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Home / Albums / Keywords Bob Kafka
+ wheelchair lifts + ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation 4
ADAPT (589)
A-12 /The Houston Post/Wednesday, February 15, 1989 NATION & WORLD [Headline] Disabled hail ruling on bus access [Subheading] Court requires transit agencies to install wheelchair lifts ASSOCIATED PRESS PHILADELPHIA — Advocates for the disabled Tuesday hailed a federal court ruling requiring wheelchair lifts on new public buses, but a spokesman for transit agencies said the ruling doesn‘t address vexing problems. “We've been grappling with this for a long time," said Albert Engelken, deputy executive director of the American Public Transit Association in Washington. He said wheelchair lifts receive limited use where they exist and are an added expense to transit agencies at a time when federal subsidies are dwindling. A 3rd U.S. Circuit Court ol Appeals panel ruled 2-1 Monday that Congress has made its wishes on accessibility clear, and lift-equipped buses are part ol that mandate. The court ordered the Department of Transportation to rewrite a regulation allowing communities to offer alternative paratransit service, such as van rides. James D. Fornari, a New York City attorney for a group of veterans with spinal cord injuries, said the ruling will force transit systems to look for the most efficient means of serving disabled people. He said the ruling also could influence DOT regulations on light rail and commuter rail systems. Transportation department spokesman Bob Marx said DOT attorneys had not seen the decision and would not comment. Officials of Houston's Metropolitan Transit Authority also had not seen the decision, but MTA spokeswoman Carol Boudreaux said the authority would comply with any new regulations. Representatives of the disabled community in Houston lauded the ruling. “The disabled community is excited and we hope Alan Kiepper, manager of Houston Metro, hears this message from the courts and the disabled community. Access is a civil right," said Vicki Harris, executive director of the Center for Independent Living. Currently, Metro's MetroLift program provides scheduled curb-to-curb transportation for mentally or physically disabled persons who are unable to ride regular buses. Bob Kafka, an American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation representative who joined Harris at a news conference, said he believed the cost of retrofitting buses with wheelchair lifts would be too costly, but said he hoped the ruling would force Metro to buy new buses with lifts. "Disabled people are part of this community, and they should have access to mainline transit," he said. Engelken said his association's board, which comprises the heads of transit agencies across the nation, believes agencies should be able to decide on a local basis how best to serve disabled people. lt costs $15,000 to equip a bus with a wheelchair lift, and buses cost about $200,000, said Joaquin Bowman, a spokesman for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.
ADAPT (256)
Cleveland Plain Dealer p.8 Title: Cincy frees wheelchair access bus activists CINCINNATI (AP) -- A judge granted early release yesterday to three wheelchair-bound activists who were arrested last week for participating in protests to demand access for handicapped people to public transportation. Hamilton county Municipal Judge J. Howard Sundermann, Jr. granted a defense lawyers request for early release of Michael Auberger of Denver, George Cooper of Dallas and Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas, who had served six days for criminal trespassing. Sundermann had sentenced the three to jail terms of 10 days each for their part in last week’s demonstration at the headquarters of Queen City Metro, Cincinnati's public transit agency. Their lawyer, Joni Wiikens, had argued against a jail term, saying the men could have suffered health problems if they were jailed for an extended period. Before he granted the early release, Sundermann asked the men if they planned to go to another city and repeat the demonstration. Auberger and Kafka said they planned to return home. Cooper did not reply. “I think we made our point. The issue won’t go away,” Kafka told reporters after the hearing. Auberger, Cooper and Kafka are members of Americans’ Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT), a national organization that sponsored last week’s protests outside a downtown Cincinnati hotel where the American Public Transit Association was conducting a regional meeting of bus system executives. The activists were protesting Queen City Metro’s policy of requiring the handicapped ride on separate vans for the disabled rather than on regular buses. ADAPT members urged the system to fit the buses with wheelchair lifts, but Metro officials said they did not have money to do so because of the Reagan administration’s cuts in federal transit funding. The vans must be reserved 24 hours in advance. Handicapped people complain that the vans often are booked days in advance, leaving them isolated and unable to get to work or other destinations.
