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- ADAPT (224)
THE HANDICAPPED COLORADAN Vol. 8, No. 4, Boulder, Colorado, November 1985 [This article continues in ADAPT 115 but the story is included here in its entirety for easier reading.] PHOTO on center-right of the page and shows several people in wheelchairs (including Larry Ruiz looking away on left, as you face the bus, and George Florum on right in black ADAPT T-shirt holding a coffee and a cigarette) in front of a large bus. One person stands in front of the bus holding a scarecrow-like effigy of a person in one hand and something else in the other. A person in a white shirt is seated in the driver's seat. Another person similarly dressed is standing next to him. Above them behind the windshield is a destination type sign reading “EASY.” Caption: DEMONSTRATORS BLOCKED BUSES in Long Beach during the fourth day of the Los Angeles demonstration. One protestor (center) holds up an effigy representing the American Public Transit Association. Police arrived later and made several arrests. Demonstrators said the Long Beach police treated them properly. [Headline] Access showdown in L.A. Leads to massive arrests In a scene reminiscent of the black civil rights marches of the 1960s, some 215 people in wheelchairs rolled down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles on Sunday, Oct. 7, to protest the lack of accessible mainline public transit in the United States. ' Chanting "We will ride!" and carrying inflammatory placards, the single-file column snaked its way 1.7 miles from the MacArthur Park staging area to the Bonaventure Hotel where the American Public Transit Association (APTA) was holding its national convention. Although the demonstrators had been denied a parade permit, police made no attempt to halt the march and routed traffic around the procession. However, the hands-off attitude disappeared once the column of wheelchair militants reached the hotel. As hotel security personnel blocked the only wheelchair-accessible elevator that gave access to the main lobby, several of the demonstrators pulled themselves from their wheelchairs and threw their bodies in front of the escalators, vowing to prevent anyone else from entering or leaving the hotel. The disabled demonstrators shouted "Access now! Access now!" while police deliberated their next move. Finally, after an hour, the police moved in. Eight demonstrators, including one woman, were arrested for “refusing to leave the scene of a riot," according to a police spokesperson. But they didn't go without a fight. George Florom of Colorado Springs thrashed about so hard that it took three officers to subdue him. One of the officers claimed that Florom kicked and bit him, During the scuffle, police said one of the demonstrators grabbed an officer's gun. Florom was removed to a specially equipped police van. He was soon joined by Edith Harris of Hartford, Conn, a veteran of other APTA demonstrations, who had been arrested during the San Antonio APTA protest. Harris had tried several times during the day to get the police to arrest her, even to the point of throwing shredded ADAPT literature in the street and demanding that police arrest her. Police merely removed her motorized chair from the street and picked up the paper, But when Harris threw herself on an escalator, the police moved in and escorted her to a waiting police van. Police and demonstrators differed as to how well the department handled the arrests. "We look bad no matter what we do," Sgt. Bill Tiffany said. A police spokesperson said the department had medical personnel on hand and tried to provide for the special needs of those arrested. That wasn't the case, according to Wade Blank of Denver, one of the founders of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), which helped organize the Los Angeles demonstration as it has similar protests in Denver (1983), Washington, D.C. (1984), and San Antonio, Texas (1985). "The police were real nice until we got to the Bonaventure," Blank said. “But it was a real bad situation at the hotel. The cops turned into real pigs. They wouldn't let us use the hotel restroom. Some of them laughed at a lot of disabilities of the demonstrators, and a few of them pulled their clubs and threatened us with them." Blank said he learned that the officers who pulled their clubs were later given reprimands. Lou Nau, chairman of the Disability Rights Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was also critical of how the police handled the arrests. Nau said that Mike Auberger, a quadriplegic community organizer for the Atlantis Community in Denver, was not allowed to use a bathroom for eight hours, causing hyperreflexia, while others who were arrested were not allowed to take necessary medications although they repeatedly explained the danger this might cause. Four men were handcuffed behind their backs and then left for up to five hours in their chairs in police vans, according to Nau. Of the eight arrested, Harris was released that same night and five of the men by the following afternoon. The other two men were not released until Tuesday morning. Some 53 disabled protestors maintained a night-long vigil outside the county jail. The police later issued this statement: “It must be stressed that the Los Angeles Police Department has repeatedly tried to meet with demonstration leaders in the attempt to provide legal alternatives to accomplish their objectives and avoid the distasteful necessity of arresting handicapped citizens." To that end, Jack Day, a board member of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (RTD flew to Denver earlier in the year to [print completely faded] in an attempt to talk the organization out of civil disobedience. Blank was one of those who met with Day. "We told him we wouldn't use civil disobedience if the (Southern California RTD) agreed to introduce and support a resolution at the APTA convention calling upon APTA to reverse its stand and back mandatory wheelchair lifts on buses," he said. Day said that was not possible. Meanwhile back in Los Angeles Day's other board members continued to discuss ways and means of handling the demonstrators. Ironically, Los Angeles — the city where demonstrators chose to make their point - is one of the most accessible in the country. California and Michigan are the only states that require all new public transit vehicles to be equipped with lifts. Usha Viswanathan, a spokesperson for the Southern California RTD, said that 1,891 of the district‘s 2,445 active buses were equipped with lifts and another 200 were being retrofitted. The lifts cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each. Within the next five years, the district intends to operate only lift-equipped buses, making it the first 100 percent accessible system in the country. In other parts of the country it's Up to the local transit provider to decide whether or not to offer accessible service. And that's the way it should bee, according Albert Engelken, APTA's deputy executive director. Geographical and climatic conditions have to be taken into consideration because lifts are difficult to operate in snow and on curved roads, Engelken said. In the late 1970s, the Carter administration's Department of Transportation mandated that all new buses be outfitted with wheelchair lifts. APTA, which acts as a lobbying and policy-making group for some 300 separate transit districts across the country, filed a lawsuit that eventually reversed that decision. Since then disabled groups have dogged APTA wherever it meets, insisting that the organization vote on a resolution calling for mandatory accessibility. That‘s why the demonstrators were in Southern California, Jim Parker of El Paso explained. Parker said ADAPT was very appreciative of the steps California was taking toward complete accessibility.” "This is a model city," he said. The demonstrators were in Los Angeles to embarrass APTA, not the local transit district, he said. That didn't stop the demonstrators from stopping buses, however. On Wednesday, Oct. 10, wheelchair demonstrators poured onto the streets of Long Beach, where they held several buses hostage. Protestors said they would release the buses if Laurance Jackson, general manager and president of Long Beach Transit and the newly elected president of APTA, would meet with them. A spokesperson for Jackson said that would be impossible, as Jackson had other commitments at the convention and the protestors had come unannounced. Before the day was done, police issued 33 misdemeanor citations for failure to disperse and arrested l6 protestors, all of whom were later released on their own recognizance. Blank said that the Long Beach police acted appropriately under the circumstances. Long Beach had been the scene of another confrontation earlier that same week. On Monday, 26 wheelchair demonstrators staged a roll-in at the office of U.S Rep.Glen Anderson (D-Long Beach), who is chairman of the House Transportation Committee. Anderson, who had been expected in his office that day, had been detained in Washington due to a heavy work load. The congressman later issued a statement pointing out that he had consistently voted to support accessible systems. Anderson blamed the Reagan administration, not Congress, for overturning a "requirement that the handicapped be given full accessibility to public transit." Most of the demonstrators agreed with that assessment. Blank and Parker compared APTA to the Klu Klux Klan and called upon its individual members either to fire its executive board, including executive vice president Jack Gilstrap, a longtime foe of mandatory accessibility, or to pull out and form a new national transit organization. A Gilstrap aide said he had no intention of resigning. Blank said Gilstrap and the rest of the APTA membership could expect to see them again when the organization holds its next national convention in Detroit in 1986. ADAPT plans similar tactics, since Michigan, like California, has already opted for total accessibility. "It's a question of civil rights," Blank said." And it's a national issue. Wherever they go, you can expect to find us." 3 photos filling the top three-quarters of the page. Photo 1: A man (George Florum) in a manual wheelchair wearing a black no-steps ADAPT T-shirt is loaded onto a lift of some type of vehicle by three beefy police officers Caption: GEORGE FLOROM OF of Colorado Springs is arrested for blocking buses in Long Beach. Photo 2: A dark shot of a man in a white T-shirt (Chris Hronis) being pulled upward by several sets of hands. Caption: CHRIS HONIS [sic], a California ADAPT member, is arrested at the Bonaventure Hotel. Photo 3: a couple of small groups of protesters in wheelchairs and standing, are in front of one bus and beside another, while police stand nearby. Caption: ACTIVISTS hold a bus captive in Long Beach. To the left of photo 3 is an ADAPT "we will ride" logo with the wheelchair access guy and an equal sign in the big wheel. - ADAPT (88)
