ADAPTING ATLANTA

What do you get when the American Health Care Association, AHCA, convention coincides with the Federal election in the backyard of the Congressional district of the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich? One of the best national ADAPT actions in history! Election time in Atlanta, the city which had just hosted both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic games international disability conference could not have been a better choice. November 3 through the 6, 1996 five hundred ADAPT activists marched on Atlanta to continue our battle to free our people from nursing homes and other institutions and get a national attendant services program. Commitments from the Speaker, a call from Airforce One pledging a meeting with the President and the chance to give the nursing home industry a taste of its own medicine were among the victories won at this historic occasion.

This time it was the Speaker's people who called ADAPT asking for a meeting. Realizing ADAPT was not only not going away but actually was about to be in his face, his staff set up a meeting to negotiate ADAPT's demand that Gingrich sponsor a national attendant services bill. In hard hitting negotiations, ADAPT representatives from each state were able to hammer out an agreement hand written by Gingrich himself and signed by both him and Mike Auberger.

ATLANTA

The statistics may be faceless numbers, but at the vigil we remembered together. Photo: Tom Olin

As these negotiations were taking place the other 470 ADAPT members marched down International Blvd. to the plaza in Centennial Olympic Park to hold a press conference and rally. At the press conference ADAPT announced we were filing a human rights complaint with the United Nations regarding the United States’ national policy of institutional warehousing for people with disabilities. Michigan ADAPT organizer Marva Ways read the resolution indicting the United States while ADAPT members, holding candles, looked on. Emotions ran high as the crowd, in memory of friends and family who have died in nursing homes, planted flags in the grassy hillside along the plaza. Just as the ceremonies were ending the Gingrich negotiators rejoined the big group to announce our successful talks. These powerful memories, this call for justice and the hope of a real solution were the perfect start for the actions of the next few days.

Fed up with the Clinton administration's lip service on changing the focus of the nation's long term care, ADAPT was ready for bear on the second day. Since before the start of 1996 this administration had been acting like an advertising firm for the nursing home industry. Although some Medicaid policy had been changed, the focus and the funding bias remained in favor of the nursing home industry. Given opportunity after opportunity to call for a reform and redirection in support of community services, Clinton and his people refused to take that chance, and instead clung to the wretched status quo. Letters and calls to try and set up meetings had been ignored.

The eve of the presidential election proved to be an excellent backdrop for our message, enough to get even Clinton's attention.

Taking the light rail is some trick, when you are traveling with 500 people. But, it’s a trick ADAPT has become quite adept at over the years. So November 4th ADAPT set out for the office visit. It took only minutes to fill the lobby of the building which housed, on its second and eighth floors, the Democratic state headquarters and the state Clinton-Gore headquarters. It seemed to take hours to get folks upstairs. Though the elevators were slow, a steady stream of ADAPT activists flowed to the floors above, until both were packed. Our wheelchairs and bodies clogged the halls as our chants echoed down them. On the eighth floor the Democratic Party chair was in a huff, refusing to discuss ADAPT's demands. On the second floor staff were trying their best to divert us.

Slowly the police began to appear, claiming the owner of the building wanted us arrested and removed. Obviously the idea of hauling hundreds of us off was a little daunting, but even the cops could not make Mr. 8th-floor-hot-shot negotiate. Back on the second floor ADAPTs crack team of negotiators was taking control. As their cohorts were being arrested and literally hauled off one by one, Day Leaders Faye Bonner, Marva Ways and Mike Oxford systematically worked their way up the chain of command within the White House. It was sickening to hear our alleged "friend" Carol Rasco offering a meeting with some junior White House advisors the week after the election. Did they really think we were that stupid’?

ADAPTs intelligence forces we at work during these negotiations, and leaks in the opposition's communications made it clear that sad as their offers were, even more sad was the fact that they did not intend to keep the promises they were offering. Faye, Marva, and Mike refused to back down. At one point cops started to haul off Marva, when suddenly the tone changed.

