- ΤαξινόμησηΠροεπιλεγμένη
Όνομα φωτογραφίας, A → Z
Όνομα φωτογραφίας, Z → A
Ημέρα δημιουργίας, νεότερη → παλαιότερη
✔ Ημέρα δημιουργίας, παλαιότερη → νεότερη
Ημέρα καταχώρησης, πρόσφατη → παλαιότερη
Ημέρα καταχώρησης, παλαιότερη → πρόσφατη
Βαθμολογία κατάταξης, υψηλή → χαμηλή
Βαθμολογία κατάταξης, χαμηλή → υψηλή
Επισκέψεις, περισσότερες → λιγότερες
Επισκέψεις, λιγότερες → περισσότερες - ΓλώσσαAfrikaans Argentina AzÉrbaycanca
á¥áá áá£áá Äesky Ãslenska
áá¶áá¶ááááá à¤à¥à¤à¤à¤£à¥ বাà¦à¦²à¦¾
தமிழ௠à²à²¨à³à²¨à²¡ ภาษาà¹à¸à¸¢
ä¸æ (ç¹é«) ä¸æ (é¦æ¸¯) Bahasa Indonesia
Brasil Brezhoneg CatalÃ
ç®ä½ä¸æ Dansk Deutsch
Dhivehi English English
English Español Esperanto
Estonian Finnish Français
Français Gaeilge Galego
Hrvatski Italiano Îλληνικά
íêµì´ LatvieÅ¡u Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuviu Magyar Malay
Nederlands Norwegian nynorsk Norwegian
Polski Português RomânÄ
Slovenšcina Slovensky Srpski
Svenska Türkçe Tiếng Viá»t
Ù¾Ø§Ø±Ø³Û æ¥æ¬èª ÐÑлгаÑÑки
ÐакедонÑки Ðонгол Ð ÑÑÑкий
СÑпÑки УкÑаÑнÑÑка ×¢×ר×ת
اÙعربÙØ© اÙعربÙØ©
Αρχική / Λευκώματα / Ετικέτα civil rights 51
- 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 Officially, the White House has not withdrawn its support for the bill, which would require all new buildings and services used by the public to accommodate the disabled.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 (595)
US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT Sept. 18, 1989 [This story appears in ADAPT 595, 590 and 602. It is included in its entirety here for ease of reading.] [Headline] Liberation day for the disabled by Joseph P. Shapiro Forty-three million will soon win basic civil-rights protections. Their growing movement has brushed aside the opposition and is changing America The day before the Senate passed historic legislation to protect the civil rights of disabled people, Mary Jane Owen got another rude reminder of the daily discrimination that faces people like her. Owen, a writer who is blind and uses a wheelchair, was lobbying senators for the disability-rights bill. But when she moved onto Constitution Avenue to go home, a taxi driver at curbside sped away rather than pick up a woman in a wheelchair. It is similar acts, repeated hundreds of thousands of times a day to the nation's 43 million disabled, that fueled an angry political movement that has brought the nation to a path-breaking moment. In a few weeks President Bush is expected to sign the Americans with Disabilities Act, a broad statement that will extend to the disabled the same protections against discrimination that were given to blacks and women in the 1960s and 1970s. The Senate passed the measure 76 to 8 last week, and the House is likely to approve it next month. The bill is a profound rethinking of how this country views disabled people, defined as anyone with a physical or mental impairment that "substantially limits" everyday living. For the first time, America is saying the biggest problem facing disabled people is not their own blindness, deafness or other physical condition but discrimination. The bill, says Senate sponsor Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), is "an emancipation proclamation for people with handicaps" that will fundamentally change their lives, getting more of them out of their homes and institutions and into full participation in society. Under the new law, restaurants, stores, hotels and theaters can no longer turn away a person with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, AIDS or any other disability. Employers would be prohibited from rejecting qualified workers just because they are disabled, and they would be required to fashion generally inexpensive modifications to the workplace to make it accessible to the disabled, such as putting a desk on blocks to raise it for a wheelchair user. It would also require that new buses be equipped with lifts so that wheelchair users could get on public transit. New buildings, or those undergoing major reconstruction, would have to be made accessible to disabled people, with elevators installed in shopping malls and new structures higher than two stories. Telephone companies would have to hire operators who could take a message typed by a deaf person on a Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) and then relay it orally to a hearing person on another phone. [Subheading] Cost of Access. Businesses, particularly small ones, are wary of the changes. John Sloan, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, complained that the bill will impose costly requirements on businesses" and is "so broadly written" that it is unclear how far, and to what expense, a business will have to go to avoid being open to a lawsuit. Sponsors of the bill said estimates that its implementation might cost billions of dollars were wildly exaggerated. Past experience shows they may be correct. When Congress in 1973 protected disabled people from discrimination by institutions that receive federal funding, North Carolina education officials estimated it would cost them $15 billion to make state university buildings accessible, says architect Ronald Mace of Barrier Free Environments. Instead, many changes were simple and cheap. To accommodate students in wheelchairs, classes were moved to ground