—a proposal to require transit systems to add wheelchair lifts to buses. The state of Michigan requires that all transit companies receiving state funds be wheelchair accessible, but the city of Detroit has avoided that requirement by refusing to accept any financial assistance. Buses in the largely white suburbs have lifts, but a wheelchair passenger who wants to continue a trip into Detroit is out of luck. Detroit mayor Colernan Young, himself a black who played a prominent role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, does not support accessibility for disabled persons and was scheduled to address the APTA convention along with Ed Bradley, also a black and a CBS newsman and regular on "60 Minutes.” Both Young and Bradley reportedly pleaded with Parks not to participate in the march on the APTA convention, but after a late night meeting with staff and advisors, Parks said she would not renege on her commitment. As The Handicapped Coloradan " was going to press, it was reported that Young was going to ask the Detroit city council to rescind ADAPT's parade permit. An ADAPT spokesperson said he expected some 150 ADAPT members from across the country to be joined by at least another 100 protestors in making the march on the Westin Hotel Renaissance Center. "l think we're on the brink of breaking this thing wide open,” said Wade Blank of Denver, who helped form ADAPT. Blank said he was hoping Parks‘ participation would help people to understand that disabled people look upon accessibility as a civil right. APTA, on the other hand, says it's a question of practicality and finances and so should be left to the discretion of the local transit provider. Geographical conditions have to be taken into consideration because lifts are difficult to operate in snow and on curved roads; according to Albert Engeiken, APTA's deputy executive director. Blank scoffs at that position and suggests that lift technology has reached a point where they can be operated in all kinds of climatic extremes, if the transit provider is truly committed to accessibliity. Many transit systems did order lift-equipped buses in the late 1970s when the Carter administration's Department of Transportation mandated accessibility. APTA, which acts as a lobbying and policy-making group for some 300 separate transit districts, filed a lawsuit that eventually led to a reversal of that decision. In Denver, the Regional Transportation District (RTD) announced that it was scrapping its plans for providing mainline accessible service on the basis of that ruling and quickly found itself battling wheelchair protestors in the streets. In falling snow and freezing temperatures, protestors blocked buses and chained themselves to railings outside the RTD offices untll the courts interceded. RTD was ordered to provide some accessible service, but the board of directors continued to resist the Idea. However, ln 1983 the appointed RTD board was replaced by an elected body and quickly voted to commit Denver to accessibility. That same year, APTA brought its national convention to Denver. Disabled individuals and groups who had fought for lifts in the streets of Denver united under the ADAPT banner and, with the support of Mayor Federico Pena, threw up pickets around the convention hotel and arranged to present its demand for accessibility to the convention. No vote was taken and the issue was not brought before national conventions held ln Washington, D.C., in 1984 or in Los Angeles in 1985. ln both cities ADAPT members defied police and blocked buses. A handful were arrested in Washington and a couple of dozen in Los Angeles. ADAPT didn't limit itself to picketing just APTA’s national convention but dogged the organization across the country, sending pickets to various regional conventions, including San Antonio and Cincinnati (see related story). Buses were blocked and more demonstrators went to jail. In some cases, confrontations with local police turned ugly. That has led some disabled groups to break away from ADAPT and Blank’s leadership. Denver's Holistic Approaches to Independent Living (HAIL, Inc.) and its executive director Theresa Preda went to Detroit but refused to participate in some of ADAPT’s actions. "They told me they were afraid I wasn't going to be satisfied until there was blood in the street, until someone in a wheelchair got killed,” Blank said. “They told me I was trying for another Kent State." Blank, who founded the Atlantis Community which, like HAIL, fosters independent living, was a campus minister at Kent State University when national guardsmen fired on student demonstrators during a Vietnam war protest. Four students were killed. Blank denied that he had any such intention, but added that ADAPT has no intention of giving up civil disobedience. “It’s the most effective weapon we've got," he said. Blank said, ADAPT would probably stop buses in Detroit. "They just received 100 new buses," he said. "Without lifts, of course." Blank said he would not be surprised if protestors were to be arrested. Ironically, on the eve of the march the Wayne County jail was filled to capacity (1700) and prisoners were being turned away. - ADAPT (219)
Denver Post, Issues, 10/6/85, no page number [Headline] Transit leaders to face protests from disabled By Jack Farrar Special to the Denver Post The American Public Transit Association will run into some political street theater when it rolls into Los Angeles today for its annual meeting. Waiting for the group will be a militant cast of handicapped individuals, including members of a Denver organization called Atlantis, who want full accessibility to the nation's public transportation system. As APTA delegates convene at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, more than 100 people in wheelchairs – members of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit – will be “marching” single-file from MacArthur Park, more than a mile away, to begin a week-long series of demonstrations. They won't have a parade permit. They haven't asked for one. Through such acts of civil disobedience, the demonstrators hope to force the APTA, public officials and the news media to think about what they consider to be the most pressing issue facing the handicapped: access to public transportation. One contingent of protesters will be led by Wade Blank, a 44-year-old Denverite who cut his activist teeth in the 1960s, marching with blacks in Alabama and peaceniks in Ohio. Access 'a right'[boldface] Blank is the founder and executive director of Atlantis, one of ADAPT's most militant member organizations. “Jobs and education don't mean much,” Blank argues, “if you can't take a bus to get there. Accessibility to public transportation – moving from one place to the other – should be a right, not just a consumer service.” For the past three years, ADAPT, largely under Blank's leadership, has demanded that APTA adopt total accessibility for the handicapped as an official policy rather than as an objective. Transit association officials have responded by citing numerous improvements made in service for the handicapped – improvements that the handicapped have applauded – and contends that total accessibility is financially impractical. “We have not ignored the handicapped,” says APTA Deputy Executive Director Albert