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+ Lillibeth Navarro 3
ADAPT (508)
The Handicapped Coloradan AUTUMN 1989, VOL. 12, NOS. 4 & 5 [This is the full text of an article that appears in ADAPT 508 and 504] [Headline] FEDS GIVE IN! [Subheading] It ain't over till it's over—and it’s over A struggle that began ten years ago in falling snow on the streets of Denver may have ended this October in Atlanta, the city where Martin Luther King, Jr., preached the value of civil disobedience from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. As more than a hundred demonstrators held the Richard B. Russell Federal Building hostage, representatives of President Bush and the American Disabled for Public Transportation (ADAPT) hammered out an agreement that will eventually put a wheelchair lift on every bus in America. The statement stopped short of a full promise to mandate lifts, but it did contain this Statement: "Full accessibility in public transit is the President's policy." And it did promise that the government would try to prevent any transit system from purchasing non-equipped buses before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is adopted. That measure does mandate full accessibility and is expected to be approved by Congress and signed by the President. Privately, federal negotiators told ADAPT that they would guarantee that no more systems buy liftless buses, according to informed sources, who said that a videotape of this promise exists. It is probably too late to block the purchase of non-accessible buses in Pittsburgh and Albuquerque, however, since these cities have already had their proposals approved. The Atlanta agreement comes in the wake of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia that reaffirmed an earlier decision by the court that persons with disabilities must be provided effective access to public transportation services throughout the nation. In the 9-3 ruling, the Court of Appeals struck down a regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation limiting the amount that transit systems had to spend on disability access to three percent of their operating budgets. The Court said that the limit was "arbitrary and capricious.” By an 8-4 vote the Court ruled that existing buses need not be retrofitted but that all new buses must be equipped with lifts. Timothy M. Cook, director of the Washington-based National Disability Action Center, who argued the appeal on behalf of ADAPT, said the decision will lead to the adoption of multi-modal systems that include accessible mainline buses as well as door-to-door transit for those who are unable to board lift-equipped buses. The July 25 ruling reaffirmed a similar ruling made in February by three of the judges. That decision had been appealed by the DOT. The Court of Appeals has sent the case back to the lower court with instructions that it set a specific time-table for the issuance of new regulations by the Secretary of Transportation. One of ADAPT's founders, Wade Blank, said the court decision and the concessions made by the President in Atlanta were very satisfying, but that somehow the group was unable to celebrate, at least in a formal fashion. “I went down to a meeting [of the RTD Handicapped Advisory Council] and told the people there that we had won this great victory, and most of them didn't even know what I was talking about," he said. Blank said the accessibility victories that had already been won in Denver had made these people complacent. It was a different story in Atlanta, however, where scores of demonstrators from across the country had converged to picket the annual convention of their arch-nemesis, the American Public Transit Association (APTA), which has consistently opposed any attempt to require mainline wheelchair accessible service. ADAPT has been picketing national and regional conventions of APTA since the organization met in Denver in 1983. Except for Denver, where the demonstrators had the endorsement of the city’s mayor, Federico Pena, those meetings have been marked by demonstrators being arrested for picketing the APTA convention headquarters and for blocking city buses. The story was a little different in Atlanta where the demonstrators made a token push at the barricades around the Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Oct. 24, before they moved on to their real objective, the Russell Federal Building, the next day. Wheelchair protesters poured into the building, jamming hallways and blocking elevators, which trapped federal employees on the top floors of the building. At 6 p.m. federal marshals moved in and began physically removing demonstrators, but with little success. As marshals pried open a door and wheeled one demonstrator out, several more sped inside. One demonstrator managed to be escorted out of the building seven times. It was a game of musical wheelchairs until President Bush intervened, ordering the marshals to let the demonstrators back into the building. Things quieted down until the next day, Tuesday, Oct. 26, when the demonstrators once again poured into the building and blocked the elevators. “It got a little ugly," Blank said. "Some of the disabled people were attacked by federal employees." But even as demonstrators and federal employees were battling to see who would eventually gain control of the building, the historic agreement that would end non-accessible public transit was being signed. ADAPT had won, although a few blocks away APTA officials were arguing that the group had not been instrumental in the decision. With