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Úvodní stránka / Alba / Štítek Justin Dart Jr. 3
Datum zveřejnění / 2019
- ADAPT (801)
The Washington Post, Metro Section 5/6/93 [Headline] The Disabled Plan to Show Washington They're Enabled—and Entitled By Liz Spayd, Washington Post Staff Writer Michael Auberger has shackled his wheelchair to city buses in Dallas. He has barricaded hotel entrances in San Francisco, and he has thrown himself in front of federal buildings, government officials, even oncoming traffic, all to draw attention to the rights of the disabled. This weekend, Auberger and hundreds of other activists from across the country plan to converge on Washington for a three-day blitz of demonstrations and marches in what promises to be the largest protest in history for people with disabilities. “We've written the letters, made the phone calls, had the meetings, and the bottom line is we're still being treated like second-class citizens." said Auberger, co-founder of ADAPT, an activist group that is spearheading the activities. “lf those channels don't work, you take to the streets." Organizers say the immediate purpose of the demonstrations is to demand that the federal government commit more money to helping disabled people live at home, instead of in institutions. At the same time, they want to continue the larger campaign for equal rights that produced the Americans With Disabilities Act, landmark legislation that went into effect last year. A march to the White House and a memorial service for Wade Blank, who was a leader in the movement, are expected to draw the largest crowds, both on Sunday. What may draw the most attention, however, are demonstrations on Monday and Tuesday, when protesters are expected to disrupt Washington with human blockades of buildings and streets. The exact places and times for those actions aren't being disclosed, but the targets could include public buildings, such as the Capitol and the White House, and some federal agencies. “We like to preserve the element of surprise," Auberger said. ADAPT — an acronym for American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today — has been staging protests every six months for more than a decade to fight what it says is the inhumane treatment of the disabled at nursing homes and other institutions. The group said it hopes to redirect 25 percent of the $23 billion in Medicaid funds currently budgeted for nursing homes into programs that would enable those with disabilities to have attendants in their homes. Currently, each state sets policy for how much Medicaid money will go toward attendant care programs, but there is no national policy. [Subheading] Disabled Activists Plan 3-Day Protest The strike on Washington is timed to pressure the Clinton administration into focusing on people with disabilities as part of its package of health care revisions, due out soon, activists said. "Clinton has talked about change and says he wants people to be able to live at home, but what we're looking for is more than just words," said Bob Kafka, an ADAPT organizer in Texas who plans to bring a caravan of about 50 people to Washington. In the past, ADAPT activists have drawn attention to their cause by employing sometimes sensational tactics. They have done belly crawls across hotel lobbies in San Francisco, clawing at passersby. They have taken sledgehammers to street curbs in Denver to protest sidewalks that were inaccessible to wheelchair users. And they have swarmed and blockaded buildings in virtually every major U.S. city; a demonstration in Chicago last spring forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 American Medical Association workers and created disruptions in a half-dozen other downtown facilities. Though such events have attracted media attention, some individuals and `groups` sympathetic to ADAPT’s cause question how effective they are in achieving the larger goal of attaining more money for in-home care. “We're sympathetic to their concerns, but we think the tactics they use bring attention to ADAPT and not the problem," said Claudia Askew, a spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association, which represents 11,000 nursing homes and is a frequent target of ADAPT protests. Disabled people also are somewhat splintered over whether ADAPT's approach helps or hurts their cause. “There are people with disabilities that think ADAPT is a little extreme," said Patrick McCurdy, vice president of Marylanders for Adequate Attendant Care, a group that generally relies on peaceful protests and negotiations to lobby for in-home care. McCurdy did defend ADAPT's technique as a necessary part of an overall approach to force change in a society that he said has long ignored the rights of disabled people. Few spoke up for those rights until recently, but the Americans With Disabilities Act provided new protections to disabled people and helped forge a civil rights movement among the 43 million people with physical or mental impairments. “A great byproduct of the [disabilities act] is the new sense of confidence and empowerment it has instilled within the disability community," said Justin Dart, chairman of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, a small federal agency. “It's generated an enormous infusion of dignity and pride." Gregory Dougan, a District resident, said the renewed sense of hope is one reason he will take part in Sunday's march. Dougan, who was born with cerebral palsy and uses crutches, said he is fortunate to be able to live at home. But several of his friends live in institutions because they can't get the in-home care they need. And on Sunday, Dougan said, he will be thinking of them. "I'll be tired at the end of the day," he said, "but my crutches and me are going to that march." - ADAPT (1758)