Rocky Mountain News 7/6/78 [This story continues in ADAPT 91 but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] NEWS Photo by Dick Davis: A city bus is parked at an angle to the street across 2 or 3 lanes. In front, a small woman in a power chair and dark sunglasses, sits holding a very large sign that reads "Taxation without Transportation" and has a wheelchair symbol of access. Two other people in wheelchairs are backed up to the side of the bus and a small group of other people in wheelchairs are in the street by the blockers. Mel Conrardy is in the wheelchair closest to the camera. Caption reads: A group of handicapped persons "seized" two RTD buses Wednesday, protesting what they called the firm's insensitivity to handicapped. [Headline] Buses seized, police decline to make arrests [Subheading] DISABLED SNARL TRAFFIC IN PROTEST By GARY DELSOHN News Staff Protesting what they said was the Regional Transportation District's insensitivity to Denver's handicapped, about 25 disabled persons "seized" two buses during Wednesday morning's downtown rush hour, snarling traffic and daring police to make arrests. While supporters helped them board two eastbound buses on Colfax Avenue at Broadway, several persons in wheelchairs surrounded the crowded vehicles. Early morning commuters had to walk two blocks to catch other buses while RTD drivers radioed their headquarters for assistance. Shortly after the 8:30 takeover, police arrived, admitting they weren't sure what to do. As commanders came to assist, police decided not to arrest any handicapped protesters because, as one sergeant said, “We don't want to be the fall guys on this.“ Police said they didn't want to risk injuring any of the severely disabled persons by loading them into police vans, nor did they wish to be pictured in television newscasts or newspapers arresting persons in wheelchairs. TWO PERSONS WERE arrested for refusing to obey police orders, but they were local counselors - not in wheelchairs - who work with many of Denver's approximately 8,000 handicapped. John Simpson, RTD executive director, arrived at the scene about 10 a.m. and talked with the demonstrators, asking them to leave the street and explain their grievances away from traffic. The protesters refused to move, saying Simpson and RTD have been meeting with the handicapped for years and done little to solve their transportation problems. "Handicapped people have a right to ride the bus just like everyone else," said Lin Chism, a disabled University of Colorado at Denver student studying rehabilitation counseling. “Today is the first of many times we will have to do this to get RTD to come to some agreement with us.“ Calling themselves the Colorado Coalition of Disabled Citizens, the protesters, organized and led by Denver's privately owned Atlantis Community for the handicapped, said the demonstration was a response to last week's federal court ruling that RTD was not violating the constitutional rights of the city's handicapped by not providing them access to RTD buses. ATLANTIS AND OTHER groups representing the handicapped and elderly last year sued RTD to require installation on all new buses of devices providing access to persons in wheelchairs. Wade Blank, director of Atlantis, which helps handicapped persons adjust to non-institutional life, said demonstrators hoped to get the attention of U.S. District Court Judge Richard P. Matsch, who made last week's ruling, and "others in the judicial system so they know what we‘re up against. “Like Martin Luther King. we have tried to go through the system," Blank said. "Now, like Dr. King, we must practice civil disobedience until the judges change their minds or Congress makes new laws." A clerk for Judge Matsch said, “The judge does not respond to reporters‘ questions and makes no comment on a ruling he has made." Blank said Atlantis lawyers will appeal Matsch's decision. He said the group also plans additional disruptive protests. “These people have no place else to go," he said, adding that they would not even be able to attend meetings on the subject proposed by Simpson because they could not find transportation. Simpson, talking with protesters, police and reporters throughout the morning, said RTD is trying to help disabled persons get around town and is one of the most progressive agencies in the nation in that area. RTD HAS I2 BUSES equipped with hydraulic lifts and locking safety clamps for persons in wheelchairs. Simpson said. Transporting several hundred persons to and from work and school daily, the "special service", buses appear to be the best way to move handicapped persons, he said. Equipping other buses with elevator lifts wouldn't be feasible, according to Simpson, because many handicapped persons can't get to bus stops located throughout town. Simpson pleaded with the demonstrators to move and let the two stalled buses continue down Colfax Avenue, even ordering one of the special buses into the area to handle the crowd. He also took reporters through the bus, demonstrating its features. But the protesters refused to move, saying their problem wasn't one of immediate transportation but rather a long-term dilemma exacerbated by the fact that only nine of the 12 special buses are in use. The other three, they said, are in storage at RTD garages. Simpson said RTD will have another 28 buses designed to carry handicapped persons in operation by September but their use has been delayed by mechanical problems. POLICE COMMANDERS repeatedly tried to mediate an immediate solution to the the traffic jam created by the protesters, but demonstrators said they would not leave unless Simpson gave them a written promise that all RTD buses would be made accessible to the handicapped. Simpson, declining this offer, said he would meet "with anyone, any time" on the issue. "We have been sensitive," Simpson said. "But some of these problems Congress will have to address." Demonstrators also expressed concern that the waiting list to get on the special buses is 1,000 persons long and the only alternative for persons without friends or relatives to drive them around is a private cab service that charges about $16 per round trip. Many city and state officials were on the scene, watching and talking to police and demonstrators. Mary Krane, a supervisor in the city's social services department, said she quit RTD advisory committee on the handicapped and elderly last year in frustration. "I resigned because it was so hard to get anything done, " she said. "We messed around with a few things but nothing really happened. No one has been willing to make the capital investment necessary to make buses accessible to the handicapped." JEROME SPRIGS, A member of the Governor's Council on the Handicapped, said disabled persons "know they're getting the run-around from the RTD because many of these special buses are being used in rural areas." Lisa Wheeler, 20, an Atlantis counselor, and Bill Roem, who runs a Lakewood home for the physically handicapped, were arrested about 11 am after they ignored a police order to leave the street. "Police are doing their jobs, " Roem said from inside a squad car. "But there has to be some awareness of the problem." Ms. Wheeler and Roem were book at police headquarters and released on $100 bond. Police blocked traffic on Colfax Avenue from Delaware on the west to Lincoln on the east. Traffic during the evening rush hour didn't seem to move any slower than usual, as protesters said they probably would continue their vigil throughout the night. - ADAPT (354)
Austin American-Statesman Sunday, October 25, 1987 Lifestyle section Title: Streetcars and Desire Activist couple dedicate lives to tearing down walls between city buses and the disabled By Carlos Vidal Greth, American-Statesman Staff (This is a compilation of the article that is on ADAPT 354 and ADAPT 353. The content is all included here for easier reading.) Most visitors to the Bay Area relish the opportunity to hop a cable car and "climb halfway to the stars," as Tony Bennett croons in his signature song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Stephanie Thomas, organizer for Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, had other ideas. "To mobility-impaired people, keeping those historic symbols of public transit alive memorializes inaccessibility and makes it seem like a positive thing," she said. ADAPT, a national civil-rights group, strives to make it easier for disabled people to ride city buses. They differ from mainstream disability-rights groups in that members sometimes commit acts of civil disobedience when the usual political channels clog or hit a dead end. Thomas, her husband Bob Kafka, and eight other Austinites went to San Francisco in late September to conduct a protest during the national convention of the American Public Transit Association, a lobbying organization. Kafka and 15 others were arrested when they climbed out of their wheelchairs and staged a sit-in at the cable car turnaround at Powell and Market streets. Thomas was arrested twice, once for blocking a shuttle bus and once for blocking a cable car. "I've been arrested eight times or so," she said. "I've lost count. Bob has been arrested 14 times. The police are usually aware it's a demonstration about civil rights, and that we're not out to hurt their city. But it's scary. We're not automatons. Some members break down and cry when they go to prison." As far as Thomas is concerned, the suffering has been worth it. "The demonstrations got national exposure. More important, we got the transit association's attention. They are beginning to listen." Thomas, who is also executive director of the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities, could sit for a poster portrait of the committed political activist. Her shock of amber hair shifts of its own accord like the wind ruffling a field of grain. Wide, blue eyes fix visitors with the riveting gaze of a woman who believes she fights for what is right. She was born 30 years ago in New York to parents who fought for justice in their way. Her father organized political campaigns and worked for arms control. Her mother, a writer, was involved in the women's movement. "Mom taught me to question people's perceptions," Thomas said. "The women's and disabled movements have something in common: We're defined by our bodies. You have to fight that all the time." Her first protest occurred when she was in elementary school. Mothers in the apartment building where her family lived wanted to establish a day-care center. The owners didn't want to provide the space. "Women and children took over the building," Thomas said. "We weren't angry college protestors. We were non-threatening moms and kids. But our presence made a difference." Despite her progressive upbringing, she was a shy girl who hid from the world behind the covers of books. When she was 17, her legs were paralyzed when she fell off a farm tractor while doing chores. What could have been a tragedy turned her life around. "I realized that life doesn't go on forever, and that you need to make the most of every moment," Thomas said. Thomas attended Harvard, where she and other disabled students organized a group to help make campus more accessible. "When I look back, I see we were very tame,” she said. “We were polite but usually got what we asked for.” Over the years, Thomas became increasingly active in disability rights. She got involved in independent living centers, communities of disabled people supporting one another so they can live with dignity outside institutions. In the early 1980s, she joined the Austin Resources Center for Independent Living. She went to work for the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities in 1985. The 9-year-old coalition lobbies for, represents and coordinates 90 organizations (including ADAPT) concerned with disabilities, as well as the more than 2 million disabled Texans. “It is the collective voice for the disabled in Texas,” said Kaye Beneke, spokeswoman for the Texas Rehabilitation Commission. "They’re committed - the members live every day with the problems they try to solve. “Stephanie understands there’s a spectrum of political views in the coalition, which tend to be more middle-of-the-road than ADAPT. She takes responsibility for the representing of all those views. But don’t call the coalition passive. They’ve had their way in the legislature and on the local level.” As a leader in two of Texas major disability-rights organizations, Thomas has her hands full. It helps having Bob Kafka, who broke his back in a car accident in 1973, at her side. The experienced trouble maker -- albeit trouble for a good cause -- has made a name for himself. He won the Governor’s Citation for Meritorious Service in 1986. Appropriately, Kafka met Thomas at a disability-rights conference. “Stephanie was real involved, real committed and real attractive,” he said. Sharing home and office has increased their commitment to the cause they serve- and to each other. “Bob and I are an activist couple,” Thomas said. “It’s intense because we work so closely. But it’s rewarding. It has made us an incredibly tight couple.” Thomas has to rework her concept of activism when she joined ADAPT. “Demonstrations force the public to look at disabled people in a different light,” she said. “The cripple is the epitome of powerlessness. We say we’re sorry if it scares you to look at me, but we have to live our lives.” Confrontation, however can cost allies as well as foes. This year, the Paralyzed Veterans of America severed ties with ADAPT and any organization "advocating illegal civil disobedience.” “Our charter states that we must act in accordance with the laws of the land,” said Phil Rabin, director of education. “To act otherwise would be to violate our charter. “The veterans and ADAPT members share first-hand the frustration of living in a society that is not accessible to the disabled. We don’t want to fight ADAPT. It’s a waste of precious resources to divert our energies.” Though Thomas’ group is controversial, it has achieved many of its goals. Albert Engleken, deputy executive director for the American Public Transit Association in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that ADAPT’s street theater has had some effect. In September his organization created a task force to study the issue of providing service for disabled, he said. Engelken, however is not a convert to their cause. “ADAPT wants a lift on every transit bus in the country,” Engelken said. “We believe it should be left to local transit authorities to decide how to handle transportation for disabled people. Transit officials are not robber barons. We’re paid by the public to provide the most mobility for the most people.” Thomas knows how to work within the system. Ben Gomez, director of development for Capital