a public transportation victory in their hip pocket, ADAPT turned its attention to the private sector on Wednesday by halting bus service at the Greyhound terminal in downtown Atlanta for more than five hours. Demonstrators blocked the driveways and in some cases chained themselves to the drivers’ steering wheels. More than two dozen of them were arrested, but all were later released on their own recognizance. Greyhound regional manager Tom Street said that only four buses, carrying a total of 80 passengers, left Atlanta during the siege, instead of the normal 20 buses and 600 passengers. Greyhound has a “Helping Hands" program where persons in wheelchairs may ride the buses so long as they are accompanied by an able-bodied friend, who rides free. Demonstrators said that this policy severely restricts their freedom of travel. They were also upset that Greyhound does not allow battery operated wheelchairs to be transported on their buses. Boxed Text: Text of statement signed by Feds, ADAPT in Atlanta The following is the text of the statement issued on Sept. 26, I989, in Atlanta by representatives of ADAPT and the federal government. We have had the opportunity to meet with representatives of the disabled community here in Atlanta today. We have mutually agreed to the following points: 1. The Urban Mass Transportation Administration will recommend to Secretary Skinner that officials of the Department of Transportation and representatives of the disabled community shall promptly meet and confer for the purpose of establishing a process for identifying and dealing with any eleventh hour attempt to circumvent the principle of accessibility prior to the adoption and effective date of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Full accessibility in public transit is the President's policy, We are making this recommendation because the Department cannot issue a summary order commanding immediate accessibility, including wheelchair accessibility for all transit. We would, if we could. 2. Because the President shares the sense of urgency of the demonstrators here in Atlanta for the passage by the House of Representatives of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we have agreed to recommend that a workable arrangement be negotiated to accommodate a continuing symbolic presence by the disabled community at the Richard B Russell Federal Building. 3. We have also agreed to communicate to Secretary Skinner the concern expressed here that the current rule-making for implementation of the Air Carriers Access Act of 1986 is not on a sufficiently tight timetable and should be resolved at the earliest practicable date. End of boxed text. PHOTO (by Tom Olin?): A medium close up of Lillibeth Navarro, a small Phillipina, who leans forward intensely, chanting or yelling full force. She sits in her motorized chair her right hand in a fist resting on her armrest. Her large glasses and glossy dark hair seem almost out of place with her intensity. She is wearing and ADAPT shirt that says "I Will Ride" and has the old "no steps" (a set of steps covered with a circle and a diagonal bar across - the no symbol) logo surrounded by "American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit." On the left shoulder of her shirt you can see the list of cities ADAPT had held actions. In her lap a bandanna covered with the "no steps" logo. Caption: I am a disabled person. Hear me roar.
ADAPT (435)
Title: Disabled.. protesters at the Queen E. ‘We Shall Overcome’ by Ron Charles Montreal Daily News Inserted in the top center of the page is an image of yesterday's Daily News front page [ADAPT 386 & 385] with the headline A wheelchair army goes to way! and photos of that protest. Captioned: “Yesterday’s Daily News.” Title: The Siege Day 2 TEN disabled protesters were arrested last night for chaining their wheelchairs to doors at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, while 10 others were being arraigned in municipal court. Singing "Access is a civil right," and "We shall overcome," the protesters demanded to see American Public Transit Association (APTA) vice-president Jack Gilstrap. Gilstrap refused to face them. APTA is holding its annual conference at the Queen Elizabeth. The protesters, members of American Disabled for Access to Public Transit, want APTA to endorse wheelchair lifts on all new buses across North America. Police officials said nine of 10 would be arraigned in municipal court sometime last night or early this morning. Cynthia Keelan and her seven-year-old daughter Jennifer were released soon after the wheelchair bus carrying the arrested demonstrators arrived at police headquarters. Police began processing the 10 protesters last night just as the arraignments of 10 others arrested earlier in the day were being completed. The 10 arraigned at 7:30 last night were arrested for blocking the Camillien-Houde parkway atop Mount Royal —to impede the return of APTA conference-goers from a luncheon at Chalet Mont Royal. All 10 pleaded guilty to charges of mischief and obstruction of justice. Municipal court Judge Louis-Jacques Leger sentenced five of the 10 — all of whom refused to pay $50 in fines — to three days in jail. The judge also slapped probation orders on the protesters, forbidding them from taking part in demonstrations on the Island of Montreal for six months. Léger also forbade them from being within 100 metres of an ADAPT demonstration and from being in areas where the arrests were made until the APTA conference ends to-morrow. [Subheading] Waived conditions The judge waived