Engelken. “Accessibility is a compelling issue. But total accessibility is an enormous undertaking, and with federal dollars shrinking, our resources are limited. In any case, it is not the role of an association like ours to establish policy.” Disabled activists, however, believe the costs of accessibility are distorted by the transportation industry. Moreover, they argue, the issue is civil rights, not economics. “Public transportation is a tax-supported system,” Blank says. “The handicapped pay taxes. It's as simple as that. How would the average taxpayer feel if he was denied access to a facility he paid for?” Long regarded as a quiet minority, disabled individual recently have added a more confrontational approach to their struggle for equality, and the man frequently in the front lines of that movement is Blank, whose long blond hair and granny glasses evoke the image of the 1960s activist. He encourages the handicapped to take to the streets when they feel their demands are being taken less than seriously. Members of Atlantis have made headlines locally and nationally with their tactics in Denver – chaining themselves to seats of fast food restaurants, occupying intersections that don't accommodate wheelchairs, and blocking the entrances to buildings with architectural barriers. Rules watered down [boldface] Progress in making public transportation available to the handicapped can be traced to the Urban Mass Transit Administration's adoption of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1979. [sic] Section 504 generally made it illegal to exclude any individual, by reason of handicap, from any program receiving federal dollars. UMTA's regulations stated that all new buses purchased with federal money must include wheelchair lifts and aimed for 50 percent of peak-hour accessibility on regular bus routes. RTD standards strict [boldface] The Regional Transportation District in metropolitan Denver has adopted accessibility standards that are more stringent than required. Even after Section 504 regulations were softened in 1981, RTD's board chose to maintain its commitment to provide 50 percent peak-hour accessibility on all routes, and 100 percent off-peak accessibility. And RTD will soon become the first public transit system in the United States to introduce wheelchair lifts on its larger, regional commuter buses. Despite such advances, Blank will not be satisfied until disabled individuals throughout the United States can board and ride a bus whenever and wherever the able-bodied do the same. “We simply want APTA, as the association which speaks for the public transportation industry, to declare its intention to make the system accessible. We know it will take time. But isn't this the country that put a man on the moon?” - 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 (717)
Chicago Tribune, Thursday May 14, 1992 [This article continues in ADAPT 712 but the entire text has been included here for easier reading.] Photo by Eduardo Contreras: A man (Randy Horton) in a denim jacket kneels on the bottom step of an escalator with his arms spread from one handrail to the other. Someone stands on the escalator facing him. Behind him are a group of other protesters in wheelchairs filling the area. The group includes: Steve Verriden, San Antonio Funtes, Chris Hronis and others. Caption reads: Randy Horton (on knees) blocks John Meagher on a State of Illinois Center escalator. Title: Disabled protesters take hard line by Christine Hawes and Rob Kawath Rolling his wheelchair around the cavernous State of Illinois Center, shouting for his rights, Ken Heard recalled how he used to spend his days in a Syracuse, N.Y., nursing home where doctors controlled his life. They would tell him when he could get up in the morning, when he could go to sleep, what he could eat. They would feed him pills, but they wouldn’t tell him what they were for. It was as if he had no mind of his own. “l saw people tied down in their beds, said Heard, who has severe cerebral palsy. "And I saw people die in there." It took some time, a marriage that got him out of the nursing home and a raging desire for independence, but today Heard has regained the power to think for himself. He now earns his own income, rents and fumishes his own apartment and even takes vacations in Las Vegas. His joumey to self-sufficiency began when he heard about an activist group now called American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. On Wednesday, about 200 ADAPT protesters in wheelchairs disrupted operations at the State of Illinois Center, 100 W. Randolph St., blocking exits and occasionally fighting with building patrons and workers as police stood by, arresting no one. Elaborate security measures the state had put in place Monday to keep the 16-floor, 3,000-employee building functioning broke down while state and Chicago police squabbled over who was responsible for arresting protesters deemed to have gone too far. But the scene of disabled men and women dragging themselves up escalators, surging into the building lobby and clutching the legs of people trying to walk past is just another picture in the well-publicized story of a group of vociferous activists savvy in street action. “One of the strongest points of their civil disobedience is making themselves look as pathetic as possible,” said one Chicago-area official at an agency that has been a target of ADAPT. The official, who asked that his name be withheld, said, “They are excellent media users, and they are very successful at putting spotlights on issues that most people probably wouldn’t normally pay attention to.” ADAPT has taken its dedication to a fever pitch, too fevered for some, and like many new protest `groups`—including the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT -UP) for gay rights, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for animal rights and Earth First for the ecology—is using dramatic, sensational tactics for their cause, to allow any nursing home residents the ability to live on their own. And though some may question their efforts, none can doubt they have impact. One woman who said she was grabbed, tripped and bitten during Wednesday’s melee confessed a few hours later, “I can’t help but feel guilty.” During Heard’s 10-year stay in the nursing home, he met some ADAPT members from Denver and listened to them tell of how they took sledgehammers to Denver's street curbs as a way of objecting to inaccessible sidewalks. Now Heard is a political organizer for ADAPT, in town with 350 other protesters. And though members are no longer taking sledgehammers to cement, they are steering wheelchairs into intersections, chaining themselves to buildings and crawling along dirty streets to get over curbs too high for wheelchairs. For the past two years, ADAPT has been staging demonstrations every six months in support of reallocating one-fourth of the country’s Medicaid funds that now go to nursing homes to in-home health care, and to make it easier for disabled people like Heard to escape their “prisons.” This week in Chicago, protests have played out at the quarters of everyone ADAPT perceives as the health-care power brokers: the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the American Medical Association and the offices of Gov. Jim