Metro, said ADAPT members have been effective on the Mobility Impaired Service Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations on service to the transit authority board of directors. “They’re well-organized,” Gomez said. “We don’t always agree on the approach and issues. We’ve made many of the adjustments they’ve asked for, but not always within their time frame.” The concessions have been gratifying, but Thomas has only begun to fight. “ADAPT took a dead issue änd made it hot again,” she said. For information on American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, write to ADAPT of Texas, 2810 Pearl, Austin 78705/ To learn more about the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities, call 443-8252, or write to P.O. Box 4709, Austin 78765. [curator note: addresses and phone numbers no longer valid] Staff Photo by Mike Boroff: A man (Bob Kafka) with Canadian (wrist cuff) crutches, a plaid shirt, light colored jeans and sneakers sits in the lap of a woman (Stephanie Thomas) with wild big hair and a button down shirt. She is sitting in a manual wheelchair. Caption reads: "Bob and I are an activist couple,” says Stephanie Thomas who met Bob Kafka at a rights conference. “It’s intense because we work so closely. But it’s rewarding.” Photo by Russ Curtis: A group of protesters are looking up at something over their heads and their mouths are open shouting. In the front of the picture a woman in a manual wheelchair (Stephanie Thomas) is sitting on a line on the pavement that reads passenger zone. She has her finger raised pointing and is wearing a t-shirt with the ADAPT no-steps logo. Beside her is a man (Jim Parker) with a headband looking back over his shoulder, beside him another man in a wheelchair. Behind Jim stands a woman (Babs Johnson) with her arms by her sides and her mouth open yelling. Behind her a line of other protesters is arriving. Caption reads: ADAPT organizer Stephanie Thomas traveled to San Francisco to participate in a rally protesting the policies of the American Public Transit Association. - ADAPT (200)
The Handicapped Coloradan, vol.8, no.7, Boulder, CO February 1986 (This article is continued in ADAPT 198 but the entire article is included here for ease of reading.) PHOTO 1: Along a street a large line of people in wheelchairs and others move past a shady park with vendors with small umbrellas over their stands. Several of the protesters carry placards in their laps, one of which reads: A PART OF NOT APART FROM. Faces are too dark to tell who is in the line. Caption reads: In the shadow of the Alamo a wheelchair column moved along the streets of San Antonio, Texas in April 1985. Protestors were heading for the hotel headquarters for the regional convention of the American Public Transit Association. PHOTO 2: Mike Auberger, with his mustache, trimmed beard and shoulder length hair looks at the camera with his intense eyes. Wearing a light colored sweater and shirt with a collar, he sits in his wheelchair which is mostly visible because of his chest strap. Caption reads: Mike Auberger of Denver was one of some 16 Coloradans who went to Texas to protest the lack of accessible public buses. [Headline] The eyes of Texas are on outside agitators -- and a lot of folks from down the street There's never been much love lost between Coloradans and Texans, at least not since those folks from the Lone Star State first wandered into the Rocky Mountains and discovered deep powder in the winter and cool valleys in the summer. As Winnebago after Cadillac after pickup poured across Raton Pass, Coloradans greeted Texans with open cash registers and - increasingly -- ridicule. Our scorn for Texans even reached into the highest office in the state when Governor Dick Lamm greeted his Texan counterpart with this joke: A Texan died here recently and we couldn't find a coffin large enough, so we gave him an enema and buried him in a shoebox. Texans were not amused, though by now they should have come to expect such treatment. We've been squabbling ever since a detachment of Colorado militia turned back a Texas Confederate army at Glorietta Pass during the Civil War. Each summer now we give Texas a chance to even the score down near Alamosa in a rotten tomato battle. OF course we always make sure our army's bigger. That animosity, however, doesn't carry over to the disabled population of the two states. In fact, a dozen or more militant wheelchair activists from Colorado have been rolling onto the streets of several Texas cities during the past couple of years to aid their counterparts in the battle to force Texas transit systems to make their buses wheelchair-accessible. "After Colorado, Texas is out best organized state," Wade Blank, the long haired ex-preacher who helped found American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) in Denver two years ago. ADAPT chapters have sprung up in several other states, notably Illinois, Maine, and Connecticut, but none have garnered as many active members as Texas. Scores of Texans have blocked buses in San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and El Paso in recent months to focus the attention of the state's media on the lack of accessible buses. Part of ADAPT's success in Texas lies in the fact that there are so few lift-equipped buses in this huge state. Some Texas cities did order accessible buses when the Carter administration's Department of Transportation ordered mandatory accessibility in the 1970s. However, most of these lifts were never used as the American Public Transit Association (APTA), a national lobbying and policy making organization for transit systems, successfully fought the regulation in federal appeals court. APTA maintains that the local transit provider is the best judge of whether or not accessibility is feasible. Adverse climatic and geographical conditions are generally cited as the chief obstacles to lifts. Texas ADAPT leaders point out that few areas in Texas experience severe winter storms and that the state's larger cities are generally laid out on flat plains. That was one of the points wheelchair activist tried to make when they picketed in April 1985 regional APTA convention in San Antonio. A sizable contingent of Coloradans joined those picket lines, leading to a charge by the local newspaper, the San Antonio Light, that the demonstration was the work of outside agitators and that most of the city's disabled population was quite happy with using paratransit. Spot demonstrations and bus seizures soon followed in other Texas cities, while some Texas ADAPT members turned outside agitators themselves by participating in demonstrations at the APTA national convention in Los Angeles in October 1985. Several Texans including Jim Parker of El Paso and Bob Kafka of Austin, were among The dozens arrested. Supporters of lifts point to cities like Seattle and Denver where most of the buses are accessible -- and increasingly free of breakdowns. Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTD) maintenance crew made a few simple changes in some of their lift systems and managed to operate experimental buses without a single breakdown. ADAPT argues that some transit providers have deliberately sabotaged their lift systems to justify removing them. Opponents of lifts argue that paratransit--usually vans that pick riders up at their residences -- is more cost effective. Supporters point to Seattle where the cost per ride on mainline buses is less than $15 a trip, which compares very favorably with the best deals offered by paratransit systems. Convenience is a major factor too, according to Mike Auberger of ADAPT-Denver, who points out that most paratransit systems require two days' advance notice and users might have to travel all day just to keep a 15 minute dental appointment. "Me, I like being able to roll down to the corner bus stop," Auberger said. ADAPT grew out of coalition of Denver disabled groups who were successful in battling RTD over wheelchair lifts. Protestors seized buses and chained themselves to railings at RTD headquarters before the battle was won. Two years ago they went national when their arch foe, APTA, held its national convention in Denver, APTA refused to allow ADAPT to present a resolution to the convention calling for mandatory accessibility until pressure was brought to bear by Denver Mayor Federico Pena, a pro-lift advocate. APTA declined, however, to vote on the issue, and ADAPT picketed the group's 1984 national convention in Washington, DC, in October. Twenty-four protestors were arrested during the demonstration, including Parker. Parker, who was joined in Washington by four other Texans, isn't through with APTA yet. When that group holds its Western Regional Convention in San Antonio April 20, Parker said they can expect almost as many demonstrators as went to Washington. "I can't think of any place in Texas where it (public transportation for the disabled) is as good as it is here in Denver -- in fact it's poor everywhere here. Dallas just decided to buy 200 or 300 new buses without lifts." The situation isn't any better in his home city of El Paso, according to Parker. "It's very poor here," he said. "There are 30 city cruisers here with lifts but the city has shown no desire to use them." Parker thinks too many people in wheelchairs are too passive. "They're not used to pushing people, but we're starting to see some changes." However, Parker points out that Texas is a very conservative state and people -- including the disabled -- are slow to change. People wishing to participate in the San Antonio demonstration should call Parker (915-564-0544) for further information. PHOTO: Two bearded, bare chested wheelchair activists (Jim Parker, and [I think] Mike Auberger) are in the foreground. Parker, his shoulder length hair tied back with a bandana, sits with his foot up on his opposite knee, hands in his fingerless gloves. The two are facing away from the camera and talking with another man who is kneeling down beside them looking up at them. Caption reads: Jim Parker (center) of ADAPT-El Paso meets with a newsman during a picket of McDonald's. Many disabled persons objected to the fast food chain's refusal to immediately retrofit all of its restaurants so that they would be accessible to wheelchair patrons. Parker is currently involved in helping organize a demonstration at the Western Regional Convention of the American Public Transit Association (APTA) in San Antonio Oct. 20 - 24 [sic]. - ADAPT (395)
St. Louis Post Dispatch 5-22-88 PHOTO by Ted Dargan/Post Dispatch: A Line of ADAPT people roll down a city street. The first person in line (Mike Auberger) has two long braids and sunglasses. His arms hang on either side of his motorized wheelchair and his ADAPT shirt is somewhat covered by the chest strap on his chair. Next to Mike is a man in a manual wheelchair with curly hair and a beard (Bob Kafka) who has is legs crossed and is wearing the same ADAPT shirt as Mike. Behind them a man (Jerry Eubanks) with no legs in a manual wheelchair is being pushed by a blind man (Frank Lozano) who is smiling. Behind them is another man in a maual wheelchair. Behind him is someone in a motorized wheelchair who is looking off to the side. Behind them is another person in a wheelchair. The photo is grainy so it's hard to make out many details. Caption reads: Disabled people demonstrating downtown last week for more accessible bus service. Title: Bus Stop By Joan Bray Of the Post-Dispatch Staff ACTIV1STS FROM local advocacy groups were absent from the scores of protesters who took to St. Louis streets last week asserting the rights of the disabled to accessible bus service. Leaders of the local groups say tactics, not goals, caused them and their members to opt out of the demonstrations. About 150 people blocked entrances at Union Station and surrounded buses at the Greyhound terminal. A majority of them were in wheelchairs, on crutches or otherwise disabled. And they were out-of-towners. They belong to a loosely woven group, American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, called ADAPT for short. The group was protesting the policies of the American Public Transit Association, which was holding a regional meeting at the Omni International Hotel at Union Station. As a result of ADAPT's civil disobedience, 78 arrests were made, two group court appearances were held and a lawsuit was filed by the group over treatment at the City Workhouse. We support ADAPT's policies on access 1,000 percent," said Max J. Starkloff. He is executive director here of Paraquad Inc., which advocates rights for the handicapped. "But we have not participated in the demonstrations." "Our methods are negotiation, public testimony and organized public rallies," Starkloff said. "Our goals ore the same" as ADAPT's. Both the local activists and ADAPT want the transit association to push for installing a wheelchair lift on every bus in the