ADAPT (583)
Fort Worth Star Telegram / Sunday March 26, 1989 [Headline] Disabled evicted by guards [Subheading] Fort Worth protest at courthouse ends BY Whitt Canning, Fort Worth Star Telegram Bob, Joe, Frank, Tim and Frazier spent a quiet evening Friday on the ninth floor of the Federal Building nodding off occasionally between friendly chats with the guards. Having arrived earlier in the day to take part in a protest by a group of disabled people against the Urban Mass Transit Administration, they hadn't really planned on staying the night. Things just sort of worked out that way. Their strange vigil ended abruptly about 1:15 p.m. yesterday when they were evicted by Federal Protection Service officers, who explained that it was being done for their own good. “They physically picked us up and carried us out," said Bob Kafka, admiring a skinned place on his right forearm that was bleeding slighty. “At least," said Joe Carle, “it was reassuring being in the hands of the kinder, gentler Bush administration." Kafka, 43, Carle, 50, Frank Lozano, 38, and Tim Baker, 26, are members of a group called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation that staged a nationwide protest Friday in an effort to dissuade the administration from appealing a recent decision in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals (ADAPT vs. Burnley). The decision requires wheelchair lifts on buses purchased with federal money. The Fort Worth protest involved 20 to 30 people, but Kafka, Carle, Lozano and Baker managed to reach the ninth-floor office of the administration's regional manager, Wilbur Hare. There, they requested he telephone White House chief of staff John Sununu and voice his support for the court decision. Joining the small group in its audience with Hare was Frazier, an amiable pooch who serves the visually impaired Lozano as a guide dog. Hare refused the request, and went home at 4:45 p.m., leaving the intrepid little band stuck on the ninth floor, vowing to stay through Easter weekend. “We were in the outer office, and he (Hare) came out once about 3:30 and told us he was leaving at his normal time," Carle said. "Then at 4:45, he came out, shook our hands, wished us happy Easter, and left. "We wished him happy Easter too." So the group was left occupying the building, along with several guards. At 6 p.m., Casey Bowen, director of building operations with the General Services Administration, told them they would not be forcibly removed, but he would not allow food to be brought in. As an added precaution, Kafka said, all the phones were removed. “I don't mean just in Hare‘s office," Kafka said. "lt looked to me like they removed every phone on the ninth floor. They didn‘t just disconnect them. They TOOK the phones off.“ The group settled in for the night. "Mostly, we tried to sleep as best we could, sitting in our chairs (Kafka, Carle and Baker use wheelchairs)" Kafka said. "I got the couch, since l'm the oldest," Carle said. “Frank slept on the floor because he doesn't have a wheelchair.“ "There are some vending machines up there," Kafka said, "and we ate some candy bars and drank some cokes that was about it. "The guards were very nice to us -- until today, when they evicted us." [Subheading] PROTEST About 6:30 a.m. yesterday, Kafka said, they asked the guards if they could send out for food and were refused. About 11 a.m. the group's attorney, Paul Alexander, arrived with the same request and also was refused. Then about l p.m., the group made another request — that Hare appear at a 6 p.m. news conference and agree to make the call to Washington tomorrow. ln return, they would end their occupation of the building. "That's when they evicted us," Kafka said. “They said they were acting on Bowen's orders and it was for our own good because we hadn't had anything to eat. “They picked me up out of my chair, because l wasn't going to leave, and carried me. That's how I got skinned up." “They had a little trouble getting Frank into a wheelchair," Carle said. “But Frazier went quietly when ordered to leave." Baker, who is severely disabled, did not fare so well, group members said. “When they were pushing him out in his chair, they didn't know how to operate it, and they tore up the motor and the clutch,“ Kafka said. “They did about $1,000 worth of damage to it." Guards at the building refused to comment. Hare did not show up at the news conference. And the I3 activists held up the starting time of 6 p.m. to wait for additional supporters who did not arrive. “We came here to fight for transportation, but we couldn't get the troops over to fight for them," Carle said, adding that none of the disabled could ride the bus downtown so only