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Fort Worth Star Telegram / Sunday March 26, 1989

[Headline] Disabled evicted by guards
[Subheading] Fort Worth protest at courthouse ends

BY Whitt Canning, Fort Worth Star Telegram

Bob, Joe, Frank, Tim and Frazier spent a quiet evening Friday on the ninth floor of the Federal Building nodding off occasionally between friendly chats with the guards.

Having arrived earlier in the day to take part in a protest by a group of disabled people against the Urban Mass Transit Administration, they hadn't really planned on staying the night.

Things just sort of worked out that way.

Their strange vigil ended abruptly about 1:15 p.m. yesterday when they were evicted by Federal Protection Service officers, who explained that it was being done for their own good.

“They physically picked us up and carried us out," said Bob Kafka, admiring a skinned place on his right forearm that was bleeding slighty.

“At least," said Joe Carle, “it was reassuring being in the hands of the kinder, gentler Bush administration."

Kafka, 43, Carle, 50, Frank Lozano, 38, and Tim Baker, 26, are members of a group called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation that staged a nationwide protest Friday in an effort to dissuade the administration from appealing a recent decision in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals (ADAPT vs. Burnley). The decision requires wheelchair lifts on buses purchased
with federal money.

The Fort Worth protest involved 20 to 30 people, but Kafka, Carle, Lozano and Baker managed to reach the ninth-floor office of the administration's regional manager, Wilbur Hare. There, they requested he telephone White House chief of staff John Sununu and voice his support for the court decision.

Joining the small group in its audience with Hare was Frazier, an amiable pooch who serves the visually impaired Lozano as a guide dog.

Hare refused the request, and went home at 4:45 p.m., leaving the intrepid little band stuck on the ninth floor, vowing to stay through Easter weekend.

“We were in the outer office, and he (Hare) came out once about 3:30 and told us he was leaving at his normal time," Carle said.

"Then at 4:45, he came out, shook our hands, wished us happy Easter, and left.

"We wished him happy Easter too."

So the group was left occupying the building, along with several guards. At 6 p.m., Casey Bowen, director of building operations with the General Services Administration, told them they would not be forcibly removed, but he would not allow food to be brought in.

As an added precaution, Kafka said, all the phones were removed.

“I don't mean just in Hare‘s office," Kafka said. "lt looked to me like they removed every phone on the ninth floor. They didn‘t just disconnect them. They TOOK the phones off.“

The group settled in for the night.

"Mostly, we tried to sleep as best we could, sitting in our chairs (Kafka, Carle and Baker use wheelchairs)" Kafka said.

"I got the couch, since l'm the oldest," Carle said. “Frank slept on the floor because he doesn't have a wheelchair.“

"There are some vending machines up there," Kafka said, "and we ate some candy bars and drank some cokes that was about it.

"The guards were very nice to us -- until today, when they evicted us."


[Subheading] PROTEST

About 6:30 a.m. yesterday, Kafka said, they asked the guards if they could send out for food and were refused. About 11 a.m. the group's attorney, Paul Alexander, arrived with the same request and also was refused.

Then about l p.m., the group made another request — that Hare appear at a 6 p.m. news conference and agree to make the call to Washington tomorrow. ln return, they would end their occupation of the building.

"That's when they evicted us," Kafka said. “They said they were acting on Bowen's orders and it was for our own good because we hadn't had anything to eat.

“They picked me up out of my chair, because l wasn't going to leave, and carried me. That's how I got skinned up."

“They had a little trouble getting Frank into a wheelchair," Carle said. “But Frazier went quietly when ordered to leave."

Baker, who is severely disabled, did not fare so well, group members said. “When they were pushing him out in his chair, they didn't know how to operate it, and they tore up the motor and the clutch,“ Kafka said. “They did about $1,000 worth of damage to it."

Guards at the building refused to comment.

Hare did not show up at the news conference. And the I3 activists held up the starting time of 6 p.m. to wait for additional supporters who did not arrive.

“We came here to fight for transportation, but we couldn't get the troops over to fight for them," Carle said, adding that none of the disabled could ride the bus downtown so only those who could afford a car could come.

Kafka said that the group will examine legal recourse for injuries and damages incurred while being evicted. However, the group's lawyer, Paul Alexander, had advised the four that they might not have legal grounds because they were on federal property, Carle said.

As to whether the demonstrators felt they had accomplished anything by the protest, Carle said, “We hope that somewhere along the line this wakes up the able-bodied community" and shows members of the disabled community that “they don't have to knuckle under."

He said the group's impromptu occupation of Hare's office had probably amazed them as much as anyone else.

“When we got here (with the other protesters), I was telling Bob that Mr. Hare was a pretty nice guy and would probably make the phone call fairly quickly," Carle said.

“We were trying to figure out what we were going to do with the rest of the afternoon.“

Carle said other protests are planned soon, including one against Greyhound Corp. on Monday in Dallas. Greyhound, he said, has indicated it does not wish to adapt its buses to the handicapped.

“I think this was an abomination," Kafka said. “As a Vietnam veteran, l am embarrassed for my country. But it's just another example of how the govrnment views the disabled. They don't want us to be people — they want us to sit down and shut up, or be put away in institutions.

“I think a lot of people have a fear of the disabled."

“They're trying to put us back where we've been for ... eternity," Carle said. "Instead of doing this, they should help us with job training so we can carry our own weight.

“It's the only way we will ever become . . . people."

The occupying force at least had a clear view of its immediate objective once it was back out on the street: friends who arrived to help were immediately dispatched to find food (“double burgers, chicken, and big milkshakes").

When the food gathering force hurried off, Carle offered one last observation on the situation. "Frazier," he confided. “is extremely upset about all this.

“He says they treated him like a dog."

Staff writer Betsy C.M. Tong contributed to this report

PHOTO (by Ricky Moon, Fort Worth Star-Telegram): From left to right Frank Lozano kneels on the pavement, his hand on his dog Frazier's neck. Frazier, a white lab, sits calmly in harness, looking serenely off into the distance. Beside him is Joe Carle in a denim vest, ADAPT shirt, gimmie cap and dark glasses, he sits in his wheelchair and smiles. Next to him, Tim Baker, face partially obscured by his chin operated wheelchair control stick, looks over at Bob Kafka. Kafka, next to him is in his manual wheelchair and is talking to Tim. Behind them is the stark facade of the federal building.

Caption reads: Frank Lozano, his dog Frazier, Joe Carle, Tim Baker and Bob Kafka, from left, sit outside the Federal Courthouse after their eviction.

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