country. They see 100 percent accessibility as a civil right. Rut the transit association notes in a written statement that no such accessibility is required by the Constitution, the Congress or the courts. It says the number of lifts on buses has increased to 30 percent now from 11 percent in 1981. In that same period, the administration of President Ronald Reagan has slashed the federal transit program's budget by 47 percent, the association says. The association says each local transportation agency should be allowed to determine how it will provide access for the disabled. Special services — like the Call-A-Ride service operated by the Bi-State Development Agency — may work better than lift-equipped buses in some areas, the association says. Local groups' methods for effecting change include working within the system. Starkloff serves on Bi-State's committee on transit for the elderly and disabled. The chairman of that committee, Fred Cowell, is executive director of the Gateway chapter of Paralyzed Veterans of America. Bi-State has made a commitment to install wheelchair lifts on all its buses, Cowell said. But the committee wants the agency's board of directors to adopt a policy stating it will do so. "We know that the buses are here to stay," Cowell said. "If or when budget cuts come, special services such as Call-A-Ride would be the first to go." Cowell and Starkloff said they feared that between the bureaucracy and the protests, the primary point — the need for equal transportation — was being missed. "A disabled person is not unlike any other person," Cowell said. Disabled people need to get to their jobs, to medical care and to social engagements, be said. "There is absolutely no difference in their need to get around," he said. Starkloff noted that the cost of a van equipped for a wheelchair — a minimum of about $20,000 — was prohibitive for most people. But the disabled should not have to wait at a bus stop on the chance that the next bus may be equipped with a lift, be said. Nor should they have to plan their trips 24 hours in advance, as Call-A-Ride requires, he said. Cowell said, "The main thing the (BI-State) committee has been trying to do is develop a deepening concern for services for the disabled and elderly." The fact that the committee has been successful in persuading Bi-State to buy only buses with lifts prevented the agency from bearing the brunt of ADAPT's effort here, one of the protest leaders said. The Rev. Wade Blank, a Presbyterian minister from Denver, is a co-director of ADAPT. He has a daughter who is disabled. Two months ago, representatives of ADAPT met with State officials in preparation for their trip here and learned of the agency's commitment to lifts, Blank said. As a result, ADAPT aimed its protests at the transit association's meeting and Greyhound Bus Lines. Greyhound is bidding on local routes in some metropolitan areas — Dallas, for one, Blank said. But it does not equip its buses with lifts, he said. A spokesman for Greyhound said last week that, instead, it provided a free ticket for a companion for a disabled traveler. Regarding the transit meeting, Blank said: "Our whole intent is to go after people who are so much wrapped up in the system that they insulate themselves from the issue. They have to live and breathe (ADAPT's protests) when they go to these conventions." Demonstrators here represented some of ADAPTs 33 chapters across the country, Blank said. He said his headquarters was with a group in Denver called the Atlantis Community, which moves disabled people out of nursing homes into independent living arrangements. Funding comes primarily from church donations and foundation grants, he said. From 1978 to 1981, ADAPT protested — and "caused a major disruption" — in Denver every month, Blank said. In 1982, the buses there became 100 percent equipped with lifts, he noted. ADAPT has since protested in all the cities where the transit association has met and where it has been invited by other activists, for a total of about 15 cities, Blank said. [unreadable] ...only buses with lifts, he said. Blank said the failure of local groups to join ADAPT's protests did not weaken the cause. Another success that ADAPT points to is a ruling by a federal Judge in Philadelphia in January striking down a regulation of the US. Department of Transportation that allows transit authorities to spend only 3 percent of their budgets on the disabled. The Judge postponed the effect of the ruling while the Justice Department appeals it. Three percent of Bi-State's budget for the current fiscal year Is $2.6 million, said Rosemary Covington, an agency official who works with the advisory committee. But Bi-State will spend only $1 million because of delays in getting bids on new buses and in expanding the Call-A-Ride service. "We are having budget problems, but that wasn't the reason" the money wasn't spent, Covington said. The remaining $1.6 million does not roll over to the fiscal year that begins July 1, she said. She said that by early next year, Bi-State expected that 221 of its fleet of about 700 buses will be equipped with lifts, 12 of the more than 120 routes will be operated entirely with lift-equipped buses, the Call-A-Ride service will include all of St. Louis County and the city and a voucher system will be available for back-up cab service. Equipping all the agency's buses with lifts will take six to seven years, Covington said. Meanwhile the committee will help evaluate the services for the disabled, she said. "If ridership doesn't materialize" on the buses with lifts or "if it costs thousands or millions (of dollars) to maintain them, that will enter into the decision making," Covington said. Bi-State is training drivers how to use the lifts and plans to promote and advertise the service heavily, she said. - ADAPT (635)
Different TIMES, September 24, 1990, p. 6 ADAPT fights for attendant services (Reprinted with permission from the Disability Rag; Box 145; Louisville, KY 40201.) [This story continues on 623 but the text is included here in full, for ease of reading.] “People with disabilities have the civil and human right to dependable attendant services that meet our daily needs in the location and manner of our choice." This simple declaration, made in Denver this summer, signaled the offensive being launched by ADAPT against “the nursing home lobby feeding off peoples' lives." It's ironic, says ADAPT member Mark Johnson. "Here we've finally got our rights now, in a law, and here you have more and more severely disabled people wanting to kill themselves—literally kill themselves—because they're being forced into nursing homes." “That Ken Bergstedt in Nevada [who petitioned the court in May to disconnect his respirator] is literally saying, “l'll end my life before I'll go in a nursing home," Johnson said. “What do you expect when people only have institutionalization to look forward to?" adds actress Nancy Becker Kennedy, one of the group that conducted a hunger strike in Los Angeles in July to protest the cut of California’s In Home Supportive Services. “Their attempts to stay in their homes are thwarted." lt’s the same with Georgia's highly publicized Larry McAfee, who was just put into a “group home," says ADAPT. Even after all the publicity, the State of Georgia will not put any money into funding attendant services in one's own home. And ADAPT is fed up. Recalling the phrase the transit industry used to argue that each city should decide whether or not to put lifts on buses, ADAPT calls the patchwork system of funding in-home services “the old ‘local option’ stuff all over again." “We're sick of it,"says Johnson. There needs to be a national commitment. In California, activists battled for several months to restore their In Home Support Services program which had been entirely cut from the state budget—and succeeded only in restoring it to its former level, which allows a disabled person to hire an attendant only at minimum wage and for no more than eight hours a day. People who need an attendant around the clock, like Ken Bergstedt, have little hope of avoiding a nursing home even in California, often cited as the state with the best attendant services program in the nation. Yet such battles sap the energy of disability activists for the larger fight for a national commitment. ADAPT has modified its former name, “American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation" to “American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today" to reflect its new focus. ADAPT says attendant services are a right. The group wants the program it's calling for to make attendant services available "based on functional need" rather than “whether a person can work or not." They don't want "employability" to be a "condition for getting services. And they don't want eligibility based on any specific disability, as it is in many states now. They want it to be available “to people of all ages, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with back-up emergency services."They stress they're not asking for “someone to hold your hand" but are speaking of the realistic needs of people like McAfee, Rick Tauscher, and Bergstedt who need an attendant available around the clock. They also say a program that allows the disabled person maximum control over an attendant is mandatory. Maybe a disabled person won’t want that control; maybe they'll want someone else to handle the paperwork and hiring decisions. That should be the disabled person‘s option, they say. There’s a quality-control issue here, they insist; they want to make sure disabled people get quality care but are allowed maximum say over personal services they receive—which is all too often not the case today as home "health" agencies muscle their way into the home "care" field. They‘re sick of the word “care.” They want a program that doesn’t keep anyone from services because they make too much money; they're willing, they say, to deal with a sliding scale for fees for such a program; but they want it available to anyone who needs it—regardless of income. It's a right, and cost is simply not an issue, they say. Keeping disabled people in institutions is ludicrously more expensive than providing in-home services in this country today. They blame that lack for the problems Larry MeAfee's constantly found himself in; they blame the nursing home industry for siphoning off the money that could go to fund such services. And they charge that home health agencies are nothing more than “the new nursing homes." Home health agencies “take people on Medicare and give them services and then bill them for $60 a pop," says ADAPT organizer Wade Blank. “Then when their Medicare coverage runs out after six months, they drop ‘em." The group says it’s also targeting “the big insurance companies like Prudential" and health maintenance organizations, who they say have a vested interest in keeping the system like it is. “We're saying that ethically and morally, nursing homes are not the place to go," says Blank. “When I see my severely disabled friends, living in their own homes, when l visit them in their apartments, listen with them to records or order in a pizza—and then I see my friends living in nursing homes, wasting away, waiting to die, I get very, very angry,” said Southern California ADAPT member Lilibeth Navarro. A survey of ADAPT members through their newsletter, Incitement, led them to decide to shift the focus to attendant services, said Navarro. And they're emphatic about the term too. “It’s not ‘attendant care‘ anymore," said Blank. “Whenever anybody said ‘care’ everybody booed,“ he added. It is fitting that ADAPT, whose original members came from Denver‘s Atlantis Community, will focus on attendant services. It was that need which led to the start of Atlantis, a “community” of disabled people and attendants. Atlantis “has a neat system,"agrees Navarro, noting that the 24-hour rotary attendant services allows any Atlantis person to have an attendant available whenever it's needed. “We could call an attendant at 11:30 p.m. and have somebody here," she said. “People who are having trouble with attendants can call and get an emergency back-up." Navarro, like others, said she knew of people “who endured abuse because they were afraid to lose their attendant"—"because it's so hard to find somebody, and nobody to turn to in an emergency situation." She related the story of a man whose attendant simply walked out on him and left him, unable even to reach a phone, for four days. “If his father hadn't checked on him, he'd be dead." “Only a national attendant program," she stressed, “will free us from emotional slavery Nancy Becker Kennedy agreed with Navarro. “The linchpin for independent living is in-home attendant services. It’s humane; it gives us a future." The group has sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan demanding a meeting in Atlanta Oct. 1; they've given Sullivan until Aug. 15 to reply. ADAPT activists from around the nation will descend on Atlanta the first week of October to launch the fight. They’ll be calling for a quarter of the money now going to the nursing home industry to “go into a pot for attendant services." As usual, ADAPT doesn’t expect this to happen without a fight -- primarily from the “nursing home lobby.” “This October," says Blank, “we will serve notice on those groups who are the enemies of a national attendant services program." TEXT BOX: ADAPT will converge on Atlanta — home of Morehouse College, HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan’s alma mater — on Sept. 28 for week-long direct action protest and training. Nationally known organizer Shel Trapp will conduct the session Saturday, Sept. 29. For more information on travel and hotel arrangements, contact ADAPT in Denver at (303) 936-1110. — Reprinted with permission from the Disability Rag; Box 145; Louisville, KY 40201. - ADAPT (122)
