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Domov / Albumi / Oznaka Secretary Louis Sullivan 22
Ustvarjeno / 2013
ADAPT (641)
DISCLOSURE JULY-AUGUST I991 From Coast To Coast ADAPT Battles For Home Attendant Care by C.I. Zander Photo by Tom Olin: Two protesters in wheelchairs curl forward with arms raised to their faces as police or security tip them back on their back wheels. The person in the front (possibly Barb Guthrie) has a bumper sticker on the side of the chair that reads "I support my country." Capiton reads: ADAPT protestors being removed from HHS entrance in April action. “Almost everywhere we go, we meet somebody who has a friend or relative who's disabled — a brother, a cousin, a father or mother. That's why people support us. That's why they believe in what we are doing." Danny Saenz of ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) was talking about the recent string of direct actions which has taken them from Baltimore to Washington to Dallas to Chicago and back to Washington again. ADAPT's primary issue: put Medicaid money into direct home attendant care of the disabled and get them out of nursing homes. ADAPT 's primary target: HHS Secretary Dr. Louis Sullivan, also known as “Lonesome Louie" and “Dr. No" because whatever ADAPT asks for, he refuses. “All we want is a meeting. . ." “All we want is a meeting," says Saenz, who is from the Austin, Texas ADAPT chapter. “But he always finds some excuse.” Tom Olin of Tennessee Adapt adds: "When we were in Washington recently, we thought that we had a meeting with Sullivan. But HHS went back on their word. So we closed down their building." Adapt members blocked the exits of the Health and Human Services building and forced guards to close it down for two hours on June ll. Police were reluctant to make arrests not only because it is bad publicity for them to be seen carrying off the disabled but also because most police stations do not have adequate care facilities. Tuesday, June 11, may go down as the biggest day in ADAPT's history for more reasons than the shutting down of HHS. Members began early at the American Health Care Association Convention where Sullivan was scheduled to speak. AHCA is a particularly galling organization to ADAPT because it is a lobbyist for the nursing home industry which receives billions in federal and state money for healthcare that ADAPT leaders describe as "inadequate," “wasteful” and “sometimes criminal." ADAPT estimates that over 1.5 million disabled could be moved from nursing homes to attendant home care if the Medicaid benefits were the same or comparable. Getting To Sullivan Although many ADAPTers got into the Hyatt Hotel where the AHCA convention was being held, security forces were able to head them off and lock the auditorium where Sullivan was scheduled to speak. All except for one person. She was able to sneak in and got down to the front of the room in her wheelchair. When Sullivan started his lecture, she also began speaking and gesturing to the audience, asking why Sullivan supported the agenda of nursing homes instead of the agenda of the disabled themselves. Several security police carted her off but ADAPT had, once again gotten Sullivan's attention. Eventually, Sullivan snuck out of the hotel, reputedly through the back kitchen entrance. But, even then, several ADAPT members caught up with him at his expensive limo and shouted their demands for a meeting at him as he drove away. Then ADAPT moved over to the HHS building where they blocked entrances and closed doum the building for a few hours. As National People's Action had done on their April visit, a few people got past the guards to some upper floor offices. But, of course, Sullivan was “not there." To cap off the day, ADAPT met with Senator Kennedy's staff to talk about the proposed health care bill. “We called for a meeting when we were here before in April," says Olin. “But they said they didn't know who we were. So we told them to just watch the news on TV and they’d see us.” What Kennedy’s staff and many other Washingtonians saw on TV then were another two direct actions which included blocking the HHS parking lot and the busy Baltimore intersection in front of the Social Security and Health Care Funding Administration building. ADAPT members said they wanted to illustrate what happens when they are locked in nursing homes. “It’s the same kind of feeling —— you can't leave when you want to. You need my permission," said Mike Auberger of Denver's Atlantis Community afterwards. “I’m sympathetic. . ." "I'm sympathetic to all these folks not able to get home, but this is a really minor inconvenience compared to the inconveniences suffered by those in nursing homes," said protester Nate Butler. A Washington Post photo showed ADAPT members lying down in front of police cars in a scene reminiscent of civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s. Some federal workers were irritated but many expressed sympathy for ADAPT’s views. Other ADAPT actions this spring included cornering Sullivan in Chicago on May 14 and, again in Dallas on May 22 at the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities Conference. ln Dallas, according to the June issue of Incitement, ADAPT’s national newsletter: “(Sullivan) began his talk, and, slowly and silently, one by one, ADAPT members dropped to the floor and began crawling toward his podium, waving the proposed meeting dates in the air. Though he tried to ignore us, Sullivan stumbled over his words several times. in the end, a sea of bodies lay on the floor before him. . -" Sullivan's staff repeatedly says they won‘t meet with "radical" `groups`, but ADAPT leaders believe that this is just an excuse to avoid them. They note that Sullivan has plenty of time to meet with big money `groups` and lobbyists but that he ignores community-based `groups` whether they are "radical" or not. One of ADAPT's strongest arguments for reallocating Medicaid nursing home funds to a home attendant care system is financial. Leaders believe that, in the same way that health insurance administration costs eat up money that should go to the people who have the medical problems, nursing homes end up making large profits while the disabled suffer. Auberger says that nursing homes’ care costs are in the range of $30,000 to $60,000 a person a year but home care is in the $15,000-30,000 range. Auberger himself receives home care that averages about $2,000 a month. "Not only is it cost effective," he concludes, “it‘s the right to dignity and freedom of choice." The bottom line for ADAPT is the redirection of 25% of the $23 billion that Medicaid currently spends on nursing homes to community-based attendant services programs. While some states have adequate home care services, most do not. So ADAPT believes the primary change must come through the allotment of federal funds. “The nursing home industry is a billion-dollar industry — they give political contributions to politicians who protect their interests," says Lillibeth Navarro, an ADAPT member from California. “This is going to be a difficult struggle. But because our cause is right, because it touches practically everybody, we will prevail." For more information on ADAPT programs, call 303 733-9324 in Denver, or S12 4420252 in Austin, Texas.
ADAPT (745)
Fourth Wave Magazine (Washington University) [This article continues in ADAPT 729, 721 and 739, but it is included here in it's entirety for easier reading.] Wheelchair Warriors Story and Photographs by Jan Neely Editor's note: Last May, Fourth Wave editorial intern Jan Neely and I flew to Chicago for our first ADAPT demonstration. ADAPT (or American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, as it is more formally known), first took to the streets 12 years ago in Denver, Colorado, to fight for wheelchairaccessible public transportation. Today, with the passage of the ADA securing transportation access, ADAPT has taken on the nursing home industry, institutions and the United States government in an attempt to provide community based personal attendant care and housing to all persons with disabilities in all 50 states. Here’s what happened: ..... Editor Photo: A city sidewalk jamed with wheelchairs and a couple of cameramen standing beside them between parked cars. Larry Biondi is on front right side of the photo. People are basically lined up waiting to move out. Article begins: DAY ONE: ADAPT arrives in Chicago. Its my first demonstration and my first job as a photojournalist. "Click, click" goes my camera. Everybody else may look cool. but I'm shakin' in my shoes. Try to picture 300 people (most in wheelchairs) on the same mission. No pro-nursing home advocate is safe here! I feel as if I've just entered THE ADAPT ZONE! Actually, the first day was mellow and taken up with pre-action planning. ADAPT doesn't have any membership rules or requirements. You just have to believe that people with disabilities have the right to live without putting up with abuse of any kind. I'm real excited because this is the first group I've ever been involved with that has people with all kinds of disabilities, not just developmental disabilities. DAY 2 Here's ADAPT (photo 1) blocking the doors of the auditorium in hope of catching Dr. Sullivan when he leaves. The Chicago police and the Secret Service put up barricades and pushed back the activists. Victoria Medgyesi, editor of Fourth Wave and my traveling buddy, used her press pass to get into where Dr. Sullivan was to ask him some questions. He refused to talk to her about Medicaid, ADAPT or nursing home abuse. PHOTO 1: A line of Chicago police officers face off against a line of ADAPT protesters in wheelchairs who come up to about the middle of the officer's chests. In the forground there is a barricade, but further back they are just right up against each other. PHOTO 2: Three men in wheelchairs (__________, ___________ and JT Templeton sit in an open area in front of a barricade. Behind the barricade is a crowd of people. JT holds a poster that reads "Sullivan where are you?" Article continues... DAY 2 cont. Usually ADAPT doesn’t go around the country crashing graduations, but this one was different (photo 2) Here we are at the University of Chicago where Dr. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Human and Health Services, is speaking to students who are going to be medical professionals. For the past two years, ADAPT has been trying to talk to Dr. Sullivan about redirecting 25 percent of the Medicaid budget for personal attendant care into a home-based program. But he has refused to talk to ADAPT or to change the rules. As the graduation crowd went in, ADAPT passed out flyers. As l told one person, “What if you become disabled someday? What if your family couldn't take care of you?" As for the police, at this time they just stood back and watched. One of the reasons ADAPT has public demonstrations is to make the public aware of what's important to people with disabilities. Actions like this keep us going to meetings back home even though what we say is usually ignored. DAY 3 The next day we went to one of ADAPT's all time favorite places to "act up": the state office of Health and Human Services. It was only a few blocks away from our downtown hotel. so all 300 of us got in a single line and went for a little walk. Did I say little? Wait a minute. a line of 300 people in wheelchairs plus their supporters? Little? I will admit it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. ADAPT does not stop when it goes on one of its “little walks." It does not stop for lights, trucks, cars, cops, or anything else. It also goes right down the middle of the street. But that's not to say ADAPT isn't nice, oh no! All along the way ADAPT gave the people of Chicago (who lined up on the curbs to watch as we wheeled and walked by) little gifts of knowledge: flyers with the real scoop on nursing homes. PHOTO 3: Amid a long line of ADAPT folks marching in their wheelchairs, a man (Mark Johnson) in a wheelchair talks with a man (Bill Henning) and a woman who are walking beside him. PHOTO 4: A city street lined by tall buildings, is filled by ADAPT protesters apparently crowded from one side to the other. Several people standing closest to the camera but facing away (Jimmi Schrode is on the far left) raise their hands, thumbs up. Article continues... DAY 3 cont. It was a thrill to watch ADAPT in action. When the whole group got to the Federal building, it was a big mess. We blocked off streets and almost shut the building down. As ADAPT told the police, the media and all the people who gathered; “We declare this building a Federal nursing home... only this time, no one goes in or out without our permission! " The reason many activists do this is because they once lived in nursing homes and other institutions and know how bad those places are. Boy, can I relate. I have mild cerebral palsy and I’m lucky to have always lived at home. But will I always be lucky? I feel that as long as there are institutions, they will be a threat to the kind of life my friends and I want to live. This laid-back looking guy is Mike Auberger. He is one of the original ADAPT activists. ADAPT may look like a bunch of disorganized hippies who lost the map to Woodstock 20 years ago, but the opposite is true. In Mike's backpack is one of ADAPT's three cellular phones and the base walkie-talkie! Bill Scarborough, an activist from Texas, keeps the computer nerds in the know by sending the word out from his laptop computer to computer bulletin boards across the country. ADAPT also has a media person who goes to whatever city ADAPT is demonstrating in several days ahead to let people know whats going to happen. PHOTO 5: A very intense looking man (Mike Auberger) in a power chair is sitting sideways to the camera. Behind him is some kind of vehicle and the ADAPT crowd filling the street. Tisha Auberger (Cunningham) is squatting on the bottom right of the picture. After nine long hours of blocking the building's doors, representatives from HHS finally agreed to meet in the street with ADAPT. It turned into a regular media pow-wow. Activists told the administrators and the media what was needed by people with disabilities. Photo 6: A gaggle of reporters and photographers tightly encircle the Regional HHS Director and several ADAPT protesters (Teresa Monroe, center, and Bob Kafka, right side). Article continues... We talked and they listened, but I have a feeling the concern I saw on those experts' faces was just the same old B.S. All of ADAPT's demonstrations are non-violent, but they are important battles in a war fought by people who are fighting to lead decent lives. The possibility of being arrested did make me nervous. It made me feel a little better when ADAPT told the new people that, if you got arrested, the group would never leave you alone. They said ADAPT would tell the cops your needs, get you a good lawyer, and stay on the outside of the jail chanting so you would know ADAPT was with you. Photo 7: Portrait shot of a man (Gene Rogers) with long brown hair and glasses, sitting in his wheelchair. He is wearing a T-shirt with a larger than life sized photo of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's face and the words "VIOLENCE IS IMMORAL" and a lengthy quote below that is too small to read in the photo. Article continues... DAY 4 As l was getting dressed I thought to myself “Today ADAPT is taking on the AMA." Oh God. what have l gotten myself into? l mean the AMA! The Big Brother of the medical world; the people who are not only in charge of admissions to nursing homes, but who are also in charge of giving prescriptions to people like me. I thought: What if my doctor saw me and did not like what I was doing with ADAPT? Would he stop giving me my blood pressure pills that I can't afford to buy? What would happen then? What about the others? Aren't they in the same boat? I got a lot more out of my trip to Chicago than just a story and a few good pictures. I met some people who are important to the disability rights movement. I felt accepted and I came home with the feeling that together we can really change things. People with disabilities need to keep talking. We need to demonstrate. We need to tell the so-called "experts" the real truth and try not to be too afraid while were doing it. Insert text box: Incitement, Stephanie Thomas Editor. What's happening on the front lines? Read INCITEMENT, the official newsmagazine of ADAPT, and learn the who, what, when, where and why behind today's headline news. Free! To order contact: ADAPT/INCITEMENT 1339 Lamar SQ DR Suite B, Austin, TX 78704 (512)442-0252 Second text insert at end of article: Jan Neely is a photography student at Olympic Community College and an editorial intern at Fourth Wave. She is active in People First of Washington. the end
ADAPT (744)
The Disability Rag July/August, 1992 [This article continues on ADAPT 738, 733,728, 724, 748, 743 and finally 737; however the entire text is included here for easier reading. ] Photo by Tom Olin: A policeman holds a wooden barricade while another tries to pull a protester who is lying on the ground by his pants legs backward and out from under the barricade. The protester is holding onto something above his head. On one side a third policeman seems to be coming over and on the other side a man (Frank Lozano) and his guide dog (Frazier) are coming over. Title: On the barricades With ADAPT by Mary Johnson photos by Tom Olin “I am tired of rules and regulations. And them telling me what you have to do. None of them has worked for me as good as being at home. In nursing homes, they put you on sleeping pills to keep you from getting aggravated with what will occur. “You can’t pay —— you don’t have any money to pay an attendant at night, when you’re on SSI. All of these things they’re constantly cutting. I haven’t been in a nursing home for 15 years — and I don’t plan to go.” It's Saturday night in Chicago. Nearly 300 ADAPT members have gathered in a meeting room in Chicago’s Bismarck hotel, getting ready for the group’s May 1992 assault on the Windy City. People are telling their stories. Many are there because there was a nursing home in their past — or they don’t want one in their future. The next day the group will swoop down on the University of Chicago's commencement exercises. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan is speaking, and some in the group can't believe their late-breaking good fortune at getting another shot at hassling the Secretary who has steadfastly refused to meet with them to discuss redirecting Medicaid funds to in-home attendant services. A planned Mother's Day March to a graveyard — to symbolize how this nation kills its mothers in nursing homes — is cancelled. “I was never for that dead stuff anyway," ADAPT organizer Mike Auberger says. The week's events are debated. Somebody wants to know why they see police taking photos of them whenever there's an ADAPT action. There's an attorney available for people who get arrested, the group is told; they‘re given his name, as well as ADAPT organizers to contact if they get arrested. “I’m telling you — and it’s the most important thing I'm gonna say." Auberger warns the group. “have your medications with you if you're going to get arrested. Have ‘em labelled. No pill boxes; bottles. Make sure it has your name on it — nobody else's. Make sure there’s no illegal substances on you; no weapons. ‘Cos this is going to follow us down the road.” As it turned out, Chicago was mild compared to Orlando's confrontations last fall, in which nearly all ADAPT activists were thrown in jail — some in solitary confinement — for the week. In Chicago, only 10 people would be cited and fined in Monday’s confrontation at the HHS regional offices in downtown Chicago, and only 4 police-tagged “leaders” arrested the next day at American Medical Association headquarters; all were released at day’s end. Perhaps the national outrage in the wake of the Rodney King beating acquittal in Los Angeles a few weeks before had made Chicago police, considered to be some of the most brutal, cautious. The University of Chicago graduation turns out to be a beautiful Chicago spring day. Police and Secret Service are allowing ADAPT members into the auditorium without any hassle. Later, though, Jim Parker is asked to leave. He protests loudly as police haul him out a side door: “Why am l the only one being asked to leave?” About that time Tim Carver of Tennessee simply rolls off into the men's room, unnoticed, to wait out the sweep. Several ADAPT members unfurl a large FREE OUR PEOPLE banner over the wall below their seats, off in the “handicapped section" where the Secret Service have relegated them. Big burly Secret Service men with their walkie-talkies run over quickly and reach down to pull it up. Bob Kafka and Allen Haines are as determined that they won’t succeed. A kind of arm wrestling match ensues with Kafka and Haines holding firmly to the banner to keep it hanging over the wall where it forms a backdrop to the stage area where Sullivan will be speaking. The Secret Service have the advantage of leverage; they’re taller. One especially burly guy finally wrests the pole with its banner away from them and with a contemptuous jerk, flings it high into the bleachers behind them. “Clear ‘em out," mutters an all-business police captain. Four cops to a chair seems to be the agreed-on method of removal. Paulette Patterson of Chicago is removed this way. Over on the side, Anita Cameron and Jim Parker, back in and out of his wheelchair, and Frank Lozano, minus dog Frazier, are scooting down the steps on a side tier, trying to make it down to where Sullivan will speak, but they're caught and removed, too. “Get as close to the doors as possible,” says Bob Kafka to the other activists who have now been ejected from the back of the building. With police blocking doors. clots of ADAPT move to every entrance. Well, almost every one. Jean Stewart and Eleanor Smith use Stewart's crutches to pound on the metal doors, trying to create a disturbance inside, as the graduation ceremonies begin. Inside, though, the noise is barely audible. Nancy Moulton of Atlanta is sitting quietly on the ground, leaning on a door, with her guide dog Nan beside her. “Get up,” say a blue shirted Chicago