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ADAPT (433)
Transit activists wheel into action on South Shore By PEGGY CURRAN Of the Gazette In March, Bill Bolte took a sledge-hammer to Hollywood's star-studded Walk of Fame because it wasn't wheelchair-accessible. Bolte was arrested, although the vandalism charge was dropped, he says, "in the interests of justice." Six months later, Bolte says the city of Los Angeles has come up with $360,000 to cut access ramps along the 2.5-kilometre sidewalk. On Monday night, the wheelchair-bound American was arrested again - for the 14th time - when he chained himself to the doors of the underground parking garage at Place Ville Marie. Released from Bordeaux Jail yesterday but banned from demonstrating on the island of Montreal, he joined about 20 disabled people who took their crusade for better public transit across the bridge. There were no arrests during the brief, boisterous sit-in at the Brossard bus terminal. But Bolte said another arrest was a risk he was ready to take as a member of ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. [Subheading] `Not willing to go last' "Our only ability is to embarrass and expose the position of the able-bodied power structure, which is basically 'You go last,' " Bolte said. "Well, we aren't willing to go last any more." For about half an hour during afternoon rush hour, members of ADAPT and their supporters staged a rowdy demonstration at the terminal on Taschereau Blvd. Chanting "we will ride," about five disabled people parked their wheelchairs in front of a Montreal-bound bus. That forced the South Shore transit authority to empty the bus and have passengers board other buses idling on Taschereau Blvd. One of the disabled protesters, Marthe Bail of Quebec City, succeeded in boarding the bus by pulling herself out of her wheelchair and clinging to the handrails. Bail, one of only four Quebecers who took part in yesterday's protest, said disabled Quebecers have a fundamental right to public transit. And she said they shouldn't have to rely on the woefully inadequate service now provided. [Subheading] Sympathetic response In Montreal, for instance, she said disabled passengers must make reservations 48 hours in advance whenever they want to use the service. And the buses don't cross bridges, ruling out trips to Laval and the South Shore. Pierre Beaudoin, whose bus was blocked by the protesters, said he respects their demands. Beaudoin said he believes it would be possible to redesign regular buses to provide access to the disabled by installing lifts and setting aside space for wheelchairs. For the most part, commuters who witnessed the demonstration were also sympathetic. "They feel they have to do this to achieve their goals," said Andre Plante. "Who are we to complain? What's a delay of a few minutes? These people are handicapped for life." Brossard resident Francine Labrosse said she doesn't think ADAPT's demands are very realistic. I don't think the inside of the bus is wide enough for wheelchairs even if the lifts they want were installed," Labrosse said. "Of course, if the government decides it wants something anything is possible." But at least one South Shore resident was outraged by the demonstration. "How am I supposed to' get to work?" a livid Joseph Pacheco screamed at bus driver Beaudoin. "Am I supposed to take a taxi? That will cost me $11. Who is going to pay' for that?"
ADAPT (386)
Montreal Daily News Title: A wheelchair Army Goes to War! [This article continues in ADAPT 385 but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] Photo 1 by ALLAN R LEISHMAN/Montreal Daily News: In a crowd of uniformed police officers and others, two policemen stand on either side of a protester sitting on the wet ground. The protester sits, back to the camera, wearing a cap and his face and head are obscured by a white trash bag under his jacket. These two police officers are looking back beside the camera. The police barricade is just visible in front of the protester. Caption: Roundup: Police are kept busy by demonstrators last night. Photo 2 on the left and below the other photo by ALLAN R LEISHMAN/Daily News: A person in a manual wheelchair is tipped completely back by attendant and protester Jan Ingram the front wheels of the chair are hooked over a very low heavy metal barrier. Behind that barrier are standard police barricades and uniformed officers are standing behind them. One policeman is in between the standard barricades and the low barrier and he is looking at other officers and pointing at the person in the wheelchair. Caption: Protesting: One of the wheelchair demonstrators near the barricaded Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Title: 25 arrested in downtown demonstration by Ron Charles Montreal Daily News MUC police arrested 25 wheelchair-bound demonstrators last night after they forced their way into the lobby of the Sheraton Centre in downtown Montreal. The demonstrators were protesting the American Public Transit Association's (APTA) reluctance to endorse wheelchair lifts on new buses. They crashed their wheelchairs through a luggage-cart barrier hotel employees had built in an attempt to ward off the protesters. [Subheading] Came along When APTA, a Washington-based transit authority organization, brought its annual conference to Montreal this week, the protesters came along as part of the ticket. The demonstrators, from a group called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), have been protesting at APTA conferences for eight years. Only a few members of a local disabled rights group took part in the demonstrations — the rest were from the U.S. Police said all those arrested — who are expected to be charged with assault — were American citizens, many of them Vietnam veterans. About 50 MUC police officers showed up to clear the Sheraton's marble-covered lobby after the protesters, singing "we want to ride," blocked elevators and escalators. Police wheeled the demonstrators one by one to a waiting wheel-chair bus being used as a paddy wagon. Police snipped chains linking protesters Mike Auberger and Bob Kafka's wheelchairs to a handrail in the lobby. Although the APTA conference is taking place at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, some of the 3,000 attendees are staying at the Sheraton. Earlier in the day, police turned the Queen Elizabeth into a fortress with metal street barriers as about 75 demonstrators wheeled toward the APTA conference headquarters. They blocked traffic in both directions on Dorchester for more than two hours as police tried to pen the group in with the barriers. Police took two protesters who had crashed the barriers out of their chairs in order to lift them and their chairs over the barriers. [Subheading] Took chair "The police took his chair away, separated him from his legs," said Lori Taylor as she watched from the side-walk when police lifted her husband, Lester, over the barrier. "He can't walk, he's just sitting on the wet ground and all he wants to do is ride a bus like you and me." Bill Bolte, who started ADAPT's Los Angeles chapter, said police overreacted to the demonstration. "This really confuses me because I know that after the Canadians (hockey team) won the Stanley Cup, all types of terrible activity went on," said Bolte. "People overturned cars while everyone, including the police, just looked the other way and went and had a cup of coffee." Several demonstrators who broke through the police perimeter smashed their chairs into barriers in front of the hotel entrance, but hotel security and police stood their ground. Police arrested some 25 wheelchair demonstrators after they forced their way into the lobby of the Sheraton Centre. They were protesting the American public transit association’s reluctance to endorse wheelchair lifts on new buses. It was showdown time yesterday, as wheelchair-bound protesters took on city cops outside the Sheraton hotel on Dorchester Boulevard Some demonstrators where roughly carried and wheeled away as the melee grew ugly. The protesters were making their case for better accessibility to buses at the American Public Transit Association convention.
ADAPT (413)
[This artlice continues in ADAPT 412, but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] PHOTO 1: A group of protesters in wheelchairs, in a rough line, head down the street toward the camera. In front and to one side a policeman on a motorcycle/trike. Caption: ADAPT demonstrators, with police escort, on their way from the Arch to Union Station, via Market Street PHOTO 2: Four protesters in wheelchairs block a flight of stairs in a lobby type area as people walk by. From left to right they are Ryan Duncan, Heather Blank, unknown protester, and Wayne Spahn. Caption: Demonstrators blocked access to stairways in Union Station, trying to force a confrontation with APTA officials. [No Title or author or publication given for this article on the clipping. It does not appear be the start of the article.] "They bill it as door to door service, but it does crazy things like, if you want to go from west county to the city, it will pick you up but leave you at the city-county line." Bi-State plans to expand the service in December by adding 11 lift-equipped vans and extending the service into the city. The system will also extend its hours of operation, to 6 a.m. to 7 p m. Its use in the city limits will be limited to disabled passengers, Plesko says, and, with the extended hours, disabled workers will be able to use the service to get to their jobs. While some other cities are making similar (or greater) progress — San Francisco, for one, has lifts on every one of its buses — things are still moving too slowly for the members of ADAPT. And they blame the slow pace on APTA. (ADAPT members who came to St. Louis this week stressed that they were here because of their quarrel with APTA and were not here to demonstrate against Bi-State. They said they approved of the plans Bi-State had made for the achievement of 100 percent accessibility, but nonetheless questioned the slow pace at which that was occurring.) The fight between ADAPT and APTA has its roots in the 1970s. During the Carter administration, the Department of Transportation (DOT) issued rules requiring transit systems to have at least half of their buses equipped with wheelchair lifts. Those regulatioms came out of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a landmark federal law that many in the disabled community point to as being equivalent to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But APTA filed suit against DOT for its regulations and a federal court upheld APTA's argument for "local option," that is, allowing individual transit authorities to decide how they would comply with the spirit of the regulation requiring adequate accessible transportation for the disabled. Says APTA's Engelken, "These decisions are best made locally, because the local transit systems understand the needs of their passengers. For example, it would not be feasible to have a transit system for the disabled based on 100 percent lift-equipped buses in Fargo, North Dakota, because in the winter it would be almost impossible for someone in a wheel chair to get to a bus stop and wait for a bus. Able-bodied people have enough trouble (there)." Says Bob Kafka, another ADAPT leader, "(That) is