Meanwhile down at the jail house the holding cells just got fuller and fuller and fuller. Guards began lining us up against the hall walls as our numbers totally over-whelmed the facility. The whole scene took on the air of a Fellini movie as we joked and waited to see what fate was to befall us. People just kept pouring in.

Faye Bonner, with her Arkansas connections knew that the President planned to be flying to a party that evening so she demanded the White House call Airforce One. That was impossible. That was impossible. Then
suddenly, Special Assistant to the President Alexis Herman was flying in from Montgomery to negotiate. Unlike those before her, Herman was apparently negotiating in good faith. She listened to our concerns and agreed to set up a meeting with the President in the first quarter of 1997, and even gave a letter of commitment.

In jail the final count was 86 arrested. About 11:00 pm a judge came in and presided over our arraignment hearings in a holding cell. Like sausages squeezed out in a factory line, one by one all 86 of us were processed through the system and out into the cold night.

Back at the hotel, a charming establishment, all the restaurant and bar staff had gone on strike. So we ordered 43 pizzas, took advantage of the lack of crowds and empty tables and celebrated the victories of the first two days. Just one target was left unaddressed.

It had been a late night, so we started out later than usual. This time we were taking the ADAPT vans so we started shuttling way across town to the Georgia Nursing Home Association. It took hours, and despite jittery nerves, some false alarms and threats from a nearby gas station owner, we were able to wait undetected for hours until the whole gang was together.

Once assembled we lost no time in marching down the highway to the Association's headquarters and surrounding the building. We had it shut down in minutes, and began tapping on the windows and door, calling for Fred Watson the Association's Executive Director to come and meet with us. To no one's surprise, Fred was downtown, partying it up with his AHCA buddies. Before long the police joined us, and overhead we saw their helicopter circling. Since Fred refused to come back to the office, negotiations came to a standstill.

More and more police cars arrived and tried to pen us in by parking across the driveway to the parking lot. Our response? In one quick move we had taken the highway in front of the building. In the end we were four lines deep, handcuffed together and stretched across all four lanes.
There were so many of us, though, that even with this formidable blockade we were easily able to keep the building as the afternoon wore on. The media were also there in force and began to prepare for their live-at-five stories. Finally, although Fred refused to show concern for his staff inside, we let them out the back door at quitting time.

Fed up with Fred, the police finally gave him some kind of ultimatum, and by six o'clock he returned to negotiate with a delegation of Georgia ADAPT folk. GA ADAPT asked for his support for their state version of CASA, the Long Term Care Bill (check name), but he regurgitated the same pap his kind always spits out: we support community based services but we can't put anything in writing or get any more specific for you. After a couple of attempts to get anything real out of the louse it was clear further talk was useless, Pat Puckett announced the results of their talks, namely nothing except head patting and lip service.

It was a dark and stormy night. No really, it was wet and cold and not yet the end of a long day -- with the nearest bathroom a hike away -- but ADAPT's troops held firm. We had simply to think of our brothers and sisters in nursing homes. They had no choice of who and where they would spend another night They had little to make them comfortable. They also probably were waiting to go to the bathroom, or be changed. Their bodies might not be cold, but how warm were their hearts and souls with potentially years of warehouse living stretching out into their futures?

ATLANTA

(Continued from page 9)
If the enemy would not address our concerns seriously at the GA Nursing Home Association, we would have to go to them.

Lined up in twos down the highway, our numbers stretched on and on. Even to the weary and jaded among us it was an awesome sight! On signal we moved out to the MARTA light rail station about a half mile down the highway. On route we passed the buses that waited to take us to jail. (One thing ADAPT has learned is how to get a paratransit vehicle to do all the things they never can do otherwise: be on time, wait patiently and without interrupting their riders, riders who have not subscribed or even reserved a trip in advance.)

