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Hem / Album / Tagg Diane Coleman 36
Publiceringsdatum
7Phili
Diane Coleman sits in her wheelchair with the access symbol on the ADAPT flag framed behind her. She is wearing a tricornered hat from revolutionary American days. In the foreground in front of her is half of the Liberty Bell, and the feet of someone else in a wheelchair are visible below the bell.
ADAPT (665)
Photo: A man [Mike Auberger] in a motorized wheelchair in blue ADAPT t-shirt and jeans, sits in the middle of a group of other people in wheelchairs. From left to right, they are unknown man with back to camera, woman in pink jacket and red skirt [Diane Coleman], man [Joe Carle] in dark sunglasses and sleeveless jacket, and man [Jim Parker] in white Bart Simpson t-shirt. Mike is holding a clipboard on his lap and reading something from it.
ADAPT (1795)
Mainstream Magazine, April 1993 issue [This article continues in ADAPT 1974, but is included here in its entirety for easier reading.] Photo: Wade Blank, in sneakers, jeans and an ADAPT T-shirt over a long sleeved shirt, walks with other ADAPTers in a march down a city street. Beside him is George Roberts, behind George is Diane Coleman and behind her is Anita Cameron. Behind Wade's left side is Chris Hronis, and behind him Bill Henning carries a banner. Caption for picture reads: Wade Blank takes to the streets of San Francisco with ADAPT in October 1992 Title: Wade Blank, 1940 to 1993 Co founder of Adapt [sic] Pursued A Vision Of Justice For People With Disabilities By Laura Hershey When a college friend dared Wade Blank to march with Martin Luther King. Jr. in Selma, Alabama. Wade didn't know what to expect. However, the experience imbued him with a vision of civil rights which he would never forget. Later. working in the youth wing of a nursing home, he understood clearly that the same issues, freedom. equality, and justice, were at stake for people with severe disabilities. Throughout his life, Wade Blank strove to obtain independent living opportunities and equal access for people who had lone been denied these basic civil rights. Wade died at age 52 on Feb. l5. I993. in a swimming accident in Todos Santos, Mexico, where he was vacationing with his family. He was trying to save his 8 year old son. Lincoln. An undertow made the rescue impossible; both Wade and Lincoln drowned. Wade is survived by his wife, Mollie; his daughter. Caitlin, 6; and his adopted daughter, Heather, 22, who has a disability. All members of the Blank family were actively involved in the disability rights movements that Wade helped launch. On Feb. 2l. a memorial service drew 1,100 people to Denver's Radisson Hotel. the site of the first national protest by American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, or ADAPT. the grass roots, direct action disability rights movement Wade co-founded. Wade and Lincoln were remembered as spirited, loving people committed to social change. A neighbor remembered Wade helping her fix a broken lock late one night; she recalled Lincoln leading other children in a rousing chant during a make-believe demonstration on his front porch. Wade's colleague Shel Trapp quipped. “lf Heaven is inaccessible. God is in big trouble." Wade believed in the leadership potential of even the most severely disabled activists. He pushed his followers to take charge of the movement, even when it would have been easier to dominate it himself. His ability to alternate between a directive role and a supportive role from manager to attendant. from mentor to messenger kept Wade close to his people. lt also had a tactical value: At a 1991 demonstration in Colorado. police were vainly searching for someone to hold responsible for several dozen unstoppable wheelchair wielding protesters. An officer asked Wade. “Are you in charge here?" "No." Wade answered. “I just help people go to the bathroom." Drawing on his background as a pastor of a diverse and active parish, Wade taught the value of community. He brought people together across disabilities, classes, races, ideologies and other differences. ln ADAPT. Wade created a true community. welcoming anyone committed to the movement's vision of justice. During national actions, people from across the country exchange experiences and expertise. offer each other encouragement and strength, meet friends and even start romances. Just getting to the sites of national protests requires enormous energy expenditures and a myriad of logistical details for people with disabilities, many of whom use wheelchairs. On long. grueling caravan drives across country. Wade met those needs with humor and gentleness. He drove tirelessly, navigated, did attendant care, pumped gas, made fast food runs, hauled suitcases and battery chargers, repaired wheelchairs, even brought coffee to everyone’s rooms in the mornings. When we grew exhausted and short-tempered. he buoyed us with affectionate teasing and terrible, recycled puns. He kept the troops moving, both on the road and during protests. with encouragement, bad jokes. and calm confidence. Protests will be tougher without Wade's bold creativity, irrepressible sense of humor, and reassuring presence. But the movement won’t die with Wade. He knew that. “King‘s organization’s mistake was that they hung it all around his neck,” he told an interviewer last November. “What happened to the movement? It lost its definition. King gave it its definition. If I would get knocked off tomorrow or die of a heart attack, it wouldn’t slow us down a bit. We know what we’re about, and the movement would go on with the same intensity.” In 1971, Rev. Wade Blank arrived in Denver after 10 years of preaching and organizing in the Midwest. He had graduate degrees in divinity and was an ordained Presbyterian