one of the arguments people use for not providing transportation. They say, 'People in a motorized wheelchair can't get there, so why provide (accessible buses)?' But do you know what a person in a motorized wheelchair has to do to get to the bus stop? He has to hit a joystick. Little old ladies cleaning people's homes for years, with fallen arches, and having to carry shopping bags, no one has ever said we need special transit for them. But a disabled person who has to hit a joystick to operate his wheelchair, we need special transportation for them because it’s too cold, too snowy, too hilly, too wet, too this. "It's like were going to break, were going to fall apart." ADAPT sees APTA's insistence on local option as an attempt by the group to foster so-called "separate-but-equal” transportation systems. They say that APTA is attempting to segregate transit systems; keeping disabled passengers out of the mainstream system. ADAPT was formed in 1982 in Denver by Auberger and a handful of other members of that city's disabled community. It was put together because APTA had scheduled a convention for Denver and APTA's resistance to 100 percent accessible main-line public transportation for the disabled made the trade organization the moral equivalent of "the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party" for disabled Americans, Kafka says. Thirty demonstrators showed up at the first protest, and there have been eight subsequent protests, all at APTA regional or national conferences. The demonstrators model their actions after the non-violent civil rights activists of the 1960s. They block access to buses: they block access to the APTA convention sites. Some, including Auberger, chain themselves to buses or to doorways. The aim is arrest and the accompanying media attention. Auberger has been arrested at least 30 times by his own count, including this past Sunday at the Omni Hotel. ADAPT's militant tactics have drawn criticism from several corners, including others who work in the disabled community. "While we agree with the goals and-objectives of accessibility for disabled persons, we don't agree with the tactics of civil disobedience or confrontation as a means to achieve those objectives," says Ginny Weber, assistant to Deborah Phillips, the commissioner of the city's Office on the Disabled. "There are other ways to get things done," she says. "You can go through the legislative process. You can conduct public awareness campaigns. Over the last 10 years, some progress has been made. To change conditions that have been in existence for a long time takes a while. You have to just stay in there' and keep working towards it." Sheldon Caldwell, executive director of the St. Louis Society for Crippled Children, agrees. "I don't think it pleads our case well to have a group with a disruptive militant attitude. This is my personal opinion: I haven't polled my staff on this, but I don't think disruption is ever the way to go about it. But others are not as harsh in their judgment. "I take a different position (from those who criticize ADAPT)," says Paraquad's Tuscher. "I have the point of view that there are many ways to get from where we are to where we want to go. We're more likely to use negotiation, legislative action, legal action, public relations campaigns. Confrontation is not one of our methods, but I don't think it's my place to judge (ADAPT). Let history judge: let history prove whose method is the right one." About the criticism from within the disabled community, ADAPT's Kafka says, "Those who are in power are not going to give it up to you willingly. Without the push of civil disobedience, even the Civil Rights Act would never have come about." Says Auberger, "(Negotiation and public relations campaigns) delay the justice. It's not perceived as delaying justice, but it is. They are doing harm to their disabled brothers and sisters by saying, 'I don't support their tactics, but I do agree with their position.— Because other groups for the disabled receive so much financial support from corporations, they are less willing to be as direct in their demands as is ADAPT, he says. "They will eat a lot of garbage just to get half the loaf. "If you're going to change things, you have to get rid of the notion right away that you are going to be someone's friend," he says. "Be-cause someone is going to want something different than you do. The city of St. Louis and I will never be friends. The police and I will never be friends, but I won't lose any sleep over it. I know when I leave here, people will be talking about this issue in a way it hasn't been talked about before and something might change. "You look at demonstrators in history. Go back to the civil rights movement. The blacks who demonstrated weren't seen as 'nice.' If you go back further, to the women's suffrage movement, those women who wanted the right to vote weren't seen as mom and apple pie. But typically people who have been vocal about their rights are never perceived as being nice." PHOTO 1: Two men, one a plain clothes policeman and the other the bus driver, load a man in a scooter onto an accessible bus as several other people in suits and uniforms look on. Caption: St. Louts police arrested 41 demonstrators at the Sunday protest by ADAPT at the Omni. PHOTO 2: A man (Mike Auberger) with his hair pulled back tightly, wearing glasses, a beard and an ADAPT no steps T-shirt, sits in a long hall with bars of light on the walls and ceiling. He holds up his hands, fingers permanently folded at the first joint, guesturing as he speaks. He has a chest strap to hold him in his motorized wheelchair. Caption: Mike Auberger, one of the founders of ADAPT