Edgar. ADAPT claims that having personal, in-home attendants for the disabled costs $900 a month less in state funds than keeping them in nursing homes and other institutions. Illinois officials say the difference is only $600. But aside from financial concerns, ADAPT members say they’re fighting against inhumane restraint and abuse in nursing homes. Their strategy is to make the able-bodied feel as uncomfortable and limited as they themselves do—and to grab as much media time as possible. Television cameras were there Wednesday when bands of wheelchair users mobbed workers trying to use an escalator in the State of Illinois Center. And they were there Tuesday when protesters crawled out of their wheelchairs, across Grand Avenue and over foot-high curbs outside of the American Medical Association’s national headquarters. “This makes us visible," said Jean Stewart, a 42-year-old novelist from New York, who has used a wheelchair since she lost her hip muscle because of a tumor about 17 years ago. “And it enables us to get our message across. It’s not a publicity stunt, it’s education.” The group’s history is rife with attention-grabbing acts of protest after talks with officials were unsuccessful and full of what they feel is noteworthy success. The end result of the Denver protests, said Wade Blank, a founding member of the group, was one of the most accessible cities for disabled people in this country. Three years ago, a handful of ADAPT members were arrested for blocking a Chicago Transit Authority bus with their motorized wheelchairs. But two results of those efforts, they feel, were CTA purchase of buses with wheelchair lifts and even the passage of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. ADAPT members say they are disrupting business as usual because they are shut out of offices where politicians and association presidents could be sitting down to discuss the issue. And they are trapping members of the public to demonstrate how they feel trapped and restrained. “For so long the issues surrounding disability have remained invisible,” said Stephanie Thomas, who lost her ability to walk when she was run over by a tractor 17 years ago. “So we have to do some extraordinary things to make people pay attention.” Wednesday’s protest, which came after U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur refused to order a lessening of security measures at the state’s Chicago headquarters, left police and Department of Central Management Services security officers snapping only at each other, even after the protest turned ugly. “I have to get to an appointment!" yelled one middle-age man as he wrestled on the ground with two protesters who had grabbed his legs and, in the process, had been pulled out of their wheelchairs. “This is what it feels like to be trapped in a nursing home!” yelled one protester. The man finally struggled free and hustled out of the building while Chicago and Central Management Services police watched from only a few feet away. “We’re sorely disappointed with the Chicago Police Department,” said Central Management Services Director Stephen Schnorf. “Certainly they provided better protection to the other buildings where there were protests this week.” But Chicago Police Cmdr. Michael Malone said the state was in control and his officers were just there to back them up. He said the state was misrepresenting the agreement between the two departments. And all that consternation was caused by a group that claims to be loosely organized and barely funded ADAPT, which has about 5,000 members nationwide, has very little formal correspondence, aside from a newspaper called Incitement and a rare memo, Blank said members keep in touch through word of mouth more than anything, and most of them support their travels through small fundraisers. But though the group says most of its day-to-day procedures are hardly sophisticated, ADAPT leaders are extremely skilled in using the media, say some who have watched the group’s protests first-hand. Sonya Snyder, public relations director at a Florida hotel where ADAPT demonstrated against the American Health Care Association last October, said the protesters only became rambunctious when television cameras appeared. “For most of the time, the police and the protesters would share sandwiches,” Snyder said. “But when the media came, down went the sandwiches and up went the protest.” And Janice Wolfe, a spokeswoman for the health care association, said the group’s efforts are “frustrating and misdirected. Their efforts could be better spent on individuals who are in power to do something.” ADAPT members view their protests as grand displays of strength, not pitiful appeals. They speak of their demonstration plans as though they are plotting battle strategy, using words like “identified enemy,” “privileged information” and "top secret." They pattern their protests after the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and compare themselves to the black leaders of that era “This is just like Martin Luther King,” ADAPT member Bernard Baker from Atlanta “We’re fired up, and we can’t take it anymore." - ADAPT (45)
Rocky Mountain News Mon., March 22, 1976, Denver, Colo. Banner Headline for story. PHOTO on left of headline: Head and shoulders shot of a young man (Michael Smith) with dark hair, pulled back in ponytail, dark beard and moustache. His head is tilted slightly to one side and he is smiling a bit. Caption reads: Michael Smith. He had a dream; He prayed that He would walk again someday. But someday never came. [Headline] Late poet a plaintiff in nursing home case Page 5 [Banner headline in ADAPT 44. Story starts here in ADAPT 45 and continues in ADAPT 46, but the entire text is included here for ease of reading.] Late poet was plaintiff in nursing home lawsuit By Jonathan Dedmon, News Staff Michael Smith was a poet. A victim of muscular dystrophy, Michael wasn't able to hold a pen, however. Weighing less than 100 pounds, one of the few physical tasks he was able to perform was to turn the pages of the many books he read. He would keep stanzas of poetry stored in his head and wait for friends or staff at the Heritage House Nursing Home in Lakewood where he lived to have free time so he could dictate his verse. A former aide remembers when she would be busy caring for patients and Mike would say, "Got to write." "We'd say, ‘Sorry, Mike‘ Don‘t have time.