Denver Post [This article continues on in ADAPT 123, but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] Photo by Lyn Alweis: A short haired man in a jacket and dark slacks [Mel Conrardy] is lifted in his wheelchair from the sidewalk to a bus. The lift comes out of the front door of the bus and has railings on either side of the lift almost as tall as the seated man. Just by the bus door is a sign on the side of the bus that says "RTD Welcome Aboard." Caption: An RTD bus with wheelchair lift provides mobility for Mel Conrardy Title: Leaders of handicapped rate RTD service best in country By Norm Udevitz, Denver Post Staff Writer Disabled Denverites just a few years ago had as much chance of riding a bus as they did of climbing Mount Everest. “It was brutal the way RTD treated us,” said Mike Auberger, an official in the Atlantis Community, for the disabled and a leader in the fight that has turned the Regional Transportation District’s handicapped service around. In the 1970s and early 1980s, RTD busses then rarely equipped with wheelchair lifts, often left wheelchair-bound riders stranded on streets. Drivers, lacking training in dealing with visually or language impaired people, panicked when blind or deaf riders tried to board buses. “It used to be that even in the dead of winter, when it was below zero, those of us in wheelchairs would wait 2 or 3 hours for a bus to finally stop," Auberger recalls. “And often the lift was broken and we couldn't get on the bus anyway. And usually the drivers were rude and angry. They would tell us that we were ruining their schedules." But conditions have changed, Auberger says: “Right now, Denver has the most accessible public transit system for the handicapped — and all the public - in the country." Debbie Ellis, a state social services worker who heads the agency's Handicapped Advisory Council, agrees, saying: “It took a lot of pressure, but RTD has responded and now the bus system is doing a good job of serving the handicapped." Leaders of national programs for the disabled also agree. In fact, the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped will bring 5,000 delegates, many of them handicapped, to its national conference in Denver in April. This will be the first time in four decades the group has held its national session outside of Washington DC. “One of the key reasons we're meeting in Denver this year is because it just might be the most comfortable city in the country for the handicapped,” says Sharon Milcrut, head of the Colorado Coalition for Persons with Disabilities, which is hosting the conference. “A very important aspect of that comfort," she notes, “is how accessible the transit system is for the handicapped.” It didn't get that way easily. In the decade between 1974 and 1984, handicapped activists had to pressure indifferent RTD administrators and directors. Each gain was hard won. “We used every tactic in the book, from lawsuits to bus blockades on the street and sit-ins at the RTD offices," says Wade Blank, an Atlantis group director. “The lawsuits didn't help much but when we took to the streets in the late 1970s, I think that's when we started getting their attention." Blank and others also say the 1984 hiring of Ed Colby as RTD general manager helped. Before he arrived, less than half of the 750 RTD buses had wheelchair lifts, which often were in disrepair. Training for drivers to learn how to deal with handicapped riders was minimal. Agency directors resisted change. RTD relied heavily on a costly special van operation called Handyride - a door-to-door pickup service for handicapped. It has cost $13[? glare makes number hard to read] million to run since it began in 1975. “Over the past couple of years the turnaround has been phenomenal," Auberger says. “All of RTD's new buses are being ordered with lifts and older buses are being retrofitted." By 1986's end, almost 80 percent of the bus fleet — 608 of 765 buses — had wheelchair lifts; 82 percent of the fleet's 6,242 daily trips are now accessible for the disabled. Plans call for the fleet to be 100 percent lift-equipped by 1987's end. “The lifts aren't breaking down all the time now, either," Auberger said, noting that agency officials found drivers had neglected to report broken lifts: “That way the lifts stayed broken and drivers had an excuse for not picking us up. A bunch of people were fired over that and others realized that Colby wasn't kidding about improving handicapped service." Driver training also has improved dramatically. “It isn't perfect yet,” Ellis of the advisory council says. "But everyone is working hard at it. What we are finding is that 20 percent of the drivers understand that they are moving people, all kinds of people, and they're really great with the handicapped. “Another 20 percent figure their job is to move buses and to heck with passengers, all kinds of passengers. That bottom 20 percent probably won't ever change. So we're working real hard on the 60 percent in between," Ellis says. Drivers, for example, learn to help blind riders. “That’s an improvement that helps the disabled, but it also helps regular passengers who are newcomers to the city,” Ellis says. All the improvements haven't come cheap. Since 1974, more than $5million has been spent on lifts and lift maintenance, most of the expense was incurred in the last three years. RTD plans to spend $9 million more in the next six years to keep the fleet up to its current standards and pay for more driver training. Another $4 million will be spent on HandyRide service. Ironically, Auberger and Ellis both say one of the biggest problems remaining is getting more handicapped people to use mass transit. “There are no reliable figures," Ellis says. “But we think there are about 20,000 handicapped people in the metro area and only about 200 or 300 are using buses on a regular basis." Auberger, confined to a wheelchair after breaking his neck in an accident ll years ago, complains: “The medical system builds a bubble around handicapped people and makes them think they have to be protected. "That's just not true in most cases. So one of the things we're doing now is educating the handicapped to overcome their fears. We've finally got a bus system that works for us and we want the disabled to use it." Photo by Lyn Alweis: A rather straight looking man [Mel Conrardy] in a white jacket, big mittens, and a motorized wheelchair, wears a slight smile as he rides the bus. Someone in a dark jacket stands beside him, and behind him, further back on the bus, other riders are sitting on the bus seats. Caption reads: A bus seat folds up to anchor Mel Conrardy's wheelchair to the floor. Conrardy commutes to work at the Atlantis Community. - ADAPT (350)
San Francisco Bay Guardian 9/23/87 Disabled to march for transit access By: Cheryl Davis When members of the American Public Transit Association gather in San Francisco during the last week of September, they will be met by disabled people from across the country who plan to demonstrate against a national transit policy they say is unfair because it separates them from other transit users. Specifically, disabled activists intend to protest the widespread use of special vans to transport disabled riders door-to-door, a system commonly referred to as “paratransit.” That system, they say, is a form of segregation. In its place, they argue, all buses and trains should be equipped to accommodate people in wheelchairs as part of as overall policy fully integrating the disabled into society. “Full accessibility,” they argue, is a right that should not be denied because of cost. Paratransit is impractical as well as offensive, disabled transit riders say. Burr Overstreet, a Santa Rosa man who uses a wheelchair, called paratransit “a paternalistic system that screws people over, costs a fortune and it’s the first thing cut during economic downturns.” Paratransit users “are made to feel like helpless hospital patients,” Les Treece-Sinclair, a wheelchair user and staff person at the September Alliance for Accessible Transportation, a Northern California coalition, told the Bay Guardian. Most Bay Area transit districts, including the San Francisco Municipal Railway, use a combination of buses with lifts and paratransit vans for disabled and elderly patrons, and California law requires that all new buses be equipped with lifts. Local transit agencies have a good reputation nationally for working closely with disabled and elderly patrons. But, even so, there are problems. “Supposedly we [in Marin] have one of the better systems,” Overstreet said. “The combination of fixed-route and paratransit should in theory be fairly effective, but it’s not. The paratransit only runs Monday through Friday, 9 am to 3 pm. Disabled riders have to reserve in advance and disabled people who work cannot use such a paratransit system either to work or to socialize.” “Paratransit doesn’t come close to meeting the transport need of elderly and handicapped people,” said Treece-Sinclair. “At the moment, on many bus lines only every third or fourth bus will be accessible.” Jose Rodriguez, a public information officer for the Metropolitan Transit Commission, told the Bay Guardian Bay Area transit districts “are working hard to meet a basic level of service but we are aware of the need for improvement. As always, this is contingent on securing needed funds.” The debate between disabled people and much of the public transit industry centers around interpretations of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which states that persons with handicaps cannot be discriminated against under any program receiving federal funds. Since mass transit relies heavily on federal funds, Section 504 serves as a rallying point for disabled activists who argue for making all public transit wheelchair-accessible. The U.S. Department of Transportation in 1979 issued regulations that required full wheelchair access on newly ordered buses and called for retrofitting existing buses and modifying portions of existing rail systems to accommodate disabled users. Disable activists applauded the regulations, but APTA lobbied Congress vigorously, claiming the regulations were costly, unworkable and designed to reach only a small percentage of the disabled population. A 1979 Congressional Budget Office report supported APTA’s claims and called instead for paratransit systems. APTA sued to overturn DOT’s regulations and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in 1981 that the regulations exceeded the scope of the Rehabilitation Act. DOT interim regulations gave local communities the option of determining levels of accessibility and many transit districts opted for paratransit. Paratransit advocates argue that outfitting buses with lifts and other special equipment is too expensive, given the number of disabled riders. Santa Clara County Supervisor Tom Legan, for example, said at a January board meeting, “We’re spending $3.5 million per year [maintaining] lifts for what amounts to 57 boardings per year.” But disabled activists say the official estimates of disabled ridership are too low. Palo Alto resident Brian Bolitho, who uses a wheelchair, told the Bay Guardian his commute to work alone account for more than 200 boardings per year on Santa Clara buses. Dennis Cannon, a transportation, specialist the federal Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, told the Bay Guardian, “The actual use of accessible buses could be five times higher, or more, than transit agency estimates. The driver often simply guesses the number of obviously disabled passengers.” Much of the expense of repairing lifts, Cannon added, could be avoided by improved maintenance and better training of bus operators. Some APTA members, Canon said, are reappraising the adequacy of paratransit. James Lee, accessibility coordinator for Alameda County Transit, agreed. “Since 1976, study after study has documented the inadequacy of paratransit. It is not cost-effective, nor is it demand responsive,” he told the Bay Guardian. - ADAPT (240)
