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Нүүр хуудас / Цомог / Түлхүүр үгс Wade Blank
+ blocking a bus + jail + Jim Parker 2
ADAPT (216)
[Headline] Protest by disabled clogs downtown L.B. PRESS-TELEGRAM (AM/PM)/THURSDAY, Oct. 10, 1985, p. A10 FROM/A1 batch of arrests in the 200 block of Pine. At that point, protest leader Rev. Wade Blank, of Denver, told police there would be no further disruptions. Blank thanked the police for the way the department had handled the demonstration and said the remaining protesters were tired and hungry. During the afternoon, police Lt. Norm Benson conferred at length with protest leaders, pointing out that, despite whatever police sympathies there might be for the cause, the event took patrolmen off their rounds and posed an impediment to emergency vehicles. Benson even made a call to the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where the American Public Transit Association is holding a convention, in an attempt to reach Laurence Jackson, general manager and president of Long Beach Transit and new president of the APTA, to urge him to speak by phone with an ADAPT spokesperson. Guy Heston, the bus company’s director of marketing, interviewed at the scene of the bus tie-ups, said the request to talk with Jackson was untenable because "they came unannounced, and, as you know, he has commitments at the convention." An ADAPT spokesman, Jim Parker of El Paso, told a reporter as he was being steered toward a Dial-a-Lift van for the trip to the Long Beach jail, "This is probably going to be the largest mass arrest of disabled people in the history of this country." He stressed that the targets of Wednesday's demonstration and one Monday in the office of Rep. Glenn Anderson, D-Long Beach, were the APTA, which closes its four-day convention today in Los Angeles, and Anderson, as chairman of the House subcommittee on surface transportation. "One very important thing for the people of Long Beach, Los Angeles County and California to understand," Parker said, "is that this is not aimed at them, because California and cities like Long Beach and Los Angeles are really models for the country to look at. "Most of the buses have lifts on them, and all new buses purchased will have lifts. "I guess, for the first time, disabled people have come to the city where the president of APTA resides . . . to help pull the federal government back into the issue again, along with APTA." ADAPT asserts that it was a legal action by APTA, followed by an administrative order in early months of the first Reagan administration, that killed a law mandating phased in accessibility for the disabled to public transit across the country. The order left the decision up to local option. Jackson could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but Long Beach Transit Assistant General Manager Patrick Butters said that nine of 18 fixed routes in Long Beach are wheelchair accessible, while 85 percent of all the company's public buses in the city are equipped with wheelchair lifts. "On an ongoing basis we’ve been increasing that" percentage, said Butters. A committee on the handicapped advises Long Beach Transit on which bus routes to offer lift service on, said Butters. "We’ve tried to hit the routes that are most heavily traveled," he said. An average of 12 to 14 persons a day who are confined to wheelchairs ride on fixed Long Beach Transit routes, said Butters. In addition to regular bus service, Dial-a-Lift service is available in Long Beach, Lakewood and Signal Hill, he added. At the height of the protest, Frank Lozano and Martin Walton took a stand in front of an RTD bus that had eight Long Beach Transit buses backed up behind it at Pine and Broadway. The passengers of those idled buses, workers and schoolchildren heading for home, were not happy with the delay. "Hey, I just want to go home; take a shower, eat some supper and watch the ball game," said one man. But Lozano, who is blind, and Walton, confined to a wheelchair, held their ground. "No, it doesn't surprise me,” Lozano said of the anger from the riders. "I realize that there are many people who are unaware of the issues." California is one of two states – Michigan is the other — that mandate that all new public transit buses be equipped with wheelchair lifts. The demonstrators said they were aware of this but believe that Jackson and APTA can pressure the other 48 states into enacting similar legislation. Press-Telegram staff writer Don Currie contributed to this article. Photo located on top middle of the page. Woman in an electric wheelchair wearing ADAPT stickers raises her hand in a power fist and yells. Meanwhile two informed officers load her onto a lift equipped paratransit van. The driver of the van stands in the doorway waiting. A person in a wheelchair watches from the side. Photo credit: Michael Rondou/Press-Telegram Caption: Protester is lifted onto a Dial-a-Lift van, which has the access she wants on buses, after her arrest on Long Beach Boulevard.