floors rather than installing elevators to carry them to top floors. The cost so far has totaled $l5 million, says Mace. Similarly, a 1982 study for the Labor Department found that half the accommodations made in the workplace cost little or nothing. For example, it was easy for companies to change a wheelchair user's work hours to conform with the schedule of lift-equipped buses. Another 30 percent of the accommodations were achieved for between $100 and $500. That included such changes as giving a telephone head-set to a quadriplegic telephone operator. Despite the concerns of business groups, their opposition to a bill that would open them up to a new spate of lawsuits was surprisingly muted and not nearly as vociferous as their fight against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For one thing, no one wanted to look like a bigot fighting a civil-rights bill, particularly one that was rushing through Congress. More important, businesses in the last few years have seen disabled people as a new source of labor and customers. “If they can get to the stores, business is going to increase" says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce‘s Nancy Fulco, who nonetheless lobbied to limit the rights bill's impact on business. [Subheading] Hidden Army. The mixed feelings of business groups underscored how disability rights is a civil-rights movement different from any other. Unlike the black and women's movements, disability-rights groups have never filled the streets with hundreds of thousands of marchers. Instead, the disability movement boasts “a hidden army,“ says former Representative Tony Coelho, who has epilepsy. Since a fifth of the nation's population has some form of disability, ranging from mental retardation to severe arthritis, Coelho argues, “disability impacts practically every family.“ Nowhere was that clearer than in Congress and the White House. where key supporters of the rights bill felt a particular need to win the bill‘s passage because they personally know about disabilities. Most important was President Bush, who has two sons with disabilities. Bush's strong statements in support of the bill during the 1988 campaign won him important support in the usually Democratic disability community. Nevertheless, the rights bill was in trouble until mid-June because of business fears about its cost. Then, on the day he left Congress, Coelho called Bush to ask him to renew his commitment to the bill. Within a few weeks, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu convened a strategy session with key senators to negotiate a compromise. That was easy to achieve once sponsors agreed to the White House request they drop the provision that would have allowed the disabled to sue for punitive damages if they were discriminated against. a provision that was the most opposed by business lobbies. From that moment, the compromise bill has been on a fast track. The success of the disability movement is extraordinary because it sprang up with little noise and little notice. One essential ingredient has been the growth of a new class consciousness among the disabled. Seventy-four percent of them feel they share a “common identity” with other disabled people, and 45 percent argue that they are “a minority in the same sense as are blacks and Hispanics,” according to a 1985 poll by Louis Harris & Associates. “All disabled people share one common experience—discrimination,” says Pat Wright of the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund. Often it is crude bigotry. In January, an airline employee in New York who resented having to help a 66-year-old double amputee board a plane instead threw him on a baggage dolly. A New Jersey private-zoo owner a few summers ago refused to admit children with Down syndrome to the monkey house because, he claimed, they upset his chimpanzees. It is that kind of outrage and countless more subtle discriminations that fueled the movement that now wants to change the image of the disabled. Many now reject the traditional attitudes of society that suggested their lives were tragic and pitiful. Many now loathe charitable appeals such as the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon that raised $42 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association over Labor Day weekend. Such extravaganzas seek funds by emphasizing the most desperate cases. That kind of approach, activists say, suggests that disabled people are to be cared for and cannot be contributing members of society. “We don’t want to be dependent any more,” says Lex Friedan of the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research Foundation in Houston, who is a quadriplegic wheelchair user, the result of an automobile accident. “We want to be part of society in every way.” Such new attitudes reflect fundamental changes in the lives of disabled people. Since 1975, when federal law first ensured all disabled children access to schools, hundreds of thousands of disabled students have gotten a better education alongside nondisabled peers. Many grew frustrated after college, when they found there were few such protections to help once they tried to find jobs. A recent Census Bureau study concluded that the gap between the earnings of disabled and their