the last two conditions for Marie Barile, the sole Montrealer arrested atop the mountain. Barile protested conditions which said she should not be within the boundaries of Cote des Neiges Boulevard, Pine Avenue, Mount Royal Avenue and Parc Avenue. "But I work on Cote des Neiges near Victoria," she said, leaning forward in her wheel-chair so Léger could hear her. Rev. Wade Blank, one of the five who refused to pay his fine, told the judge that he would go to jail to protest the incarceration of the wheelchair-bound demonstrators. "I'm protesting the punishment of people, who are already punished enough by society," said Blank, who isn't disabled. MUC police moved in after the group of 50 blocked access to the chalet for an hour. "All the APTA people got up to their fancy luncheon, but they couldn't get down," said Molly Blank, Wade's wife. Meanwhile, 20 ADAPT members are expected to be released from prison this morning after serving half of their three-day sentences for invading and refusing to leave the Sheraton Centre, where some APTA members are staying. While 28 were arrested in the Sheraton protest, eight paid their $50 fines after pleading guilty to mischief and obstructing justice in a 2:30 a.m. municipal court session yesterday. The rest refused to pay fines or could not. The 20 — 16 men who were sent to Bordeaux jail and four women sent to Tanguay — went on hunger strikes to protest the probation orders Léger imposed. "Basically, the judge told them not to go into a demilitarized zone encompassing the major hotels where APTA members are staying," said Stewart Russell, the group's Montreal lawyer. [Subheading] Don't have right Russell called the restrictions on their movements unconstitutional because, he said, they didn't allow those convicted freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Again at last night's session, he told Léger the orders were unconstitutional. "These people have not the right to demonstrate anywhere in the city of Montreal for six months, and they can't go see the mountain like other tourists visiting the city," Russell told the court at the arraignment of the mountain demonstrators. Léger said the probation order didn't hinder their rights enough to be considered unconstitutional, and he said, "I think they had an opportunity to see the mountain today." Sidebar: Access is a civil right, they say Singing “Access is a civil right,” and “We shall overcome,” disabled protesters at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel demanded to see American Public Transit Association (APTA) vice-president Jack Gilstrap yesterday. The protesters, members of American Disabled for Access to Public Transit, want APTA to endorse wheelchair lifts on all new buses across North America. Photo by Allan Leishman/Daily News: A group of ADAPTers are sitting in their wheelchairs together (left to right: Bobby Simpson, Terri Fowler, Katie Hoffman, Debbie _______ and in front Lillibeth Navarro. Behind them half a dozen police cars and the "Special" paddy wagon/school bus are parked. About a dozen police officers are standing around the cars; one appears to be chatting with Larry Ruiz and another ADAPT person. Caption reads: “Protest: Demonstrators demand to see the American Public Transit Association vice-president.”
ADAPT (421)
[This article continues in ADAPT 422 but the entire text of the article is included here for easier reading.] Title: MUC police arrest 20 on Day 2 of protests by wheelchair activists By: Susan Semenak, of The Gazette 10/4/88 Large contingents of Montreal Urban Community police were mobilized yesterday for the second day in a row to deal with wheelchair protesters who were demonstrating for better public transit facilities for handicapped people. Twenty protesters were arrested, 10 in a demonstration atop Mount Royal and 10 who chained themselves to the doors of the under-parking garage at Place Ville Marie, across the street from the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, where the American Public Transit Association — the protesters' target — is holding its convention. Most of the demonstrators were members of ADAPT — American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. In the demonstration on the mountain, 35 protesters tied up 100 specially trained police for about four hours yesterday afternoon. [Subheading] Refusing to clear road Ten were arrested after refusing to clear the road leading to the Mount Royal chalet, where the transit association had organized a lunch. After pleading guilty in municipal court last night to charges of mischief and obstructing police, five demonstrators paid fines of $50 while five others refused, to pay and were sent to jail for three days. A mother and her 12-year-old daughter were released after the Place Ville Marie protest. The eight other activist pleaded guilty to charges of mischief and obstructing police. All eight chose to go to jail for three days rather than pay $50 fines. [Subheading] Placed on probation All those who pleaded guilty yesterday were placed on probation until the convention ends Thursday. Judge Louis Jacques Leger barred them from the island of Montreal and from demonstrating and banned them from the mountain and from a wide downtown area around the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Police said last night that of the 48 activists arrested yesterday and Sunday, only one was a Quebecer. Protest organizer Rev. Wade Blank of Colorado told Leger. "I am personally grieved and saddened that this court has chosen to punish people who have already been