ADAPT (180)
THE HANDICAPPED COLORADAN Volume 7, No. 3 Boulder, Colorado October 1984 PHOTO: A man in a leather brimmed hat, long hair beard and moustache down vest and jeans, seated in a motorized wheelchair (Mike Auberger), leans to his right as he is surrounded by abled bodied people. Back to the camera, a man plain clothes is partially in front of him, papers sticking out from his back pocket. A uniformed officer is also back to the camera and is holding Mike's arm which in front of Mike. A second uniformed officer is doing something behind Mike's back while a woman stands up on the sidewalk to his side watching with her hands on her hips. (She was an organizer with National Training and Information Center and was assisting with the Access Institute.) cation reads: D.C. Police Arrest Denver Disabled Protestor MIKE AUBERGER, a community organizer for the Atlantis Community in Denver and a member of the American Disabled for Accessible Transit (ADAPT) is arrested by Washington, D.C., police outside the Washington Convention Center where the national convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) was just getting under way. A spokesperson for APTA said that the demonstrations only delayed the start of the convention by a few minutes. Inside the convention hall Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole abandoned her prepared text and said the administration was working to provide public transit for the disabled. Outside the hall, demonstrators branded the secretary's plan as another “separate but equal" scheme and demanded that the federal government require all public transit systems be made accessible to the handicapped. Demonstrators not only blocked the entrances to the convention but also surrounded chartered buses that took delegates from their hotel to the convention center. The disabled activists represented a number of cities, including Denver, Syracuse, N.Y., Boston, El Paso, Los Angeles and Chicago. Additional photo on page 4. 28 Busted in D.C. The 28 disabled activists who were arrested for civil disobedience during the national convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) in Washington, D.C., last month are trying to raise $1500 to make their bail money by a Dec. 3 deadline. At the same time, they're preparing to carry their demand that the APTA members buy only wheelchair-lift equipped buses to the transit organization's regional convention in San Antonio on April 20. The Texas contingent from the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) under the leadership of Jim Parker of El Paso has been especially militant in their demands. Taking their lead from an editorial in the September Handicapped Coloradan, a coalition of of Texas disabled groups met in San Antonio and voted to ask transit systems in Texas to withdraw from APTA unless it goes on record supporting accessibility. The Colorado chapter of ADAPT was planning to introduce a similar resolution to Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD). APTA's position is that accessibility should be left to the discretion of the local transit provider, Although the Carter administration mandated accessibility in public transit, APTA was successful in getting that ruling thrown out in a l98l court battle. ADAPT maintains that the disabled have a civil right to public transit. Jack Gilstrap, APTA's executive vice president, reiterated that position as wheelchair demonstrators seized buses in front of the White House and hurled their chairs at police lines outside the Washington Hilton and Washington Convention Center during APTA's late September meeting. Gilstrap said that the funds just weren't there to support a mandatory system, adding that the additional burden might jeopardize some transit systems. However, since the convention ADAPT has been approached by APTA's new president, Warren Franks, the director of the Syracuse, N.Y., transit system, who has requested a meeting in Denver with wheelchair activists. "The Syracuse ADAPT group has been pretty active," said ADAPT spokesperson Wade Blank. "Franks must be pretty worried about what might happen there if he wants to meet with us.“ ADAPT was organized in Denver one year ago by some of the same groups and individuals who had been involved in forcing RTD to adopt a pro-accessibility policy when purchasing new buses. That battle too was highlighted by militant demonstrations with wheelers chaining themselves to the doors of RTD headquarters. In contrast, demonstrators restricted themselves to orderly pickets when APTA held its national convention in Denver in 1983. But ADAPT only abandoned its plans for civil disobedience after APTA met its demands to address the entire convention on accessibility. APTA's national staff fought that request and allegedly threatened to pull the convention out of Denver at the last minute, but finally agreed to allow ADAPT to address the meeting after Denver Mayor Federico Pena intervened. There was no question that ADAPT would be offered the same treatment at the Washington convention. Although they didn't get a spot on the agenda Blank said his group made their point by capturing the attention of the capital's media. Even before the convention opened, ADAPT made its presence known by joining forces with local D.C. activists to seize seven Metrobuses and block the five blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House during the afternoon rush hour. Demonstrators released the buses an hour later when D.C.’s Metro General Manager Carmen E. Turner agreed to meet with Washington disabled leaders to discuss their demands for a fully accessible system. No date has yet been set for that meeting, which ADAPT said marked an historic first in the Washington area. No arrests were made during that demonstration, although Washington police moved several demonstrators out of the street. But on the following Monday and Tuesday 28 demonstrators were arrested as they tried to block buses leaving the Washington Hilton for the convention center and again at the convention center itself. The police threw up lines as picketers arrived but were unable to halt the advance of the demonstrators, who wedged their chairs in the hall's doors or hurled their bodies onto the ground. Mike Auberger, one of those arrested, said the police "were abusive -- there's no doubt of that," but he added that this was probably pretty typical. “Let's face it," he said, "these guys probably have to deal with demonstrators all the time." They don't mess around when they get started. Auberger said he was grabbed by the hair and pulled back so that his chair was resting on its back wheels. Two other demonstrators were thrown from their chairs and taken to local hospitals where they were released after being treated for minor injuries. Police had to bring in special vans with wheelchair lifts in order to cart demonstrators off to jail, where they were fingerprinted and rushed into court. "Only the doorway between the holding cells and the courtroom was too narrow to get our chairs through," Auberger said, "so they had to take us in the back way." Some of the disabled picketers were surprised that the police reacted with such force, according to Auberger. "l think it opened a few eyes," he said. ADAPT filmed the demonstration, and a 20-minute edited version is being shown as part of a fundraiser to pay the bails of those arrested, about half of whom were from Denver. Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-Denver) has agreed tn help raise money, but because of previous campaign commitments said she would be unable to participate until after the first of the year.