The Cincinnati Enquirer Photo by the Cincinnati Enquirer/Michael E. Keating: Four police officers holding a thin, tall man (Jim Parker)by his legs and arms suspending him in the air while they try to place him in the wheelchair. Another police officer and a passerby at the street corner are visible in background, as well as a city bus parked with its doors open. Caption: Cincinnati Police lower ADAPT activist Jim Parker into his wheelchair after removing him from a Metro bus. He had crawled aboard. [Headline] Group seeks access for wheelchairs By David Wells George Cooper and Bob Kafka climbed aboard a City Metro bus at Government Square Monday, paid their fares and were arrested. Cooper and Kafka were among several dozen members of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) demonstrating this week against Metro and the American Public Transit Association gathered at the Westin Hotel. ADAPT disrupted operations at Metro’s main downtown stop on Government Square for about two hours Monday. Following arrests of Cooper and Kafka, Metro rerouted its buses and avoided further confrontation with the wheelchair-bound demonstrators. ADAPT wants full accessibility for the handicapped on all public transportation facilities. Regular Metro coaches do not have wheelchair lifts. The company does provide transportation for the handicapped with special, lift-equipped Access vans. ADAPT claims that Access vans are unreliable in poor weather and even in good weather require a 24-hour advance reservation. The group also wants the national transit association to adopt a resolution at its Cincinnati convention requiring full access for the handicapped. Wheelchair-confined demonstrators picketed Westin entrances throughout the day but were denied admission to the hotel or adjoining public atrium. Cooper of Dallas, and Kafka of Austin, Texas, were charged with criminal trespass after they refused requests from Metro and the Cincinnati Police to get off the bus. “There are no lifts in these buses. It is not safe (for the handicapped), “said Murray Bond, assistant general manager for the company. Yet, after Cooper and Kafka were arrested, they were transported to the Hamilton County Justice Center on the bus rather than being transferred to a lift van. “That was a judgement call on my part,” said Capt. Dale Menkhaus, who headed the police detail. “It was decided it would be much easier and safer to transport them on the bus than to try to carry them off of it.” Four officers rode with the prisoners to ensure they were not jostled on the five-block trip to jail. Also arrested at the demonstration was Mike Auberger from Denver, who Menkhaus said attempted to block the bus carrying Cooper and Kafka. Auberger was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to the Justice Center in a lift van. Menkhaus said it was “a no win situation” for the police. No matter how sensitively the officers acted, they still had to confront and arrest people in wheelchairs. Officers in that detail were briefed on handling the demonstrators. Menkhaus said. “Our officers were told to ask each individual what the best way to lift him was, even to the point of which limb they would prefer to have moved first.” Still, to the members ADAPT, they were being dragged off the buses. “People were being dragged off the buses because they just wanted to ride,” said Bill Bolte of Los Angeles. When ADAPT member Rick James, a cerebral palsy victim repeatedly tried to roll his motorized chair into the street and in front of buses, police officers unplugged the chair’s battery. It left James immobile on the sidewalk. Other ADAPT members reconnected the battery and James pulled up in front of another bus. Metro eventually took the bus out of service and left it parked at the stop during the demonstration. At the Justice Center, all three prisoners co-operated fully with deputies, said Sheriff Lincoln Stokes. About five other demonstrators boarded buses that pulled in the stops at Government Square but they got off the bus when asked to do so, Menkhaus said. - ADAPT (271)
January / February 1987 METRO Magazine [Headline] Handicapped Rights and APTA Highlighted text: A seeming fixture at APTA conventions is a demonstration by the handicapped. In this exclusive interview with METRO Magazine,Rev. Wade Blank describes the movement’s goals and objectives. Shortly before the APTA Annual Meeting in Detroit last October, the General Assembly of the Denver Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church unanimously passed a resolution favoring 100% accessibility to all publicly funded transit buses. The resolution calls upon the" U.S. DOT “to mandate that all public buses bought with federal monies be accessible to all people, specifically including those persons who use wheelchairs for mobility." The resolution declares that equal access to public transportation is a basic human right. It urges the American Public Transit Association to support total accessibility, and calls on all public transit systems to work toward the goal as well. According to sponsors of the resolution, 14% of U.S. citizens are disabled and thus denied full access. The resolution also recommends to all churches and church agencies to consider adding equal access facilities to all their church buses and vans. Wade Blank, a Presbyterian minister and leader in the disability rights movement for 11 years, said the resolution is the latest effort in the struggle to enable disabled Americans to integrate into their communities. According to Blank, disability rights is a civil rights movement similar to the black political movement of the 1950's and 60's. Blank is a leader of ADAPT, the Denver-based American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, an organization which has demonstrated on behalf of disability rights at several APTA conventions in recent years. Blank said his organization has about 800 people who actively support it, though he believes many thousands more wheelchair-bound people would do so if they could. What follows is an interview with Rev. Blank conducted in Detroit during the APTA Annual Meeting there during which 18 disabled individuals were arrested for demonstrating at the city hall. METRO: Mr. Blank, what is your organization trying to accomplish at this APTA meeting? Blank: First of all, in 1983 we introduced a resolution before APTA in Denver, Colorado, in which we said that we wanted APTA to vote in favor of having public transportation accessible to people in wheelchairs. That resolution said three things. First, that APTA should inform all its members that it will now endorse accessibility; second, that they should take a public vote member by member (about the issue); and third, that they should inform the transportation industry that accessibility is their position. They have refused since 1983 to act on the resolution, so we assume that that means they don't favor accessible public transit. Now as to what we are doing here. Whenever APTA goes into a community (to hold a convention) we do two things: we demonstrate against APTA, and we use the occasion to illustrate to the public that their local transit system is not wheelchair accessible, in other words, every bus being wheelchair accessible. METRO: Over the years your organization has demonstrated at a number of APTA meetings and very often the demonstrations have been very disruptive. Do you think that your activities have paid off? Blank: They've paid off in the sense that first they are directed to other people with disabilities in order to raise their consciousness about their rights. Our group has grown three times over the last few years. Secondly, it tells the able-bodied public that people in wheelchairs cannot board transit, which most people never even think about. And thirdly, it teaches the community at large that our political movement is in fact a civil rights movement. METRO: Your organization demonstrates against APTA. But isn't it true that you're also hoping for action on the local level wherever you mount a demonstration? Blank: Yes. In effect, APTA does our organizing for us by picking the cities it goes into. We follow and go in and raise consciousness for our cause. I don’t think anyone can understand how alienating it is (to be disabled). My daughter is in a wheelchair. If she goes to a bus stop and the doors open and shut and the bus drives off without her, there's no way of expressing to people how alienated, how shut out that makes her feel. Of course, the transit people want to make it an economic argument...but that didn't cut it with the black movement and it's not going to cut it with the disabled movement either. METRO: How is ADAPT funded? And what is your annual budget? Blank: Mainly from the Roman Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans and the United Church of Christ. ADAPT itself doesn't have a budget per se. A trip like this (to Detroit) will run us approximately $15,000 for all the logistics involved, hotels, food, attendant care, just the logistics of moving that large number of disabled. METRO: How big is your staff? Blank: We don't have a staff, we don't have bylaws, we don't even have officers. It's just a consensus group. For example, in Denver, the disabled groups each do their own thing, and there's a lot of individuals who have joined ADAPT by simply saying, I want to be part of it. That's all it takes. We have a list of names of who those people are. METRO: You mentioned the logistics of moving the disabled. Do you bring people along with you to do the demonstrating, or do you seek to have local disabled join in? How does this work? Blank: In July we flew here with some disabled and met with the local disabled. They basically said they'd recently filed suit and were trying to get access to the buses, but that they didn't believe they could support any demonstrations because they'd be afraid to lose what they have now. That's almost to the letter the situation in every community we go into. The disabled are very afraid to lose what little they have. Plus, a disabled person in a wheelchair is by definition passive about the way they see themselves. But before we leave Detroit we will have a few people who will dare. By seeing the press, they'll see it's pretty amazing and they want to be a part of this. It changes the way they view themselves. That's how we recruit members. METRO: Tell me how the organization started? Blank: It started in Denver in 1975 when we announced we were going to make the transit system there accessible. Everybody laughed at us. We had about 20 members. We filed suit and lost. On July 5, 1978, the day after the suit was lost, we went down and blocked the first two buses in the whole movement. We held those buses for two days, sleeping on the streets. The battle in Denver went on in spurts. We started in 1978. In 1979 (Denver RTD) announced they'd make their transit buses accessible, but in 1980 when Reagan took office they went to a posture of inaccessibility. We hit the streets again and they reverted back to accessibility. In 1982, they finally signed an agreement with us that they would be totally accessible. So then other groups asked us: how did you do that? we'd like you to teach us how. Rather than just sit in Denver and enjoy our system, we decided to export what we'd won there using the same tactics on a national basis. METRO: You said earlier that the economic argument against accessibility doesn't fly. Yet to APTA and the transit industry the economic argument is very real. After all, the funds to pay for accessibility come out of their budgets. They can cite some very dramatic statistics of how much subsidy each handicapped ride costs. So how can you say the economic argument doesn't carry weight? Blank: Because those figures are not true. Denver, for example, bought 160 buses. The lowest bidders (for that contract) bid accessible buses. Neoplan undercut everybody else’s bid and they bid accessible. So you can't go just by the lifts themselves, you go by the total cost of the bus. METRO: But you also have to consider the maintenance costs and personnel costs too. In San Francisco. for example, one of the agencies there has two maintenance workers who do nothing but service the lifts, that's all those individuals do. Blank: That's true. But they have people who work on the motors, and people who work on the brakes, and people who work on every aspect of the buses that service the able bodied. The figures out of Seattle and Denver on maintenance per lift is under $400 a year, if they do preventive maintenance. Now that's a lot lower than APTA's figures of $2,500 per lift (per year). That figure is correct if you don't ever fix the lifts. In other words if you drive around and they break down and they're all gummed up, then you have to put new hydraulics in because you haven’t changed the oil. Then you're going to top out at $2,500 the same way if you don't keep your car up. METRO: During his remarks to APTA, CBS correspondent Ed Bradley charged your organization had mounted a mailgram campaign against his coming. He went on to give a presentation about apartheid in South Africa Your comments? Blank: The disabled community in the United States is suffering from a form of apartheid. The disabled live in section 8 housing, high-rise housing which is for disabled and elderly, They live in nursing homes. They go to workshops like Goodwill where they're segregated, and they are paid under 10 cents an hour in the average workshop in the United States. That's what the salary is. The disabled can't ride public transportation, so you have a form of apartheid. METRO: Thank you. - ADAPT (461)
