A real Power Move: get Yourself to an ADAPT Action

[Headline] our friend Tom Cagle of Lakeport, New Hampshire tells Dear Diary about his trip to the ADAPT action in Houston

Saturday 5/18/96

Dear Diary, it’s plane-to-Houston day. When I bought my plane ticket, I told the nice travel agent I needed 90+ minutes between planes to make a connection.

I can walk a bit. But we all did a bit each day, too, if you get my meaning.

So of course the first flight had closed it’s doors by the time I was finally wheeled to my plane. Lucky for me m the skycap who had hauled my butt around made it out to be the airline’s fault. This got me a first class ride to Houston. I got at least one semi-human-sized meal thrown in. I figured this is a good beginning.

Houston, Hobby airport, 7 hours later—I am ready to curl up in a fetal ball and nap when I am thrown out into the heat.

Whatever energy I had just pisses away. I have almost enough to sense to find a bus to the hotel.

Friends are bringing my scooter by trailer, and I won’t have it until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I make it (as in walking , as in dying) to my room and back to see the start of the action. Looking for familiar faces, but don’t see y.

Restaurant meal, then plushy room with a kitchenette. The camp food I brought has some potential.

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Sunday 5/19
You are going to hear me whine about the heat. I will try to keep it to this one digression. Walking out into the air today was like being mugged.

Every single overworked muscle cramped. It wasn’t until I tried to pee in the evening that my lack of need for a pee demonstrates how much of me has clamped down in the heat.

Thankgod my scooter arrived. I may be able to fake some kind of normalcy. Justin Dart has Henry Cisneros, duke of HUD, in toe. Most of the meeting with Cisneros is civil but skeptical. We put out that closure of the set-asides (Section 8) means that wheelchair-accessible housing will not be built. What there is of it is routinely given to ABs.

[Headline] The original crip power holiday…backing the PLODs into corners

[Subheading] PLODs-People living off the disabled

Plus, the vast preponderance of new construction is going into nursing homes and not into living spaces for disabled people.

I bring up the HUD thing: that each HUD fiefdom is entitled to dictate when we must eat, who we may talk to, etc. I am not the only person to use the word ‘peonage.’ Cisneros should know the meaning of that word.

The crowd is civil, as I said, but clearly not happy. I think he gets it. Time will tell.

Monday 5/20
The size of our group (400 rolling, 150 AB and walking disabled) makes splitting into two groups prudent. The first target is AHC (American Health Care Centers, Inc.), the headquarters and the chairman’s house. ADAPT troops surround both.

Our group at the headquarters is initially ignored, as most gimps usually are. Then the horror sets in when we are neither meek nor quiet as good cripples should be. Mr. Director agrees to write a letter to AHCA (the nursing home lobby group) with our demands. One of those demands is to present all the demands to AHCA’s next annual convention.

For a director of a billion dollar operation, whose net for Texas alone was $20 million last year, this putz wasn’t a quick study. Before he spoke with us, he needed Houston’s Police Department to explain to him that they couldn’t arrest us all in anything less than three days.

The best argument he gave us was the old saw, “You are trying to take from Peter to pay Paul.” [Demanding that 1/4 of the Medicaid nursing home budget be re-directed to home- and community-based service.]

I hope the putz has his resume up to date.

Five ABs arrested as ringleaders. (Gimps couldn’t have done this by themselves, you know).

Tuesday, 5/21

Political target day: my group went to visit Tom DeLay-Majority Whip and #3 man in Congress.

DeLay was at first unwilling to talk.

His office, however, is in a little town within Houston’s borders. When the chief of police of this hamlet saw how many of us he’d have to contend with, he did most of our negotiating for us.

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The chief did this partly so he wouldn’t break his annual budget arresting us. But he also learned that DeLay’s constituents had been asking for the budget changes we want for years. DeLay had delayed them.

Once the Chief found out that we would settle for a letter to Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole in support of CASA, he put it to the Congressman, “Either get behind what these people want, or read my news release on the subject.”

DeLay’s office air conditioning was turned off (not by us) for the 7 1/2 dreadful hours it took to twist a meaningful letter out of him. We stayed until we got what we came for.

An aside: the person most hysterical about our occupation of the building? The building manager. Her demand was shrill and repetitive: get Those People out of my building. I got in my only zinger.

"If you don't like the class of visitors to your building, Lady, get better tenants."

[Subheading] Houston, Day 3

Wednesday, 5/22

Cigna Insurance [In this business of caring, according to their commercials] is downtown in a huge block-square-building on the twelfth and thirteenth floor of this twenty-floor behemoth. Both ADAPT groups joined up to move on Cigna. Starting our procession a block away, going single file, it took an hour for all of us to arrive.

Then we streamed into the building quick. Building security of course ignored us until we'd blocked two entrances. We occupied all floors and all elevators. Business ground to a hault.

Office workers were entertained by us singing ad-libbed verses like, "Nursing homes ain't what you think, they really stink...deep in the heart of Texas."

[Subheading] Adios, Houston
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The Cigna chief started to get it when we asked him if his health insurance covered attendant services. He replied that his secretary is a paraplegic.

When we asked if she had attendant services through Cigna, he said, "No, her family looks after her."

We booed loudly. He promptly agreed to write a letter of support.

Wednesday evening

AB's never see it and probably couldn't believe it if they did: the meeting-greeting-dating-mating social that breaks out at the end of ADAPT adventures.

There is nothing more likely to stimulate folks' juices than facing their fears and surviving them.

I will say, Dear Diary, that this old wreck will sleep better at night knowing that somebody in this world thought I was manly enough to flirt with and chat with for a bit.

God knows I carry too much baggage on this topic. No, I didn't follow my heart or loins. I ran like a greased pig. And she was a beauty, too.

I'll keep on fighting. I'll keep on setting myself up to get this close to bliss. I'll keep swinging at our world 'til it's okay for anybody to meet and greet, date and mate.

And someday, I will do the mating part, too. It's not like I have anything more important to do this lifetime.

Thursday, 5/23

Up at 04:30, not home until 19:30. Hunover from two beers the night before, and just plain pounded flat. Home is cooler, anyway.

Was it worthy all I could save for half a year? Oh yah.

Did we do any good? Another secure yes.

Can ADAPT action change things to the point where people with disabilities aren't routinely killed by institutions or placed by families? I dunno.

But like I said, what else have I got to do this lifetime?

Created on

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Posted on

Monday 23 September 2019

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