‘ A lot of his poetry was lost." In addition to being a poet, Mike also was an idealist. Because of what friends say was that idealism, in spite of the fact Mike died in October at the age of 21, he lives on not only in a published book of his poems but also in a giant legal battle in U.S. District Court. THE BATTLE COULD have a large impact on the care of handicapped patients in nursing homes throughout the country since it attacks the entire method of delivering health care. The suit, in which Mike was an original plaintiff, charges nursing home patients routinely are being denied their rights and even fundamental medical care, contrary to the wishes of Congress in its Medicaid law. U.S. Judge Richard Matsch currently is considering how much jurisdiction the federal court has in the case. But already a number of patients and nursing home employees have come forward with a series of affidavits which are a litany of patient abuse. The charges are leveled primarily against the former Heritage House Nursing Center in Lakewood, which since has been sold and is operating under new management and a new name. The suit’s allegations range from patients not having the colostomy bags changed to failure of the staff to provide any rehabilitation efforts. THE NURSING HOME attorney and a part owner deny the charges which are contained in a half dozen affidavits filed with the court. Pam Malpass worked as an aide from August 1974 to February of last year. Here are parts of her affidavit: “People were punished sometimes by having their wheelchairs turned off, cut their mobility (sic). Wheelchairs at Heritage House were constantly in disrepair and falling apart leading to weekly crises. Paul Brae, a Heritage House resident, fell out of his chair because it was falling apart and crawled under his bed and said he was (sic) [not] going to come out until he got a new wheelchair [cut off] we procured for him with some difficulty. Bowel programs for a number of residents weren't maintained properly resulting in infections. Colostomies and catheters weren't cleaned properly or regularly also resulting in infections for a number of patients. I also often observed that colostomy bags and catheters improperly were connected to the people that needed them with the result that they leaked and backed up." Michael Ray, an orderly from May 1974 to January of last year, said in his affidavit that on at least a dozen occasions, he made marks with a felt-tipped pen on patients’ dressings on open bed sores to make sure they were being changed twice a day as they should have been. “Each time when I looked, a day later, sometimes longer, the dressings I had put on with the markings were still there. The unclean sores lead to more serious complications and infections. During the six months I was working at Heritage House I never saw a doctor." FAILURE TO MAINTAIN a bowel program can lead to bowel poisoning and even to surgery. Mark Biles was impacted for three weeks while I was there necessitating an elaborate program of oral laxatives, suppositories and enemas to give him relief. The owners and the administrators always met suggestions or requests from the staff on behalf of patients residing there with the remark that they cost too much or if you don't like it why don't you get the hell out. “The only time that Heritage House was concemed about the cleanliness of the home was when the state inspection team announced it would appear.” ACCORDING TO JOHN Holland, who heads a team of Legal Aid attorneys working on the case, “We're saying that when Congress established Medicaid, it intended to create a real system of delivering high quality medical care to poor people, not a system that couldn't deliver for a significant number. The benefits aren't getting there.” A particular target is the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), which is charged with making sure nursing homes comply with federal standards to insure high quality health care. Legal Aid, which is reluctant to say too much about the case because it is pending, feels HEW merely established a “paper compliance" system whereas Congress wanted a compliance system to “see benefits and rights delivered and prevent the kinds of injuries and deprivations of rights alleged in the suit." THE SUIT NAMES every rung in the bureaucracy which participates in the provision of nursing home care, ranging from the owners of Heritage House to the state Department of Social Services and HEW. In addition to asking for monetary damages, the suit also seeks an injunction prohibiting deprivation of medical care and patient rights. The rights include proper medical and psychosocial treatment and care, the right to seek legal counsel and manage personal monies, the right to voice grievances and the right to adequate notice and opportunity for a hearing prior to transfer, among others. It also asks HEW to come up with a decent system of enforcing compliance with such federal laws. Because of the complex nature of the suit, it already has become a “paper nightmare," according to Holland, and a “paper war,“ according to Heritage House attomey Bob Eberhardt. THE PLEADINGS STAND some two feet high and the court hasn't decided jurisdiction yet. Perhaps one of the most damning affidavits filed so far is by Janice Jacobson, a former administrator of Heritage House. “Heritage House was filthy, cockroaches had infested the entire home (with the exception of the kitchen). The walls wene very dirty and an odor of urine permeated the air. “Flies were everywhere. They present a particular problem to those persons who are bedfast or paralyzed because they can't swat the flies from their faces or bodies. “Temperature controls were broken. Zone control valves which control the room temperature were corroded either open or shut so that the rooms were unbearably hot or cold. “INDIVIDUAL CARE PLANS are either totally inadequate or not existent." “Patients who had to be fed were degraded by impatient orderlies who constantly hurried them along faster than they could comfortably go on the pretext of there not being enough time to feed them." “Staff would get angry with people for having something wrong with them like uncontrolled bowels." “Lots of patients would never get dressed every day. The staff didn’t like to take the time to dress them. By keeping patients undressed a general institutional goal of keeping them in bed and more inactive was more readily achieved. “It was not uncommon for people who did get dressed to not be undressed but rather to sleep in their clothes. l received complaints from one family that one of the male patients there had the same clothes on for weeks. They knew because the same spot was on his shirt for three weeks." “Visitors and relatives often complained that their relatives or friends hadn't received baths or showers for weeks." “It was reported to me by nursing staff the director of nursing believed physical correction of resident misconduct was permissible and that she employed a technique of having persons she decided were misbehaving placed in cold showers." “The call button system at Heritage House often wasn't working and when it was, working staff very often didn't respond to calls. There was one incident while I was there where family members called in and said they heard their mother was dead. The nurse had to go down to the room to see if this was so. The woman had been dead for several hours." Mrs. Jacobson says, in her view, Heritage House was “warehousing people, not delivering health care." "Residents had no more rights than children and the official view was that the staff knew what was best for them and if the patients didn't think we were doing everything right or what they needed they could just leave." Management expressed this view often. “PATIENTS WERE KEPT tractable and quiescent by intimidation and medication. Encouraging people to be as normal as they can be is the essence of good nursing care. It was not done at Heritage House.“ In response, Heritage House attorney Eberhardt said the accusations are “totally untrue and completely without foundation. You can't cross-examine affidavits. The truth will come out in the trial. “ He also points to the affidavit of Allen Buckingham, regional director of the HEW office of Long Term Care Standards Enforcement. Buckingham stated his office never received any complaints concerning the allegations. Oscar Gross, former part owner and also a defendant, said he never would have been able to keep his license if the allegations were true. In addition, he said his home was the only home to provide a wing specifically for handicapped youths and he even received two awards from the wing. “We tried to do our best," he said. He also offered to take the News to the home to interview patients about conditions. He said his wife still visits patients. Gross sold the home in February and it now is under new management. Gross said he sold the home simply as “a business transaction.“ Before Michael Smith died last year, he testified at one hearing on the case. “He already felt he had won," recalled Mrs. Malpass. - ADAPT (635)