By the time the middle of the line had reached the MARTA station things were flowing alarmingly smoothly. Color leaders were stationed along the route to direct the flow, one poor standing soul per elevator was riding up and down, up and down to ensure maximum efficiency loading and button pushing. Even the police and metro staff were helping the more foolhardy or brave ride down and up (at the other end) the escalators. As he steadied a power chair user for the ride back up out of the subway one cop said "l don't approve, but this sure is moving fast and easy..."

The other end of our journey was back in downtown Atlanta. Once all had arrived at our rendezvous point we made a hasty march for the AHCA hotel, this time the fancified Marriott Marquis! As ADAPT's luck would have it, the hotel had hired two off duty officers to guard the hotel for the whole week of the AHCA convention. But both had gone to "lunch" at 11:00 pm when we arrived. We could not understand how we were able to saunter right into the lobby but we did not waste time pondering this puzzle. We just zipped on inside.

You talk about glitzy! Red plush this and gleaming chrome that. Crystal dangling from here and mirrors sparkling from there. Best of all: the thirty-plus-story-high open atrium in the center of the building. ADAPTs
motley troops massed at the bottom of the atrium, hand-cuffed ourselves together and took up our freedom chants. The echo worked its way up the atrium almost as fast as it worked our adrenaline through our veins.
Finally we had another opportunity to confront the nursing home operators inside their hedonistic nest of creature comforts.

Looking down on us from the mezzanine level one floor above, AHCA party-goers were slack jawed. Looking around at the opulence, ADAPT members’ jaws grew tight as we thought of the contrast with the dirty white walls, the bars, the lock-wards and urine stench of the nursing "homes" which had funded this gala event.

One man came down to scold us, but after moments of talking with a few of us he found his way back upstairs to try and find AHCA Executive Director Paul Willging for us. But Willging was in hiding and did not show his face.

Everything seemed to be held in limbo as our chanting went on and on. No one from the hotel approached us. Police were quite slow to appear. Meanwhile, AHCA continued to stare down from on high. After a while some among us grew restless and started to wriggle their way up a set of escalators that had been turned off on our arrival. Once on the mezzanine level they engaged those around them in conversation, explaining why we were here and what we wanted. Threateningly, an AHCA member several floors above tried to drop a
cocktail glass on one of our people. The glass missed her and shattered, severely cut a man who was talking with her.

The police made the AHCA conventioneers leave the atrium area, and soon began the arrests. City buses were lined up in the circular drive in front of the hotel and busload by busload we were hauled off. lt was almost six in the morning before the last of the crowd was taken away. When the last of the 110 of us were taken into the holding area, we had jam packed the space and were filling the halls outside. There was no hope for the militarized order jailers are so determined to maintain.

Within a few short hours our lawyers, valiant volunteers that they are, were preparing us for court and we were being herded in bunches to a small room filled with inaccessible benches so we could appear before the judge. About noon the last of the batches had been processed, and everyone was brought back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

That night another historic ADAPT soiree took place. After a wrap up meeting and a buffet supper, DJ Leonard Roscoe, himself an escapee from a nursing home, had us rocking and rolling in the huge meeting room. A male stripper helped one wheelchair warrior
and some of her friends celebrate her birthday. Outside a smaller group was singing freedom songs hootenanny style. intense private conversations, political debates and whoops of laughter punctuated the party as our folks from across the country enjoyed our last few hours together. ln the morning we would start the daunting job of piling on planes which would mess up our chairs, or cramming into vans
which would carry many of us literally for days back across the nation to our own communities where we carry on the fight -- sometimes alone -- on the home front.


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Some very special ADAPT people treated AHCA ’s partiers to a special bedtime story and lullaby. The lobby, open to the top of the
hotel, echoed and echoed with the angry chants of ADAPT ‘s night owls on the prowl.
Photo: Tom Olin

Created on

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Posted on

Monday 23 September 2019

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• Atlanta, fall 1996

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