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Monday APRIL 10, 1989 [Headline] 49 disabled protesters arrested in Sparks Photo by Cralg Sallor/Gazette-Journal: Two men in wheelchairs are being arrested by police in the middle of the street. The man on the left, Bob Kafka, is being bent forward in his chair and being handcuffed behind his back. Across his legs he has a poster but it is not readable from this copy. The man on the left, Bill Bolte, is sitting up hold a sign about Rights in front of his chest. The policeman is standing beside him bending forward to do something to his chair it seems. caption reads: CONFRONTATION: Sparks police arrested Bob Kafka, left, of Austin, Texas, and Bill Bolte of Los Angeles. Text box has the quote: 'My rights are worth fighting for.’ Bill Bolte/demonstrator [Headline] Public transit meeting draws demands for accessibility By Darcy De Leon/Gazelle-Journal Sparks police arrested 49 disabled protesters demanding accessibility to public buses during a protest Sunday aimed at national transit officials meeting at John Ascuaga's Nugget. About 75 wheelchair-bound members of Denver-based American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT) rushed two entrances of the hotel—casino about 3:15 p.m., but Nugget security officers and police inside blocked the doorways. ADAPT activists chanting, “Access is a civil right,” struggled to open the doors an confront officials with the American Public Transit Association (APTA) attending a five-day convention through Wednesday. Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas, and Bill Bolte, a Los Angeles resident, were the first protesters to he arrested. "My rights are worth fighting for," said Bolte, 57. “APTA is discriminating against us," said Kafka, who has used a wheelchair since breaking his neck in a car accident at the age of 26. "We feel that APTA is to the disabled what the KKK is to the black community.“ At the height of the protest police dragged away three demonstrators lying in the casino entrance. No injuries were reported, police said. Sparks police Lt. Tony Zamboni said that as of late Sunday night, five of the 49 demonstrators arrested had been transferred to the Washoe County jail, after their arraignment in Sparks Municipal Court. They were being held in lieu of $1,025 bond for investigation of obstructing traffic, obstructing a police officer an blocking a fire exit, Zamboni said. Arraignments continued Sunday night for the remaining protesters. Disabled residents from Reno and 30 other cities throughout the country joined in the protest of an expected appeal of a federal court order that requires all public bus systems to be equipped for wheelchairs. ADAPT filed a lawsuit asking for the decision last year. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in favor of the group in February. Demonstrators Sunday hoped to persuade the transit officials to work against the appeal, expected to be made by the U.S. Department of Transportation today. APTA spokesman Albert Engelken said the group's protests are “compelling and heart-rending." But he said APTA cannot afford a national mandate for the lifts, which cost $15,000 to install and even more to maintain. Engelken also cited low usage of the buses and suggested the lift requirement be a local option instead of a state mandate. “We're for accessible transportation for the disabled, and we do have it, but the local transit systems and the local disabled communities should decide what is needed because they know what's best." Reno’s Citifare would not be affected by the decision because transit officials already have made a commitment toward a 100 percent wheelchair-equipped bus system, said Bill Derrick, planning manager for the Regional Transportation Commission. All Citifare buses bought since 1984 are wheelchair-equipped, he said, and all non-equipped buses will be replaced by 1996. Mike Auberger, ADAPT founder and protest organizer, said the group has staged at least 14 demonstrations at APTA conferences during the last seven years throughout the United States and Canada. Auberger, 33, of Denver, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a bobsled accident 17 years ago, said demonstrators will follow APTA convention-goers for as long as it takes. “We’re not fighting Reno or any other city. We're fighting APTA,” he said. “We will go to jail, we'll get arrested, but so what — it's a misdemeanor. We'll do it again." Citifare accommodates the disabled more than some other cities, said Reno resident Dottie Spinnetta, 51, who suffers from muscular dystrophy and rides the buses five days a week. But RTC could improve the system by offering additional wheelchair space on the buses and bus pickups every 30 minutes instead of every hour. “I should be able to get around as everyone else can and not have to ask,” she said. “That’s what everybody wants — to be independent." The only drawbacks of using Citifare for John Civitello, 21, is that he has to get up at 4 a.m. to catch a 6 a.m. bus that takes him to his job with American Handicapped Workers. He then waits outside the office another hour until his workday begins at 8 a.m. PHOTO by Joanne Haskin: Two policemen are standing one behind the other, facing a third and behind him is a fourth officer who is using what looks like a video camera. All the police wear hats and are looking down. From their midst, the wild head of Arthur Campbell sticks out, his long white hair flying in different directions, a strange grin on his face and his intense eyebrows above his dark eyes. The police seem to be cradling him, and look down at him. Caption reads: Protest scuffle—Sparks police detain one of the ADAPT protesters that blocked the entrance to John Ascuaga's Nugget during a demonstration Sunday afternoon. Sparks police made a total of 49 arrests during the protest. - ADAPT (169)
Rocky Mountain News 10/26/83 Two PHOTOS (by Rocky Mountain News staff photographer David Cornwell). PHOTO 1: Close up of a man (Mark Johnson) and a woman (Renata Conrad aka Rabe) looking down at a paper, as if conferring. She is holding a microphone in her hand. Beside them sits another man. Caption reads: Mark Johnson and Renate Rabe speak at meeting with transit officials. PHOTO 2: Down a long institutional looking hallway a group of people in wheelchairs and people walking head away from the camera. caption reads: After the meeting, some in wheelchairs exit via hotel's freight elevator. [Headline] Freight elevator raises ill will at meeting By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer The dispute over access by the handicapped to public transportation crystallized Wednesday when wheelchair-bound speakers at a transit convention resisted suggestions that they use the freight elevator at the Denver Hilton to reach the upstairs meeting. “They (transit officials) told us to ride up the elevator that will later take down the garbage and trash from your lunch," Trudy Knutson of Denver told hundreds of bus and rail operators at a meeting of the American Public Transit Association. "This was ordered by ... your leadership," she told the transit operators. APTA officials said they suggest using the freight elevator because it is about 20 feet from the banquet hall where the convention was being held. They said lobby elevators were farther away and were packed with many of the convention‘s 3.500 delegates. "They were free to use whichever (elevator) they wanted." said Jack Gilstrap, APTA executive vice president. “The freight elevator is much larger. You can fit only a couple of wheelchairs in a (lobby) elevator at a time." About 50 handicapped persons from ll states and Washington, D.C., attended the convention‘s morning session as Knutson and others called on APTA to pass a resolution endorsing complete handicapped access on all public transit and other demands. Many of the disabled in the audience used the freight elevator to leave the hotel following the presentation of their demands. Gilstrap said it showed that APTA's suggestion was a practical one. However, Knutson and others said the freight elevator issue was indicative of the way many rail and bus systems treat their disabled riders as a nuisance or an afterthought. She said access to public transit is a civil right, a position many transit operators reject. "A society that puts a man on the moon can surely put a person who is in a wheelchair on a bus," Knutson said. The handicapped protesters received a boost from Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who met with the disabled outside the hotel after he spoke to the convention. "We have to design public transit to take care of everyone from (ages) 10 to 100," Young said. According to an agreement signed by APTA, handicapped groups and Mayor Federico Pena‘s office, handicapped activists were allowed limited picketing rights outside the Hilton during the convention and a 20-minute presentation during the general session Wednesday. Handicapped speakers asked for federally mandated 100 percent accessibility and a notice by APTA to bus manufacturers that its members will buy only accessible vehicles. Gilstrap said the group's demands would be referred to study groups and a resolution considered late. APTA has resisted 100 percent accessibility requirement because wheelchair lifts, elevators and other equipment are expensive and the number of handicapped riders is comparatively low. "It's tough to put money into services that aren't used" Gilstrap said. “It's a manager's dilemma. It‘s used so lightly that it‘s almost ridiculous." For example, Gilstrap said the Regional Transportation District is one of the leaders in handicapped transportation with 50 percent of its buses accessible during peak hours and 100 percent accessible off-peak. Yet, in 1982, he said, each of those buses averaged only 25 handicapped trips per year. Gilstrap said special van service where handicapped riders call in advance and get picked up at home is a better, albeit expensive, idea. "At least the money spent is spent on carrying people,“ he said. Denver also offers demand service. The trips-per year average is 1,490, making it far more popular than regular bus service. Handicapped groups believe van service is unconstitutional because it is separate but equal service. - ADAPT (82)