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. - ADAPT (296)
Handicapped Coloradan Volume 9, No. 3, Boulder Colorado October 1986 [There are two articles included here.] Headline: Rosa bows out at last minute PHOTO: by Melanie Stengel, courtesy of UPI Three uniformed police officers surround a woman in a scooter (Edith Harris) and hold her arms. They are in front of a city bus, and behind them you can see a fourth officer and a city building. The caption reads: EDITH HARRIS, 62, of Hartford, Conn., is arrested by police during demonstrations in Detroit in early October. Harris, a grandmother who lost her legs to diabetes, was in Detroit to picket the national convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA). Harris has participated in similar demonstrations in Washington, D.C, and Los Angeles, Calif. She was also arrested in both those cities. Ironically, Harris compares herself to Rosa Parks, the black civil rights leader who decided at the last minute not to participate in the Detroit transit demonstrations. Title: Blacks blast ADAPT [This article continues in ADAPT 288 but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] Civil rights heroine Rosa Parks shocked disabled groups when she said at the last minute that she would not participate in any actions protesting Detroit's lack of accessible public transit. “We do not wish any American to be discriminated against in transportation or any other form that reduces their equality and dignity," Elaine Steele an assistant to Parks, said in a letter dated Oct. 3 and delivered to Wade Blank, co-founder of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT). "However," we cannot condone disruption of Detroit city services." Parks had said she would appear at a Sunday, Oct. 5, news conference and possibly lead a march across Detroit. Steele said that Parks "supports active peaceful protest of human rights issues, not tactics that will embarrass the city's guests and cripple the city's present transportation system.“ Blank said he asked Steele how their tactics differed from those used by Parks and other blacks to fight segregation in the South in the 1950s and 1960s but she was unable to provide him with a satisfactory answer. Parks is credited with igniting the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala. bus in 1956. Parks' defiant action caused a Montgomery minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. to organize a black boycott of that city's buses. Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and CBS newsman Ed Bradley — both black -- were scheduled to address the national convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) and reportedly asked Parks not to embarrass them by participating in the ADAPT action. Blank said that Parks had wavered once or twice in the weeks before the convention, but that he had managed to persuade her to stick to her original decision. But less than a week before the convention opened, Parks and her staff met in long session, and decided to support ADAPT. The Handicapped Coloradan has so far been unable to reach Parks or her representatives to learn what made her change her mind so suddenly. Blank said that he "wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Chrysler or Ford told her that they wouldn't contribute to the Rosa L. Parks Shrine if she went through with the action.” Parks is currently involved in raising money to commemorate her role and that of other blacks in the struggle for equality. But Blank stopped short of condemning Parks, saying that the 74-year-old leader has earned the respect of everyone for her actions in the 1950s. He said, "Maybe it just isn't her time any more. If I had known we were going to put her on the spot like this, I wouldn't have done it. She was under a lot of pressure. Apparently the phone never stopped ringing.” However, Blank had plenty to say about Bradley, who is a regular on the highly rated television news program "60 Minutes." Before giving a speech on apartheid in South Africa, Bradley told the 2300 APTA delegates that ADAPT had asked him not to appear at the convention. Bradley said he talked with both Young and Parks and all three agreed that they did not approve of the tactics used by the disabled group. Blank said he tried to contact Bradley by phone on at least six different occasions during the two months preceding the convention but was never able to get past his secretary." "We wanted to explain our position, but he apparently wasn't interested. This may tell you just how much homework they do on ‘6O Minutes.' Maybe people who make their living by intimidating others can't take it themselves," Blank said, referring to the often adversarial approach used on the program. “Blank said he was never able to ‘get through to Young directly but a member of Young's staff said they were welcome to ride the city's buses. "Then they arrested us for doing just that," he said. The state of Michigan requires that all transit systems receiving state funds be wheelchair accessible, but the city of Detroit avoids that requirement by financing its own transit system. Representatives of the suburban Southeastern Michigan Transportation Authority (SEMTA), which is accessible, said it would be willing to introduce a pro-accessibility resolution at the next APTA convention if it can find two or three co-sponsors, according to Blank. Young defended ‘Detroit's policy at a news conference by saying that he couldn't "make gold out of straw" to pay for the lifts. Young attacked ADAPT for employing “sabotage and sensationalism” and accused the group of taking "advantage of their disabilities" to block buses and get publicity for their cause. “That's not the way to win cooperation," he said. Blank said the only time people in power take notice of disabled people is when they engage in civil disobedience, pointing out the efforts their opponents made to discredit ADAPT. “The police told us that APTA had told them we were urban terrorists." He said he was sure few people in Detroit knew of the difficulties encountered by persons with disabilities in using public transit before ADAPT hit town. Blank said he tried to get Jesse Jackson and his rainbow coalition to support ADAPT in Detroit, but every time he telephoned he was told that “Jesse was in the air" flying to another appearance. Some members of Jackson's other group, PUSH, did participate in some of