cop. Moulton doesn‘t move. Nan rests her head on Moulton’s leg and rolls her eyes up at the cop towering over them. Now there are 4 Chicago cops and one guy who must be from the Secret Service hanging over Moulton and her dog. “If you don't move, we’ll have to grab you. and the dog will attack,” the cop persists. Still Moulton sits. “If you’re concerned about the dog, move!” the cop barks. Moulton gets up, worried that the cops will hurt Nan. While some block doors, others pass out leaflets to latecomers. The chants of “hey hey, ho. ho, nursing homes have got to go!" change to “We want Sullivan!" The police have barricaded the exit with blue sawhorses that read “police line." A pickup truck from the University's facilities management is unloading yellow university police barricades. A lady inside the back of the auditorium, hearing the faint chanting coming from outside, mutters, “they're not making friends." She‘s with the university. The University of Chicago is so large that commencement is held in two shifts; a morning one and an afternoon one. Sullivan has finished speaking and the crowd is emerging from the pavilion. They walk down the long fence of police barricades, while ADAPT chants and hands them leaflets: “Wanted: Sullivan. For crimes against disabled people." Inset picture: Beefy policeman with his cap down over his nose leaning forward. Caption: “If you care about your dog, move!” Article continues: It's lunch. ADAPT always feeds its activists. Today it‘s Burger King. Attendants and other walkies pass out cokes and burgers. Nan, Moulton’s dog, gets some much welcomed ice cubes from the big bag under the tree, put into the little folding plastic water bowl Moulton carries with her. A new crowd is coming to the arena. They, too, get leaflets and chants. Tim Craven has been ejected when police found him inside, but not before he and the other two who had hidden themselves in the press box get off a few good chants in Sullivan’s direction. A reporter for Habilitation, a disability magazine out of Seattle, has marched up to Sullivan, she reports, and asked him the questions ADAPT has so long wanted to ask him. To every single question, she says, he has responded, “It's a very nice day." Most of the students don‘t want to talk to a reporter. They have no comment. Some think that it‘s wrong of ADAPT to spoil their special day. Others think the group has a right to make itself heard — just not here, not now. One woman who has read the flyers says that "they don‘t want to be prisoners in nursing homes." A man, who hasn‘t read one, says he doesn’t know what they're protesting about but he thinks they have a right to do it. His daughter is graduating today —— with a degree in special education. Each ADAPT contingent blocking an entrance has its contingent of cops. The two `groups` joke with each other and pass the time in small talk. It's a lot like a chess game, says Haines; this trying to puzzle out where Sullivan‘s going to exit. Just about the time it occurs to several of the organizers who have been trying to psych out from which exit Sullivan will be spirited away that the one exit that has no guards on it is the parking lot entrance, a police car comes screaming down the street, makes an abrupt U-turn, and, at that moment, Sullivan's car, driven by Secret Service, shoots out of the entrance. Several ADAPT wheelers are on his tail in a flash, but it's too late. Sullivan again escapes— but the point, say the activists, has been well made to the over 10,000 people who have attended. Thousands of flyers have been passed out. PHOTO by Tom Olin: Inside a cavernous arena filled with people, two plain clothes police or Secret Service men have an ADAPT person (Bob Kafka) by the arms and are trying to lift him. He is sitting on the steps of an aisle leaning forward. To their right a young man in a button up shirt and jeans, a graduate, looks down at them. Caption reads: Getting to see Sullivan. Not. ADAPT makes no effort to block the streets surrounding the Pavilion. Monday‘s a different story. By 11am, both State and Adams Streets are blocked. Downtown Chicago is taking the flyers as fast as they’re being passed out. Many of them are surprisingly in agreement with ADAPT’s call for 25% of the current Medicaid money to be redirected to in-home services. One businessman engages Bob Kafka in a long and intense discussion over the merits of attendant services. He has buddies who were in Viemam, he says, and want the same thing Kafka does. He gives Kafka his card. Many other people are giving ADAPT members their cards, too; they are interested in the issue. Nobody, they say, has brought it up before. Certainly not the Chicago Tribune, which, instead of covering the baccalaureate brouhaha, runs a feature story on a college camp-out. “What I‘m looking for is a reasonable atmosphere to address the issues." Delilah Brummet Flaum, HHS’s Region V Director, would have to shout to make herself heard over downtown Chicago traffic and hundreds of milling demonstrators. And she‘s not shouting. She has come down, along with Chester Stroyny. Regional Director of the HealthCare Financing Administration and HCFA official David DuPre. in response to ADAPT demands. They want to meet with “officials”; they’ve blockaded the Region V HHS headquarters and aren‘t letting anyone in or out — unless they're willing to climb and crawl over protesters. About 20 activists have gotten all the way up to the HHS offices on the 15th floor, and have a bunch of police in there with them. It’s lunchtime by the time Flaum, Stroyny and DuPre are trotted out to Karen Tamley, Bob Kafka and Teresa Monroe and the others in the middle of Adams Street. ADAPT wants them to call Sullivan, to make him come back to Chicago and meet with them. Flaum can’t do that. “I am willing to do anything else you want us to do. to do try to get this resolved,” she’s saying. But she wants the group to be "more reasonable." She tells Tamley that she is “well aware" of ADAPT’s concerns, and that “the Bush Administration is working on non-institutional care options." Anna Stonum asks more questions. People in the crowd are starting to yell that they can’t hear. Flaum is telling Kafka that “shutting down a building“ is not the way to get a meeting with Sullivan. Kafka responds that they‘ve sent at least four letters to Sullivan and he's never responded to a single one. “You know as well as I do that the Secretary sets the tone for the discussion,“ Kafka lectures her. Kafka and DuPre engage in a debate about facts and figures. They can't trip Kafka up; he seems to know as much if not more about the issue than these folks do. At times the officials even seem to agree with him. Not, however, when he charges that “nothing the Secretary has said or done" changes anything “because he's in the pocket of the nursing home industry." “We disagree with that," say all three officials simultaneously. “We do favor the de-institutionalization model." “The damn Secretary has not said one thing — ever - has not even said the word ‘attendant services’ publicly," Kafka yells, and swears that ADAPT will continue to hold the building. “This is not being positive," says Flaum. “These are peoples' lives you’re talking about.” Kafka retorts. Photo Inset: The head of Bob Kafka, looking very intense, below the words "The damn Secretary has never even said the word 'attendant services' publicly." Article continues: “You don’t know what it’s like,” Monroe shouts at the officials when Kafka's done. “I want to talk to Sullivan. You get him here. He has no idea. Don't tell me Sullivan knows.” Monroe’s point, which she makes to Flaum, is that the money should go directly to the disabled person “because no person knows better what they need than the disabled person. Let us have our dignity.” She argues with Stroyny over nursing home inspections. Mark Johnson accuses Sullivan of “being in the pocket of the nursing homes.“ And meetings like this, he charges, aren’t worth a thing “unless there’s a commitment." The group, hearing Johnson, takes the cue: “We want a commitment!" One of the workers in the HHS office has come out for lunch and now finds she cannot get back in over the demonstrators. Still, she thinks what they're doing is “positive.” She’s a volunteer in a nursing home herself, she says, “And I know they’re the pits. People who don't frequent them don't know. These people who are walking around here” — she gestures to lunch-hour Chicagoans moving up and down the street-- “they could become victims of nursing homes, too. I look at these people here" —— and now she means ADAPT — “and I know I wouldn’t want to be jailed up in a nursing home." But then, she believes in protesting, she says. “I think protests are fine. I'm in tune with them. I was with Martin Luther King back in the 60s." she says. “I was in jail with Dr. King. I was 14 years old. That was just what you did; you went to jail. Some of our young people don't understand. “This is how to explain it,” she continues, warming to her subject. “These people want to get heard. We couldn’t get heard in Birmingham, either. That‘s why we marched on Washington." She won’t identify herself, though, but will only say she’s a spectator. But she works upstairs in the HHS office, she says. “And they got time to listen to that TV stuff — people come in talking about that, they make a big deal about the stuff they see on TV. And they got these people out here and they don‘t want to pay attention. When I was upstairs, they were callin’ ‘em ‘beasts’ and “vultures.” It is a measure of the erosion of belief in the system that has become the trademark of ADAPT that, when an EMS ambulance pulls up to the door and the word goes out that police are bringing down a man who’s had a heart attack, the thought passes among the group that this is yet another ploy. They think the stretcher rolled into the lobby and up on the elevator may be a ruse to make them move away from the door, which they nonetheless do, not wanting it to be said that they cared not for another disabled person who might be in danger. And when the man is brought down on the stretcher, there is more speculation: wasn’t he one of the officials out here earlier? Did the confrontation and excitement give him a heart attack? Is he faking? Is it really a medical emergency, or just :1 move to get someone out of the building who has an important meeting to attend and doesn't want it stopped by cripples? No one remembers the man in the stretcher more than a few minutes after the ambulance pulls away, lights rotating, into the Chicago traffic. Jane Garza from El Hogar del Nino is with the protesters. blocking a door by leaning against it. She’s part of the protest. she says: disabled herself, though she knows she doesn’t look it. She works in early childhood education. Some of the signs protesters are carrying were made by the children at her center, she says. “It's a way to bring them into it," she points out. The parents of the disabled kids at the center “are all reasonable people,” she says. “So they understand my being at an activity like this." If she gets arrested, she says, she has an understanding with her agency: they will bail her out. She’s been arrested with ADAPT before. she says; that was in Montreal. She’s been with ADAPT protests in Washington — the one to get the ADA passed; and one in St. Louis. “No one wants to see their child in a nursing home. People can really relate to that." She says the group at her door has been talking to passersby all day about the issue. “I was on the verge of going into a nursing home myself, back in ’82.” says this woman who doesn’t look disabled. When she had her aneurism and was in rehabilitation, she says, the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services gave her money with which she was able to pay two people — one for the morning, and one for the evening. “I just needed help getting up and then getting to bed. I was so weak. I just needed minimal assistance, somebody there to help me get dressed. But without that program. they would have put me in a nursing home.” Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar’s budget cuts have forced the Department of Rehabilitation Services to extend a freeze on intakes in that program through the end of 1993. and Edgar, Chicago ADAPT charges, is trying to eliminate a yearly cost-of-living adjustment for attendants. "After I got stronger, I was able to manage on my own. But look at how many people are in my shoes!” she says. “I worked; I had money. I was a social worker back then: one who had to apply for public aid just so I could get assistance." Insert picture: A person (possibly Lonnie Smith) with his head to one side and below the words “We want them to see what it’s like for us.” Article continues... The philosophy and tactic of doorblocking: Let people go in and out, if they’re willing to climb over you and your chair to do it. Arrest is not the objective here; inconveniencing people is. “We want them to see what it's like for us.” says one who has engaged in many door blockings. Photo by Tom Olin: A policeman stands in the middle of the street legs braced in a wide stance and arms streched out. He is holding a man with a cane (Gary Bosworth) with one hand and with the other hand and foot trying to hold back a man (Bob Kafka) in a manual wheelchair who is bent forward pushing. Other police officers are standing in the street, a supervisor is watching, as is a TV cameraman. Other protesters are partially visible at the edges of the scene. Chicago police have a black and white checkered band around their hats that is very distinctive. Article continues- Tuesday morning's Chicago Tribune, instead of covering ADAPT's HHS confrontation. reports on stepped-up security measures at the downtown State of Illinois building where. the Tribune reports, in error, ADAPT was "supposed" to be demonstrating Monday. ADAPT, it says, changed its mind. In fact, ADAPT planned to hit state offices on Wednesday. Speculation abounds as to who fed the paper the false information, the effect of which is to make ADAPT look disorganized. It later becomes apparent that state officials have had a hand in it. There is nothing in the Tribune about the people who stopped along State Street and asked questions, about Flaum, about any of it. The Sun-Times carries a photo inside. At the comer of State and Grant, a baby-blue police wrecker, the same blue as the cars, as the barricades, has blocked a curb ramp. ADAPT has blocked four intersections adjacent to the American Medical Association. Wheelchairs are stretched across 16 streets. At the intersection of Wabash and Grand, in the back, Paulette Patterson is hassling the policemen, mouthing off and chasing them with her motorized chair. It seems she is trying to get arrested. The police are being friendly enough. It won't be until noon that things will get rough. The cops will barricade the main entrances to the glass-walled fortress: many ADAPT members will take that as their cue to launch themselves out of their wheelchairs onto the high-curbed stoop around the building, crawling up to bang and hammer on the wooden barricades. A few find satisfaction in pounding on the glass walls. This will happen, though, only after the confrontation — the confrontation that resulted in Jerry Eubanks of Chicago being dropped from his wheelchair: picked up by his neck, it seems to other protesters, who holler for an “Ambulance! Now!”; the confrontation that causes Patterson to roll from her wheelchair and shriek at the top of her lungs, kicking her legs wildly as police try to pick her up. The police back off; when they come at her again, her screams again drive them back. Finally, Patterson is left alone, and, once more in her wheelchair, rolls off to the side, where she admits slyly and with her trademark smile that she enjoys discomfiting police. “They don't wanna mess with me," she says proudly. Suddenly they are all there again, surging at the entrance, trying to get up the high curb. Stephanie Thomas and Diane Coleman and others are wedging themselves in next to the Chicago Transit Authority paratransit vehicles that are a sure sign of arrests: it's the only way police can haul off a wheelchair to the hoosegow. Allen Leegant is diving under a barricade trying to get up to the entrance. Chris Hronis and Arthur Campbell are trying to follow; they are caught by police. Campbell is carried, spread-eagle, by four cops, directly to a CT A van. Cameras are everywhere; TV crews have materialized out of nowhere. Campbell has been arrested. Mike Auberger has been arrested. Campbell and Auberger are each put into his own van. The police have their eye on Mike Ervin. When you catch a snatch of cop-to-cop talk, you learn they're trying to pick off those they figure to be the leaders. “What the cops never understand is why the demonstration continues after they’ve hauled off the folks they think are leaders," says someone who is blocking a street. “They can’t figure out that arresting leaders doesn’t work; that as soon as they arrest someone, somebody else just moves in." Susan Nussbaum, blocking a side door, answers questions about whether the movement will ever see violence. “There’s always the potential for violence," she is saying. “But it would be good if that could be understood in the context of a larger issue. “I am not in favor of getting my head beaten in." At 3:15 the building starts to empty out. ADAPT has managed to block all the exits, so AMA workers and officials alike are subjected to a gauntlet of taunts as they trot, under tight police protection, down the ramp to the alley and across to the parking garage. The taunts seem mostly to be of the “AMA Shame On You” variety. When ADAPT members arrived at AMA headquarters in the morning, they found tables set up with water coolers and cups of refreshing water awaiting them. Later, the AMA‘s Department of Geriatric Health would confirm for a reporter that the AMA had done this so the disabled people wouldn't get overheated and get sick. Many protesters were wary of the water. Some suspected it had been spiked with Valium: others thought it a ploy to get them to have to pee later on, adding to their discomfort and hopefully ending the demonstration early. Much of the water was left untouched. Water was also running through hoses into the sprinkling system of the AMA‘s lawns. This had the added effect of keeping protesters off the grassy knolls fronting the building. Shortly after ADAPT arrived, one demonstrator had parked his chair on the hose while others moved across the area to block doors. Later, the water was simply turned off. Insert picture: A head and shoulders picture of a protester chanting, with the words "AMA: Shame on you!" "People are dying shame on you!" Article continues- The AMA’s flak, Arnold Collins, was standing around with the TV and radio reporters most of the day. The AMA had issued a statement insisting it “supports the home care objectives of ADAPT." Dr. Joanne Schwartzberg, Director of the AMA's Department of Geriatric Health, said in the news release that a meeting the previous Thursday with ADAPT had been “productive” and that the two `groups` had “considerable common ground.” Campbell, who attended the meeting, had a different analysis. He said he believed Schwartzberg truly had no understanding what ADAPT wanted; that some of their ideas had been totally inconceivable to her. Schwartzberg said ADAPT was the first group she had ever met with and felt “hostility.” “It was a great shock," she said. “I always thought of myself as being a great advocate. But I wasn’t an advocate enough for them." Schwartzberg said that ADAPT didn’t understand that there were “really frail people in nursing homes — a kind of frailty that these disabled don’t have. “I was really scared that the demonstrators might get harmed, the way they throw themselves out of their chairs.” she went on. “They’re very courageous; I think they're a little reckless. Luckily, nobody’s gotten seriously hurt." “Do you think she really believes the things she says, or do you think it’s just a pose?” a filmmaker wondered. The AMA had issued “a guideline for medical management of homecare patients," she said, and they were putting on 8 seminars for doctors “in managing home care.” She knew ADAPT wanted AMA members to divest themselves of their financial interest in nursing homes and cut nursing home admissions. But the AMA couldn‘t do that, she explained patiently. “We are a voluntary body. not a regulatory body." “They couldn't understand why we couldn‘t do more." she said. The Chicago Tribune was still concerned about the State of lllinois building. Every day Tribune stories had chronicled the increasing security at the site. On Tuesday, Paulette Patterson and another disabled woman filed suit in U.S. District Court alleging denial of access due to increased security. Though a temporary restraining order was not granted, Patterson’s attorney, Matthew Cohen, said filing the suit had had the desired effect. The Tribune covered the suit. Photos by Tom Olin: 1) Two protesters (Spitfire and Jimmi Schrode) in the march raise the power fist to woman leaning out of a second floor window yelling and giving them the thumbs up. Below on the sidewalk most people are just walking by but one older man looks on. Spitfire is wearing her combat helmet. 2) A line of ADAPT protesters face a set of barricades on the other side of which are a line of policemen holding the barricades with both hands. Midway down the line of protesters, a man in a wheelchair (Danny Saenz) is turned toward the camera and another protester (Chris Hronis). 3) Close up of a man in a wheelchair (Rene Luna) who sits in front of an almost life sized portrait of IL Governor Edgar. Rene is holding a poster that reads "nursing home industry owns Edgar." Article continues- Finally, on Wednesday, ADAPT obliged the Tribune and state officials by staging a protest at the building, drawing attention to stale policies that were cutting people off from attendant services in Illinois. On Thursday. the Tribune ran a long story on ADAPT. Calling them "a group of vociferous activists savvy in street action." It quoted a miffed Chicago official who refused to be named saying that "one of the strongest points in their civil disobedience is making themselves look as pathetic as possible.“ “The group's history is rife with attention-grabbing acts of protest." said the Tribune. which compared them to ACT-UP and Earth First! protest `groups`. "Though some may question their tactics. none can doubt they have impact.“ said the Tribune. the end
