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Úvodní stránka / Alba / Štítky APTA - American Public Transit Association
+ Bill Bolte + ET Ernest Taylor 4
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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.
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St. Louis Post Dispatch (May 18, 1988) PHOTO by Ted Dargan/Post Dispatch: About a dozen people in wheelchairs surround a bus in the middle of a street. A man in a white short sleeved button down shirt and dark pants stands to one side with his hands on his hips, looking at the ground. The photo is grainy so it is hard to tell who the protesters are, but several wear ADAPT shirts and several have large posters taped across their legs. George Florum sits by the bus' left front wheel. Caption: The driver of a Greyhound bus leaving his vehicle Tuesday after it was surrounded by protesters on Sixth Street near the Greyhound Terminal. The protesters are members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. Title: Disabled People Block Buses, 37 Arrested By Mark Schlinkmann, Regional Political Correspondent Thirty-seven protesters, almost all of them in wheelchairs, were arrested Tuesday afternoon as they blocked buses from entering and leaving the Greyhound Lines terminal downtown. Police also arrested a man from Ohio after he became Involved in a scuffle with two protesters. Police said the man, who was later released without being charged, might have been irritated at the delay in a bus departure caused by the demonstration. The incident, which shut down traffic at the terminal on and off for almost three hours, took place on the third day in a row of protests by disabled people seeking the installation of wheelchair lifts on all buses in the United States. The group, called the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, or ADAPT, is in St. Louis because the American Public Transit Association is meeting at the Omni International Hotel. But after two days of protesting at the hotel, the target shifted Tuesday to the Greyhound terminal, at 801 North Broadway. "We demand that they serve all the public, including us," said Bill Bolte of Los Angeles as he and others blocked a bus on Sixth Street from entering the terminal. "We're going to stop their buses everywhere until they stop treating us as less than greyhounds." Boite and others complained that Greyhound allowed disabled people with wheelchairs to travel only if were accompanied by a companion. George Gravley, public relations director or the bus line, defended the company's policies in a telephone interview from his office, in Dallas. While the company lacks mechanical lifts, he said, it for years has had a program that provides a free ticket to a companion of any disabled traveler. The protesters began arriving at the terminal around noon. First, a few people began blocking two entrances to a parking lot on the east side of the terminal along Broadway. Then, when a bus without passengers drove toward the west-side entrance, on Sixth, several protesters wheeled up to block its path. Carrying placards and chanting slogans, the group grew in number to about 20. Police, meanwhile, blocked off Sixth between Convention Plaza and Cole Street to traffic. Other incoming buses were forced to bide their time elsewhere. About 1:30 p.m., Police Capt. Clarence Harmon informed the protesters that they were breaking the law and would be arrested if they refused to move. While that was being mulled over, police said, a man identified as Donald Keiper, 63, of Ridgeville, Ohio, walked from the terminal area and grabbed a wheelchair in which Barbara Guthrie, 48, of Colorado Springs, Colo., was sitting. Keiper started to move Guthrie's wheelchair, but another protester in a wheelchair, Ernest Taylor of Denver, intervened, and a brief scuffle ensued, Police then arrested Keiper. He was released later: warrants were :_aken under advisement. Police said no injuries had resulted. Police later arrested Guthrie, Taylor and the other protesters, some for blocking buses inside the terminal area. The process was slow because the wheelchairs had to be lifted mechanically onto Bi-State buses and vans, which hauled them to the City Workhouse. The episode was over about 3 p.m. The circuit attorney's office said Tuesday night that the protesters had been released on their promise to appear in court after being charged with general peace disturbance, a misdemeanor. Late Tuesday afternoon, Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker Jr. denied a request from Jerome Schlichter, an attorney from St Louis who is representing ADAPT, for a court order regarding blood tests. Schlichter's request was denied after the city stated that it was not requiring the people arrested to undergo mandatory testing and that only those who agreed to the practice voluntarily were being tested. But Schlichter said ADAPT continued to allege that blood tests were taken without consent Sunday night at the Workhouse from a group of 41 protesters arrested that day in front of the Omni. Bill Bryan and William C. Lhotka of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed information for this story.
