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Home / Albomlar / Tags civil disobedience
+ disability rights movement 3
ADAPT (261)
The Cincinnati Post Thursday May 22, 1986 1B [This article continues in ADAPT 251, but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] PHOTO by Patrick Reddy/The Cincinnati Post: A lone man in a wheelchair (Glenn Horton) sits in front of a metal police barricade. He wears his pale ADAPT T-shirt with the ADAPT no steps logo imprinted in black on the front. He looks casual but determined, with one foot resting higher on his chair than the other, and his hands folded in his lap. Behind him is cavernous black, some kind of entrance. And around him stand four police officers dressed in dark colors, with light colored hats with eye shades. Each officer is looking determinedly in a different direction. Caption reads: Four police officers look on as Glenn Horton of El Paso, Texas, waits for a van to take him to the Hamilton County Jail after he was arrested at a protest at the Westin Hotel. Horton was among 17 disabled protesters arrested Wednesday. Title: Protesters ready for long jail stay Post staff report Comparing Cincinnati to Selma, Ala., in the 1960s, 11 members of a handicapped activist group are vowing to stay in jail to end alleged discrimination against the handicapped. Of 17 disabled protesters arrested Wednesday, 14 were charged with disorderly conduct for blocking the Westin Hotel entrance. Three were charged with criminal trespassing after chaining themselves to the front doors of Queen City Metro’s offices at 6 E. Fourth St., downtown. Scheduled court dates ranged from May 28 through June 2, so some of the protesters could be in jail for as long as 12 days. Demonstrating against lack of access to Queen City Metro buses, members of Americans Disabled tor Accessible Public Transportation have timed protests this week to coincide with an American Public Transit Association conference at the Westin. The five-day conference ended Wednesday night. “This (Cincinnati) is the Selma, Ala., of the disabled civil rights movement,” said the Rev. Wade Blank of Denver, a founder of ADAPT. “People from all over the country have been calling to say they are willing to get arrested. This has not happened in many cities.” Access Service, Queen City's alternative transit system for the elderly and handicapped, is inadequate and overloaded, ADAPT members say. “We are committed and the people who got involved in this knew it would be more than an overnight stay in jail," said Stephanie Thomas, an ADAPT organizer. “We will not post bond for them." The 11 jailed ADAPT members have been separated from the rest of the prison population and have a full-time employee watching over them at the Hamilton County Justice Center, said Victor Carrelli, Hamilton County chief deputy sheriff. Hamilton County Municipal Judge David Albanese held a special two-hour hearing Wednesday for the 17 under judicial orders covering mass arrests or civil disobedience cases. Those charged with crimi nal trespassing were Michael W. Auberger, 32, of Denver, Colo.; George Cooper Jr., 58, of Irving, Texas, and Robert Kafka, 40, of Austin, Texas. Albanese set bond for the three, who pleaded not guilty, at $3000 cash and "banned them from the city if they chose to post bond. They did not. Kelli Bates, 21, of Denver, the only woman arrested, was the only ADAPT member to plead no contest to a disorderly conduct charge against her. Albanese found her guilty and sentenced her to 30 days in jail if she has not left the city by Friday or enters the city before Friday. Lonnie Smith, 30, of Denver, charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, pleaded not guilty. Albanese set a $2500 10-percent bond for the resisting charge and a $1500 10-percent bond for the disorderly conduct charge. Those pleading not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct and placed on a $1500 10 percent cash bond were Ernest Taylor, 31, of Hartford, Conn.; William Bolte, 54, of’ Los Angeles; Glenn Horton, 46, of El Paso, Texas; Joseph Carl, 47, of Denver, and James Parker, 40, of E1 Paso. Those pleading not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct and given higher bonds because of prior records were Robert Conrad, 32, of Denver, on a $2000 10-percent cash bond and George Roberts, 37, of Denver on a $3000 10-percent cash bond. Those pleading not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct and released on a $1500 unsecured bond because of medical problems were Arthur Campbell, 39," of Louisville; Kenneth Heart, 36, of Denver; Efrain Lozazno, 35, of El Paso; George Florom, 43, of Colorado Springs, Col; and Rick James, 36, of Salt Lake City. In all cases where bond could be posted, Albanese warned the people not to return to Cincinnati except for court appearances or meetings with their attorneys. Prosecutor Charles A. Rubenstein in many of the cases protested Albanese’s decision to allow the prisoners to be released on bonds. “There is a great likelihood if they are released on bond they would create "further problems and turn this court into a revolving door,” he said. However, James Nicholas of the public defenders office, who was appointed to aid the group's privately hired legal counsel, said "the group would cause no further problems. “The reason that they came, here is finished. They have no reason to remain." After the hearings were finished, Nicholas said most members of the group had vowed to remain in jail.
