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Home / Albums / Tag protest 84
- ADAPT (749)
The Disability Rag, July/August 1992 $2.50 Photo by Tom Olin: A policeman us bent forward doubled up, holding a small woman (Spitfire aka Eileen Sabel) from crawling between his legs and under the police barrier behind him. Spitfire wears a white shirt which says in black letters "Never Surrender." Beside them a man (Bernard Baker) is lying on the street under the barrier holding one of its bars. Under his legs is another wooden barrier that has been tipped over and above his head is another barrier of some kind that says "street operations." Title: On the barricades with ADAPT story, photos page 4 [article begins ADAPT 744 and entire text is included there for easier reading.] Boxed inset: Inside: Dying to get out p.12, John Hockenberry - anger and access p.30 - US_Capitol_Rotunda_part_2_cap
This is part 2 of the ADAPT Capitol Rotunda protest in support of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA. This shows the group preparing for civil disobedience to pressure swift passage of the bill. Over 100 people were arrested at this protest, which gets less attention than the Crawl but was equally intense. The film is open captioned (as are all videos on this museum site). - Incitement v.1 n.1 p.3
page 3 of v.1 n.1 article We Will Ride on Austin protest for lifts on buses. Photo of protest at Capital Metro Board Meeting. Photo of San Antonio Rally with National ADAPT. Article ADAPT goes to Los Angeles. - Video Incitement- Las Vegas 1994
Here is the video Incitement story of the ADAPT action in Las Vegas Nevada, 1994, when ADAPT again protested the American Health Care Assn, AHCA, convention there. Closing streets, protesting at the Convention Center and the AHA hotel, ADAPT fought to make the nursing home providers deal with the pain and havoc their industry causes in the lives of people with disabilities of all ages. - ADAPT v AHCA Las Vegas 1994
Edited video footage of Las Vegas ADAPT action mixed with news clips from same action. Shows protest of AHCA convention by disability rights group ADAPT. Shows protests at Las Vegas Convention Center, on Paradise Dr. and at Hyatt Hotel. Video by Gordie Haug - Rotunda part 1
This is part 1 of the story of the ADAPT protest in the Capitol Rotunda to call for passage of the ADA with no weakening amendments. The ADA had become bogged down in the House and there was concern the bill would not pass. The day after the Wheels of Justice March and the Capitol Crawl, ADAPT took over the Rotunda of the United States Capitol building and over 100 people were arrested protesting for our civil rights. This is almost raw footage and gives a real sense of the event as it unfolded. Part 2 of this action is included in the next video Capitol Rotunda part 2. - Capitol Crawl
This video covers part of the Wheels of Justice rally and then the Capitol Crawl that took place on the west (Mall) side steps of the US Capitol March 12, 1990. This action, in which hundreds of people with disabilities took part, was done to push the Congress to move forward on the landmark civil rights bill, the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA. The ADA had stalled in Congress and the disability community rose up to say enough is enough. It was part of a several day action by ADAPT to move Congress to act. It was also the culmination of a massive national grassroots effort by organizations and individuals from every state and territory in the nation to call for an end to discrimination based on disability. It symbolized the struggle people with disabilities faced in dealing with the society's discrimination, and the strength and perseverance of people with disabilities in facing these obstacles. - With Liberty & Access For All
This is a short demo film by Linda Litowsky that tells about ADAPT and our first campaign for lifts on buses and passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was made to promote a longer film she made so it ends abruptly. However it is a good overview of early ADAPT and has been used in many organizer trainings and presentations. - ADAPT (708)
Chicago Defender, Thursday May 14, 1992 ADAPT shuts down Illinois center ADAPT protests budget cuts by Dobie Holland Hundreds of wheelchair-bound demonstrators shut down the State of Illinois Center after they converged on the building Wednesday to protest the impending budget cuts in the Home care program for the disabled. The shut down occurred after members of the Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) were denied access to the governor’s 16th floor offices. The group retaliated with a blockade of escalators and elevators. Although ADAPT members faced barricades outside the center, once they had stormed inside, security police operating the elevators refused to allow most of the wheelchair-bound protesters upstairs. Mike Ervin, one of the Chicago coordinators for ADAPT, said they had no choice