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The Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, September 7, 1991 Title: Disabled plan to demonstrate at convention The Orange Sheriffs Office is preparing for a showdown when nursing home operators and activists in wheelchairs show up next month. By Christopher Quinn of the Sentinel Staff The stage has been set for a wild showdown next month in Orlando among nursing home operators, deputy sheriffs and hundreds of wheelchair-bound protesters, some on respirators. The activists, whose tactics include chaining themselves to buildings to halt conventions, want fewer people kept in nursing homes and more money devoted to caring for the disabled at home. They are members of Denver-based American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT. They plan to demonstrate at next month’s convention of the American Health Care Association at the Orange County‘ Convention and Civic Center. The association represents nursing home operators. If ADAPT members break the law during their protests — as they have in cities across the country — the Orange County Sheriff's Office plans to arrest them, possibly filling the county jail with people who require medical help. “Their aim is to be arrested," said Sgt. Jon Swanson, head of the Sheriffs Office intelligence unit. “Their whole tactic is confrontation.” ‘lt’s going to cost a lot of taxpayer money’ The Sheriff's Office will have to pay overtime to keep crowd and riot control squads on hand 24 hours a day during the four-day convention that begins Oct 6. “It's going to cost a lot of money, a lot of taxpayer money,“ Swanson said. An ADAPT newsletter about the planned protest says "Mickey Mouse and AHCA will never be the same after ADAPT travels to the tourist capital of the US." The newsletter boasts of how the group disrupted a speech by Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan earlier this year. Barbara Guthrie, an ADAPT organizer, said in an interview Friday that members are non-violent people willing to go to jail for their beliefs. “We'll push for arrest" she said. "There's thousands of people in nursing homes that don't need to be there.” Guthrie said ADAPT’s goal is for Medicaid to redirect 25 percent of its $23 billion nursing home budget to home care for the disabled. Guthrie-said she is confined to a wheelchair but is able to live at home because she gets a little help day getting dressed. Linda Keegan, a vice president for the nursing home association, said ADAPT does not seem interested in compromise. “What they're looking for is attention," Keegan said, adding that her group has met with ADAPT leaders twice this year to map out an agreement but that ADAPT continued to protest at meetings. “I really don’t believe what they’re looking for is to work anything out!" Keegan said the association's immediate concern is safety at the convention. She said she would not be surprised if ADAPT tried to block all the entrances at the mammoth building. They're pretty good," she said. Most of the 3,500 people attending the convention will stay at the Peabody Hotel across from the convention center on south International Drive. Swanson said ADAPT has reserved 80 rooms at the Clarion Plaza Hotel at the Convention Center just up the street. The group expects more than 300 members. In cities across the country ADAPT has blocked meetings, disrupted meetings and shut down offices as it sought to reach its goals. Last May in Washington, activists— more than 100 in wheelchairs — blocked entrances to the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department to protest nursing homes. Some ADAPT members discarded their wheelchairs and crutches and tried to get past a police line securing the building. Some crawled under parked police cars and tried to squeeze past the legs of police officers in front of the entrances. Sheriff's crowd control officers will be trained in the next few weeks on how to arrest protesting quadriplegics and other disabled people without hurting them, Swanson said. Deputies might even find themselves under attack. Swanson said that in other cities, ADAPT members have formed wheelchair lines and rushed police barricades. Unless the ADAPT members were charged with felonies, which is unlikely, they would be processed through the county jail and released within a few hours. The jail, the state's most crowded, is under court order to release people accused of most non-violent crimes. Ed Hoyle, an assistant jail director, said if the protesters were arrested a second time, they probably would be held for a court appearance. The jail will have emergency medical workers on hand. For the protesters, the Orlando visit will not be all business. The ADAPT flier says, "There will be time at the end of the actions to play at Disney World and Epcot Center."
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The Guardian, May 27,1992 Photo by Tom Olin: A disabled man dressed all in white (Tim Craven) lies on his back to crawl under a police barricade. Beside him a woman (Barbara Bounds) in a wheelchair leans toward him as if to support and protect him. She is facing the barricade and has a sign taped to the back of her chair that says "People Before Profits." Two police men lean over the barricade toward Tim and another sticks his arm in between them. Behind them are even more officers. On the near side of the barricade yet another officer stands, bending almost all the way forward toward Tim on the ground. Caption reads: Protesters in Chicago got our of their wheelchairs and lay down in front of the barricades, forcing employees to walk over them. Disabled militants bring hope to health reform By Mary Johnson Chicago-Hundreds of members and supporters of ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) took to the streets here May 10-13 to continue their fight for in-home attendant services and to move the national health-Cate debate into the rights arena. The group is aiming to force the American Medical Association—whose headquarters are here—and the American Health Care Association, the nursing home lobby, to replace “home care" with "attendant services“ which consumers control “in the location and manner of our choice,“ says ADAPT. ADAPT, which under the name American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation won the national fight for wheelchair lifts on buses, intend their street protests as the “flashpoint," says founder Wade Blank, for national health care reform. There is nothing medical about assistance to bathe, eat or dress, these activists charge. Target: Louis Sullivan Learning that Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan would be speaking at University of Chicago commencements on May 10, the 250-strong ADAPT contingent cancelled a Mother‘s Day march and stormed into the university‘s pavilion, planning to disrupt Sullivan's speech. Police and Secret Service agents promptly ejected them, but the group spent the afternoon handing leaflets to graduates‘ families. Sullivan has been a perennial ADAPT target for his refusal to meet with them to discuss Medicaid policy on nursing homes. The next day, ADAPT surrounded the HHS regional offices in downtown Chicago, managing to get up to 15th-floor offices before being blocked by police. Others in the group cordoned off exits, forcing building employees to climb over them, and at one point succeeded in getting department officials into the street to listen to the group‘s demands. Ten protesters were cited and released. On May 12, ADAPT moved to AMA headquarters, blocking adjacent streets and crawling up to bang on office windows. Police barricaded the doors, but protesters got our of their wheelchairs and piled themselves at barricades, forcing AMA employees to step over them when their offices shut down early. Police moved to arrest four people they believed to be in command. The four included Mike Auberger of Denver and Arthur Campbell of Louisville, Ky., who were released later in the day. Garnering media attention Though ADAPT planned to press state targets only on May 13, the state barricaded its downtown State of Illinois Building on the two days before. Guards locked wheelchair access doors and forced wheelchair users to submit to police escort on elevators. On May 12, Chicago ADAPT member Paulette Patterson sued the state over discriminatory denial of access. Though District judge Milton Shadur failed to grant a requested temporary restraining order, Patterson’s attorney, Matthew Cohen, said he had “no doubt the suit had an effect.” On May 13, ADAPT took over the building while city police squabbled with state police over jurisdiction and mostly kept their hands off protesters. Longtime Chicago activists noted ADAPT‘s success in garnering media attention. Chicago Lawyers Guild member Ora Schub said ADAPT‘s protests got more coverage than Gulf war demonstrations in the city — even when antiwar protesters shut down Lake Shore Drive. There seems little question ADAPT has begun to have an impact beyond disability rights. As one of the only groups to take the health reform issue into the streets, ADAPT, says Blank, sees its role “as focusing the debate on a bigger political issue” within health-care reform: services as a legal right. “What the disability rights movement can do is humanize society,” he says. Tennessee ADAPT recently forced the hospital power structure there to accept a state financing fee that will fully fund Medicaid (see sidebar). Lawyer Gordon Bonnyman, who was involved in the Tennessee campaign, remembers a “poverty advocate friend" sending him a clipping about an ADAPT protest in Orlando, Fla., in 1990, when the group first took on the American Health Care Association over the attendant services issue. He and his friend “were despairing about health reform," he said, “asking ourselves when the people who were really affected were going to begin to influence the discussion. "l said, ‘l just don‘t see that ever happening until people are willing to stage some direct actions,‘ " Bonnyman recalls. “Then she sent me that clipping from ADAPT's Orlando action and she said, ‘Here are the folks who could do that.'" “My response at that time was, ‘That’s nice, but how many people is that?