nondisabled co-workers is growing. A disabled worker in 1987 made only 64 percent of what his nondisabled colleagues earned. In 1980, it was 77 percent. The 1985 Harris survey found that 70 percent of working-age disabled people were unemployed. Of those, two thirds said they wanted to work but were prevented from doing so because, among other reasons, they faced discrimination in hiring or lacked transportation. Those who do not work now collect federal disability and welfare checks, costing nearly $60 billion a year. “It doesn’t make sense to maintain people in a dependency state when those people want to be productive, tax-paying citizens,” argues Jay Rochlin of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. Although no one knows precisely how many millions of dollars could be saved by bringing the disabled fully into the work force, Sylvia Piper, an Ankeny, Iowa, mother, says she saved taxpayers $4.8 million by ignoring physicians who urged her to institutionalize her retarded son, Dan, when he was born. Instead, she kept him at home and sent him to public school with non-disabled children, the kind of role models who inspired him to get a job this summer. Dan, now 18, saved $800 from his pay as a drugstore stockroom worker. His first purchase was a gray bedroom rug, upon which he slept the night it arrived. The next morning he was ready for work early and announced, “I've got to work harder and make more money." Once again, says his delighted mother, Dan grew when faced with a challenge. The nation’s changing demographics have added to the urgency of meeting the needs of the disabled. By 1990, there will be 6.2 million elderly Americans with one or more basic disabilities, up from almost 5 million in 1984, according to estimates by the Urban Institute, a research organization. And the explosive growth of the number of those with AIDS and HIV infection has already added hundreds of thousands more disabled to the population. That is why AIDS-policy advocates teamed up with disability groups to make sure civil-rights guarantees under the bill also applied to those with AIDS. People with AIDS had won federal court rulings protecting them under existing disability-rights laws, which apply only to federally funded programs. The new bill will expand that protection to the private sector, so that people with AIDS and HIV infection cannot be fired from jobs or denied service in restaurants. [Subheading] Galvanizing Issue. Along with being better educated and more independent, the new generation of disabled people has become more politically sophisticated. Some 200 independent-living centers, which have sprung up since the 1970s to provide a mix of counseling and support services to severely disabled people, became bases of advocacy. One galvanizing issue came in the early 19805, when a Reagan administration anti-regulation effort tried to eliminate key federal protections that prohibit discrimination by any program or contractor receiving federal funds. Negotiating sessions over the regulation first brought then Vice President Bush face-to-face with Evan Kemp, who headed Ralph Nader’s Disability Rights Center. The regulation was never changed, in part because of Kemp’s advocacy and growing friendship with Bush. Last week, the President named Kemp, a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since 1987, to chair the civil-rights agency, which will handle job-discrimination cases brought under the new law. The disability-rights movement is distinctive, too, because it has never had a Martin Luther King or a Betty Friedan to lead it. Part of the reason is that there are hundreds of different disabilities. Nonetheless, disabled people, such as student protesters who last year gave Gallaudet University its first deaf president, I. King Jordan, are now adopting on a small scale the protest tactics of the civil-rights movement. Thirty members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, which uses tactics of civil disobedience, on Labor Day backed their wheelchairs against buses at the Los Angeles Greyhound terminal and disrupted busy holiday traffic in a protest for wheelchair lifts on buses. As the historic legislation was being debated, there was a curious twist. Watching with interest was a paraplegic visitor from Moscow, Ilya Zaslavski. He made history earlier this year when he won election to the new Soviet national legislature, the first person anywhere in the world to run as a disability candidate. Zaslavski watched the work of Congress and announced plans to introduce SDA—-a Soviets with Disabilities Act. INSERTED TEXT BOX: THE COST FACTOR Businesses are concerned about the costs imposed by the civil-rights bill: BUILDINGS: The cost of making accessible new buildings and those existing structures that are undergoing major renovations runs between 0 and 1 percent of building costs. TRANSIT: Changes required of bus and transit systems to help the disabled over the next 20 years might cost several hundred million dollars. PHONES: It will cost $250 million to $300 million a year to hire operators to work relay systems so deaf people can communicate with those who can hear, according to federal and AT&T estimates. INSERT: PHOTO (Roberta Barnes -- San Antonio Light): A line of people in