but to block the paths of pedestrians in the building by setting up wheelchair blockades of escalators and elevators in the center. They demanded a meeting with the governor. Gov. Jim Edgar was in Springfield but it was not clear by the Chicago Defender's press deadline if he would meet with the group. Gary Mack, a spokesman for the governor, said the State of Illinois has one the most “liberal programs" in the country for the disabled and cuts are being made “across the board” in the wake of a severe budget deficit. Mack said the program will lose $3 million — “a small amount" — a reduction from $68 million to $65 million. Mack added the governor was not responsible for denying the protesters access to the elevators. "They (security) have been trying to keep this place operating," Mack said. “But as l understand it, we are letting some people up here (on the 16th floor). One oi those people allowed up in the elevators to sit in the governor’s 16th floor lobby was Paulette Patterson. Patterson, who was not a member of the protest group, said she was denied access to the elevators on Tuesday when she came to the building to eat breakfast. Patterson, 35, of Chicago, said she has filed a discrimination suit against the state because she was not allowed free passage through the building “simply because I was in a wheelchair. “l was not with this group before,” she said. “But I am a member now." Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, commenting on the conflict between security personnel and protesters, said during a Tuesday press conference: “My job is not to judge anybody but to make sure no one's rights have been violated." - ADAPT (705)
Chicago Tribune Photo by Eduardo Contreras: An Asian-American man (Ken Heard) with pulled back hair and large glasses, a white jacket and pale jeans sits in his foot controlled power wheelchair. He blocking part of an escalator, and what he is not blocking, the police officer that is trying to stop him is blocking. The officer's arms are crossed across his chest and Ken has his hands in his pockets. Caption reads: Ken Heard blocks the entrance to an escalator Wednesday in the State of Illinois Center as part of an ADAPT protest. - ADAPT (421)
[This article continues in ADAPT 422 but the entire text of the article is included here for easier reading.] Title: MUC police arrest 20 on Day 2 of protests by wheelchair activists By: Susan Semenak, of The Gazette 10/4/88 Large contingents of Montreal Urban Community police were mobilized yesterday for the second day in a row to deal with wheelchair protesters who were demonstrating for better public transit facilities for handicapped people. Twenty protesters were arrested, 10 in a demonstration atop Mount Royal and 10 who chained themselves to the doors of the under-parking garage at Place Ville Marie, across the street from the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, where the American Public Transit Association — the protesters' target — is holding its convention. Most of the demonstrators were members of ADAPT — American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. In the demonstration on the mountain, 35 protesters tied up 100 specially trained police for about four hours yesterday afternoon. [Subheading] Refusing to clear road Ten were arrested after refusing to clear the road leading to the Mount Royal chalet, where the transit association had organized a lunch. After pleading guilty in municipal court last night to charges of mischief and obstructing police, five demonstrators paid fines of $50 while five others refused, to pay and were sent to jail for three days. A mother and her 12-year-old daughter were released after the Place Ville Marie protest. The eight other activist pleaded guilty to charges of mischief and obstructing police. All eight chose to go to jail for three days rather than pay $50 fines. [Subheading] Placed on probation All those who pleaded guilty yesterday were placed on probation until the convention ends Thursday. Judge Louis Jacques Leger barred them from the island of Montreal and from demonstrating and banned them from the mountain and from a wide downtown area around the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Police said last night that of the 48 activists arrested yesterday and Sunday, only one was a Quebecer. Protest organizer Rev. Wade Blank of Colorado told Leger. "I am personally grieved and saddened that this court has chosen to punish people who have already been greatly punished by society." Const. Normand Tremblay said the Montreal Urban Community police were out in full force yesterday to prevent the wheelchair protesters from repeating the disturbance they had caused Sunday, when they chained themselves to railings at the Sheraton Centre hotel and blocked traffic on Dorchester Blvd. for nearly two hours. Twenty-eight of the handicapped activists were arrested Sunday. After pleading guilty to mischief charges, five paid $25 fines and were released, while 23 others opted to serve three-day jail terms at Bordeaux and Tanguay jails. "We are joining our friends in jail and it's worth it," said Lillibeth Novaro, one of those arrested on the mountain yesterday, as a policeman wheeled her to a school bus hired to take the protesters to police headquarters and municipal court. "There are millions of people in wheelchairs who need to take the bus to go to work and be equal members of society," she said. Novaro ended up paying her $50 fine and didn't go to jail. 