Access LISA News March/April 1993, Page 25 Title: Remembrances of Wade Blank “Ironically, Wade died in the same way he lived - swimming into the face of hostile (political) undercurrents, and giving of his life to help another fight for theirs.” - Access Living ”Leadership he provided and resulting momentum have been instrumental to clearing our biggest obstacles. I don't think we would see wheelchair lifts on buses or a campaign to establish a national Personal Attendant program today if not for the work he and ADAPT have done.” - Marca Bristo "There are some people, just by looking at them, you know they have fundamental deep character. He certainly was one. He participated in the civil rights activity of the 60's from which he learned and applied to our own struggle. He was always straightforward and said what he thought. He was filled with idealism and I hate to lose him." - R. Kent Jones, founder of Chicago 's ADAPT chapter ”He basically stood up for anybody’s right no matter who they were and did so passionately.” - Mike Ervin, Chicago ADAPT member “Wade was an activist with a heart. His family included all people with disabilities. Whether Wade was chanting ‘We will ride’ or ‘Free our people‘ or ‘People united will never be defeated‘ he knew that he must continue to fight for a better America for all people, including those with significant disabilities.” - Sen. Tom Harkin ”To dwell on the tragedy of Wade Blank’s death would be a very large disservice to the future. Wade's life is the message. His existence was a towering triumph that demands to be shouted, to be heard, to be acted on. ”He was a superb organizer. He had total honesty and total follow through. You could take his promises to the bank. ”He understood that love does not smother with criticism, care and control; it encourages, emancipates and empowers. ‘Wade's leadership of love made ADAPT the family for those who had no family.” - Justin Dart Photo: In a park setting Wade stands amid a crowd of people in wheelchairs. His long blonde hair falls over his shoulders and he is looking down at his hands. On a hill top behind there is a lone of what appear to be police officers walking away. Caption reads: Wade Blank, and his family, joined fellow ADAPT members on the protest trail. This photo was taken at an ADAPT action in Baltimore, 1991. - ADAPT (1013)
Incitement [This picture contains an article and the "ADAPTed" lyrics to a song. The article text continues in ADAPT 1012, 1011, 1010 and 1009, but is included here in it's entirety for easier reading. The lyrics appear here after the complete article.] Photo: A man (Cisneros) and woman (Julian) sit with heads bowed writing on pads in their laps. At their feet a woman (Searle) sits on the floor her arm extended, speaking forcefully. Behind her Three guys in wheelchairs sit in front of a mostly obscured crowd. One other wheelchair user is visible between HUD Secretary Cisneros and Deputy Sec. Julian listen as Jean Searle tells it like it is! Norbert _______, Alfredo Juarez, Jose Lara and Sean Pevsner watch the fireworks. Photo: Holly G Gearhart [Subheading] DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU! Five hundred strong ADAPT took on the third largest city in the United States, Houston Texas, which is home to the third largest nursing home corporation in the nation, Living Centers of America, LCA. As if anticipating ADAPT’s impact, Houston had record high temperatures of over 95 degrees each day. But ADAPT’s stalwart troops withstood the melting temperatures for one of the hottest actions yet! Action started Monday morning as wave after wave of wheelchair warriors reached the front door of Living Centers of America. Transporting these record numbers was quite a trick, especially since Houston’s traffic is known for bumper to bumper log jams on the maze of highways which crisscross its 596 square mile face. Living Centers of Americas corporate headquarters stand alone on the feeder road of IH-10. As if built for defense, this industry giant is surrounded by flat grassy fields, impossible to approach undetected. Clearly everyone could not gather before we entered the building, so speed was of the essence for the first arrivals. Unloading with efficiency learned from experience, the leadership team and first arrivals rushed through the front doors and the lobby. Building security began to realize something funny was going on. As they insisted we sign-in the guest register, we piled in the elevators and headed up to the eighth floor to find LCA corporate mogul Edward Kuntz and his cohorts. Photo by Cante Tinza Inc.: A tight shot of a crowd of ADAPT protesters in front of Living Centers of America glass building. Folks look hit and one woman is holding a poster over her head that reads: I'd rather go to jail than die in a nursing home!! Caption reads: Barbara Hines, AJ and tons of others gave Living Centers of America a does of their own medicine when their office was turned into a nursing home for the day. Last year, in Texas alone, Living Centers amassed $39.28 million in revenues after allowable expenses, according to state human services department cost reports. Nationally, LCA increased their net revenues $185 million, 26%, from 1994 to 1995. Over 50% of their revenues come from Medicaid and other public funds. And 100% came from the lives of people like you and me who do not have a fair choice to stay at home and with attendant services. Insert footnote: When reporting this to the public, ADAPT of TX used to use the term profits, but the Texas nursing home industry threatened to sue us if we used that term. FYI The American Heritage Dictionary defines profits as "the return received on a business undertaking after