- ЈазикAfrikaans Argentina AzÉrbaycanca
á¥áá áá£áá Äesky Ãslenska
áá¶áá¶ááááá à¤à¥à¤à¤à¤£à¥ বাà¦à¦²à¦¾
தமிழ௠à²à²¨à³à²¨à²¡ ภาษาà¹à¸à¸¢
ä¸æ (ç¹é«) ä¸æ (é¦æ¸¯) Bahasa Indonesia
Brasil Brezhoneg CatalÃ
ç®ä½ä¸æ Dansk Deutsch
Dhivehi English English
English Español Esperanto
Estonian Finnish Français
Français Gaeilge Galego
Hrvatski Italiano Îλληνικά
íêµì´ LatvieÅ¡u Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuviu Magyar Malay
Nederlands Norwegian nynorsk Norwegian
Polski Português RomânÄ
Slovenšcina Slovensky Srpski
Svenska Türkçe Tiếng Viá»t
Ù¾Ø§Ø±Ø³Û æ¥æ¬èª ÐÑлгаÑÑки
ÐакедонÑки Ðонгол Ð ÑÑÑкий
СÑпÑки УкÑаÑнÑÑка ×¢×ר×ת
اÙعربÙØ© اÙعربÙØ©
Почетна / Категории / Етикети Mike Auberger
+ Bob Kafka + Stephanie Thomas + APTA - American Public Transit Association 2
ADAPT (260)
JULY 1986 Disclosure Disabled Cripple Cincinnati PHOTO: A march of people in wheelchairs across a metal bridge that looks like a giant erector set. Three across lead the march, and behind you can see others in an almost single file line. On right, Mike Auberger with his braids and headband rides an electric chair, and has a poster across his legs "Give me a lift, not the SHAFT." In the center, Stephanie Thomas with a bush of hair and a sign that reads "Access is a Civil Right", pushes her manual in a wheelie. On the left, Cincinnatian Gary Nelson, rides his manual as Babs Johnson pushes him. She is looking to her right talking with someone in line. Behind and between Mike and Stephanie, Rick James is visible, riding laid back in his powerchair. Others are behind in line, but the focus is not deep enough to make them out. Caption reads: GARY NELSON, STEPHANIE THOMAS and MIKE AUBERGER lead an ADAPT parade into Cincinnati. During four days of demonstrations there, 17 wheelchair riding protestors were arrested and taken to jail. Fifty disabled Americans went to Cincinnati at the end of May to protest discrimination against people in wheelchairs—and they put together some protests that city authorities will never forget. The wheelchair-riding demonstrators, who came from as far away as Texas and Colorado, are members of ADAPT— American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. They're tired of being denied access to public buses, and they went to Cincinnati to confront a meeting of the American Public Transit Association (APTA). APTA represents public transit officials from cities all over the country, and 600 of them were in Cincinnati in May for a regional education and training conference. In the space of four days, ADAPT staged half a dozen dramatic demonstrations, tied up bus service for an entire afternoon, shut down the office of the local transit system, caused havoc at a major downtown hotel, and had 17 of their members arrested, including 3 who were temporarily banned from the city of Cincinnati. “I've been kicked out of a lot of places," says ADAPT organizer Mike Auberger, "but never from a whole city!" ADAPT was formed in Denver in 1983, after Auberger — who is a quadriplegic as a result of a bobsled accident — and other handicapped activists convinced city officials there to put wheelchair lifts on every single bus. “It took six years of street fighting to win in Denver," says ADAPT organizer Wade Blank, a minister who became involved with handicapped issues while working as an orderly in a nursing home. “So then we said, are we going to sit on our laurels, or are we going to expand to other cities?" ADAPT demonstrators have hit APTA events in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The demonstrations have a double purpose: to pressure APTA to go on record in favor of accessible public transit nationwide, and to push local officials to change their bus systems. While APTA remains stubborn, ADAPT can point to a number of local successes in cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, and Kansas City. ADAPT members see their cause as a civil rights struggle, and their actions call attention to the injustice suffered by disabled people who are denied access to basic public services. The first arrests in Cincinnati came on Monday, May l9, when George Cooper and Bob Kaska climbed out of their wheelchairs and crawled aboard a Cincinnati city bus. They paid their fares, but were arrested for “trespassing.” Mike Auberger, who blocked the front of the bus, was also arrested, and the three were banned from the city by a municipal judge. Monday night, APTA conference-goers had a reception scheduled at the College Football Hall of Fame, outside the city limits. ADAPT protestors went out to meet them, but found entrances to the building locked by local sheriffs. They were waiting on the shoulder of the four lane road leading to the Hall of Fame when four buses carrying hundreds of APTA members came down the road, rolling along at about 40 miles an hour. Suddenly, a group of people in wheelchairs bolted out to block the buses. “l remember flashing in my mind that these might be the first deaths of the civil rights movement