'We want equal access' "We pay taxes like everybody else and we want equal access to mass transit," said Molly Blank, who drove four days from Colorado with her husband and 18-year-old handicapped daughter to join the protest. Police blocked roads leading to the chalet and the lookout atop the mountain with barricades and patrol cars to prevent the protesters from confronting the luncheon guests. The police force's tactical squad had been tracking the demonstrators' movements since morning. Urgences Sante doctors were on hand to verify that none of the protesters had been injured during the arrests. "We know these people are here to cause problems and we are here to prevent that," Tremblay told reporters as a helicopter the MUC had rented for the day from provincial police hovered overhead. "We are allowing them to protest and express themselves, but we cannot allow them to make trouble. And we want to take all the necessary precautions to ensure that nobody is injured”. The special police team assembled to deal with the protesters took a day-long course last week to learn how to "handle" the handicapped — from identifying disabilities and deactivating wheelchairs to carrying the disabled without injuring them. Tremblay said police consulted their counterparts in six U.S. cities where the group has staged previous demonstrations. Phyllis Young, a transit official from Duluth, Minn., who attended the luncheon on Mount Royal, said the wheelchair protesters have been turning up at public transit conventions for the past five years. "This is nothing. In San Francisco they chained themselves to trolleys and ran over one policeman in their wheelchairs and gave him a concussion," Young said. "Another year they all laid down on the street and blocked traffic for a whole day." Tremblay said police could not stop the protesters from coming to Montreal because they have no criminal record — the only laws they had broken are municipal bylaws. Instead, MUC police smiled and chatted as they wheeled the protesters away. But some had donned kneepads under their uniforms in case the protesters became aggressive. Maria Barila, a Montrealer arrested on the mountain, said officials at the Office des personnes handicapes du Quebec — the government agency that oversees services to the disabled — discouraged local disabled people from turning out at the demonstrations. "Some people were told they could lose their welfare cheques," said Barila. "Others were told that things could get violent." Francois Gagnon, also of Montreal, said specialized buses for the handicapped provided by the Montreal Urban Community Transit Corp. are "a joke." He said the disabled would prefer to ride the same buses and Metros as everyone else. “They call It door-to-door service, but sometimes it takes two hours for a disabled person to get from home to work in those mini-vans they provide," said Gagnon, winding his way up the mountain in his wheelchair. Meanwhile, Murielle Lariviere-Lebret, president of the Adapted Transport Users Association, said her group morally supports ADAPT protesters demanding accessible transport for all. But her group, which speaks on transit for 18 associations of the handicapped here, would not join demonstrations or urge members to do so. Instead, it prefers to concentrate on getting more and better minibuses and taxis to serve handicapped commuters in the MUC. Over the longer term, it favors adapting the regular bus and Metro service so it is accessible to the handicapped. [Subheading] Position denounced This position was denounced by Jean-Francois Gagnon, a member of the Quebec Association of Handicapped Consumers, who said the handicapped had to become more radical to get what they want from the MUC and Quebec. But MUCTC managing director Louise Roy said the transit corporation has no intention of adapting buses or Metro stations to accommodate the handicapped. "Our intention was never to make the Metro system completely accessible she said. "We are working on improving our adapted door-to-door service, and I think that's much more realistic." Adding wheelchair-lift platforms on regular buses would cost $15,000 per bus, which Roy said is too expensive. Instead, the MUCTC will spend $16,000 on improving adapted transit services next year. "Each year our ridership on adapted transit increases by 30 per cent. Last year we served 500,000 people," she said. Service is offered through adapted mini-buses and taxis. Riders pay the same price they would to ride a bus and the rest of the cost is absorbed by the MUCTC, Roy said. - ADAPT (385)