‘ I now think: ‘Enough.' ADAPT really does have the ability to have an impact nationally on health care issues-far beyond their own issue of personal attendant services." The group plans similar actions in San Francisco this fall. Second, sidebar, article inserted on this page: Saving Medicaid in Tenn Six people in wheelchairs moved swiftly a cross across the drive-way of the Tennessee Health Care Association in Nashville on March 31. Chaining themselves together, the small band waited for members of the Tennessee Hospital Association to come out of their meeting. It was a classic ADAPT action. This time ADAPT was leading a coalition of health care reformers that would force the state‘s powerful hospital lobby to drop its opposition to a state licensing fee intended to prevent a $1.1 billion loss in federal Medicaid funds. Tennessee pioneered the concept of leveraging matching federal Medicaid funds by levying a state financing fee against hospitals that took Medicaid patients. With its 70-30 match, the state took the $300 million collected from participating hospitals to obtain another $700 million in federal matching funds. With that tactic, Tennessee was fully funding its Medicaid program and feeling no financial crisis. By 1991 it was in use in 37 states, with many reporting similar success. The federal government, alarmed at having to pay out increased Medicaid funds to stares that used this method, devised a plan to derail it. A little-publicized 1991 law made such licensing fees illegal unless levied against all hospitals equally. It counted on opposition from hospitals that took no Medicaid patients (and therefore had no reason to agree to the fees) to fight state passage of licensing fee bills. That opposition was swift in coming in Tennessee. The state is home to Hospital Corporation of America and HealthTrust, two of the nation's largest hospital chains, and numerous other hospitals. The Tennessee Hospital Association, of which Hospital Corporation of America is a powerful member, opposed the fee. A state bill to extend the fee to all hospitals was virtually dead, said Tony Garr, head of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign, until ADAPT of Tennessee, led by organizer Diane Coleman, got involved. “The only way we could bring attention to the issue was to hit the streets,” said Garr. “ADAPT played a very important role" in helping other groups in the Tennessee Health Care Campaign “move to direct action,” said Gordon Bonnyman, a lawyer who has worked with Medicaid issues in Tennessee. Beginning in January, Coleman and Tennessee ADAPT members staged weekly actions, targeting the large hospitals as villains who were destroying the state’s Medicaid program. The first week a group of nearly 200 people, headed by ADAPT, marched to the Hospital Association's offices. The next week the group staged a protest in front of Baptist Hospital, which opposed the fee. The group hung a sign asking “Are you Christian?" on the hospital administrator's portrait. The group‘s fifth action targeted Thomas Frist, who heads Hospital Corporation of America. “We had a small casket, with dollar bills draped over it, and a sign that read, “Thomas Frist, how many must die for your $1.235 million in annual cash compensation?” said Coleman. The protests had the desired effect. Frist, reportedly upset by the negative publicity, capitulated the day the group surged on Health Care Association headquarters with the cross and withdrew his corp0ration’s opposition to the fee—reportedly urging legislators to vote swiftly to pass the law to avoid more unfavorable publicity. “There have been Medicaid cuts for the last 15 years in this country, and they have gone mostly unreported," said Bonnyman. “ADAPT galvanized people. Without them, the whole thing would have gone down the toilet." M.J.
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Chicago Sun Times, 3/13/92 TWO PHOTOS by Sun-Times photographer Al Podgorski: First photo is of a person (Eilene Spitfire Sable) in a helmet and white sweatshirt making a peace sign as she faces off with a uniformed Chicago police officer, over a police barricade. Spitfire faces away from the camera and teh officer's face is somewhat obscured by her hand and the visor on his hat. On Spitfire's back are the words "NEVER SURRENDER." Second picture is of two trim uniformed Chicago police officedrs holding on to the wheelchair and arm of a large man in a manual chair (Jerry Eubanks,) Jerry, who has no legs, is leaning to one side and has his head hanging over. His button down shirt has come mostly open and hs is grimmacing. Behind this trio, a crowd of ADAPT protesters (including Lujuina Votaw) are sitting together, guarded by more uniformed officers. Caption reads: Disabled rights activists keep police busy Tuesday at the American Medical Associatlon building. LEFT: Eileen Sabel of Phlladelphia takes a peaceful approach. RIGHT: A protester is removed after blocking a van that contained an arrested demonstrator. Disabled take home-care protest to AMA's doorstep By Larry Weintraub, Staff Writer ln a third day of protests in support of home care instead of nursing home admissions, disabled rights activists Tuesday disrupted traffic and activities at the American Medical Association headquarters at Grand and State. Four demonstrators were arrested and one was injured. Two police officers were hurt and streets around the AMA building were blocked—first by protesters in wheelchairs and later by police. The demonstrators arrived at about 11:30 a.m. and surrounded the building at 515 N. State, said police Area 6 Chief of Patrol John Walsh. About six hours later, police officers escorted a caravan of wheelchairs south on State toward the Bismarck Hotel, where the group, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT), has been staying. In the interim, the activists pounded on windows, shouted slogans, blocked entrances and generally tried to shut down the building. When the AMA began sending workers home at 3:30 p.m., about 20 demonstrators dropped out of their wheelchairs and crawled to confrontational positions. One man, Michael Auberger, 38, of Denver, was charged with battering a police officer. Officials said he rammed his mechanized wheelchair into East Chicago District Patrol Officer Robert Weston, injuring Weston's leg. The injured protester, a 38-year-old man who asked that his name be withheld, was treated for bruises at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and released. The other disabled persons arrested, a man and two women, were charged with disorderly conduct. ADAPT members, about 300 from 40 cities in 25 states, are holding a national convention here. They have been protesting the amount of federal and state funds spent on housing disabled people in nursing homes, rather than on attendants whose assistance would permit them to live at home, according to one spokesman, Mark Johnson of Atlanta. Johnson said his group targeted the AMA Tuesday “because nobody can go into a nursing home without a physician's referral, so they can play a pivotal role in reforming the system." Johnson said the lack of money for in-home care forces disabled people who could get along on their own with minimal assistance “to go on public aid and to live where they don't want to live." In-home care is far cheaper than nursing home residence, he said, and 80 percent of disabled people who live in nursing homes would rather live at home. Joanne Schwartzberg, director of the AMA‘s department of geriatric health, said the association agrees that “home care is the first choice for long-term care" and the AMA has a long history of support for it. However, the organization can only suggest guidelines to its members, she said. “Most disabled persons obviously don't belong in nursing homes." said Schwartzberg, “and we offered at a meeting last Thursday to work with them toward mutual goals—increasing the amount of home care and possibly drawing model home-care legislation for states that have no such provisions." The group demonstrated Sunday at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan was speaking, and Monday at 105 W. Adams. where the department has offices. ADAPT plans to move its protest to the State of Illinois Center today. Meanwhile Tuesday, two women who use wheelchairs filed a class-action federal lawsuit charging that "oppressive" security measures Monday at the State of Illinois Center denied them equal access to facilities there. An emergency hearing on the matter is scheduled for today before U.S. District Judge Milton I. Shadur. Contributing: Jim Casey, Rosalind Russi
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Chicago Defender, Tuesday May 12, 1992 Sengstacke Newspaper vol. LXXXVII- No.6 35 cents, 40 cents outside Chicago and suburbs Title: Disabled group blockades street by Dobie Holland Likening the plight of the disabled to that of the Civil Rights movement, Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) staged a blockade of downtown streets Monday in an effort to gain an audience with Health and Human Services Director Dr. Louis W. Sullivan. Sullivan, however, refused to meet with the group and 10 ADAPT members were arrested on criminal trespassing charges according to HHS and police officials. “Our ghettos are the nursing homes and facilities for the mentally retarded. Society doesn't want to recognize us. They want to put us in these ghettos," said ADAPT coordinator Bob Kafka of Austin, Texas. Hundreds of ADAPT members rolled their wheelchairs and formed a human chain in the middle of Clark and Adams streets and swamed HHS’ regional offices to demand a meeting with Sullivan. The group wants 25 percent of Medicaid funds channeled to community-based nursing centers, which would permit many disabled citizens to live at home, ADAPT representatives said. "The American Disabilities Act is very similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Kafka said. “Very few people want to talk about the discrimination against the disabled. "They don't want to consider us as people and they just want to put us all in nursing homes,” Kafka continued. “Most people think a nursing home is a nice place for little old ladies...well, it's not.” Kafka, who is wheelchair-bound, said he has never been in an institution but recent political policies of the Bush Administration are making it possible. Title: ADAPT blocks street The American Health Care Association, a formidable nursing lobby, and the American Medical Association are also responsible, Kafka noted. Kafka said nursing homes have become big businesses and doctors have become owners of nursing homes, which motivated both `groups` to, support the institutionalization of the disabled. The group has been attempting to meet with Sullivan for more than two years, Kafka said. with all of their requests being rejected. A spokesperson for HHS told the group that Sullivan was contacted but said his schedule would not permit him to meet with them. On Sunday, a small band of disabled activists disrupted Sullivan's commencement address at the Univelsity of Illinois at Chicago, although the secretary did not acknowledge the ADAPT members. Guests to the gaduation day ceremonis filed past police barricades, while the activists, many in wheelchairs, circled outside the doors of the UIC Pavillion, chanting “We want Sullivan.” The demonstrators made same demands. urging the Bush Administration to redirect 25 percent of Medicaid funds currently budgeted for nursing homes and other institutions to set up community-based programs to allow the disabled to live on their own. An estimated 1.6 million disabled people now live in nursing homes. which Kafka said is a more expensive and less humane option than helping the disabled live independently.