of the handicapped," recalls Wade Blank. No one was injured: two buses steered onto the shoulder of the road, and two others came to a halt. The conventioneers had to get off the buses and walk the rest of the way to the Hall of Fame. On Tuesday, ADAPT settled for a symbolic action, raising a cross in front of the Westin Hotel, where APTA was holding its meeting. The cross, they said, demonstrated APTA's “crucification" of disabled people. On Wednesday, it was back into battle. The banning order against Kaska, Cooper and Auberger had been lifted, but they got arrested again by chaining their wheelchairs to the front doors of the Cincinnati bus system’s main offices. Fourteen other disabled people, meanwhile, were arrested for blocking entrances at the Westin Hotel. All seventeen of them wound up in a classroom at the city jail. "It was definitely a new experience for the whole justice system,” says Mike Auberger. “Everyone received a real education in disabilities." Most of the protesters were released after a day or two, but Auberger, Kaska and Cooper, who were viewed as the real troublemakers, had to stay in jail for six days. This caused some serious problems, as none of the men can use the bathroom without the help of an attendant—and no one in the Cincinnati jail system was prepared to deal with that situation. Auberger, who had a skin rash and a urinary infection, was eventually hospitalized. All three protestors have now been released, he reports, and they are back home and suffering no serious long term effects from their ordeal in prison. The difficulties in jail, he thinks, “were more of a left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing type of thing than any serious intent to do harm." Their grueling experience, however, shows just how difficult it is for disabled people to stand up for their rights in a society that is not prepared to deal with people in wheelchairs. Despite such obstacles, ADAPT members are determined to continue their struggle for full civil rights. They are already planning for their next confrontation, which will take place on October 6 through 9 in Detroit, where APTA is scheduled to have its 1986 national convention. Without doubt, it will be a memorable occasion. HIGHLIGHTED TEXT: Suddenly, a group of people in wheelchairs bolted out to block the buses. . . “I remember flashing in my mind, ” said one observer, “that these might be the first deaths of the civil rights movement of the handicapped. ” BOXED TEXT BELOW ARTICLE: BE THERE! People in and our of wheelchairs are welcome to join the ADAPT protest in Detroit, to speak out for fully accessible public transportation. For information, contact Mike Auberger or Wade Blank at ADAPT, 4536 E. Colfax, Denver, Colorado, 80220. 303-393-0630 303-393-0630.
ADAPT (403)
The Riverfront Times, ST. LOUIS' LARGEST WEEKLY: 211,962 READERS EVERY WEEK! MAY 18-24, 1988 [This article continues in ADAPT 398, but the entire text is included here for easier reading] PHOTO: Three plain clothes policemen try to hold back a man in a motorized wheelchair (Ken Heard). One is behind Ken, one beside him holding the armrest and the third is in front bending forward trying to manipulate the driving mechanism that is on the footrest of Ken's wheelchair. (Ken drove his chair with his foot.) Ken is in shorts and an ADAPT shirt and wears a pony tail and head band, and he is leaning forward concentrating on trying to control his chair. A uniformed policeman looks on from behind or is possibly looking to help. On the right side of the photo, another man in a scooter (Tommy Malone from KY) is watching. Behind him is a set of glass doors and blocking one is a woman in a wheelchair (Barbara Guthrie of Colorado Springs). She is wearing dark glasses and a brimmed hat as well as her ADAPT shirt. title: Picket To Ride, Why the disabled take to the streets to get down the road by Joseph Schuster For most who want to take the bus, the biggest problem is finding exact change to drop into the fare box. But for disabled persons dependent on wheelchairs, the fare box is more a slot machine: Their chance of getting on a bus is frequently as unlikely as hitting the jackpot. The problem is an acute shortage of buses equipped with wheelchair lifts to get disabled passengers into the bus. In St. Louis, less than one-fourth of the 690 buses operated by Bi-State Development Agency are equipped with lifts; only half of those available lifts function. The story is the same in almost every city across the United States, and now disabled rights activists are pointing to the lack of accessible transportation as the most significant problem facing the disabled today. "In the past (disabled groups) placed education and employment programs high as a priority," says Mike Auberger, a leader and founder of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT). "But we've always seen that as the biggest joke: 'Hire the handicapped.' You can give me a job, one that pays a good salary, but if I can't drive (because of a disability) and can't take a bus, there's no way in heaven you can hire me. It's been, 'Here, let's put this piece of the pie out here for you but not give you a way to reach it. The unemployment rate among disabled Americans is appallingly high. The most recent figures available for St. Louis are from the 1980 census, says Russ Signorino spokesman for the Missouri Division of Employment Security. [at this point in the article the first column is cut off on the left, slightly] According to that census, there were 119.000 [disa]bled St. Louisans. but only 48,000 were in [the] work force. says Signorino. Of the 71,000 of the labor force. 