wheelchairs diagonally crosses the picture. In the front Lonnie Smith Archuleta with his buff physique, in a T-Shirt with a medal-like imprint on the front, wheels his sports chair. Behind him a slight woman (Diane Coleman) with very thin arms and leg braces on her extended legs, rolls her power chair with a flag attached. She wears a straw hat, red ADAPT no steps T-shirt and long red skirt, across which she wears a sign reading "Gentler -n- kinder nation??" Behind her another woman in a power wheelchair (Linda Johnstone) wears a different red ADAPT T-shirt and a sign across her knees reads "We Need a Ride To Work." Behind her is another large woman in a wheelchair (Mary Kay Sanders) in dark sunglasses and a white dress; she carries a white parasol and appears to be chanting. Over the top of the parasol another sign (held by someone walking but obscured from view) written in calligraphy can be seen: "Access is a Civil Right." The line bends back and around out of view. Caption reads: Countless Frustrations. Angry protesters in San Antonio wheel through the streets to protest the lack of accessible public transportation. - ADAPT (601)
THE DENVER POST / NATIONAL Friday: September 9, 1989 [Headline] Senate approves bill to guarantee rights of disabled By Knight-Rldder News Service WASHINGTON — An estimated 43 million America with disabilities won a major victory last night as the Senate approved a landmark bill aimed at moving them into the nation’s social and economic mainstream. The Senate, on a 76-to-8 vote, passed legislation that would extend for the first time sweeping civil rights protections to persons with hearing impairments, epilepsy, AIDS and dozens of other physical and mental disabilities. The measure, which now goes to the House for expected approval, would ban discrimination in the hiring of the disabled; require businesses, shops and transit systems to make their facilities more accessible to the wheelchair-bound; and force telephone companies to provide special operators for the deaf. The bill was endorsed last month by President Bush, and administration lobbyists joined advocates for the disabled yesterday in opposing efforts to modify the legislation to meet business objections that it will be too costly to small firms. Business leaders warned that the measure could put some employers out of business if.they were required to make expensive structural changes in their buildings to accommodate disabled customers and workers. Critics also said the compliance provisions of the bill were vague and would result in years of litigation in federal courts over what constituted discrimination against the disabled. Major provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act would: * Prohibit employers from discriminating against qualified job applicants with disabilities. Changes to accommodate the disabled in the workplace would be required unless they would cause an “undue hardship," a term critics say is too vague. * Require new business establishments to be accessible to the disabled and require existing establishments be made accessible if the alterations are “readily achievable." * Require new buses and trains to be equipped with wheelchair lifts. * Require telephone companies to provide operators who could relay messages from the deaf to hearing individuals. Deaf persons can communicate with each other by telephone now by using Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDDs), but can't communicate with people who don't have the TDDs. “We’re not asking for special treatment," said Pat Wright, government affairs director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Inc. “Whether it’s putting a ramp in or providing a reasonable accommodation in employment, it makes you equal, not special." The bill, as originally written, would have exempted Congress from its provisions — but that exemption was deleted during debate. And in another concession to the intense interest of the disabled in the measure, the Senate for the first time allowed an interpreter using sign language to translate the televised proceedings of the floor debate so that the deaf and hearing impaired could follow the action. Extending civil rights protections to people with AIDS or the AIDS virus had been recommended by a Reagan administration commission on AIDS, but was opposed by President Reagan himself. Bush, however, has supported the protection. The bill bars employment discrimination against persons with AIDS but does permit employers to deny jobs if the employee poses a significant risk of transmitting the infection to others. However, homosexuals are not covered by the legislation. They can still be discriminated against solely on the basis of their sexuality. After an inquiry by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., sponsors agreed to delete transvestites from nation protections. Helms also raised questions about providing protection to schizophrenics, manic-depressives and psychotics, but their status remained intact in the measure. - 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 (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 (1795)