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THE HANDICAPPED COLORADAN Vol.9, No. 5 Boulder Colorado December 1986 [This article continues in ADAPT 259, but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] PHOTO by Melanie Stengel, courtesy of UPI: A large heavy set man with no legs (Jerry Eubanks) sits in his manual wheelchair in front of a city bus. He has a determined and frustrated look on his face. Behind him and up against the front of the bus you can see another protester in a wheelchair (Greg Buchanan). On either side of Jerry is a uniformed officer, apparently unsure of how to proceed. One stands with his hand on this hip, the other officer is on Jerry's other side and is looking toward the first policeman, as if for guidance. caption reads: ARRESTING DISABLED PROTESTORS poses some unusual problems for police as these perplexed officers found out during the ADAPT Detroit demonstrations. Title: Doing hardtime in Cincy During the demonstrations at the regional convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) in Cincinnati this May 17 protestors were arrested. Three of them, George Cooper of Dallas, Mike Auberger of Denver, and Bob Kafka of Austin, were sentenced to 10 days in jail. Wade Blank, founder of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), said it was the first time in the history of the movement that any disabled persons had done “hard time. ” The following is Kafka's own account of that hard time. The article is reprinted from Incitement, Vol. 2, No. 3, a newspaper published by the Texas ADAPT chapters. By BOB KAFKA Wednesday, May 21, 1986 4:30 p.m.— One by one they haul us off, seventeen in all. We go through the usual procedures: giving name, address, next of kin, all our property, a list of our medications. We sign the papers, are fingerprinted and photographed. We go into the detention center for hours of waiting while the powers that be decide what to do with us. Handicapism raises its ugly head again as judge Albanese releases six ADAPT members on their own recognizance. His reason: medical problems. The real reason: he can't understand those with CP and Frank, the one blind man, freaks him out. We become the Cincinnati Eleven. 8 p.m.—Mike Montgomery, the “head keeper" at the Hamilton County, jail, has a dilemma: eleven people in wheelchairs and not one empty bed in the infirmary. Where to put us? The decision had obviously been made to keep us together and apart from the rest of the prison population. They convert a training classroom into what looks like a hospital ward without windows. Eleven WWII hospital beds are hauled in. Two guards are stationed with us at all times and, for some reason, three from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. The accessible bathroom is down the hall. At first we are guarded each time we go to empty our leg bags; soon they realize we are not going to try the “great escape." The starkness of our surroundings is stifling: ugly green concrete block walls, gray tiled floors, buzzing fluorescent lights, and two clocks on the walls always counting time and exactly how long we have been in jail. Thursday, May 22 6 a.m.- The room is quiet. Without windows the difference between night and day can only be separated by the morning eggs and the changing of the shifts. We are a curiosity to our keepers. Faces peer in the doorway all morning to look at "the handicaps." ll a.m.— The doctor and nurse arrive to evaluate our "conditions," We again list our medications and the daily supplies we need. Two bladder infections, two decubitus ulcers, one strained back, and many who need assistance dressing, showering and toileting. They leave saying everything will be taken care of. (This is not to be.) 3 p.m.- The social work staff arrive. They are here to make sure we are treated OK, we have access to the library, gym and telephone, and to take care of any crises. (Again, this is not to be.) 4:30 p.m.- Joni Wilkens, our attorney, comes to discuss how we will handle our cases. We decide to stay together and not plea bargain. 6 pm.- It is obvious by now that we are not going to get our proper medication. Substitutes for drugs they don't have don't work. Those needing Valium are told it can't be dispensed in a jail setting. George again asked, to no avail, for his raised toilet seat and "booties" to protect his feet from sores. Mike asked about his bowel program. The nurse and guards give us only blank looks. 10 p.m.—Lights out. The guards assist those who need it. By the time we leave many of them will make pretty good attendants. Friday, May 23 6 a.m.-Lonnie went to the hospital late last night. His decubitus started to bleed and they rushed him over around l a.m. He came back around 3 a.m. and remained in bed all day. 12 p.m.- Boredom is starting to set in. George is rolling back and forth in the halls. Bill is constantly talking, which helps to keep us awake during the day. We fill out commissary forms, but as Joe predicts, we never see the items ordered. Lunch arrives, Mike has the guard melt his spoon so he can feed himself. He makes them do it each meal. George R. again devours his food. E.T. is lying in bed shivering from his bladder infection. 2 p.m.