59.000 did not work [bec]ause their disability prevented them from [emp]loyment. The balance of 12,000 disabled [unclear]ons were so-called "discouraged workers." [Indi]viduals who had stopped looking for work [beca]use of various factors. ‘You're going to find a higher percentage of [disc]ouraged workers among the disabled (than [amo]ng the general population)." Signorino [said]. Nationally, less than one-third of the country's 13 million disabled are in the labor force, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States 1986, the most recent edition to {unclear] information on the employment status of disabled Americans. Of those who are in the work force, almost {unclear]-fifth are unemployed. ("Discouraged" workers are not included in the work force; those who are unemployed. but looking for work. are.) This is compared, in the same year, with the able-bodied population of the country, which nearly 70 percent of 133 million persons were in the workforce and 9.6 percent of those were unemployed. The problem of lack of access to public transit brought Auberger and more than 100 other members of ADAPT to St. Louis this week to demonstrate at the annual meeting of Eastern region of the American Public Transit Authority [sic] (APTA), the industry's [principal] trade organization. ADAPT wants the transit industry to move toward what ADAPT calls "100 percent accessibility." That is every bus in the country would have wheelchair lifts. But APTA opposes that saying it is impractical and too expensive. It favors, instead, what is known as "local option." Each transit authority would decide how it would make public transportation accessible for the disabled, using either buses equipped with lifts, paratransit vans with lifts (the so-called dial-a-ride services, or a combination of the two. Right now, 18 percent of the nation's systems use lift-equipped buses exclusively, 44 percent use paratransit vans and the remainder — including St. Louis — use a combination. Nationally, according to APTA Deputy Executive Director Albert Engelken, one in three buses is lift-equipped. That is progress, Engelken says. In 1980, only about 11 percent of the nation's buses were lift-equipped. But for ADAPT and others in the disabled community, the progress is too slow. “I'm damned impatient," says Jim Tuscher, vice-president of programs for Paraquad, a St. Louis non-profit agency that serves disabled people. "I personally have been involved with Bi-State for well over 10 years, negotiating, trying to get an accessible transit system and today we still do not have an adequate system. Sure, their attitude is better now than it was 10 years ago, in that they are willing to cooperate with the disabled community. They had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into this. But I‘m a results person and so far I haven't seen any. I still can't go out to the corner and take a bus." Currently, 171 (24.8 percent) of Bi-State's 690 buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts. Tom Sturgess, the company's director of communication, says the system has a goal of 100 percent wheelchair accessibility, but getting there is a slow process. Later this summer, the number of lift-equipped buses will be increased to 238, but that will still mean that only one in three Bi-State buses can be used by a disabled person. Sturgess says Bi-State has notified its manufacturer that it will be buying another 60 lift-equipped buses sometime in the near future. Of the company's present 171 wheelchair lifts, only 85 (or just less than half) function. “We've had a lot of problems with them." says Sturgess. “The new buses we're getting will have a different kind of lift in them, one we think will work. Of those we have, we're in the process of repairing as many as we can, but some will never operate again. We're convinced it wouldn't be economically feasible to do so. The biggest problem is the salt they spread on the streets and highways. It sprays up into the lift mechanism, corrodes the wires and rusts the lifts.“ Because there are so few lift-equipped buses at present, only 16 to 18 of Bi-State's 129 routes have accessible buses, says Todd Plesko, Bi-State's director of service planning and scheduling. But not every bus that travels those routes has a lift. For example, on Bi