those who could afford a car could come. Kafka said that the group will examine legal recourse for injuries and damages incurred while being evicted. However, the group's lawyer, Paul Alexander, had advised the four that they might not have legal grounds because they were on federal property, Carle said. As to whether the demonstrators felt they had accomplished anything by the protest, Carle said, “We hope that somewhere along the line this wakes up the able-bodied community" and shows members of the disabled community that “they don't have to knuckle under." He said the group's impromptu occupation of Hare's office had probably amazed them as much as anyone else. “When we got here (with the other protesters), I was telling Bob that Mr. Hare was a pretty nice guy and would probably make the phone call fairly quickly," Carle said. “We were trying to figure out what we were going to do with the rest of the afternoon.“ Carle said other protests are planned soon, including one against Greyhound Corp. on Monday in Dallas. Greyhound, he said, has indicated it does not wish to adapt its buses to the handicapped. “I think this was an abomination," Kafka said. “As a Vietnam veteran, l am embarrassed for my country. But it's just another example of how the govrnment views the disabled. They don't want us to be people — they want us to sit down and shut up, or be put away in institutions. “I think a lot of people have a fear of the disabled." “They're trying to put us back where we've been for ... eternity," Carle said. "Instead of doing this, they should help us with job training so we can carry our own weight. “It's the only way we will ever become . . . people." The occupying force at least had a clear view of its immediate objective once it was back out on the street: friends who arrived to help were immediately dispatched to find food (“double burgers, chicken, and big milkshakes"). When the food gathering force hurried off, Carle offered one last observation on the situation. "Frazier," he confided. “is extremely upset about all this. “He says they treated him like a dog." Staff writer Betsy C.M. Tong contributed to this report PHOTO (by Ricky Moon, Fort Worth Star-Telegram): From left to right Frank Lozano kneels on the pavement, his hand on his dog Frazier's neck. Frazier, a white lab, sits calmly in harness, looking serenely off into the distance. Beside him is Joe Carle in a denim vest, ADAPT shirt, gimmie cap and dark glasses, he sits in his wheelchair and smiles. Next to him, Tim Baker, face partially obscured by his chin operated wheelchair control stick, looks over at Bob Kafka. Kafka, next to him is in his manual wheelchair and is talking to Tim. Behind them is the stark facade of the federal building. Caption reads: Frank Lozano, his dog Frazier, Joe Carle, Tim Baker and Bob Kafka, from left, sit outside the Federal Courthouse after their eviction.
ADAPT (267)
THE PLAIN DEALER, THURSDAY, MAY 22; 1986 page 19-A PHOTO by AP: Four policemen in their fancy police hats are "rolling" a man (Rick James) up a 150 degree (ie. almost vertical) "ramp" into a van. Rick is sitting with his hands up by his chest. His hat is missing and his hair is flying out in all directions. His expression is a mix of amazement, disgust and resignation. Caption reads: Cincinnati policemen push Rick James of Salt Lake City, Utah, up a ramp into a van after he was arrested outside a downtown hotel as part of a demonstration by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. Title: Cincy arrests disabled in protest of bus access By BILL SLOAT STAFF writer CINCINNATI — Police arrested l7 disabled people yesterday after they blockaded the entrance to a downtown hotel or chained themselves to the doorway of an adjoining office building that houses Queen City Metro, this city’s public bus service. Eleven of them refused to post bond and were in Hamilton County Justice Center under cash bonds ranging from $1,500 to $3,000. Five were released late yesterday on personal bonds. One pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and was found guilty. Sixteen were in wheelchairs from polio, paralyzing spinal accidents, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and amputations. One was blind and walked carrying a white cane. The arrests were made during a non-violent, noon demonstration that challenged lack of access to city buses here and around the nation. Chants of “We will ride" and “Access now” came from about 52 demonstrators outside the Westin Hotel. Some removed footstands from their wheelchairs and banged on metal barricades. Police stood behind the barricades and refused to let the demonstrators into the hotel. All 17 taken to jail said