minister. But his radical activities had gotten him in trouble with the church authorities and he had been fired from his parish. His experiences had included hosting meetings of the Kent State chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); helping Vietnam War draftees flee to Canada; and organizing African American youths to demand community water and sewage systems in conservative Twinsburg Heights, OH. Wade was burned out and not sure what he wanted to do next. He ended up at Denver’s Heritage House nursing home, where he tried to make institutional life bearable for young disabled people. He quickly realized that such confinement could never be acceptable. He was fired from his job, but stayed in touch with several of the young residents. Eventually he helped 11 of them move into their own apartments. At first, Wade himself provided all his clients’ attendant care, until finally the State of Colorado agreed to fund home health care services for people living independently. This was the beginning of the Atlantis Community (named for a forgotten continent), today a thriving independent living center in Denver. Even in their newly won freedom, the Atlantis founders discovered barriers to independence all around them. Public buses were inaccessible, so the community members became activists. One July 5, 1978, with Wade’s support and guidance, 19 disabled people blocked buses overnight in the busy intersection at Colfax and Broadway to demonstrate their demand for lifts on buses. Protests continued until, in June 1983, Denver committed itself to a fully accessible bus system. Last summer, the city laid a plaque at the Colfax-Broadway intersection, engraved with the 19 activists’ names. Characteristically downplaying his own key role in the demonstration, Wade asked that his name not appear on the plaque. Wade once described his role this way: “That’s what my job is, to assist my people in gaining the power to make change." Throughout his years of service to “my people,” Wade worked to build strength and leadership among disability activists. Emboldened by success, the Denver activists carried their demands for bus access to the entire nation. Wade‘s vigorous encouragement and organizing skills had helped to transform a group of powerless nursing home "patients" into a band of effective revolutionaries. Now that same savvy spirit found a warm reception among disabled people who were tired of segregation and exclusion. A new movement was born, with the fitting acronym ADAPT, or American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation. The first national ADAPT protest took place at the Radisson in October, 1983. The nation's transit officials were meeting at the hotel when disabled protesters blocked every entrance. Similar demonstrations throughout the country, involving the blocking of hotels, office buildings, and buses, focused public attention on the fact that access to transportation was a basic civil right denied to people with disabilities. Subsequent protests refined ADAPT ’s brand of protest. With his 1960s civil rights experience, Wade taught his followers how to stage protests that were non violent but direct and confrontational. In the hands of people with severe disabilities, these tactics were astonishingly effective. ADAPT activists baffled police officers, and filled jail cells, in dozens of cities. The public, and ultimately the powers that be, had to respond. The idea of people with severe disabilities, and their allies (including Wade), risking arrest again and again some as many as 20 or 30 times proved not only impressive, but persuasive. After nearly a decade of such protests, ADAPT achieved its goals for the nation’s transit systems. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) included mandates for bus and rail services. All new bus purchases must now be lift equipped, just as Wade and his cohorts had demanded. But before it passed, the ADA became stalled in the U.S. Senate and was in danger of being defeated or weakened by amendments. Wade organized a “Wheels of Justice” campaign that included three days of marching, demonstrating, and civil disobedience. Some 150 people were arrested in the Capitol rotunda. Within a few weeks, the ADA passed the full Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush on July 26, 1990. But Wade and ADAPT spent little time celebrating. They knew there was still much to be done. With over a million people still languishing in nursing homes, ADAPT immediately launched its new campaign, demanding the shifting of federal Medicare/Medicaid funds from nursing homes to in home attendant services that would allow people disabled by birth, accident, illness, or age to live independently. The meaning of the acronym, ADAPT, did just that it adapted. The letters now stand for American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today. The old battle cry, “We Will Ride!,“ was replaced with a new one: “Free Our People NOW!” In a recent interview, Wade said, “My whole commitment in life is to eradicate those nursing homes, to destroy them, bring them down. We will.” He didn’t live to see that goal realized, but he shared that vision with hundreds of others. In the process he helped create a movement that will continue the fight to “Free Our People.” Laura Hershey, freelance writer and poet, is an ADAPT activist. Inserted in box: A memorial will be held May 9, I993 at the Lincoln Memorial as part of an ADAPT action in Washington DC. Contributions may be sent to The Family of Wade Blank Memorial Fund at The First National Bank of Denver, 300 S. Federal Blvd., Denver, CO 80206. A trust fund has also been established in the name of Wade Blank. Contributions can be sent to Atlantis/ADAPT c/o Evan Kemp, 2500 Q St. N.W I21, Washington, DC 20007.