PHOTO, News Photo by Steve Groer: A view from above down into a room filled with people, most in wheelchairs, sitting in a rough circle with one person in the middle. Next to that person is a desk with typewriter and paperwork on it. Caption reads: Members of Atlantis Community stage protest at RTD headquarters. Handicapped protest lift vote RTD’s rescission of plan assailed By JERRY BROWN News Staff About two dozen handicapped people, most of them in wheelchairs, staged a two-hour sit-in at the Regional Transportation District’s executive offices Thursday after RTD’s directors voted to rescind plans to install wheelchair lifts on 89 articulated buses scheduled for delivery in 1983. The protestors, all from the Atlantis Community, agreed to leave, but only after: * RTD Executive Director L. A. Kimball and three board members promised they would try to arrange a meeting between the full board and Atlantis members unhappy with Thursday’s vote, with the possibility that the board will reconsider its vote. * Kimball agreed to delay implementing the decision to rescind the lift order until after the proposed meeting takes place, if possible. Before the compromise was reached, the Atlantis members said they were prepared to spend the night at the RTD office -- unless removed by the police. RTD official called police and Denver paramedics, and they waited in a nearby room, ready to remove the protesters if the negotiations failed. Co-director Wade Blank said Atlantis members are prepared to stage daily visits to Kimball’s office and take the issue to court if the board sticks by the decision not to buy lifts. Blank said Atlantis members also plan to stage demonstrations during Kimball's public appearances. Blank said Atlantis members say Kimball, who became RTD’s executive director Sept. 14, is the one who persuaded the board to rescind the order for the wheelchair lifts. Last spring, when RTD ordered the articulated buses federal regulations required that all new buses purchased with federal funds be equipped with wheelchair lifts. Eighty percent of the $2l.6 million purchase price of the buses, including the lifts, will come from federal funds. Eliminating the lifts would reduce the purchase price by $1.1 million, or $12,571 per bus, according to RTD. The regulations requiring wheelchair lifts on new buses were rescinded by the Department of Transportation in July, and Kimball said Thursday that eight of the nine other bus agencies who have ordered the articulated buses as part of a consortium that includes RTD have decided not to buy the lifts. Anticipating that the regulations might be rescinded or overturned in court, RTD and the other bus agencies included the wheelchair lifts as a revocable option in their order. RTD has until Nov.27 to cancel its order for the lifts without penalty. After that date, RTD would have to buy the lifts or pay a penalty to drop them from the manufacturer's specifications. More than 100 handicapped people or representatives from agencies providing services to the handicapped were present for the board vote, and more than 20 speakers argued against rescinding the lift order. With only 16 board members present and 11 votes required to rescind the lift order, it appeared at one point that the speakers had swayed enough board members to win their case. But the board voted 11-5 to revoke the order for the lifts, with chairman Lowell Hutson casting the deciding vote after he counted to see how many board members had voted on each side. The Atlantis members then left the board meeting room in the basement of RTD’s headquarters at 1325 S. Colorado Blvd. and occupied part of the building's fifth floor, where Kimball and other RTD executives have their offices. Nearly two hours later, Kimball and board members C. Thomas Bastien, Kathi Williams and Mary Duty came upstairs to negotiate an end to the demonstration. Atlantis, which has long advocated making all of RTD‘s buses accessible to the handicapped, staged a series of sit-ins and other demonstrations against RTD a few years ago because the agency wanted to provide separate service for the handicapped. Relations between the two organizations improved significantly two years ago after RTD agreed to make half of its peak-hour service accessible to the handicapped. - ADAPT (1789)
The Handicapped Coloradan / Page 15 & 16 [This article continues in ADAPT 1786, but has been completely included here for easier reading.] Title: "If heaven isn't accessible God had better Watch out!" Photo: Waist up picture of Wade Blank with his below shoulder length blonde hair and round tinted glasses. He is smiling and wearing a vest. Caption reads: Wade Blank ADAPT founder dies in Mexico. Wade Blank went down to Baja, California, in February and drowned there trying to save his eight year old son Lincoln. He was there vacationing with his family. The money for the trip came from Wade’s share of a legal settlement in San Francisco when bad guys violated the civil rights of ADAPT demonstrators. He couldn't afford that kind of trip on his own. He never made more than $16,000 in his life. Lincoln was in the water swimming. An undertow got him and Wade went in after him. He had to know there was very little chance either one would survive. Some fisherman from a nearby village fished Wade’ s body from the water. His wife Molly brought his body home and they covered the coffin with an American flag. Only the stars on this flag formed a wheelchair. Lincoln’s body was never recovered. A few days before he left on that vacation, I told him to skip Baja and its treacherous waters for the calmer seas off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Wade said he’d think about it but we both knew he wouldn’t alter his plans. Wade Blank liked to be where the action was. Many of the 1100 people who filled the ballroom at the Radisson Hotel on Sunday, Feb. 21, to say goodbye to their fallen comrade had accompanied him into battle. “If heaven isn’t accessible,” one of them warned, “God better watch out!” Wade founded the Atlantis Community in 1975 when he helped several disabled people move out of a nursing home and into their own apartments. Then he went on to help organize protests against RTD for not having wheelchairs lifts on its buses, a move that later led to the creation of ADAPT, which then stood for American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (“The hard part is getting the acronym right,” he told me at the time.) I asked Tom Olin who was going to replace Wade. “No one,” he said. “Wade was into empowering disabled people. It’s a tribute to him that we’ll just keep on going.” Maybe. But it won’t be the same. People like Wade Blank don't come along very often. A writer for Westward once called Wade the nearest thing to a saint he had ever met. But Wade wasn’t perfect. After all, he was a Cleveland Browns’ fan. He had it so bad that on game day he’d call home to his folks in Ohio and have them put the phone next to the radio. He was president of the Cleveland Browns Fans in Exile Club. A small part of him died when Elway found Jackson in the end zone in the 1987 AFC Championship game. He was a devoted father who had a vasectomy reversed after he married Molly. He called me soon after the operation and bitched about having to lie still to prevent the tubes from severing again. It was the only time I knew him to stay still. The time spent was worth it. He loved Lincoln and Caitlan just as he loved Heather, his adopted daughter. He instilled in them special values. A neighbor recalled a time when she came home and observed Lincoln in front of his house directing some other kids. They weren't playing cowboy and Indian or war or any of the usual childhood games. They were playing rally. “All right,” Lincoln said. “United we stand, never apart.” Wade was a Presbyterian minister whose language would make a coal miner blush. I quoted him a lot on these pages over the past ten years or so but I never quoted him accurately. He used four letter words the way other people use punctuation. Someone made a TV movie about the events at Heritage Nursing Home and Wade said it was close to the truth. But the actor who played Wade didn’t quite capture his style. Wade wore his hair long and looked a little like a construction worker who took a wrong tum back in the 1960s. He once asked me if I wore ties. “I own one,” I said. “It keeps my sleeping bag rolled up.” He liked that. He hated ties. At the memorial service, those few men who showed up wearing ties were asked to remove them—out of respect. By then I owned a real tie. You can‘t go to a funeral in my small hometown without one. I left it at home for Wade. He didn’t have the eloquence of a Martin Luther King. He didn't need it. He wasn’t interested in grabbing the spotlight for himself. He taught his friends that their wheelchairs were a weapon and if they used them right, the whole world would take notice. RTD took notice. Denver became one of the first cities in the U.S. to adopt accessible public transit. Wade helped carry that message to countless other cities. He showed people how they could make a statement by going to jail and then he went out and raised the bail money. Eventually, in a parking lot in Atlanta, the feds gave in. Accessible public transit would be the law of the land. Wade wasn’t about to rest on his laurels. He turned his attention to an earlier cause. ADAPT changed the acronym to American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today and took on the nursing home industry. Wade knew that the disabled warriors who took on the federal government over accessible transit and got themselves arrested scores of times were strong enough to live in their own homes. He vowed to force the federal government to take money away from the nursing homes and make that dream a reality. That battle goes on. His friends at ADAPT are planning a memorial service in his honor in Washington, D.C. this May. At the same time, they’re going to make sure Bill Clinton honors his promises to provide funds for such attendant care. It's a fitting memorial but you can find plenty of monuments to Wade Blank in this country. There one at every street comer where there’s a curb cut and one on every bus equipped with a lift. And every time someone who is exploited because of a physical disability raises a fist in defiance and fights for his or her freedom and humanity, you’ll see Wade’s image in their eyes and his dream in their hearts. So long, Wade. If it’s really heaven, there won’t be a dress code. Written by Tom Schantz - ADAPT (147)
The Handicapped Coloradan, December, 1983 [Headline] Access institute Has Grant to Train 12 Disabled Activists A new Denver based group received a grant to train disabled activists from across the country in the techniques needed to make their home cities accessible to persons with disabilities. The American Lutheran Church has given the Access Institute $8,000 to start a pilot program. Three disabled persons from each of four cities will be selected for the initial program. Grant applications are currently out to the Hunt Alternative Fund for $5,000 and to the Campaign for Human Development for $100,000. Institute founders hope eventually to create a network of advocacy groups across the country. Access Institute is in part an outgrowth of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT), a group formed this past summer in Denver to lobby bus companies and the federal government to equip all public transit systems with wheelchair lifts. ADAPT attempted to assist similar groups in other cities to push for accessible transit systems but has so far met with disappointing results. ADAPT founder Wade Blank said leaders of the disabled community in Chicago were reluctant to involve themselves with "outside agitators" while another group in Salt Lake City "folded when two newspapers editorially attacked them." The two sponsoring organizations behind the Access Institute say they believe their training program will prevent such problems in the future. Formal training for the participants will be the responsibility of the Community Resource Center (CRC), while non-classroom fieldwork will be handled by the Atlantis Community. Atlantis and CRC have worked together in the past. Five staff organizers at Atlantis received their training from CRC, whose training techniques are based on grassroots procedures developed by community organizer Saul Alinsky. In its 10 year history Atlantis has attempted to move away from the traditional "individual advocacy" method of dealing with inequities where a single complainant's problem is handled while "the larger problem of an inherently inequitable and irrational system is never addressed," according to the grant proposal. The proposal says Atlantis' "direct action" has been successful in gaining improved conditions for Denver's disabled populations and that every week the group receives requests for advice from groups and individuals in other cities. The Atlantis approach often involves confrontational policies with more than a touch of the dramatic. Tired of what they termed endless meetings with local transit officials that failed to put a single lift on a bus, members of Atlantis climbed out of their wheelchairs and lay in front of buses parked at the city's busiest downtown intersection. The two day demonstration generated immense publicity for their cause and eventually led to a commitment on the part of the regional transportation district to a 100 percent accessible bus system. They took a similar approach to curb cuts. When the city failed to respond to their request for cuts near their office and local hospitals, Atlantis members rolled down to the curbs in their wheelchairs and used sledgehammers to create their own cuts. Today the city of Denver has an aggressive policy to expand the number of curb cuts. The Access Institute will also train participants in how to deal with local government officials and how to raise money to promote their programs. Some of the fieldwork will involve moving in with severely disabled clients of Atlantis' home health care agency along with visits to institutions which exploit and oppress people such as nursing homes and workshops. Participants must come from cities with a population of at least 150,000, with individuals or groups that have already demonstrated an interest in local issues dealing with the disabled. The participants must be physically disabled themselves, have leadership abilities, be versed in disability civil rights, and have the backing of an agency or concerned individuals willing to support organizing efforts. A mass mailing to potential candidates is now being prepared. The Institute hopes to begin operations by April 1984.