[This is a continuation of the article in ADAPT 386. The entire text of the article is included there for easier reading.] Montreal Daily News Monday, October 3, 1988. Photo 1 by Allan Leichman/Daily News: Three uniformed police officers lift a protester (Bob Kafka) whose face is contorted in a yell of pain. One is bending over his legs while the other two have him by the arms. Behind and out of focus other officers and protesters are visible. In the foreground is the trunk of a car. Photo 2 missing picture id inset below the other picture: An officer pushes protester (Bob Kafka) away in his manual wheelchair. Two people stand in the foreground one watching. Caption: Police arrested some 25 wheelchair demonstrators after they forced their way into the lobby of the Sheraton Centre. They were protesting the American Public Transit Association's reluctance to endorse wheelchair lifts on new buses. - ADAPT (396)
St Louis Post Dispatch May 19, 1988 Title: Protesters Plead Guilty, Are Released By William C. Lhotka and Mark Schlinkman Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Thirty-seven disabled people arrested at wheelchair protests here this week entered guilty pleas Wednesday afternoon to charges of peace disturbance and then were released under an agreement worked out by lawyers. The court action came after members of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) held a final protest rally outside Union Station, where an association of transit systems completed its five-day regional convention Wednesday. No new arrests were made at the 45-minute gathering, which involved about 90 people, most of them in wheelchairs. But about 2:15 a.m. Wednesday, two able-bodied men who police said were associated with ADAPT were arrested on assault charges after fighting with police on the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, 2211 Market Street. Police were called to the scene by hotel security guards who reported a disturbance. The incident had no connection with any protest or demonstration. Police said one of the officers had suffered a potentially serious eye injury. In an interview Wednesday afternoon, an ADAPT leader, the Rev. Wade Blank of Denver, denied that the two men were members of The organization. He said they were with a disabled woman from Lawrence, Kan., who had arrived in St. Louis early Wednesday. Blank said she apparently had come here to take part in the rally later in the day; he said he was unsure whether she had done so. Most of the members of ADAPT here have been staying at the Holiday Inn on Market. The protesters want the transit group, the American Public Transit Association, to push for the installation of mechanical wheelchair lifts on all buses in the United States. Association officials say that they support access for the disabled but that each local system should have the right to decide for itself how to provide such access. Protesters were arrested Sunday for blocking entrances and hallways at the Omni International Hotel at Union Station and on Tuesday for blocking buses entering and leaving the Greyhound Lines depot at 801 North Broadway. Under the agreement worked out by prosecutors and defense attorneys, Associate Circuit Judge Thomas C. Grady accepted the time the defendants served in jail after their arrests in lieu of any further sentence or fines. The judge also waived court costs. The agreement meant that the demonstrators were free to leave St. Louis. On the other hand, they have misdemeanor convictions on their records. Three of the 37 faced charges from both the Sunday and Tuesday protests. Arrested in the separate incident early Wednesday were Mike Knowlen, 22, of Lawrence, Kan.., and Dana Dower, 22, of Viburnum Mo. Police said Dower faced a felony charge of second-degree assault and misdemeanor charges of peace disturbance, resisting arrest and destruction of city property. Police said Knowlen faced misdemeanor charges of third-degree assault, peace disturbance, cruelty to an animal and interfering with an arrest. Police said the fight had erupted as police officers attempted to arrest Knowlen. Police said Knowlen had been slapping and swinging a dog by its tail on the lot and had been shouting profanities. In the scuffle, police said, Dower fell face forward onto the trunk lid of a police car. Police said Officer Barry Hinchey had been treated at Bethesda Eye Institute for an injured retina after he was struck on the face Hinchey also was treated, at St. Louis University Hospital, for a human bite wound. Officer Mark Chambers was also treated there for bruises. Bill Bryan of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed information for this article. - ADAPT (319)