ADAPT (1018)
Houston Chronicle Tuesday May21, 1996 Headline: 5 arrested after building is taken over in protest [page has a crease down the middle so some text is hidden, most was able to be figured out] by Lisa Teachey -- Houston Chronicle About 400 disabled people took over a westside building Monday until police arrived to move the protest outside. Members of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, most of them in wheelchairs, blocked the entrance and elevators leading to Living Centers of America at 15415 Katy Freeway at about 10:30 a.m. Five people who refused to leave the building were arrested for criminal trespass, said Houston police Capt. D.E. Watkins. None of the arrested was wheelchair bound. The protest was staged because ADAPT wants a larger share of the federal money dedicated to nursing home care to go to programs that provide in-home care or community-based care for the disabled. “We're tired of the nursing home industry keeping a lock on over 85 percent of the long-term care money,” said protester Diane Coleman. “If a person needs long-term care, they should be able to say where they [obscured partially here] get, not the system.” Federal money is set aside through Medicaid for nursing home care as well as for attendant-care and community-based programs, said Katherine Hinson, of the Texas Health Care Association, a trade organization that represents long-term care facilities. “They want to take money from one under funded program and put it in another under-funded program,” Hinson said. “There’s not enough money to go around. We've asked them to join us to get more funding for all.“ Living Centers is a long-term health care corporation that operates nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers a other types of facilities. “Their main quarrel is with the government,” said Edward Kuntz, Living Centers chief executive officer. “They want additional funding." Kuntz said he agrees with ADAPT's call for more money, “but not at the cost of long-term nursing facilities."
ADAPT (432)
Photo by Tom Olin: Close shot of Diane Coleman, bundled in her fluffy coat, and Rick James, in his black mountain man hat and a sweat shirt, chained to a glass door. Through the door you can see people standing up against it. Diane and Rick are chanting with intense looks on their faces.
ADAPT (656)
Left to right, Mike Auberger, Diane Coleman, Rick James and 2 other people block the side entrance to the Health and Human Services offices on Independence Ave. Mike's neck is kryptonite locked to the doors. Diane has a poster that reads "Stop the money to the nursing home lobby!" Behind Rick's head is a very large access symbol sign.
ADAPT (674)
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.