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Chicago Defender, Monday, May I I, 1992 Title: Sullivan speaks, get heckled at UIC by Dobie Holland Screaming slogans such as “You're killing us," a group of physically-disabled persons disrupted the commencement speech of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Dr. Louis W. Sullivan Sunday at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Security personnel removed the partially wheelchair-bound group from the UIC Pavilion and escorted them outside, where they joined 500 other protesters from 25 states who picketed outside during the ceremonies. John Gladstone, a Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) member from Philadelphia, explained the group's militant tactics: “These are radical times. You can only write so many letters. l wrote so many letters to Mr. Sullivan that I had writer's cramp." ADAPT, a national Civil Rights agency, is concerned with Bush Administration policies that have resulted in widespread budget cuts in state Medicaid funding. The reductions, ADAPT members say, will force disabled people to live in nursing homes. The group is calling for 25 percent of Medicaid funds to be ear-marked for community-based nursing centers, which will enable many disabled citizens to live independently from nursing homes. “They're warehousing us (in nursing homes)," Gladstone said. “I've lived in nursing homes for 14 years and I have seen some of the brutality that goes on there." Gladstone said nursing homes are guilty of inhumane treatment and neglect of patients who are unable to defend themselves. The environment in nursing homes, Gladstone added, is not conducive to leading a normal adult lifestyle. "When you live in these nursing home facilities, they take your life away. When I first went into a nursing home, I was in a walker but they wouldn't let me walk and they put me in a wheelchair — now I can't walk," he said. Sullivan, who was under tight security, was not available for comment after the ceremonies. The HHS secretary delivered his address despite the nterruptions and emphasized a need for sensitivity and caring toward all humans.
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Sun Times, May 11, 1992 Photo by Brian Jackson: A line of police hold a long metal barricade in front of them. On the other side a row of wheelchair demonstrators with ADAPT are lined up toes to the barricade. A man in a wheelchair (Mark Johnson) is in the forground looking sideways to the camera, beside him to his left is a small woman in a chair (Cassie James). Three people down another protester (Brian from Houston) faces the camera and is wearing numerous buttons. Another police officer stands behind Mark, with his hands on his hips. Caption: Able to protest Police keep demonstrators in wheelchairs from advancing Sunday alter a protest of Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan's commencement address at the University of illinois at Chicago. The disabled activists were protesting "warehousing" people with disabilities in nursing homes and other institutions. Russell Goode, a Louisville, Ky., member of American Disabled tor Attendant Programs Today, said, “What we really want is Sullivan to reallocate 25 percent oi the money they give lor nursing homes to us and Medicaid or attendant programs.“ The money would enable disabled people to hire attendants, he said.
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New York Times, National, Thursday October 10.1991 Title: Militant Advocates for Disabled Revel in Their Roles as Agitators by Steven A. Holmes, special to the New York Times [compare with ADAPT 673] Boxed text: Forcefully trying to change images of the nation’s disabled. ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 6 — The melee‘ at a meeting of nursing home representatives here was, in many ways, a typical for the demonstrators: After smashing their wheelchairs into police barricades and blocking a hotel entrance, 73 of them were arrested, creatmg front page headlines and a successful day's work for Adapt, the militant advocacy group for the disabled. The aim of the action today at the Peabody Hotel in this resort city was to focus attention on the organization's call to divert Federal money from nursing homes to a form of in-home care. But the means the group uses, like Sunday's chaotic demonstration, have often exasperated its allies as much as its adversaries. But even those who criticize Adapt acknowledge that the searing images of people with physical limitations engaging in civil disobedience often succeed in shattering stereotypes of how meek and pliant “cripples” are supposed to act, stereotypes often held by many disabled people themselves. “Adapt is about the issue," said Mary Johnson, editor of the Disability Rag, a weekly magazine that is devoted to disability issues. “But it is also about showing you that though you are disabled you have power already. For people who feel they don't have any power, who are often dependent, that is such a liberation." The Denver-based group's style has drawn its share of criticism from other advocates for the disabled. These critics note that the group played little part in the negotiations that led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and that their methods had often antagonized allies in the stniggle. “I think they do get attention," said a Washington-based disabled advocate who asked not to be identified. “But that's true when they are playing to an audience that is not politically sawy. For people out in Middle America, sitting in front of the TV, seeing people in wheelchairs demonstrating is something new. But to folks in Washington who are used to sit-ins, it's passe." [Subheading] An Effective Weapon But leaders of Adapt, which originally stood for Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, say it is `groups` like theirs that push others to press forcefully ior expanded rights for the disabled. “l think that even for the people with disabilities who don't participate directly in Adapt, we give them heart," said Diane Coleman, an Adapt organizer from Tennessee. And even those who sometimes criticize Adapt acknowledge that it is an eiiective weapon. lt is a role Adapt readily takes on. "We make all the other `groups` seem real rational," said Mike Auberger, one of Adapt’s founders. The group was begun in I983 in Denver by people who worked to persuade the city to make all local buses accessible to people in wheelchairs. Over the next few years they held protests over the issue of accessible public transportation in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Phoenix; Detroit and Atlanta. In addition to picketing, the protesters often would lock their wheelchairs together in front of city buses or chain themselves to a bus’s bumper. Early on, Adapt made a prime target the American Public Transit Association, a group representing mass transit systems. The protesters disrupted meetings and harassed officials of the group. “You have to have a bad guy in political organizing, somebody you can go after," said Mr. Auberger. These days that role is filled by the nursing home industry and Louis W. Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services. After Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act last year, requiring that all new buses be equipped with hydraulic lifts for people in wheelchairs, Adapt began protesting for Federal subsidies for personal attendants, individuals hired by those with physical impairments to help them with basic everyday needs. Adapt wants 25 percent of the more than $20 billion paid to nursing home operators under the Medicaid program to be diverted from nursing homes to help the disabled pay for personal attendants. Though many mainstream proponents of help for the disabled have endorsed the goal of government subsidies for attendants, the diversion of funds sought by Adapt is opposed by the American Health Care Association, the trade group for nursing homes, and by the Bush Administration. As a result, Adapt has spent the last few months harassing the nursing home association and “Mr. Sullivan. This spring they blocked his car during a visit to Chicago and heckled him in a speech in Washington. in August, a handful of Adapt members rolled their wheelchairs along side Mr. Sullivan and harangued him as he took part in a fitness walk on Martha's Vineyard. Whether such methods will achieve Adapt‘s stated goals is uncertain. But leaders of the group say that when they first began to put pressure on the public transportation industry, no one felt their methods would bear fruit. "You have to give complete and utter credit for that to Adapt," said Evan Kemp, Jr., the head of e Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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Photo by Tom Olin: A woman with thin arms (Diane Coleman) sits holding a sign that reads "attendant services not lip service" and she looks off to her right. Her head is about waist height to a beefy police officer who stands looming beside her looking down with a hostile expression, his had on his hip. Behind them is some kind of barrier and a couple of other protesters. [This article starts on ADAPT 694 and continues on 678 and 670, The entire text of the article is included here for easier reading, but descriptions of the pictures are included on the pages the pictures appear on. 694 is just a picture and the headline of the story.] Title: ADAPT Activists and nursing home operators face to face: We will not stand for it any longer. Let our people go. You operators want to pretend it’s complicated. You raise a-lot of pseudo-issues to disguise the fact that it’s all about your money and your power. You want to pretend you’re trapped in this business, that union contracts prevent such and such... that legal liability prevents so on and so forth... We don’t want to hear any of that. It’s not complicated. It’s very simple. You will let our people go. >> We were arrested the first day, lots of us. They never expected us to come close to their hotel, the place where members of the American Health Care Association were staying while they held their convention across the street. Yes, they knew we were coming to Orlando. They briefed the locals, had the police waiting. So it was all set up in advance, cops on the rooftops, a police booking operation in the basement of the convention center. They were all set to cage us up for daring to interfere. They thought they had it covered. They were smugly going about their business, expecting only a minimum of trouble for a couple of hours. The intensity there — anyone driving by could feel it. The tons of security, the