Mainstream Magazine, April 1993 issue [This article continues in ADAPT 1974, but is included here in its entirety for easier reading.] Photo: Wade Blank, in sneakers, jeans and an ADAPT T-shirt over a long sleeved shirt, walks with other ADAPTers in a march down a city street. Beside him is George Roberts, behind George is Diane Coleman and behind her is Anita Cameron. Behind Wade's left side is Chris Hronis, and behind him Bill Henning carries a banner. Caption for picture reads: Wade Blank takes to the streets of San Francisco with ADAPT in October 1992 Title: Wade Blank, 1940 to 1993 Co founder of Adapt [sic] Pursued A Vision Of Justice For People With Disabilities By Laura Hershey When a college friend dared Wade Blank to march with Martin Luther King. Jr. in Selma, Alabama. Wade didn't know what to expect. However, the experience imbued him with a vision of civil rights which he would never forget. Later. working in the youth wing of a nursing home, he understood clearly that the same issues, freedom. equality, and justice, were at stake for people with severe disabilities. Throughout his life, Wade Blank strove to obtain independent living opportunities and equal access for people who had lone been denied these basic civil rights. Wade died at age 52 on Feb. l5. I993. in a swimming accident in Todos Santos, Mexico, where he was vacationing with his family. He was trying to save his 8 year old son. Lincoln. An undertow made the rescue impossible; both Wade and Lincoln drowned. Wade is survived by his wife, Mollie; his daughter. Caitlin, 6; and his adopted daughter, Heather, 22, who has a disability. All members of the Blank family were actively involved in the disability rights movements that Wade helped launch. On Feb. 2l. a memorial service drew 1,100 people to Denver's Radisson Hotel. the site of the first national protest by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, or ADAPT. the grass roots, direct action disability rights movement Wade co-founded. Wade and Lincoln were remembered as spirited, loving people committed to social change. A neighbor remembered Wade helping her fix a broken lock late one night; she recalled Lincoln leading other children in a rousing chant during a make-believe demonstration on his front porch. Wade's colleague Shel Trapp quipped. “lf Heaven is inaccessible. God is in big trouble." Wade believed in the leadership potential of even the most severely disabled activists. He pushed his followers to take charge of the movement, even when it would have been easier to dominate it himself. His ability to alternate between a directive role and a supportive role from manager to attendant. from mentor to messenger kept Wade close to his people. lt also had a tactical value: At a 1991 demonstration in Colorado. police were vainly searching for someone to hold responsible for several dozen unstoppable wheelchair wielding protesters. An officer asked Wade. “Are you in charge here?" "No." Wade answered. “I just help people go to the bathroom." Drawing on his background as a pastor of a diverse and active parish, Wade taught the value of community. He brought people together across disabilities, classes, races, ideologies and other differences. ln ADAPT. Wade created a true community. welcoming anyone committed to the movement's vision of justice. During national actions, people from across the country exchange experiences and expertise. offer each other encouragement and strength, meet friends and even start romances. Just getting to the sites of national protests requires enormous energy expenditures and a myriad of logistical details for people with disabilities, many of whom use wheelchairs. On long. grueling caravan drives across country. Wade met those needs with humor and gentleness. He drove tirelessly, navigated, did attendant care, pumped gas, made fast food runs, hauled suitcases and battery chargers, repaired wheelchairs, even brought coffee to everyone’s rooms in the mornings. When we grew exhausted and short-tempered. he buoyed us with affectionate teasing and terrible, recycled puns. He kept the troops moving, both on the road and during protests. with encouragement, bad jokes. and calm confidence. Protests will be tougher without Wade's bold creativity, irrepressible sense of humor, and reassuring presence. But the movement won’t die with Wade. He knew that. “King‘s organization’s mistake was that they hung it all around his neck,” he told an interviewer last November. “What happened to the movement? It lost its definition. King gave it its definition. If I would get knocked off tomorrow or die of a heart attack, it wouldn’t slow us down a bit. We know what we’re about, and the movement would go on with the same intensity.” In 1971, Rev. Wade Blank arrived in Denver after 10 years of preaching and organizing in the Midwest. He had graduate degrees in divinity and was an ordained Presbyterian minister. But his radical activities had gotten him in trouble with the church authorities and he had been fired from his parish. His experiences had included hosting meetings of the Kent State chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); helping Vietnam War draftees flee to Canada; and organizing African American youths to demand community water and sewage systems in conservative Twinsburg Heights, OH. Wade was burned out and not sure what he wanted to do next. He ended up at Denver’s Heritage