the Detroit demonstrations. Blank said he was saddened that so many blacks could not understand ADAPT's motives. “I guess it was just one human race story running up against another" he said. PHOTO: The dark figures of 3 Detroit police officers loom into the frame from all sides. Through a small hole between their arms you can see the face and chest of a man (Ken Heard) they are surrounding. Below their arms you can see the wheels and frame Ken's wheelchair. Caption reads: Detroit police had their hands full when they placed Ken Heard under arrest. Title of 2nd article: 54 arrested in transit showdown [This article is continued in ADAPT 295 but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] At least 54 demonstrators were arrested in Detroit as disabled groups once again laid siege to a national convention of their arch-foe, the American Public Transit Association (APTA). Seventeen or 18 protesters (accounts vary) were arrested Monday, Oct. 6, when they attempted to board -- and block -- Detroit city buses, which are mostly not equipped with wheelchair lifts. Those arrested were released on a $l00 personal bond and were ordered not to participate in any actions that would lead to a second arrest. The next day, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 37 protesters, including 13 repeat offenders, were booked by police for blocking one of the two entrances to the McNamara federal office building. Twenty-four of these were released after posting the $100 personal bond apiece, but the repeat offenders had bail set at $1,000 each. Even as the protesters, primarily members of the militant American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), began pouring into Detroit Friday night, the Wayne County jail was already filled to its 1700 person capacity and was turning away all prisoners charged with misdemeanors. The 13 two-time offenders were held Tuesday night in a gym at police headquarters which has bars on the windows and which has been used on other occasions as a holding area for prisoners waiting to be incarcerated. Ironically, the gym's facilities were not accessible to persons in wheelchairs, and police were obliged to carry their disabled prisoners when they needed to use the restrooms. Outside police headquarters, another 60 demonstrators gathered and staged an all-night candlelight vigil. As in other cities where ADAPT has staged demonstrations in its fight to win mandatory accessible public transit, the police said they were in a [unreadable.] More than one officer complained that you can't help but look bad when you arrest someone in a wheelchair. The Detroit police had received briefings from other cities visited by ADAPT and had given some special training to officers in dealing with disabled protesters. ADAPT had originally been granted a parade permit to stage a march on the Westin Hotel where APTA conventioneers were meeting, but Mayor Coleman Young and police went to the city council and got the permit rescinded. No parade permit was issued when ADAPT marched on APTA in Los Angeles, but police made no attempt to push the marchers off the streets and in fact routed traffic away from the demonstrators. However, in Detroit police dogged ADAPT marchers for two miles, making [unreadable] protesters stuck to the sidewalks, even when obstacles such as a large puddle of water hampered, their progress. ADAPT spokesperson Wade Blank said the Detroit action cost $20,000 and that the group was seeking additional financial assistance to continue to press their fight, which has taken them to APTA's national conventions in Denver, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, as well as to regional meetings in San Antonio, San Diego, and Cincinnati. Blank said several reporters asked him about reports that ADAPT was being funded by lift manufacturers. “I’m sure someone with APTA planted that question to try and discredit us,” he said. Blank said ADAPT had received contributions of $100 each from two lift manufacturers but that this was for other projects. “Besides, that isn’t enough to make bail for more than two people." APTA'S 1987 convention is set for San Francisco and ADAPT is already beginning to lay the groundwork for disrupting that meeting. “People ask why we do these kinds of things (civil disobedience)," Blank said. “But look how much publicity we get. People are finally getting the word about what public transit really means to someone in a wheelchair.” California has required all public transit systems to convert to accessible systems as they replace old equipment, but Blank said he’s heard that there have been some problems with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in recent months. But before they head for San Francisco, ADAPT has been asked by disabled groups in Boston for assistance in setting up a program to pursue accessible transit there. - ADAPT (395)
St. Louis Post Dispatch 5-22-88 PHOTO by Ted Dargan/Post Dispatch: A Line of ADAPT people roll down a city street. The first person in line (Mike Auberger) has two long braids and sunglasses. His arms hang on either side of his motorized wheelchair and his ADAPT shirt is somewhat covered by the chest strap on his chair. Next to Mike is a man in a manual wheelchair with curly hair and a beard (Bob Kafka) who has is legs crossed and is wearing the same ADAPT shirt as Mike. Behind them a man (Jerry Eubanks) with no legs in a manual wheelchair is being pushed by a blind man (Frank Lozano) who is smiling. Behind them is another man in a maual wheelchair. Behind him is someone in a motorized wheelchair who is looking off to the side. Behind them is another person in a wheelchair. The photo is grainy so it's hard to make out many details. Caption reads: Disabled people demonstrating downtown last week for more accessible bus service. Title: Bus Stop By Joan Bray Of the Post-Dispatch Staff ACTIV1STS FROM local advocacy groups were absent from the scores of protesters who took to St. Louis streets last week asserting the rights of the disabled to accessible bus service. Leaders of the local groups say tactics, not goals, caused them and their members to opt out of the demonstrations. About 150 people blocked entrances at Union Station and surrounded buses at the Greyhound terminal. A majority of them were in wheelchairs, on crutches or otherwise disabled. And they were out-of-towners. They belong to a loosely woven group, American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, called ADAPT for short. The group was protesting the policies of the American Public Transit Association, which was holding a regional meeting at the Omni International Hotel at Union Station. As a result of ADAPT's civil disobedience, 78 arrests were made, two group court appearances were held and a lawsuit was filed by the group over treatment at the City Workhouse. We support ADAPT's policies on access 1,000 percent," said Max J. Starkloff. He is executive director here of Paraquad Inc., which advocates rights for the handicapped. "But we have not participated in the demonstrations." "Our methods are negotiation, public testimony and organized public rallies," Starkloff said. "Our goals ore the same" as ADAPT's. Both the local activists and ADAPT want the transit association to push for installing a wheelchair lift on every bus