US_Capitol_Rotunda_part_2_cap
This is part 2 of the ADAPT Capitol Rotunda protest in support of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA. This shows the group preparing for civil disobedience to pressure swift passage of the bill. Over 100 people were arrested at this protest, which gets less attention than the Crawl but was equally intense. The film is open captioned (as are all videos on this museum site).
ADAPT (206)
Village Voice, March 4, 1986, p.27 [Headline] NAT HENTOFF: America’s Apartheid [This was part of a series of articles Mr. Hentoff wrote for the Village Voice on disability issues and people with disabilities in our society.] PHOTO in center of page, Photo credit Michael Rondou / Press - Telegram: A slight man (Bobby Hartwell) in a somewhat rickety manual wheelchair sits in front of a large city bus [number 4405]. Through the windsheild a very beefy uniformed man, perhaps the driver, stands arms resting in front of him. Behind and to the side of this first bus is a group of three police men standing and conferring. Behind them a couple of other wheelchair riders are blocking a second bus. Behind that bus a third is barely visable. Text box above the photo: “Anatomy is not destiny and never has been.” The photo caption: A demonstrator holds a bus hostage In Long Beach, California: Because of the way the bus is built, the demonstrator can't get on. [Italicized] A “caste” of. . . persons has been created [in America]. Members suffer a stigma of abnormality, inferiority, and dependency, are provided with separate facilities and programs, and are encouraged to interact only with others of the same caste. [Italicized ends] —Robert Funk, Director/Attorney, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc. [Italicized] Black people started a movement when they were forced to sit in the backs of buses. We're not even allowed on the buses. [Italicized ends] – Julie Haraskin, during a nonviolent direct-action demonstration in Los Angeles by ADAPT (American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit) Barry Giddings is a citizen of the United States who lives in Philadelphia. In 1981, he was shot in the neck and became a quadriplegic. The only way he can get around is in a wheelchair. Until December 10, 1985, he and his brother lived in his mother's home. On that day, Mrs. Giddings and her family were evicted. She went to Philadelphia's Division of Adult Services to get shelter for herself and her sons. Mrs. Giddings was told that she and her nondisabled son would be provided shelter, but Barry Giddings would have to provide for himself. Why? Because he was disabled. The apparatchiks tried to make Mrs. Giddings understand that they had no choice in this matter. Taking care of her disabled son's needs, they explained, would cost more money than was being spent on the average homeless soul in the city's shelters. Then there were the costs of additional insurance premiums to cover the city if this quadriplegic were taken in. Then where should he go? Was this man to be thrown out into the street to lie there until he died? Not our problem, said Philadelphia's Division of Adult Services. Lest you think that the decision to wholly abandon this disabled man was made by some low-level employee devoted to the increasingly popular notion that inconvenient people should be terminated, the person who sent Barry Giddings into the night was following the policy of Philadelphia's Division of Adult Services. A relative arranged to have Giddings taken into Jefferson Hospital for the night because the staff there, unlike the folks at Adult Services, could not bear leaving him without shelter. They put him in the emergency room. The next day, he was removed to Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, although he did not require hospitalization. What he required, was a place to stay, and Magee Rehabilitation Hospital couldn’t keep him because providing shelter wasn't its' function. Barry Giddings, with the help of Stefan Presser, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, took the city of Philadelphia to court. The class action suit charged that the city policy discriminates against homeless people who are disabled, and thereby violates their Constitutional right to equal protection under the law as well as their rights under Section 504 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973. That statute forbids discrimination against the handicapped in any program receiving Federal funds, and Philadelphia's Division of Adult Services, as part of the Department of Human Services, does receive Federal money. The city of Philadelphia quickly caved in, placed Giddings in a temporary shelter and said it would find permanent housing for him and his mother. As Stefan Presser points out, a particularly shocking thing about the case was that although the city had been engaged in a vigorous campaign to get the homeless into shelters, it had this firm policy of shutting out the disabled among the homeless. "There's no telling," Presser told me, “how many disabled people have been turned away until we got the policy changed, and who knows what happened to them? Some of the organizations for the disabled inform me that from time to time they've had phone calls from people who have been refused shelter because they're not able-bodied, but when they got to the phone booth from which the call was made, there was no one there." Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man could have a counterpart in the experiences of the nation's disabled for many, many years. As Robert Funk, Director of the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund, wrote in 1981: “American society, under the guise of humanitarian efforts, has developed a record, with respect to treatment of disabled persons, that is a history of isolation and discrimination inflicted upon them because of their ‘handicaps.’ This history, manifested in the attitude of ‘out of sight, out of mind,' carried out through policies of custodialism, has resulted in an ostracized, invisible minority denied access to organized society." This year, in his part of a forthcoming book, Images of the Disabled/Disabling Images, Funk makes the corollary point—— and see if any of this applies to you ---- that "the general public does not associate the word 'discrimination' with the segregation and exclusion of disabled people. Most people assume that disabled people are excluded from school or segregated because they cannot learn or because they need special protection. So too, the absence of disabled coworkers is simply considered a confirmation of the obvious fact that disabled people can't work. These assumptions are deeply rooted in history. Historically, the inferior economic and social status of disabled people has been viewed as the inevitable consequence of tho physical and mental differences imposed by disability." I know a young woman whose disability is athetosis, a form of cerebral palsy, which affects her speech and the way she walks. She is a first-class writer --- a published writer --- and a graduate of Harvard Law School. Currently in Hartford, she specializes in state regulation of automobile and homeowners’ insurance. Her name is Lisa Blumberg and she wrote me recently: "If nondisabled adults spent more time talking to disabled adults, they would learn that anatomy is not destiny and never has been." But because many disabled adults are segregated from the rest of the population, misconceptions about them, along with ignorance of who they actually are, continue to create more discrimination. For instance. Michael Landwehr of the Council for Disability Rights in Chicago, born with spina bifida, was disabled during surgery when he was 12. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Landwehr watched with great interest when in 1973 Congress enacted Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act forbidding discrimination against the disabled in any programs or activities that receive Federal funding. So what has Michael Landwehr's life been like since 1973? “I have been denied an apartment based on my disability," he says. “Last year I was uprooted from home when the commuter train I took to work refused to let me continue riding without an attendant. I was told I could not buy a ticket in the first-class section of an airliner unless I also purchased a ticket for an attendant. I have been denied jobs and promotions on the basis of my disability. Every day I am denied access to public transportation. [He is in A wheelchair.] “Hundreds of thousands of disabled persons remain incarcerated in nursing homes and institutions, isolated from every aspect of community life, denied their right to vote, denied the right to education and employment. Disabled people remain the most unemployed and underpaid group in the country. For every dollar earned by a nondisabled white male, a disabled white male earns 52 cents, a disabled minority male earns 25 cents, and a disabled minority woman earns 12 cents." But the disability rights movement is gathering momentum and has already brought about some changes. Accordingly, by the end of this decade, there is likely to be a stretching of public consciousness concerning this form of American apartheid that has largely been ignored during the rise of all the other movements for equal protection under the law-—blacks, women, Native Americans, homosexuals and lesbians, Hispanics, et al. Future columns will include an exploration of the nonviolent direct-action arm of the disability rights movement, which is currently the most vigorous continuation of the Martin Luther King-Saul Alinsky legacy. The series will also go into the history of legislation and court action concerning the disabled; the seemingly infinite ways in which the disabled are distorted, sentimentalized, and underestimated by the press, television, and films; a battery of very specific legislative recommendations by the disabled; and a good deal more. One of the underlying themes is a comment by Vassar Miller, who has published eight volumes of poetry, one of which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In her early sixties now, she was born with cerebral palsy. “What handicaps me far more than my physical condition," she says, “is the reaction society has to it. And, no less important, my reaction to society's reaction." Vassar Miller has edited a new book, Despite This Flesh (University of Texas Press), an extraordinarily illuminating collection of short stories and poems about the disabled. If public television had any imagination, a striking series could be made from Despite This Flesh. It ranges from pungent, poignant, and sharply funny evocations of childhood to a resoundingly erotic poem about a paralyzed man, "Seated Nude" by Richard Ronan. In her introduction, Vassar Miller tells of how, when she was a child, before there was ever such a thing as special education or mainstreaming, her stepmother “had tried to enroll me in a private school. ‘They just looked at me and started talking about God!‘" her stepmother said in dismayed tones when she came home. By the time the 1980s are over, a picket line of the disabled might elbow God aside and change the admissions policies of a school like that. The pressure is rising inside the disabled to break out of their caste, to be visible, to be part of whatever the hell's going on that they want to be part of. Consider ADAPT (American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit). In a number of cities around the country, its members have been demonstrating and getting arrested in protests against the lack of lifts on buses and the absence of ways of enabling the disabled to use other forms of public transportation. On October 6 in Los Angeles, a march of some 280 disabled ended at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, where the American Public Transit Association was holding a convention. This was the scene, as described in The Disability Rag (Box 145, Louisville, Kentucky): "Attempts by ADAPT members to descend to the main lobby of the Bonaventure on the one elevator connecting the lobby with the street level were met with police resistance. Security forces turned off the elevator and escalators. Police blocked doors to prevent other disabled people from entering the hotel. Chants of ‘We Will Ride!‘ filled the Bonaventure from protesters inside and out. A number of ADAPT marchers, determined that conventioneers would not be able to use the escalators either, tried to block the escalator entrances or to throw themselves down the steps....By Monday, the Bonaventure had become a police-held fortress.“ I bet you never thought disabled people could do anything like that. It's just the beginning. As an ADAPT organizer yelled at a crowd of the disabled in Los Angeles, “We've got to get over our slave mentality!"