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Home / Albomlar / Tags Dallas
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ADAPT (266)
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.
ADAPT (208)
The San Diego Union March 2, 1986, page A3 The West [section of newspaper] Drawing of Mr Louv's head: White, youngish, short dark hair parted on side and glasses. [Headline] Transportation news for handicapped ‘a nightmare’ By Richard Louv The WHEELCHAIRS are rolling. On Jan. 16, in Dallas, handicapped demonstrators decrying "taxation without transportation," chained themselves to public buses, forcing traffic detours for nearly six hours. In downtown Los Angeles, last Oct 7, more than 200 people in wheelchairs rolled down the middle of Wilshire Boulevard to protest the policies of the American Public Transit Association. In San Antonio last April, 60 handicapped people staged a four-hour protest at the city's public transit offices, causing 90 nervous bus company employees to lock themselves in their offices for an hour until the transit association agreed to meet the demonstrators. And on Feb. 13, Houston police arrested eight demonstrators in wheelchairs and carted them off to jail in lift-equipped police vans. Their sentencing is tomorrow. and a representative of the Denver-based American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit told me that if the protesters “spend weeks in jail, it will be like when Martin Luther King went to jail in Birmingham. People will realize we're not just out playing in the street" What's going on here? The disabled~rights movement isn't new, of course. It began in Berkeley in the late 60s, and ultimately resulted in a government shift from segregating handicapped people to "mainstreaming" them into the rest of society. According to Cyndi Jones, publisher of San Diego-based Mainstream, a national magazine for the “able-disabled," some of the first generation leaders "got co-opted by government jobs, and frustration for the rest of us has been growing." A raft of laws were passed during the 1970s, but the laws. says Jones. still haven't been fully implemented. “The Rehabilitation Act promised disabled people equal access to public transportation facilities and education and employment. In education. the news has been good, but transportation is a nightmare." IN 1981, CONTENDING THAT putting lifts on buses was an unrealistic expense, the American Public Transit Association sued the federal government and won. Most cities stopped deploying the mechanical lifts that enable people using wheelchairs, walkers and crutches to board buses. The favored transportation method, at least among municipal officials, became small, subsidized "dial-a-ride" vans. "That's like putting us back in segregated schools," says Jones. The disability groups have a number of other complaints, some of them affecting many more people — lack of housing, attended care, airplane facilities. But what it has come down to is the symbol of lifts. While some disabled people are satisfied with the dial-a-ride approach, Jones says "taking a van service can cost you $60 to get to work and back. You have to call and reserve a ride — sometimes days in advance, and these services can't always guarantee a specific arrival time or even take you home. As a result, a lot of us can't afford to work, or we just stay home." California still requires lifts on all new buses, but Jones contends that the transit companies can develop some creative delaying tactics. Roger Snoble, the San Diego Transit Corp.'s general manager, agrees with her. "Some cities," he says, "don't care whether the lifts work once they put them on. They just let them go, and then say the lifts don't work." Jones, by the way, gives relatively high marks to San Diego's bus system; not so to the trolley. which she calls “miserable for handicapped people." As she sees it, a new generation of leaders in the disabled~rights movement is just now coming of age. They have some powerful opponents —— with some powerful statistics. Jim Mills, chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, has pointed out that in Los Angeles the average cost per ride of the various dial-a-ride systems “is $6.22, while the costs associated with a one-way trip on a bus for a person in a wheelchair is $300." And in a recent interview, Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm told me, "I think it is a myopic use of capital to try to put a lift on every bus in America. It costs the St. Louis bus system $700 per ride to maintain lifts." But Roger Snoble says it costs San Diego far less — $166 per ride (as of a year ago, "the last time we checked, and we expect the cost to continue to decline because of dramatically improving technology." And when I mentioned Lamm's figures to Dennis Cannon, the chief federal watchdog for the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Transit Compliance Board, he said, “Lamm's figures are at least six or seven years old, and wrong. These same figures get used a lot by lift opponents, but they're based on one of the very first generations of lifts, which were poorly administered and poorly installed by St. Louis during one the worst winters in Missouri history." He points out that Seattle, with one of the best bus systems in the nation, has managed to get the per-ride costs down to $5 or $10, depending on the amount of ridership. And Denver has decreased its lift failures from 25 a day to five within the last year. WITH ADVANCES LIKE this, combined with the increasing demands from disabled groups, a number of cities have decided that the lifts make economic sense — maybe not in this decade, but soon. "What's about to hit is a wave of people who expect to have equal access, the children of the mainstreaming movement," says Jones. During the past decade, government and society encouraged disabled people to work independently, and now that generation will be at bus stops and trolley stations all over the country, waiting to go to work. With them will be aging baby boomers, a giant crop of potentially disabled seniors. "Only one~third of the disabled population is employed. but two-thirds of disabled people are not receiving any kind of benefits," says Andrea Farbman, a spokeswoman for the National Council on the Handicapped. “Still. we're spending huge amounts of money keeping people unemployed — $60 billion dollars a year, but only $2 billion going to rehabilitation and special education." One rough estimate, says Farbman, is that 200,000 handicapped people would enter the work force if the travel barriers were eliminated. adding as much as $1 billion in annual earnings to the economy. The tragedy is this: While politicians wrangle over the costs of bus lifts, nobody has studied how much money could be saved in government benefits, and how much could be gained through taxes and added national productivity if more handicapped Americans were employed.