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- ADAPT (156)
Rocky Mountain News Tues. Oct. 2, 1984 Denver, Colo. PHOTO (AP LASER PHOTO): A protester in a manual wheelchair and a puffy coat (Renata Conrad), screams as police force her arms behind her back. One uniformed officer stands behind her forcing her forward. One stands in front, his arms stretched in front. The third stands watching with his notebook in his hand and his pen or maybe a cigarette in his mouth. Caption reads: Washington police restrain wheelchair-bound women during protest at transit conference. [Headline] Disabled Denverites held at D.C. protest By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Fourteen wailing handicapped protesters, including some from Denver, were arrested here Monday when they used their wheelchairs, crutches and limp bodies to briefly blockade a national meeting of transit executives. Among those arrested were Mike Auberger, Bob Conrad, Mark Ball and Glen Damen, all of Denver. Richard Male of Denver, an able-bodied demonstrator, also was arrested, as were nine other protesters from New York, Texas, Illinois and Connecticut. The 14 were among more than 35 people who converged on the annual meeting of the American Public Transit Association at the Washington Convention Center. They were fined $50 apiece for blocking a public building. ADAPT, a Denver-based militant handicapped rights group, raised an estimated $30,000 this year to send the protesters to Washington and to train disabled groups nationwide in political demonstration and lobbying techniques. Two of the protesters who were arrested and fined were treated at a local hospital for minor injuries and released. "The police got pretty physical,“ said ADAPT spokesman Wade Blank of Denver. "We had been causing civil disobedience all week. We expected it (the arrests) to happen. It was just a matter of when." Monday's arrests capped a year of growing tension between handicapped activists and transit officials over the issue of accessibility to the handicapped. “This is not something that we are especially proud of,"said ADAPT member Mark Johnson, as he pounded on the plexiglass door of the convention center with a wooden crutch. "We are here because there has been a resistance to us," said Johnson, who ran unsuccessfully for the RTD Board of Directors in 1980. Johnson said ADAPT is demanding that the transit convention vote to make all public transit systems accessible to the handicapped, that those systems only purchase buses equipped with wheelchair lifts, and that the Federal Government reinstate a regulation mandating accessibility. Convention officials said the demonstrators delayed their program for a few minutes, but caused no damage. Last year, RTD hosted the annual transit convention. Although handicapped activists picketed the meeting, their protests were less forceful. In addition, the protesters last year were allowed to address the convention, a privilege refused them this year. "They requested a slot, but we already had everything filled," convention spokesman Albert Engelken said. "There have been some problems. They (protesters) have been pretty aggressive." The demonstrators suddenly appeared at 10 a.m, just as hundreds of transit executives arrived at the convention center on a convoy of shuttle buses from their hotels. Washington police tried to block the advancing wheelchairs. However, they quickly became entangled with the front line of handicapped men and women and were outflanked by the rest of the demonstrators. Chanting "we will ride. it's our right," the protesters wedged their wheelchairs between the doors of the convention center. Many of them threw themselves out of their chairs and sprawled on the sidewalk to block the doors. Monday's demonstration was the third in a series of protests organized by ADAPT. On Thursday, a dozen protesters blocked seven Washington Metro buses in front of the White House during the evening rush hour. On Sunday, another contingent blocked a chartered bus carrying the spouses of 50 transit executives who were touring the nation's capital. After being trapped for an hour, the spouses finally crawled over the crippled protesters to get to their hotel. The protest overshadowed the speeches to the packed convention by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole and New York City Mayor Ed Koch. Dole abandoned much of her highly partisan prepared speech, choosing instead to repeat the Reagan administration's compromise offer for accessible public transit. "Transit authorities receiving federal funds would be required to make at least half of their peak hour bus fleet accessible, provide para-transit for special services or offer some combination of these options," Dole said. Both sides are cool to the proposal. Transit executives complain it will cost too much considering that only 5 percent of the country's transit passengers are disabled. Many disabled groups, meanwhile, reject Dole's offer because they say it endorses separate but equal service. - ADAPT (479)
Two articles included here: Denver Post April 26, 1989 [Headline] Disabled protesters physically removed from the Federal Building By Peter G. Chronis Denver Post Staff writer More than 40 disabled demonstrators in wheelchairs jammed the lobby of U.S. Attorney Mike Norton's Denver office Tuesday to protest U.S. Justice Department action in a transit-access lawsuit. About 30 members of Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation and a few non-disabled protesters stayed from noon to 5:30 p.m., when officers of the Federal Protective Service began removing them from the 12th floor of the Federal Building at 19th and Stout streets. All the demonstrators were physically led from the building, but no one was arrested. Protesters from Texas, Georgia, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York and elsewhere have converged on Denver to demonstrate this week during a federal Urban Mass Transit Administration meeting. They blocked lobbies and doorways of the Radisson Hotel on Sunday night and on Monday; on Tuesday, they targeted Norton’s lobby. The group's grievance is rooted in a Philadelphia lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation in which a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals mandated that all new public transit buses be equipped with hydraulic lifts for the handicapped. ADAPT member Diane Coleman, a Los Angeles lawyer, said the Justice Department has asked the appeals court to vacate the decision and rehear the suit before the entire 12-member court. The full court agreed to do that, and it has has set oral arguments for May 15. Demonstrators demanded that Norton set up a conference telephone call with U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, but Norton told the group that Thornburgh was traveling and could not be reached. Norton, shouted down several times as he spoke, promised to write a letter to Thornburgh expressing the protesters‘ concerns. He also gave the demonstrators Thornburgh’s Washington telephone number. About 4 p.m., after calling Washington, Norton also told the group that the administration appealed the court decision because it felt a policy calling for $270 million a year in additional spending should be made either by the administration or by Congress — not by a federal district court. Coleman said federal regulations allow decisions on disabled transportation to be made locally. “As a practical matter, that meant no transportation," she said. “We want a nationwide policy — we don't want to fight city by city." Bob Kafka, an ADAPT member from Austin, Texas, added, "Disabled kids in school today are being sold a bill of goods that they‘re going to be integrated into society." Transportation is the key to integrating the disabled, he said. Ironically, he also said that Denver's public transportation facilities for the handicapped offer relatively good access to the disabled. The end of first article; second article below: Rocky Mountain News LOCAL BRIEFS Rocky Mountain News Staff April 26, 1989 [Headline] Wheelchair-lift issue in court’s lap, lawyer says U.S. Attorney Michael Norton yesterday told a group of disabled activists that the federal government's appeal of a court ruling on bus wheelchair lifts was out of his hands. Norton appeared before 40 wheelchair-bound members of ADAPT, American Disabled for Access to Public Transit, who had camped several hours outside his 12th floor offices in Denver's federal building. ADAPT members are angry about an appeal by the U.S. Justice Department on behalf of the Department of Transportation. The appeal seeks to overturn a federal court ruling requiring all local transit buses to be equipped with wheelchair lifts. Thirty protesters were arrested Monday for blocking the doors of the Radisson Hotel, where their target, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, was holding a conference.