- Joni arrives with her partner, after a long session with the Cincinnati judicial system. The judge and D.A. will accept a plea of disorderly conduct and a fine of $60 (2 days already served) for the eight who were charged with disorderly conduct. They would go free. Lonnie's charge of resisting arrest would be dropped, but there are no guarantees for Mike, George and me. 4 p.m.- The eight are released, Mike, George and I receive 1O days, with credit for two served. Eight days to go. 9 p.m.- The room seems empty without the other eight ADAPT members. The guards kid about us being the hardened criminals. George continues to ask for his raised toilet seat, I for my correct medication and Mike about assistance with his bowel program. Again-no response. Saturday, May 24 7 a.m.-The library, gym, and telephone are not available on weekends and holidays. Monday is Memorial Day. We realize we will not have access to these amenities until Tuesday. Very much like a hospital stay. We also realize our medical needs will not be met; however, we continue our demands that something be done so Mike and George can get the help they need with their bowel program. Security continues to relay this to the medical staff. Medical staff continues to say it is security’s responsibility. This double think has been going on four days now, with no assistance given so far. 2 p.m.— George is beginning to have adverse effects from Valium withdrawal. Mike is having more and worse spasms because the substitute medications are not working. I have no idea if the substitute antibiotic is doing any good at all. Sunday, May 25 4 p.m.-The day passes as usual. Up at 6 a.m. with breakfast of cold eggs and boiled water that had looked at a coffee bean. After lunch our daily request for medication, supplies, and bowel program assistance is duly noted in the guard’s record book, but as usual no action. Joni and Art Wademan, a minister who has been invaluable throughout the week in Cincinnati, came about 2:30 p.m. We share our concern that if we don't get some assistance one or all of us might get very ill. They go to the supervisor and suggest that if medical is not going to act, then we should be transported to a hospital. Going to a hospital for a bowel program might seem extreme, but after five days, impaction is a real possibility. To our amazement, Mike is taken down to medical and then to the hospital. A raised toilet seat is borrowed from Good Samaritan Hospital. We are finally allowed to take our medications which are brought in from the outside. Monday, May 26 Memorial Day — a quiet day, a day for reflection. If non-disabled prisoners were prevented from relieving themselves for five days, it would be considered torture. Equality is as much a farce in jail as it is out of jail, maybe more so. Cincinnati's judicial and penal systems obviously feel it is fine to use a person's disability as a means of punishing that person. Documented omissions which place disabled people in potentially life-threatening situations don't raise an eyebrow, even from the defenders of justice or the media. Reports that the jail is well-equipped to handle our needs but that we will simply be “less than comfortable" go unchallenged. The fact that we have two people who care, who spend some time and resolve our problem, only highlights the injustice to those who do not have a Joni or an Art and must suffer because of ignorance of the needs of disabled persons. Tuesday, May 27 11:30 a.m.—-The court is two blocks from the jail. They usually transport the prisoners to the court by van for security reasons. We present a problem, since the van is inaccessible. They look to a supervisor, and after a half hour the answer comes down. Let the prisoners roll to the courthouse with a deputy sheriff guarding each of us. Babs, Tisha, Reverend McCracken, Art and Vivian (friends and family) are waiting in the hall. The guards hurry us into the courtroom. The media is out in force. As we wait, we wonder what the D.A. will do. Joni enters the room and her face is blank. Rubenstein, the D.A., is his usual arrogant self. Joni states that the six days served are both punishment and deterrent. Rubenstein surprisingly agrees, but asks the court to get our statement. Had we learned our lessons? He wants us to grandstand for the cameras and to get the judge mad at us again. Instead, we suppress the urge to yell "WE WILL RlDE" and simply state we will be returning to our homes and work. Cincinnati will be only a memory. Judge Sundeman accepts the motion to mitigate. We are free. 2 p.m.—We are sitting in Skyline Chili, a local restaurant, and talking over the last six days. Needless to say much of the talk is also about Detroit, October 5-9, our next battle with APTA. Spending six days in jail makes one think about commitment. Detroit will take commitment from us all, but . . . WE WILL RIDE! PHOTO 1: A close up of a man (Mike Auberger) with shoulder length dark hair and a short beard and mustache. He is wearing a light color sweater and shirt with a collar, and the chest strap from his wheelchair is visible. He looks very serious. Caption reads: MIKE AUBERGER Back in the slammer again. PHOTO 2: At least 4 policemen standing around a manual wheelchair in which someone (Bob Kafka) is being bent forward and something weird is happening with a pole (the picture is dark and hard to make out.) Caption reads: THE AUTHOR being arrested in L.A.
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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.