ADAPT (714)
Chicago Defender, Vol. LXXXVII [87] No. 7 Wednesday May 13, 1992 (40¢ outside Chicago and suburbs) Editorial Listen to disabled on in-home funds A group of "disabled rights activists, who on Tuesday continued their protest against the federal government's failure to allocate more funds for handicapped individuals, should be taken seriously. They are protesting for the right to remain at home, rather than being warehoused in nursing homes. “Six times the (amount of) money goes to nursing homes and other institutions,” compared to the sums going “to community-based services. We want 25 percent of that nursing home budget to go to home care,” said Diane Coleman, an organizer for the group. There are various reasons why authorities should lend an ear to the protesters’ demands. Some of them are: * Disabled people would rather live at home than in an institutionalized environment, just like anyone else would. Many physically challenged individuals are wheelchair-bound but would have no trouble at home turning on a computer and working on it; going to the refrigerator to get their own food; operating their own TV, radio, or CD player; reading books, teaching younger members of the family, making their own bed and doing countless other constructive things to make them feel useful and relatively independent. * Additional money for home-based and community-based assistance would permit thousands of disabled individuals to receive help from part-time home attendants or nurses. The tab to the taxpayers might, in many instances, be smaller than the current cost for such services. * Many disabled protesters argue that being housed in a nursing home may actually prohibit some physically challenged people from developing into more productive citizens. These pundits stress that some of the disabled individuals being cared for in nursing homes could, if given home-based fund support, live a life with more quality to it and a few of them could even participate in home-based employment or other legal business. The bottom line is that disabled individuals deserve to be treated with as much respect as any other group in society. Other protesters have been given serious consideration by the federal government on various causes. The current cause espoused by many of America’s physically challenged individuals deserves equal attention from government authorities.
ADAPT (361)
A screen full of people marching. Many are wearing the green ADAPT t-shirt with the old no step logo. In the center Diane Coleman in her motorized wheelchair is carrying a giant white poster behind her that reads "We the people..." over her head. Beside her Cindy Keelan pushes her daughter Jennifer's wheelchair. Diane looks very determined.
ADAPT (706)
Chicago Tribune Tuesday, May 12, 1992 Title: State thwarts protest, so disabled switch site By Rob Karwath A threatened demonstration by wheelchair-bound protesters prompted an unprecedented show of force Monday at the 16-floor glass-and-steel State of Illinois Center. The demonstrators instead targeted federal offices several blocks south, leaving 3,000 state workers walking along barricaded corridors and past security checkpoints in the building at 100 W. Randolph St. Workers had to tell uniformed police where they were going. Security guards manned the elevators. A trip from an upper floor to a main-floor coffee shop became a half-hour journey. The preparations were made for a group that has become increasingly militant, with members at times chaining themselves to objects and forming chains of wheelchairs. After experiencing a day of the clampdown, most employees interviewed said they thought the state Department of Central Management Services, which runs the building, has overreacted. “It's ridiculous," said Peggy Craddieth, a secretary at the Illinois Pollution Control Board. “Even during Operation Desert Storm they weren’t this tight.” State officials said the tight security will continue all week, or at least until the protesters from Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) leave town. The heavy security seemed out of place to those familiar with the idea behind the wide—open state building. Architect Helmut Jahn created the building to symbolize the openness of a properly run democracy. Jahn’s concept was former Gov. James Thompson's frequent retort to anyone who criticized the building as a poor use of space. “There’s a general discomfort all across the office about this,” said Rob Cushing, a lawyer in the lllinois attorney general‘s office. He said of the demonstrators, “We shouldn't have to go through all of this to deny them their right to protest.” Central Management Services officials said they never intended to create a problem with the extra security, which included calling all department police in on their days off and hiring l6 private security guards at a cost of about $2,000 a day. Instead, department spokeswoman Helen Adorjan said the state was simply trying to keep the building open after receiving a call from ADAPT warning that the group might try to block doors and elevators at the building this week. The group is protesting what it believes to be a lack of government funds for programs that allow disabled people to live at home and avoid nursing homes. ADAPT did block doorways and elevators Monday in at least one Loop building where federal offices are housed. Diane Coleman, an organizer in ADAPT, said Monday that the group went to 105 W. Adams, the Bankers Building, because it houses one of the regional offices of the Department of Health and Human Services. “There have been movements by `groups` like this before, but they were neglecting civil rights tactics—taking it to the streets,” she said. “And we'll do it until we win this issue. Six times the money goes to nursing homes and