House nursing home, where he tried to make institutional life bearable for young disabled people. He quickly realized that such confinement could never be acceptable. He was fired from his job, but stayed in touch with several of the young residents. Eventually he helped 11 of them move into their own apartments. At first, Wade himself provided all his clients’ attendant care, until finally the State of Colorado agreed to fund home health care services for people living independently. This was the beginning of the Atlantis Community (named for a forgotten continent), today a thriving independent living center in Denver. Even in their newly won freedom, the Atlantis founders discovered barriers to independence all around them. Public buses were inaccessible, so the community members became activists. One July 5, 1978, with Wade’s support and guidance, 19 disabled people blocked buses overnight in the busy intersection at Colfax and Broadway to demonstrate their demand for lifts on buses. Protests continued until, in June 1983, Denver committed itself to a fully accessible bus system. Last summer, the city laid a plaque at the Colfax-Broadway intersection, engraved with the 19 activists’ names. Characteristically downplaying his own key role in the demonstration, Wade asked that his name not appear on the plaque. Wade once described his role this way: “That’s what my job is, to assist my people in gaining the power to make change." Throughout his years of service to “my people,” Wade worked to build strength and leadership among disability activists. Emboldened by success, the Denver activists carried their demands for bus access to the entire nation. Wade‘s vigorous encouragement and organizing skills had helped to transform a group of powerless nursing home "patients" into a band of effective revolutionaries. Now that same savvy spirit found a warm reception among disabled people who were tired of segregation and exclusion. A new movement was born, with the fitting acronym ADAPT, or American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. The first national ADAPT protest took place at the Radisson in October, 1983. The nation's transit officials were meeting at the hotel when disabled protesters blocked every entrance. Similar demonstrations throughout the country, involving the blocking of hotels, office buildings, and buses, focused public attention on the fact that access to transportation was a basic civil right denied to people with disabilities. Subsequent protests refined ADAPT ’s brand of protest. With his 1960s civil rights experience, Wade taught his followers how to stage protests that were non violent but direct and confrontational. In the hands of people with severe disabilities, these tactics were astonishingly effective. ADAPT activists baffled police officers, and filled jail cells, in dozens of cities. The public, and ultimately the powers that be, had to respond. The idea of people with severe disabilities, and their allies (including Wade), risking arrest again and again some as many as 20 or 30 times proved not only impressive, but persuasive. After nearly a decade of such protests, ADAPT achieved its goals for the nation’s transit systems. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) included mandates for bus and rail services. All new bus purchases must now be lift equipped, just as Wade and his cohorts had demanded. But before it passed, the ADA became stalled in the U.S. Senate and was in danger of being defeated or weakened by amendments. Wade organized a “Wheels of Justice” campaign that included three days of marching, demonstrating, and civil disobedience. Some 150 people were arrested in the Capitol rotunda. Within a few weeks, the ADA passed the full Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush on July 26, 1990. But Wade and ADAPT spent little time celebrating. They knew there was still much to be done. With over a million people still languishing in nursing homes, ADAPT immediately launched its new campaign, demanding the shifting of federal Medicare/Medicaid funds from nursing homes to in home attendant services that would allow people disabled by birth, accident, illness, or age to live independently. The meaning of the acronym, ADAPT, did just that it adapted. The letters now stand for American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. The old battle cry, “We Will Ride!,“ was replaced with a new one: “Free Our People NOW!” In a recent interview, Wade said, “My whole commitment in life is to eradicate those nursing homes, to destroy them, bring them down. We will.” He didn’t live to see that goal realized, but he shared that vision with hundreds of others. In the process he helped create a movement that will continue the fight to “Free Our People.” Laura Hershey, freelance writer and poet, is an ADAPT activist. Inserted in box: A memorial will be held May 9, I993 at the Lincoln Memorial as part of an ADAPT action in Washington DC. Contributions may be sent to The Family of Wade Blank Memorial Fund at The First National Bank of Denver, 300 S. Federal Blvd., Denver, CO 80206. A trust fund has also been established in the name of Wade Blank. Contributions can be sent to Atlantis/ADAPT c/o Evan Kemp, 2500 Q St. N.W I21, Washington, DC 20007.