greatly punished by society." Const. Normand Tremblay said the Montreal Urban Community police were out in full force yesterday to prevent the wheelchair protesters from repeating the disturbance they had caused Sunday, when they chained themselves to railings at the Sheraton Centre hotel and blocked traffic on Dorchester Blvd. for nearly two hours. Twenty-eight of the handicapped activists were arrested Sunday. After pleading guilty to mischief charges, five paid $25 fines and were released, while 23 others opted to serve three-day jail terms at Bordeaux and Tanguay jails. "We are joining our friends in jail and it's worth it," said Lillibeth Novaro, one of those arrested on the mountain yesterday, as a policeman wheeled her to a school bus hired to take the protesters to police headquarters and municipal court. "There are millions of people in wheelchairs who need to take the bus to go to work and be equal members of society," she said. Novaro ended up paying her $50 fine and didn't go to jail. 'We want equal access' "We pay taxes like everybody else and we want equal access to mass transit," said Molly Blank, who drove four days from Colorado with her husband and 18-year-old handicapped daughter to join the protest. Police blocked roads leading to the chalet and the lookout atop the mountain with barricades and patrol cars to prevent the protesters from confronting the luncheon guests. The police force's tactical squad had been tracking the demonstrators' movements since morning. Urgences Sante doctors were on hand to verify that none of the protesters had been injured during the arrests. "We know these people are here to cause problems and we are here to prevent that," Tremblay told reporters as a helicopter the MUC had rented for the day from provincial police hovered overhead. "We are allowing them to protest and express themselves, but we cannot allow them to make trouble. And we want to take all the necessary precautions to ensure that nobody is injured”. The special police team assembled to deal with the protesters took a day-long course last week to learn how to "handle" the handicapped — from identifying disabilities and deactivating wheelchairs to carrying the disabled without injuring them. Tremblay said police consulted their counterparts in six U.S. cities where the group has staged previous demonstrations. Phyllis Young, a transit official from Duluth, Minn., who attended the luncheon on Mount Royal, said the wheelchair protesters have been turning up at public transit conventions for the past five years. "This is nothing. In San Francisco they chained themselves to trolleys and ran over one policeman in their wheelchairs and gave him a concussion," Young said. "Another year they all laid down on the street and blocked traffic for a whole day." Tremblay said police could not stop the protesters from coming to Montreal because they have no criminal record — the only laws they had broken are municipal bylaws. Instead, MUC police smiled and chatted as they wheeled the protesters away. But some had donned kneepads under their uniforms in case the protesters became aggressive. Maria Barila, a Montrealer arrested on the mountain, said officials at the Office des personnes handicapes du Quebec — the government agency that oversees services to the disabled — discouraged local disabled people from turning out at the demonstrations. "Some people were told they could lose their welfare cheques," said Barila. "Others were told that things could get violent." Francois Gagnon, also of Montreal, said specialized buses for the handicapped provided by the Montreal Urban Community Transit Corp. are "a joke." He said the disabled would prefer to ride the same buses and Metros as everyone else. “They call It door-to-door service, but sometimes it takes two hours for a disabled person to get from home to work in those mini-vans they provide," said Gagnon, winding his way up the mountain in his wheelchair. Meanwhile, Murielle Lariviere-Lebret, president of the Adapted Transport Users Association, said her group morally supports ADAPT protesters demanding accessible transport for all. But her group, which speaks on transit for 18 associations of the handicapped here, would not join demonstrations or urge members to do so. Instead, it prefers to concentrate on getting more and better minibuses and taxis to serve handicapped commuters in the MUC. Over the longer term, it favors adapting the regular bus and Metro service so it is accessible to the handicapped. [Subheading] Position denounced This position was denounced by Jean-Francois Gagnon, a member of the Quebec Association of Handicapped Consumers, who said the handicapped had to become more radical to get what they want from the MUC and Quebec. But MUCTC managing director Louise Roy said the transit corporation has no intention of adapting buses or Metro stations to accommodate the handicapped. "Our intention was never to make the Metro system completely accessible she said. "We are working on improving our adapted door-to-door service, and I think that's much more realistic." Adding wheelchair-lift platforms on regular buses would cost $15,000 per bus, which Roy said is too expensive. Instead, the MUCTC will spend $16,000 on improving adapted transit services next year. "Each year our ridership on adapted transit increases by 30 per cent. Last year we served 500,000 people," she said. Service is offered through adapted mini-buses and taxis. Riders pay the same price they would to ride a bus and the rest of the cost is absorbed by the MUCTC, Roy said.