The Arizona Republic, Monday April 8, 1987 Title: Handicapped Hold Protest Photo by Pete Peters/Republic: People in wheelchairs in ADAPT T-shirts form a picket line in front of a hotel, the Regency Phoenix. They are holding posters. Behind them, in the shadows of the entrance-way to the hotel people are standing looking on. Caption reads: Members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit picket before the Hyatt Regency. The ADAPT demonstrators have targeted a meeting by the American Public Transit Association. Photo top right Photo by Pete Peters/Republic: A woman standing uses a sprayer to cool a woman in a wheelchair holding a large poster. caption reads: Carla Montez squirts Kelli Bates with cool water. They traveled to Phoenix from Denver to participate in an ADAPT protest. subtitle: Disrupt event; ask transit access By Chuck Hawley The Arizona Republic About 100 members of a militant group of wheelchair-bound activists blocked the roads and entrances to Rustler’s Roost on Sunday night in an attempt to stop those attending a steak fry for the American Public Transit Association’s convention. Chanting and carrying place cards members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit lined up across the two roads, a stairway leading form a lower parking lot and the doors including the handicapped entrance to the restaurant, which is at the Pointe at South Mountain. Police monitored the protest. The 450 people attending the weeklong convention arrived in six Phoenix buses. Some were forced to scramble up a steep gravel incline and enter through the kitchen. Others walked up the back driveway. “We plan to be here all week and to inconvenience you as much as we can,” called out one protestor, who was blocking the stairs. Earlier in the day, protestor had picketed at the Hyatt Regency, where the conventioneers are staying. The protestors at the restaurant carried placards that said, “Police wagons accessible; buses not,” and chanted, “What do we want? Access. When do we want it? Now.” The group, well-known for militant protests across the country, wants all public transit to be accessible to the wheelchair-bound. “I think they have a just cause, but I think they are carrying it to an extreme,” said Bob Hicken, general manager of the Phoenix Transit System, who walked up the hill from the lower parking lot. “We’d like to serve them all, but we can’t. If there were enough money in the world, we could do everything we wanted to.” - ADAPT (307)
SMITH BY JEFF SMITH Title: ROLL MODELS Civil disobedience tends to be a cyclical form of political expression. It only comes into flower every few years, even decades, and during the intermissions of its popularity, the great masses in the political middle tend to forget what an important tool it is. Indeed, civil disobedience is the only legitimate means of effecting change on behalf of minority needs. Mull it over: • A minority with a valid and pressing need to see some public policy created or changed has the option of going to the polls along with everyone else . . . and losing. because it is, after all, a minority. Or: • Its members could arm themselves and turn their minority cause into a guerilla war, which the majority would agree is hardly a legitimate solution. Or: • They could employ the classic, nonviolent, Gandhian stratagem of civil disobedience. Bingo. Which is why I endorse the protest staged recently by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT). About 200 members of the Denver-based group, most of them in their primary means of transportation — wheelchairs— came here and raised hell a couple of weeks ago with the national convention of the American Public Transportation Association. It was a classic sit-in. Gimps are good at that. But it's been quite a while—a peaceful, soporific, almost brain-dead while—since the civil-rights movement and the Vietnam War era, when sit-ins, protest marches and similar styles of civil disobedience were at all common. And six years of Reagan, four of Carter and three of Ford have turned many of us into conservatives like Phoenix City Councilman Howard Adams, who sympathize the problems of certain minorities, but object to the only tactic they really can use to solve those problems. Adams doesn't think cripples ought to be blocking restaurant and hotel entrances, impeding the comings and goings of conventioneers and blockading buses in order to make their point that most public transit is inaccessible to people in wheelchairs and those rendered nearly immobile by the need for canes and crutches. Adams is not an unsympathetic man: He has both sympathy and empathy for the disabled. In case you didn't know it, Howard Adams is a gimp himself. He was crippled in a swimming accident twenty years ago. And in case you think my characterizations mark me as a churl, know that I'm a gimp, too, coming on six years in a wheelchair after a motorcycle crash. (I got to be churlish independent of paralysis.) So both Howard and I know something of the subject. I simply know more than he does on account of I'm smarter. So listen up: Neither Howard