in the country. They see 100 percent accessibility as a civil right. Rut the transit association notes in a written statement that no such accessibility is required by the Constitution, the Congress or the courts. It says the number of lifts on buses has increased to 30 percent now from 11 percent in 1981. In that same period, the administration of President Ronald Reagan has slashed the federal transit program's budget by 47 percent, the association says. The association says each local transportation agency should be allowed to determine how it will provide access for the disabled. Special services — like the Call-A-Ride service operated by the Bi-State Development Agency — may work better than lift-equipped buses in some areas, the association says. Local groups' methods for effecting change include working within the system. Starkloff serves on Bi-State's committee on transit for the elderly and disabled. The chairman of that committee, Fred Cowell, is executive director of the Gateway chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America. Bi-State has made a commitment to install wheelchair lifts on all its buses, Cowell said. But the committee wants the agency's board of directors to adopt a policy stating it will do so. "We know that the buses are here to stay," Cowell said. "If or when budget cuts come, special services such as Call-A-Ride would be the first to go." Cowell and Starkloff said they feared that between the bureaucracy and the protests, the primary point — the need for equal transportation — was being missed. "A disabled person is not unlike any other person," Cowell said. Disabled people need to get to their jobs, to medical care and to social engagements, be said. "There is absolutely no difference in their need to get around," he said. Starkloff noted that the cost of a van equipped for a wheelchair — a minimum of about $20,000 — was prohibitive for most people. But the disabled should not have to wait at a bus stop on the chance that the next bus may be equipped with a lift, be said. Nor should they have to plan their trips 24 hours in advance, as Call-A-Ride requires, he said. Cowell said, "The main thing the (BI-State) committee has been trying to do is develop a deepening concern for services for the disabled and elderly." The fact that the committee has been successful in persuading Bi-State to buy only buses with lifts prevented the agency from bearing the brunt of ADAPT's effort here, one of the protest leaders said. The Rev. Wade Blank, a Presbyterian minister from Denver, is a co-director of ADAPT. He has a daughter who is disabled. Two months ago, representatives of ADAPT met with State officials in preparation for their trip here and learned of the agency's commitment to lifts, Blank said. As a result, ADAPT aimed its protests at the transit association's meeting and Greyhound Bus Lines. Greyhound is bidding on local routes in some metropolitan areas — Dallas, for one, Blank said. But it does not equip its buses with lifts, he said. A spokesman for Greyhound said last week that, instead, it provided a free ticket for a companion for a disabled traveler. Regarding the transit meeting, Blank said: "Our whole intent is to go after people who are so much wrapped up in the system that they insulate themselves from the issue. They have to live and breathe (ADAPT's protests) when they go to these conventions." Demonstrators here represented some of ADAPTs 33 chapters across the country, Blank said. He said his headquarters was with a group in Denver called the Atlantis Community, which moves disabled people out of nursing homes into independent living arrangements. Funding comes primarily from church donations and foundation grants, he said. From 1978 to 1981, ADAPT protested — and "caused a major disruption" — in Denver every month, Blank said. In 1982, the buses there became 100 percent equipped with lifts, he noted. ADAPT has since protested in all the cities where the transit association has met and where it has been invited by other activists, for a total of about 15 cities, Blank said. [unreadable] ...only buses with lifts, he said. Blank said the failure of local groups to join ADAPT's protests did not weaken the cause. Another success that ADAPT points to is a ruling by a federal Judge in Philadelphia in January striking down a regulation of the US. Department of Transportation that allows transit authorities to spend only 3 percent of their budgets on the disabled. The Judge postponed the effect of the ruling while the Justice Department appeals it. Three percent of Bi-State's budget for the current fiscal year Is $2.6 million, said Rosemary Covington, an agency official who works with the advisory committee. But Bi-State will spend only $1 million because of delays in getting bids on new buses and in expanding the Call-A-Ride service. "We are having budget problems, but that wasn't the reason" the money wasn't spent, Covington said. The remaining $1.6 million does not roll over to the fiscal year that begins July 1, she said. She said that by early next year, Bi-State expected that 221 of its fleet of about 700 buses will be equipped with lifts, 12 of the more than 120 routes will be operated entirely with lift-equipped buses, the Call-A-Ride service will include all of St. Louis County and the city and a voucher system will be available for back-up cab service. Equipping all the agency's buses with lifts will take six to seven years, Covington said. Meanwhile the committee will help evaluate the services for the disabled, she said. "If ridership doesn't materialize" on the buses with lifts or "if it costs thousands or millions (of dollars) to maintain them, that will enter into the decision making," Covington said. Bi-State is training drivers how to use the lifts and plans to promote and advertise the service heavily, she said. - ADAPT (223)
MAinstream magazine [No date] [This story continues in ADAPT 222, but is contained here in its entirety for reading ease.] [Headline] ADAPT takes the fast lane to make transit accessible By Michael Ervin San Antonio—The first indication that something was about to happen came when an oversized, stretch-limo of a van pulled up beside the Alamo and a wheelchair lift uncurled out of the back door. The colorful banner on the side of the van read: ACCESS FOR ALL. Six more people in wheelchairs were in another van parked in a lot down the street. As they proceeded down the sidewalk to join the demonstration in front of the Alamo the pedestrians stopped and looked them over. A parade of people in wheelchairs is bound to draw stares. But the expressions accompanying these stares were unique—welcoming, supportive, somewhat star struck. Maybe they knew they were coming. Before the 50 or so members of various chapters of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit even arrived here there were stories in the media about previous ADAPT confrontations with the American Public Transit Association (APTA.) Television news showed footage of the mass arrests that occurred last October in Washington, D.C. when ADAPT members tried to force their way into the center where APTA was holding its annual convention. That's the kind of escalating media coverage Wade Blank likes to see. He’s the main force behind ADAPT. “We're becoming famous. When