other institutions than to home and community-based services. We want 25 percent of that nursing home budget to go to home care." Many State of Illinois building workers said they were concerned that everyone entering the building was barred from the Easement and first-floor elevators, which were roped of and guarded by Central Management Services police officers. Yellow and black paper signs directed workers and patrons to an escalator that took them to the second floor where they were allowed to board the elevators. The escalator guaranteed that any wheechair-bound protesters wouldn‘t make it beyond the ground level. But some state workers said they were concerned that wheelchair-bound employees and disabled people with state business had to specially request that an elevator descend to the first floor and then convince building police that they were not protesters. “ls it fair for someone who shows up in a wheelchair to have to declare their business?" asked Alex Des Chenes, a contractor with the state Department of Public Health. “Have you seen the tapes of what the have done in other cities?” Anforjan said. “This group completely immobilizes activity. They need to be able to express themselves, but we need to keep the building operating." But, in an effort to prevent a disruption, workers said all of the extra security only ended up causing a disruption. The building's Lake Street entrance was open, but a large steel gate inside the revolving glass doors sealed it off to all but riders of the CTA subway trains below. A newsstand and a Chinese restaurant located inside the entrance were empty as most of their customers were forced to bypass them. Even some of the Central Management Services police running the elevators said they disagreed with the security plan and would have tried less-disruptive measures. “Everybody’s complaining about this," said one officer, shaking his head as he punched elevator buttons. “It‘s crazy." Tribune photo by David Klobucar: A mass of people are clustered in one big not. ADAPT protesters in wheelchairs are on the street and people in suits and similar work outfits are making their way down the log jammed sidewalk, up to the police barricades. A woman in a dress is stepping over and through two of the protesters so she can continue in the street. Between the street and the sidewalk a metal police barricade is partially visible, and two uniformed officers appear to be casually trying to hold the barricades up. Caption reads: Protesters from Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today block an entrance to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department on West Adams Street Monday.
ADAPT (619)
PHOTO (by Tom Olin): Inside a city bus that gleams on all it's metal surfaces and casts a blue green light across everything. A woman (Diane Coleman) in a motorized wheelchair sits in the aisle and smiles slightly. She wears and ADAPT headband and holds a flat object - like a pad of paper - in one hand, and something else in the other. Across her long red skirt is an orange poster that reads "A.D.A.P.T. or PERISH." A police officer facing the back of the bus is bending over her shoulder doing something behind her chair. In the wheelchair seating behind and to her right a man in a wheelchair (James JT Templeton) watches what the officer is doing, his hand resting against his cheek. On Diane's left and behind another man (Jim Parker) also seems to be watching what the officer is doing. He also has a headband on and his gloved hand is resting on the windowsill of the bus.
ADAPT (673)
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.
ADAPT (474)
PHOTO by Tom Olin: A uniformed police officer pushes Diane Coleman's motorized wheelchair away from the group of ADAPT protesters blocking the front entrance to the Radisson hotel. Diane has a bandage around her head, under her hat and has a "WE WILL RIDE" poster across her knees. Behind her you can see the group of protesters blocking the large entrance. To one side a man (another police man?) is standing. Protesters from left to right: An unknown person in a chair facing away from the camera, Chris Hronis (sp?) with a sign reading ADAPT for "Equal Rights", Mark Mactimmus in his white hat, George Roberts facing the hotel.
ADAPT (486)
PHOTO Tom Olin?: Two police officers, one in plain clothes and one in uniform stand talking but looking in opposite directions. The plain clothes man has on a tie and jacket. He has his arms crossed across his chest, as does the other officer. Behind them are visible, parts of the fronts of two large buses sitting side by side. Between the cops and the buses is partially visible the line of people in wheelchairs who are blocking the buses. Diane Coleman is partially visible, with an "Access Not Excuses" poster in front of her legs, and another man's head is visible with his access poster -- around the shoulder of one of the officers.
ADAPT (218)
A photo (by Tom Olin?): A group of demonstrators, some using wheelchairs, seem to be waiting by the side of the road. Three posters are readable: "ACCESSIBLE TRANSPORTATION NOW!" and "APTA OPPRESSES." Diane Coleman sits on the left side of the picture holding a CAPH (California Association of the Physically Handicapped) sign, beside her a woman stands, hands on her hips, behind her an attendant is standing. Beside her Tom Pugh sits in a manual wheelchair, and on his other side Frank McColm is also in a manual chair looking over his shoulder to his right. Standing behind and beside Frank, slightly behind the APTA Oppresses sign Wade Blank stands with his arms crossed in front of his ADAPT T-shirt. Beside him is another person standing. On the far right in the very front Beverly Furnice reclines in her chair looking off to her left with an unreadable sign in her lap.