costs have been met." Your guess at the difference is as good as ours. [back to article] Kuntz and his top level cronies personally pulled in over $2 million in salaries and perques in 1994. This cozy financial package allows Kuntz’s family to live in a genteel little village on the outskirts of Houston. On another much less prosperous edge of Houston, over 200 kids with disabilities are kept on the second floor of the "Thomas Care Center" one of Living Centers’ nursing homes. Fenced in with barbed wire, some do not even leave the grounds to go to school. This is just one of the 209 nursing homes with over 24,000 beds which help pay for the comforts of Kuntz, his staff, board and shareholders. The second wave of ADAPT’s activists went to deliver some barbed wire to Kuntz’s home (since it was apparently good for the kids at Thomas Care Center we figured his family deserved the same protection) but found that -- learning of our plan in advance -- the family had moved down the road a ways. Helpfully, a neighbor phoned the Kuntzes with the unpleasant news of our attempted visit. [Subheading] MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE OFFICE Back at the eighth floor of corporate headquarters, the first arrivals headed into the offices to seek out Kuntz. Doors were locked in our faces and one man pulled a sofa across a hallway to block our passage. However, it was obvious our message had already penetrated the office. ADAPT’s chants rang through their halls, and downstairs van-load after van-load of ADAPTers kept pouring into the building, packing the lobby. Houston police, apparently unable to arrest people in wheelchairs, tried to negotiate, Kuntz hid for the first few hours, but as the building owner grew more and more tense, Kuntz was forced to respond. ln paternalistic frustration police arrested five people who could walk (some with disabilities that were not visible ones.) Negotiations progressed at a snail’s pace, while the police dragged hundreds of ADAPT members out of the building. In the end, Kuntz agreed to meet with representatives from each of the ADAPT `groups` that had come to Houston. The police delivered him outside, where he read a typed, prepared statement of the same old tired lines AHCA folks always use. Then he scurried back inside. << Photo by Cante Tinza, Inc.: Protesters are standing and sitting jammed in by the front of a building. Their mouths are open yelling, one person has a bullhorn and several have their arms raised in the air. Caption reads: Outside the Republican Headquarters ADAPT cheered upon hearing the party chairman had arrived and agreed to our demands. [Back to article] [Subheading] BACK TO THE BEGINNING The Houston event started Sunday with a day of workshops and a Housing Forum with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. The workshops were an excellent exchange of information on everything from promoting state versions of CASA (the Community Attendant Services Act, ADAPT’s draft legislation) back home, to developing real housing opportunities for people with disabilities. Justin Dart welcomed ADAPT and Cisneros to his old stomping grounds: Texas. At the forum Cisneros seemed to pick up on many housing issues and was supportive of "visitability" (adaptive or universal design offering basic access so people can visit family, friends, etc.) in addition to better alternatives and more consumer control. However, he was either unwilling or unable to see the problem with HUD sponsoring finance packages for nursing homes and other institutions. In fact he referred to nursing homes as a housing opportunity for older Americans, and seemed to think because people were older they would somehow require such "housing." Clearly, the Secretary’s understanding of disability discrimination is superficial -- at best. More education will be necessary. [Subheading] WE’RE HERE, WE’RE THERE, WE’RE EVERYWHERE Tuesday dawned with the same blistering heat as before. But ADAPT activists were as fired-up as ever to tackle the day’s targets. With over 500 people we could again divide and hit two places in one day, thereby reinforcing our message to the target, namely the leadership of the party in power, the Republican party. Speaker Gingrich and his cohorts still had not lived up to his promises to introduce CASA and include its principles in Medicaid reform proposals. Despite its adherence to the professed Republican values, the party generally has ignored the benefits of CASA: supporting family values, cost effectiveness and getting government out of people's lives. Photo by Carolyn Long: Three women in straw cowboy hats stand in a line arms around each other grinning. Caption reads: Free at last, Donna Redfern, Kathleen Sacco and Marita Heyden finally came out of jail. Bill Henning and Mike Butte were released earlier that day. [Back to article] Half of ADAPT headed for the Harris County Republican Party, and half for the district office of Tom Delay, the US House of Representatives’ Majority Whip (they guy who lines up the votes in favor of the Contract on America). [Subheading] NO ACCESS TO THE REPUBLICAN AND DOLE ELECTION HEADQUARTERS The two actions worked like a charm. ADAPT surrounded the converted gray house where the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters are located. Ironically, this inaccessible building was also the Presidential Campaign headquarters for Dole, who sells himself as the "disability candidate." After quite a wait staff finally located Gary Polland, Chairperson of the Harris County Republicans. In the meantime, ADAPT folks sang the staff numerous versus of "Deep in the Heart of Texas," ADAPT style (see below) When Polland arrived he was very receptive to our demands. He understood that our reform proposal CASA, met