we had our first ADAPT meeting in Denver in 1982, our goal was to make the officials of any city we were coming to nervous. We wanted them to say, ‘No! Not here! We don’t want ‘em!’” They were certainly nervous in San Antonio. When a horde of people in wheelchairs showed up at the offices of the local transit authority for a noisy demonstration, the employees locked themselves in a large office as if they were afraid ADAPT was going to take them out one by one and shoot them. And when the march that began at the Alamo turned into an equally raucous occupation of the lobby of the posh hotel where APTA people were staying, hotel security had no idea what to do. And the bewildered looks of the innocent tourists were amusing. They’d certainly never seen anything like that before. “Seeing a bunch of disabled crazies blocking buses and doing things like that redefines everything everybody’s been conditioned to believe about the disabled," Blank says. This radical redefinition of what the disabled are (in the eyes of both the disabled and nondisabled) is what ADAPT is all about. And having stuffy APTA conferences and conventions as a backdrop helps make that point. APTA’s primary sin, according to ADAPT, is that it spent big bucks on a lawsuit that struck down the federal mandate that all fixed-route public buses be lift-equipped. ADAPT sees equal transit access as the most basic civil right. “It's the same segregation as when blacks had to sit in the back of the bus or yield their seats to whites. Except it’s even worse,” says Blank. “The disabled can’t even get on the bus.” By using APTA as a symbol of the stifling paternalism that keeps the disabled in a position of dependency, ADAPT makes the immorality of inaccessible public transit quite clear. *** Wade Blank is an ordained minister who never goes to church. “It’s in the true Jesus tradition. He was kicked out of the synagogue and never went back.” Blank worked in a nursing home for a few years after seminary. It frustrated him to see the disabled friends he made there stuck there simply because they had no place else to go. So in 1976 he and some others began Atlantis, an independent living center in Denver. ADAPT was born of Atlantis. Blank says Atlantis likes to “do the impossible” in terms of working with clients who have the deepest holes of dependency to dig out of. Frank, a man with cerebral palsy who was part of the ADAPT Denver caravan to San Antonio, was sprung by Atlantis in 1976 from a nursing home he had been in since 1934. Another woman began feeding herself for the first time when she became part of Atlantis. She was always physically able to. Her mother just didn't want her making a mess. Another woman had never seen a head of lettuce. Her salads had always come to her prepared. It’s rather stunning seeing people who were mired in the world of please and thank you traveling around the country, blocking buses and maybe getting arrested. It’s gotten ADAPT and Atlantis in trouble with irate relatives. The father of a woman arrested for blocking buses in Denver told Wade that since he was a reverend he must be brainwashing his daughter into joining his cult, just like Jim Jones. He said he was going to tell the newspapers so they could investigate. But Blank says, “All we’re saying to people in Atlantis and ADAPT is, ‘You are an important person.’ I just tell them (the irate relatives) that people get excited when they see that they are important and that they are expected to be somebody.” In 1978, it became clear that the mission of Atlantis could never be fully accomplished as long as Denver’s public transit system was totally inaccessible. What good was it to set someone up in an accessible apartment if they couldn’t move beyond it? They might as well have still been in the nursing home. So the Atlantis people took to the streets of Denver. They blocked buses. They held sit-ins in the transit authority offices. They got arrested. But four years later, they won and Denver is on its way to full access. [Bordered text box in center of page: “We created a drama and let it unfold . . .I guess we raised consciousness.”] The next year, APTA made the mistake of holding its convention in Denver. The target was too tempting for Atlantis to resist. Here was the personification of everything Atlantis opposed right on its step and begging to be hit. Atlantis formed a permanent transportation component call ADAPT. They organized confrontations around the convention and vowed to follow APTA everywhere until it passed ADAPT ’s resolution renouncing the lawsuit and the damage it did. These confrontations would also provide a focal point and a training ground for activists from other cities so they could form their own ADAPT chapters. Mike Auberger of Atlantis is a quadriplegic resulting from a bobsled accident during the 1972 Olympic time trials. “When we started ADAPT, we were a bunch of crazy nuts. A year later, we were a possibility. Now, we’re a reality. We started in one city and here we are about 20 cities. We must be selling something everybody needs.” The hope is that the feeling of self-importance that inspired the disabled of Denver will be as infectious in San Antonio and in cities all over America. ADAPT paved the way in San Antonio by creating a three-day headache for the police and transit authority and forcing them to take the issue very seriously. They also permanently etched the issue on the minds of the people of San Antonio with pictures on the front page of the newspaper of disabled people blocking APTA tour buses. “We created a drama and let it unfold,” Blank says. “I was talking to a reporter and I said, ‘I guess we raised consciousness.’ She said, ‘Boy did you! That’s all this town is talking about.’ ” “Now you can’t say that about too many political movements today.” But even if it doesn’t play in San Antonio, Auberger sees what happened there as another battle won. “Again we took on APTA and beat them. You’ve got this guy in a $300 suit and a designer tie with his initials and a soup stain on it. More and more people are starting to see APTA that way.” If success can be judged by police reaction, ADAPT is accomplishing a lot. Knowing ADAPT ’s penchant for blocking buses, the police routed buses away from areas with high ratios of wheelchair-users. They obviously did their homework by talking to police in other cities who had to deal with ADAPT. A television news report even told of how San Antonio police intelligence photographers were following ADAPT members around. And it’s clear that transit authorities are taking ADAPT very seriously too. The next target is Los Angeles, where APTA will hold its convention in October. ADAPT has obtained a copy of a private memo of the Southern California Rapid Transit District that speaks of the authority’s plans to spend $10,000 to $15,000 to “handle vast numbers of wheelchair bound people” who will be coming to town. “While confrontations cannot be stopped, they can be blunted.” It speaks of how the RTD is “searching for ways to diffuse or ward off demonstrations,” perhaps by pacifying everyone for a few days with a conference on accessible transit [ibid]. “Can we take control by creating a hospitality center for the handicapped?” the memo says. Who can resist such an opportunity. ADAPT is on its way.