Photo by Nashville Banner: ADAPT folks marching in their wheelchairs single file into the Tennessee Capitol building via the bunker like street entrance. Above and partly obscured, is the Greek looking above ground part of the capitol. Caption reads: ADAPT protesters enter the State First Street, across the Woodland Capitol after marching from North Street Bridge and through downtown.

Title: Disabled-rights group now demands results
By Rob Moritz
Banner Staff Writer

Disabled-rights activists are hoping for results as they meet today with American Health Care Association officials and next month with the governor.

“What we've got now are meetings. What we want are results,” local disabled-rights organizer Diane Coleman said Monday outside the governor's office in the state Capitol.

“The meetings are a first step, and that's good, but we do want results,” she added.

Today’s 3 p.m. meeting with AHCA's executive board will be held at Opryland Hotel, where the nursing home group ia holding its annual convention.

More than 200 members of Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today from 28 states protested at the hotel’s entrance Sunday before being granted a meeting with AHCA.

ADAPT wants to divert 25 percent of all Medicaid dollars from nursing homes to home health care.

On Monday, the same protesters — in wheelchairs — occupied the state Capitol for nearly six hours before being assured of an Oct. 11 meeting with Gov. Ned McWherter, who is on a two-week trade visit to Germany and Japan.

The activists demonstrated at the state Capitol because they hadn’t received a response from a letter Coleman sent to McWherter earlier this month.

The protesters blocked several offices, chanted and generally disrupted the afternoon work schedule for many state employees before Metro police and Capitol police arrived. No arrests were made.

Metro police blocked off Charlotte Avenue near the Capitol during the demonstration, causing traffic tie-ups for downtown commuters.

After nearly six hours of demonstrating and chants such as, “the people united will never be divided," and “up with attendant care, down with nursing homes," the group finally was told it could meet with the governor next month.

“So far, Tennessee has chosen human warehouses over in-home services,” Coleman said, adding that more than 35,000 disabled people are in Tennessee nursing homes.

“Put human rights over state rights," she said.

Coleman says the letter she sent to the governor contains three requests:

* That the governor establish a task force to study home care services for the elderly and disabled.

* That he make a commitment to reverse what they believe is an institutional bias in long-term services funding in the state.

* That he make a commitment to promote ADAPT’s goals at the National Governors Association.

President Clinton's health care reform calls for the expansion of home
care programs, Coleman said.

Meanwhile, a Capitol cleaning crew worked - overtime Monday night to clean up trash left by ADAPT protesters.

Created on

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Posted on

Tuesday 4 February 2020

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