they were members of a national handicapped rights organization called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. “This is a civil disobedience action," said Wade Blank, 47, a Presbyterian minister who helped organize yesterday's protest. Blank, who now lives in Denver, was involved in anti-war demonstrations at Kent State University in the 1960s when he lived in Akron. Several of the people loaded onto vans and hauled away to the Hamilton County Justice Center on disorderly conduct charges compared Cincinnati to Selma and Montgomery, two Alabama cities where civil rights activists were jailed by authorities in the 1960s. “The message needs to be sent out that we can’t ride a bus because we're handicapped,” said Glenn Horton, 46, of El Paso, Texas. "It's discrimination it’s segregation and it’s appalling that it could still be happening in this country." Horton said he had been confined to a wheelchair since age 9, when he fell and broke his back. Bill Bolte, 54, of Los Angeles, said handicapped people needed mainline bus service to get to jobs, movies, dates, shopping, banks and anywhere else they might want to go. “We're already in prison," said Bolte, who had polio 51 years ago. “We're going to see that what few rights we have are not going to be taken away. Our rights to public transportation are being deprived, and we will not sit for it." Organizers of the protest said they took to the streets because about 600 executives of public and private transit companies in the eastern United States and Canada were attending a convention in the hotel that ends today. Protesters said the convention should adopt a resolution supporting the installation of wheelchair lifts on all public buses in the nation. Many came from Denver, which has such lifts in use on its bus fleet. The demonstration also came a day after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced in Washington, D.C., a new regulation that allows transit authorities to establish alternative services for the disabled instead of putting lifts on regularly scheduled buses. Demonstrators complained the rule meant that buses, subways and rail lines wouldn't be made accessible to people in wheelchairs. Police Chief Lawrence Whalen said the comparisons with Alabama in the 1960s were unfair when it came to the police. Police in the South during the civil rights era often brutalized protesters. Whalen yesterday said, “Our officers handled themselves very admirably. The group has had their chance to protest and get their point across." He said the police assigned to make arrests had attended special briefings on how to handle disabled people and were instructed to ask the people in custody the best way to lift them into vans. “We wanted to be sensitive to their special needs." Whalen said. Three of those arrested yesterday were out on $3,000 bond after incidents Monday when two climbed aboard city buses, paid fares and refused to leave when ordered off by Queen City Metro officials. The third interfered with a bus. The three, Robert A. Kafka, 40, of Austin, Texas; George Cooper, 58, of Irving, Texas; and Michael W. Auberger, 32, of Denver, were charged yesterday with Criminal trespassing when they chained themselves to the entranceway of Queen City Metro's offices. Police Capt. Dale Menkhaus told his men to use bolt cutters to get them out of the building. Kafka, Cooper and Auberger had been ordered Tuesday not to set foot in Cincinnati by a Municipal judge at the time they posted bond, but another Municipal judge lifted the banning order shortly before yesterday's protests started. Police Chief Lawrence Whalen said 14 others were charged with disorderly conduct for their activities outside the hotel. Bond was set at $3,000 each, a Hamilton County Municipal Court official said. Before the demonstration began, the group gathered in a Newport, Ky., motel for a strategy session on civil disobedience. They agreed not to carry anything but identification with them when they confronted police in downtown Cincinnati and they voted not to post bail. None of the people arrested were from Ohio. The 11 who refused to post bond and were in jail last night are: Bolte; Bob Conrad of Denver; Joe Carle of Denver; Auberger; Horton; Jim Parker of El Paso, Texas; Cooper; George Roberts of Denver; Earnest Taylor of Hartford, Conn.; Lonnie Smith of Denver; Kafka. Kelly Bates of Denver pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days in jail, which she is to start serving tomorrow. Those released on personal bond are Ken Heard of Denver; George Florman of Colorado Springs, Colo.; Frank Lozano of El Paso, Texas; Rick James of Salt Lake City, Utah; and Arthur Campbell of Louisville, Ky.