many of the Republicans’ goals, and that choice of services was the way to go. He faxed the letters to Dole, Gingrich, Delay and others regarding our concerns and promoting support of our CASA. He also spontaneously offered to have ADAPT representatives present our proposed Party Platform language to the Texas Republican Party Platform Committee when they met to prepare for the state Convention. [Subheading] DON’T DELAY, DELAY All of the 200 crack ADAPT troops who went to Representative Delay’s office managed to get inside the building unhindered, and most made it up to the second floor where Delay had his office. ADAPT’s negotiators were tough, at one point wadding into a ball a draft statement Delay’s staff offered and throwing it back across the table at them. After intense lengthy negotiations, Delay produced a letter committing that he would meet with ADAPT. [Subheading] FREE AT LAST Around midnight that night the last of the five arrested and jailed the first day were released to a rowdy welcoming home crowd of ADAPTers. [Subheading] DAVID AND GOLIATH On Wednesday ADAPT went all together to confront the potentially largest and most heinous enemy of long term care. This menace, lurking just on the horizon, is corporate managed care; this time in the form of one of the industry giants -- Cigna. Although police had spotted us gathering in a nearby empty parking lot, as van load after van load of activists unloaded, they could not stop us as we began to roll. Cigna is one of the biggest insurers handling managed care, a real mover and shaker in the health care arena. As both private and public health care systems move closer and closer toward the managed care model, many problems are surfacing for people with disabilities who have health care needs. Not least among these are the needs for long term care. Long term care is not considered as profitable as acute health care and therefore is less desirable to the managed care corporations. They tend to try and "cream" the most profitable services and ignore the rest. Marching in the front doors, we headed for the elevators to the 12th floor. Leaders demanded to see the CEO as ADAPTers kept filling offices after office and hall after hall. Once the 12th floor was packed, people went for the 11th and 13th floors, and still the lobby remained full of chanting protesters. We took building security and occupants by complete surprise. Working upstairs, a mother of a child with a disability heard the protest and came down to thank ADAPT for lighting for her son. "I worry about him having to go to a nursing home someday. It’s a frightening thought!" she said, and she is right. After some masterful negotiations upstairs and several rounds of ADAPT’s "Deep in the Heart of Texas" from those downstairs in the lobby, Cigna’s Houston CEO Richard Todd, came down to read their letter agreeing to meet with ADAPT to discuss our concerns. The air rang with cheers for ADAPT’s third day of victories. The building chief of security said to one of the day leaders that he was not too happy with our tactics, but the protester pointed out to him that training like this would have cost him over $1,000 a day, yet we had given it for free. The security chief looked amazed, but admitted with a grin it was true! Photo by Cante Tinza, Inc: Between two gleaming metal walls of elevators ADAPT protesters fill all the available space. Facing in all directions waiting for elevators, the group is packed together. Caption reads: ADAPT filled the lobby and several floors of Cigna. We don't want managed care to manage us out of the picture. [back to article] [Subheading] HAVE NO FEAR, ADAPT IS HERE With the largest numbers we have ever had, ADAPT was tested in our ability to work as a team. Each local group had worked hard and in almost every case was able to bring more activists than ever before. Many new faces and many new places were among us. Our people were tested in our faith in one another, and learned the strength we can harness when that faith is kept. Despite some wrinkles, we bested the tests of heat, lack of elevators and transportation. People put up with half hour long waits to get down from the hotel rooms to the staging area, inaccessible vans with make-shift ramps, long cross-city trips on Houston’s traffic-jammed highways, police targeting walking protesters, and record high temperatures and humidity. We put up with these hassles to get across a message, FREE OUR PEOPLE. Acting together ADAPT, once again, was a force to be reckoned with. ADAPT’s message was sent to as many players as possible: day one to the private corporations who seek tremendous profits from the current warped system, day two to the political forces which could effect change but don’t, and day three to those who seek to control the system as it moves to "public- private partnerships." Next stop ATLANTA! [The end of this article] Lyrics Deep in the Heart of TX (song to the tune of Deep in the Heart of Texas) We take no crap Cause we're ADAPT CHORUS: Deep in the Heart of Texas Nursing homes stink They're worse than you think Deep in the Heart of Texas Politicians lie We all know why Deep in the Heart of Texas We'll put a cowboy boot Up the ass of Newt Deep in the Heart of Texas But have no fear ADAPT is here Deep in the Heart of Texas It is my place To get in your face Deep in the Heart of Texas You will be trapped Cause we're ADAPT Deep in the Heart of Texas We want CASA new We don't care how Deep in the Heart of Texas We're making a plea To just be free Deep in the Heart of Texas Rather live in my home Not a nursing home Deep in the Heart of Texas So just be sure What we stand for Deep in the Heart of Texas We take no crap Cause we're ADAPT Deep in the heart of Texas - lyrics by Zak Zakarewsky