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Degemer / Rummadoù / Merkerioù Bob Kafka
+ Secretary Louis Sullivan + arrests 2
ADAPT (718)
Chicago Defender, Tuesday May 12, 1992 Sengstacke Newspaper vol. LXXXVII- No.6 35 cents, 40 cents outside Chicago and suburbs Title: Disabled group blockades street by Dobie Holland Likening the plight of the disabled to that of the Civil Rights movement, Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) staged a blockade of downtown streets Monday in an effort to gain an audience with Health and Human Services Director Dr. Louis W. Sullivan. Sullivan, however, refused to meet with the group and 10 ADAPT members were arrested on criminal trespassing charges according to HHS and police officials. “Our ghettos are the nursing homes and facilities for the mentally retarded. Society doesn't want to recognize us. They want to put us in these ghettos," said ADAPT coordinator Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas. Hundreds of ADAPT members rolled their wheelchairs and formed a human chain in the middle of Clark and Adams streets and swamed HHS’ regional offices to demand a meeting with Sullivan. The group wants 25 percent of Medicaid funds channeled to community-based nursing centers, which would permit many disabled citizens to live at home, ADAPT representatives said. "The American Disabilities Act is very similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Kafka said. “Very few people want to talk about the discrimination against the disabled. "They don't want to consider us as people and they just want to put us all in nursing homes,” Kafka continued. “Most people think a nursing home is a nice place for little old ladies...well, it's not.” Kafka, who is wheelchair-bound, said he has never been in an institution but recent political policies of the Bush Administration are making it possible. Title: ADAPT blocks street The American Health Care Association, a formidable nursing lobby, and the American Medical Association are also responsible, Kafka noted. Kafka said nursing homes have become big businesses and doctors have become owners of nursing homes, which motivated both `groups` to, support the institutionalization of the disabled. The group has been attempting to meet with Sullivan for more than two years, Kafka said. with all of their requests being rejected. A spokesperson for HHS told the group that Sullivan was contacted but said his schedule would not permit him to meet with them. On Sunday, a small band of disabled activists disrupted Sullivan's commencement address at the Univelsity of Illinois at Chicago, although the secretary did not acknowledge the ADAPT members. Guests to the gaduation day ceremonis filed past police barricades, while the activists, many in wheelchairs, circled outside the doors of the UIC Pavillion, chanting “We want Sullivan.” The demonstrators made same demands. urging the Bush Administration to redirect 25 percent of Medicaid funds currently budgeted for nursing homes and other institutions to set up community-based programs to allow the disabled to live on their own. An estimated 1.6 million disabled people now live in nursing homes. which Kafka said is a more expensive and less humane option than helping the disabled live independently.
ADAPT (671)
Photo by Tom Olin: A woman with thin arms (Diane Coleman) sits holding a sign that reads "attendant services not lip service" and she looks off to her right. Her head is about waist height to a beefy police officer who stands looming beside her looking down with a hostile expression, his had on his hip. Behind them is some kind of barrier and a couple of other protesters. [This article starts on ADAPT 694 and continues on 678 and 670, The entire text of the article is included here for easier reading, but descriptions of the pictures are included on the pages the pictures appear on. 694 is just a picture and the headline of the story.] Title: ADAPT Activists and nursing home operators face to face: We will not stand for it any longer. Let our people go. You operators want to pretend it’s complicated. You raise a-lot of pseudo-issues to disguise the fact that it’s all about your money and your power. You want to pretend you’re trapped in this business, that union contracts prevent such and such... that legal liability prevents so on and so forth... We don’t want to hear any of that. It’s not complicated. It’s very simple. You will let our people go. >> We were arrested the first day, lots of us. They never expected us to come close to their hotel, the place where members of the American Health Care Association were staying while they held their convention across the street. Yes, they knew we were coming to Orlando. They briefed the locals, had the police waiting. So it was all set up in advance, cops on the rooftops, a police booking operation in the basement of the convention center. They were all set to cage us up for daring to interfere. They thought they had it covered. They were smugly going about their business, expecting only a minimum of trouble for a couple of hours. The intensity there — anyone driving by could feel it. The tons of security, the A.C.H.A. people retreating inside the hotel, aghast. It was like: “How dare they spoil our party!” The first wave of arrests was meant to stop us at all costs, keep us out of the convention. That first day, they thought they’d arrested all the “leaders.” But with ADAPT, when folks get arrested, other folks fill in and we just keep going. We will not be moved. It was our intent to send the message that nursing homes have one and a half million Americans locked up. We want the nursing home operators to be publicly accountable for that. Here we are, people who look like the folks the operators lock up at their home facilities. They’re on vacation, but they can’t escape. We are people with disabilities. We are everywhere. The operators were inside having seminars on how to manage the disruptive patient. We were outside holding a seminar with the press on the economics of managing people in nursing homes. Every place the A.C.H.A. people went they had to confront ADAPT people who had been in nursing homes. They can talk all they want about how homelike it is. We know better, firsthand. We are focusing the attention of the Bush administration through U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan and the whole Health Care Financing Administration. We are focusing public attention on the nursing home operators, the nurses, the families, everybody who had anything to do with our people being locked up. This will be a long struggle; we’re prepared for that. Five or ten years, a long struggle. Unless people like ADAPT are willing to stay focused and targeted, people in nursing homes and state schools are going to be forgotten all over again. We may not win at every action, but we will win the cumulative victory. We make people think about nursing homes. They don’t want to think about that. Put them away, put it out of mind, put it somewhere else. I want to say to people who say they don’t like ADAPT tactics: Do you really want our people out? Or are you sitting home saying, “Oh, those nursing homes shouldn’t do that!” How many people are going to get free because you hold that opinion? What are you doing about it? People are turned off by the arrests, by our confrontational style. “I’m not going to do ADAPT-style confrontations” — we hear that a lot. If you don't want to be on the front lines but you do want to help, there’s plenty to do: raising dollars so we can get to our actions, working with people in your community to make these issues known, forming your own group, bringing some attention to the issues in your own home town. We sure would welcome your help. ADAPT puts the edge on it, sets the margin. This is as far as we go, this is all we will take. We will not be moved. This article is taken from a conversation with Bob Kafka of ADAPT in Austin. The photographer is Tom Olin of ADAPT in Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee. You can reach ADAPT people at either of these telephone numbers: Colorado 303-733-9324 Texas 512-442-0252