Adams nor Yr. Obdt. Svt. is a decent role model for anyone with ambitions of becoming disabled. I am far too pretty and talented; Howard Adams is too powerful and prosperous. It is way too easy for someone like Adams or me to say, Hey, why don't the rest of you gimps just get your own car or van, like me? Adams is a quadriplegic with a specially equipped van. It is his own rig, but he must get someone else to drive it for him. When he's on city business, or going to and from his Phoenix City Council office, the city provides the driver. I am a paraplegic, somewhat less handicapped than Adams, so I drive myself in a station wagon with hand controls. Now you might think owning a car is virtually within the reach of anyone. Even the poorest hovel might have a Caddy parked outside. And you might say that since Smith and Adams manage so commendably, anybody can work and support a family, and get around to do [missing text here] unaffordable. Sensible people of limited means may own one old beater which one spouse takes to work, while the other rides the bus. Consider that even for Homo erectus, hoofing to the bus stop on hind feet in Hush Puppies and making the necessary connections to get from home in Phoenix to work in Tempe can be a major pain in the ass and add several hours to the workday. Now try it from a wheelchair. Listen: I am about as adapted, chipper and successful a gimp as you're likely to meet, and I don't go to Circle K's anymore. How familiar the ritual: You're driving home and you get a lech for a cold one. You hang a quick right, don't even shut off the engine, you're in and out in a flash, and buzzing nicely on your second beer before you've hit the next stoplight. When you're in a wheelchair you don't do stuff like this anymore. It is simply too much bother. Even for a gimp like me, with great strong arms, catlike grace and his own automobile. I run wheelchair marathons, lift weights three times a week, have the cardiovascular system of a twelve-year-old, but I do not visit Circle K's. It takes too long, requires too much exertion, inflicts too much pain, and maybe there's no ramp. Screw it. If I had to call two days, or as much as a week in advance to arrange to have a special van pick me up—just to make a doctor's appointment or go buy - groceries—I don't know if I could cope. If Howard Adams had to plan his daily schedule around Phoenix bus schedules, which provide wheelchair service on only six of 54 bus routes, I wonder if he would be able to discharge his duties as a councilman. I suppose he would, being the Type A he is. "I haven't showcased my activities," Adams told me, "but I am interested in this issue." Indeed, Adams has just been appointed to President Reagan's Architecture and Transportation . Compliance Board, which oversees enforcement of federal access regulation. Adams said he thinks Phoenix is doing well on handicap access, but if he lived in, say, New York, he might be frustrated and angry. Then would he resort to civil disobedience? "Probably not," he said. "I'd work the [missing text here] That might work for Howard Adams, - but not for all of Jerry's kids. I've learned a lot of stuff about gimps since becoming one — stuff that contradicts most of what I thought I knew before. No two of us are alike. Being paralyzed doesn't mean blessed forgetfulness of the concerns of your formerly functional physiology. You can experience constant pain from the paralyzed parts. You can have involuntary muscles spasms that make it impossible to sit still, and even more difficult to haul around those parts that would be tough enough to move if they just lay there like deadwood. You can run out of popcorn and have to get rest before the day is half done. You can spend two hours getting bathed and dressed to go out in public, only to get just out the door and find you've pissed your pants and have to go back and start all over. Think about these things the next time you scoff at the demands of the disabled for better access to public transportation, for ramps at street corners, for rest rooms with doors wide enough for a wheelchair, for wider aisles in airplanes, elevators in two-story buildings. Think what it means when a six-inch curb is as impassable a barrier as a prison wall. Not figuratively. In fact. Think about these things and think about one thing further: Disability is a very Eighties fashion of affliction, tres chic you could say. With speed sports like sail-boarding, off-roading and even sidewalk surfing being so trendy, lots more of you hip, yuppie dudes and dudettes will be joining me on wheels in the very near future. Think of handicapped access as an investment in your own future. Think of all this the next time you find yourself staring at the convenience market — the one with the cold can of beer— from across a lane of oncoming traffic, and you decide it's just too inconvenient to make a left-hand turn. Believe thee me: You don't have a clue as to what inconvenience is.