A.C.H.A. people retreating inside the hotel, aghast. It was like: “How dare they spoil our party!” The first wave of arrests was meant to stop us at all costs, keep us out of the convention. That first day, they thought they’d arrested all the “leaders.” But with ADAPT, when folks get arrested, other folks fill in and we just keep going. We will not be moved. It was our intent to send the message that nursing homes have one and a half million Americans locked up. We want the nursing home operators to be publicly accountable for that. Here we are, people who look like the folks the operators lock up at their home facilities. They’re on vacation, but they can’t escape. We are people with disabilities. We are everywhere. The operators were inside having seminars on how to manage the disruptive patient. We were outside holding a seminar with the press on the economics of managing people in nursing homes. Every place the A.C.H.A. people went they had to confront ADAPT people who had been in nursing homes. They can talk all they want about how homelike it is. We know better, firsthand. We are focusing the attention of the Bush administration through U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan and the whole Health Care Financing Administration. We are focusing public attention on the nursing home operators, the nurses, the families, everybody who had anything to do with our people being locked up. This will be a long struggle; we’re prepared for that. Five or ten years, a long struggle. Unless people like ADAPT are willing to stay focused and targeted, people in nursing homes and state schools are going to be forgotten all over again. We may not win at every action, but we will win the cumulative victory. We make people think about nursing homes. They don’t want to think about that. Put them away, put it out of mind, put it somewhere else. I want to say to people who say they don’t like ADAPT tactics: Do you really want our people out? Or are you sitting home saying, “Oh, those nursing homes shouldn’t do that!” How many people are going to get free because you hold that opinion? What are you doing about it? People are turned off by the arrests, by our confrontational style. “I’m not going to do ADAPT-style confrontations” — we hear that a lot. If you don't want to be on the front lines but you do want to help, there’s plenty to do: raising dollars so we can get to our actions, working with people in your community to make these issues known, forming your own group, bringing some attention to the issues in your own home town. We sure would welcome your help. ADAPT puts the edge on it, sets the margin. This is as far as we go, this is all we will take. We will not be moved. This article is taken from a conversation with Bob Kafka of ADAPT in Austin. The photographer is Tom Olin of ADAPT in Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee. You can reach ADAPT people at either of these telephone numbers: Colorado 303-733-9324 Texas 512-442-0252
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Times Herald Record, Friday October 11, 1991 p. 36 Title: Heros for the handicapped? Militant group for disabled revels in its role of agitator The New York Times [compare with ADAPT 674 - the NYT clipping] ORLANDO. Fla. — The melee at a meeting of nursing home representatives here was in many ways a typical demonstration by members of Adapt. After smashing their wheelchairs into police barricades and blocking a hotel entrance, 73 members were arrested, creating front page headlines and a successful day’s work for the militant advocacy group for the disabled. The aim of the action last Sunday at the Peabody Hotel in this resort city was to locus attention on the organization's call to divert federal funds from nursing homes in a form of in-home care. But the means the group uses, like Sunday’s chaotic demonstration, has exasperated its allies often as much its adversaries. But even those who criticize Adapt acknowledge that the searing image of people with physical limitations engaging in civil disobedience often succeed in shattering stereo-types of how meek and pliant "cripples" are supposed to act - stereotypes often held by many disabled people themselves. “Adapt is about the issue," said Mary Johnson, editor of the Disability Rag, a weekly magazine that is devoted to disability issues. "But it is also about showing you that though you are disabled you have power already. For people who feel they don't have any power, who are often dependent, that is such a liberation." [Subheading] Antagonizing allies The Denver-based group’s style has drawn its share of criticism from other advocates for the disabled. These critics note that the group played little part in the negotiations thai led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and that their methods have often antagonized allies in the struggle. “l think they do get attention," said a Washington-based disabled advocate who asked not to be identified. "But that‘s true when they are playing to an audience that is not politically savy. For people out in Middle America, sitting in front of the TV, seeing people in wheelchairs demonstrating is something new. But to folks in Washington who are used to sit-ins, it's passe." Leaders of Adapt, which originally stood for Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, say it is `groups` like theirs that push others to press forcefully for expanded rights for the disabled. “I think that even for the people with disabilities who don't participate directly in Adapt, we give them heart," said Diane Coleman, an Adapt organizer from Tennessee. And even those who sometimes criticize Adapt acknowledge that it is an effective weapon. It is a role Adapt readily takes on. “We make all the other `groups` seem real rational," said Mike Auberger, one of Adapt's founders and advocate who helped persuade the city to make all local buses accessible to people in wheelchairs. [Subheading] Drastic means to a questionable end Over the next few years they held protests over the issue of accessible public transportation in Cincinnati, ST Louis, Phoenix, Detroit and Atlanta. In addition to picketing, the protesters often would lock their wheelchairs together in front of city buses or chain themselves to a bus's bumper. Early on, Adapt made a prime target the American Public Transit Association, a group representing mass transit systems. The disabled advocates disrupted meetings and harassed officials of the group. "You have to have a bad guy in political organizing, somebody you can go after," said Auberger. These days that role is filled by the nursing home industry and Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services. After Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act last year, requiring that all new buses be equipped with hydraulic lifts for people in wheelchairs, Adapt began protesting for federal subsidies for personal attendants, individuals hired by those with physical impairments to help them with basic everyday needs. Adapt wants 25 percent of the more than $20 billion paid to nursing home operators under the Medicaid program to he diverted from nursing homes to help the disabled pay for personal attendants. Though many mainstream advocates for the disabled have endorsed the goal of government subsidies for attendants, the diversion of funds sought by Adapt is opposed by the American Health Care Association, the trade group for nursing homes, and by the Bush administration. As a result, Adapt has spent the last few months harassing the nursing home association and Sullivan. This spring they blocked his car during a visit to Chicago and heckled him during a speech in Washington. in August, a handful of Adapt members rolled their wheelchairs along side Sullivan and haranged him as he participated in a fitness walk on Martha's Vineyard. Whether such methods will achieve Adapt’s stated goals is uncertain. But leaders of the group say that when they first began to put pressure on the public transportation industry, no one felt their methods would bear fruit. "You have to give complete and utter credit for that to Adapt," said Evan Kemp. Jr., the head at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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On the plaza in front of HHS Headquarters on Independence Ave in Washington DC, a row of police cars is lined up in front of the building. Empty wheelchairs are littered in front of the police cars, and on the ground by the cars, ADAPT activists lie and sit. A large man sits on the hood of one of the police vehicles. Police and security guards stnd by the cars and near the front door. On one of the empty wheelchairs closest to the camera is a poster that reads "Louis, Louis shame shame shame."
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Disabled occupy Morehouse office ATLANTA (UPI) — About 60 wheelchair-bound protesters occupied the Morehouse College president’s office Monday, demanding a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan. The group, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT, targeted the predominantly Black college for the demonstration because Sullivan is a former president of the Morehouse School of Medicine. The disabled protesters hoped Morehouse officials would use their influence to arrange a meeting with Sullivan. Morehouse spokesman Robert Bolton said the college’s president was trying to decide on a response to the situation, and was discussing what to do with Health and Human Services officials. ADAPT wants Sullivan to redirect 25 percent of Medicaid’s $17.5 billion nursing home budget to programs that would provide home care for the disabled. “People commit suicide, they die in nursing homes because they don’t have attendant care,”' said Michael Auberger, an organizer of the demonstration. Auberger said ADAPT was not asking for more money. Instead, the group wants funds reallocated to community programs, so disabled people can live at home with assistance. “We’re not talking about nurses,” said Auberger, who is wheelchair- bound. “Typically, most disabled people aren’t sick. For instance, I mostly just need help getting dressed and getting in my(wheelchair). “A national attendant service program would allow people to conceivably become employed when they otherwise wouldn’t" he said. Auberger said ADAPT sent a letter to Sullivan in July requesting a meeting, but had received no response. Dozens of protesters have come to Atlanta from 22 states and as far away as California for a week of demonstrations to dramatize the plight of the disabled.
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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.