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ADAPT (1766)
Column title: PEOPLE WHO MAKE A DIFFERENCE Photo: A downward shot of Wade Blank standing with his hands clasped. He has his signature long hair and tinted glasses and is wearing an anorak. Someone is partially visible behind Wade. Caption reads: Wade Blank dedicated almost 20 years of his life to fighting for civil rights for people with disabilities. The members of ADAPT - the disability rights organization Blank founded - will continue the battle in his memory. Title: A True Activist Wade Blank was raised in Canton, OH, where he learned to be a Cleveland Browns football fan. a condition that caused him great pain throughout his life. He earned the equivalent of a doctoral degree in theology from McCormick Seminary in Chicago, where he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. After seven years as a minister, he decided to take a year off for “human service" and became an orderly in a nursing home. His experiences there with young adults with disabilities led him to establish the second independent living center in the nation in 1975—the Atlantis Community. Wade Blank dedicated almost 20 years of his life to fighting for civil rights for people with disabilities. The members of ADAPT—the disability rights organization Blank founded will continue the battle in his memory. Blanks first years in his efforts to win civil rights for people who have disabilities were spent eliminating attitudinal and architectural barriers in Denver. Beginning with l2 young adults with disabilities who were placed in a nursing home for lack of any other options, Blank led them on an exodus into their own homes in the community, where he successfully persuaded the legislature to fund needed personal care assistance outside an institution for the first time. Since then, the Atlantis Community has liberated more than 900 people with severe disabilities from institutions and other sheltered settings and provides the services and support they require to maintain themselves in the community. Once the people of Atlantis entered the "free world," they found that society was completely unprepared to include them. So Blank and his friends set off to integrate Denver. The public buses they needed were inaccessible to wheelchairs. Blank led training sessions and actions that escalated from addressing the transit board to civil disobedience, blocking the buses people with disabilities couldn't ride. This seven-year campaign resulted in a 100% accessible bus system that offers affordable, self determined transportation to over 30,000 riders with disabilities in the area, and it developed an assertive group of people who vowed to fight for and win full and equal rights in their society. As the reputation of Denver as the most accessible city in the nation spread, activists from every state began to call for advice and help. ln1983, Blank founded ADAPT (American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit) as a training project. The dramatic actions of ADAPT members have generated publicity that has raised awareness of disability rights throughout the nation, trained over 1,200 activists in the “fire” of civil disobedience, and provided the political muscle behind the Americans with Disabilities Act. When the right to access to public transit was won in 1990, ADAPT’s name was changed to American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. The new focus is on winning a federal mandate and funding for personal assistance services for every person with a disability in the nation who needs such help to live independently. Blank and his son Lincoln drowned on February 15, 1993, off the Baja Coast. The people of ADAPT will continue the struggle for this essential victory in their memories until all Americans with disabilities have the opportunity to choose to live independent lives. —By Molly Blank
ADAPT (32)
History and Mission Independent Living for People with Disabilities [This brochure continues in ADAPT 33, but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] PHOTO by Tom Olin (bottom right): A man (George Roberts) in wheelchair raises the power fist with his right hand. He is carrying a sign that reads "Nursing Homes = Jail." Behind him a group of other wheelchair protesters are lining up. Atlantis was founded in 1975, the second “Independent Living Center” in the country after Berkeley. A group of young disabled adults and six concerned staff from a Denver nursing home concluded that no amount of outings to concerts or bingo games could normalize life for these young people. The real solution was to move into the community, in apartments within the city’s neighborhoods, to create self-determined lifestyles where the disabled clients choose their own food, direct their own care, and determine their own priorities. This was a revolutionary concept in 1975, but the people of Atlantis were able to convince the State Legislature to fund personal care assistance outside an institutional setting for the very first time. In the more than fifteen years since its founding, the agency has been able to assist over 400 disabled adults in moving from sheltered settings and maintaining independent lives. The Atlantis Community staff specializes in assistance for very severely, multiply-disabled people, carrying out our belief that any disabled person can live outside an institution, if s/he is willing to accept the risks and inconveniences in order to enjoy self-determination and liberty. To that end, the staff and clients are experts in helping with everything from finding an apartment to applying for benefits, from grocery shopping to weddings, from cooking training to camping trips. The assistance with daily living activities and the basic skills training and reinforcement offered are complemented by the trained and state-certified staff of home health aides and their supervisors who visit the clients at home as often as needed — usually several times a day. The people of Atlantis also offer other independent living services to people throughout the nation — ranging from information and referral services to assertiveness training and technical assistance. The city of Denver and the Atlantis Community have become a mecca for disabled people seeking an accessible environment and comprehensive services. PHOTO by Tom Olin (top left corner): 4 people in wheelchairs (left to right, Joe Carle, Diane Coleman, Bob Kafka and Mark Johnson) lead a march. Everyone is dressed in revolutionary war garb -- wigs, three cornered hats, jackets with braid on them. Over their heads is a large flag, the ADAPT flag. PHOTO (bottom right): An older man (Mel Conrardy) in a white jacket and pants, sits in a wheelchair on a lift at the front door of a bus. To his right on the side of the bus door it says RTD Welcome Aboard. Mel looks relaxed and is smiling.