Ypsi residents join protest for disabled
By Emily Church, Press Staff Writer

[This article continues on ADAPT 751 but the full text is included here for easier reading.]

SAN FRANCISCO - Two Ypsilanti residents joined more than a hundred protesters Monday in blocking access to the headquarters of the Clinton-Gore and Bush-Quayle campaigns with their wheelchairs.

And Ann Arbor activist Verna Spayth was among about [unreadable] people arrested Tuesday in the third demonstration since Sunday for disabled people's [f]ights for home health care at a downtown federal building in San Francisco.

Spayth, who uses a motored cart, joined Ypsilanti residents Bob Liston and Mark Loeffler, who uses wheelchairs, in a National American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) rally.

ADAPT activists planned a week-long protest to coincide with the annual American Health Care convention of nursing home operators.

"We came here to bring to (the nation's) attention the fact that $28 billion is being spent on nursing home care; what we would like is 25 percent re-directed for home health care so that people with disabilities can live independently in their own homes instead of being warehoused in institutions,” said Liston, a former specialist for the Oakland-Macomb Center for Independent Living.

Loeffler is an Eastern Michigan University student. ADAPT members also hoped to draw national attention to proposed funding cuts for home health care in California and to those in place in other states, including Michigan.

The protests Tuesday had been the most volatile yet, Liston said. On Sunday. protesters blocked access to the hotel hosting the nursing home convention. The police broke it up in about two hours.

"Bush's campaigners on Monday refused to talk to the demonstrators," Liston said. However, Clinton’s staffers told the ADAPT members that, if elected, Clinton would work toward redirecting funds from nursing homes to community-based organizations and home health care.

Liston said the protests will end Thursday.

“I think that it’s been very powerful to have this many people with very severe disabilities coming together again across the nation to protest this,” Liston said.

The protest was his first, as well as Loefiller’s, he said.

“I think the Clinton protest was a stepping stone,” He said. "‘It was definitely a success (If elected) we'll have to hold him accountable to what he has said."

At the least, ADAPT hoped to bring attention to the home care issue.

“A lot of the people have no idea what's going on,” Liston said.

ADAPT is an about nine-year-old organization with a Michigan chapter that started as a means to address the disabled's needs fro ; public transportation.

They are now almost exclusively focused on the home care issue, Liston said.

Author

Emily Church, Press Staff Writer, Ypsilanti Press

Created on

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Posted on

Tuesday 10 September 2019

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