[Headline] Country stars soothe ADAPT activists
[Subheading] Trip a success, group believes
By Rob Moritz
Banner Stan Writer

[Image] Banner photos by Laura Embry: A man [William Lee Golden] with below shoulder length gray hair and a long gray beard and mustache in a black suit, hugs a woman [Anita Cameron] in a green ADAPT jacket, headband and hat. Both are smiling. They are in a parking to and behind and slightly out of focus you can see lots of other ADAPT folks, a camera people, and others milling around. Caption reads: William Lee Golden (left) hugs ADAPT protester Anita Cameron of Philadelphia after the country artist met with the group.

Three noted country artists"sympathize" with the goals of disabled activists who have protested in Nashville this week, including a violent disturbance at the Opryland Hotel.

"We are here to try to help and help you every way we can. We want to bring attention to your cause and your fight," Grand Ole Opry member Porter Wagoner told about 150 members of the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) on Wednesday.

"These people need to be heard. We hope we can bring people's attention to it," Wagoner said.

Wagoner, Bill Anderson and William Lee Golden met with the protesters in a parking lot on Music Valley Drive across from the Opryland Hotel.

The meeting occurred about an hour before the nationally televised Country Music Association Awards. The meeting was Nashville disabled fear backlash arranged by Opryland officials who feared that ADAPT might stage a disruptive protest at the CMA event. The group threatened such an action after 97 protesters were arrested Tuesday for trespassing at the hotel.

ADAPT members have been in Nashville since Sunday to protest and try to meet with the American Health Care Association, which is having its annual convention at the Opryland Hotel.

The group is demanding that 25 percent of all Medicaid dollars be diverted from nursing homes to home health care.

ADAPT protesters demonstrated Sunday at the entrance to the Opryland Hotel before being told they'd be able to meet with
[ Please see PROTEST, page B-3] (unavailable at this time)

[Headline] Nashville disabled fear backlash
By Glenn Henderson
Banner Staff Writer

[Image] Photo 2: A curved line of people in wheelchairs and sitting on the ground curves from a woman in a wheelchair [Paulette Patterson] who is raising her fist and yelling. Behind her stands a main in a black suit with long gray hair and bear [William Lee Golden] and another man in working type clothes [Porter Wagoner]. Both are holding black and pink ADAPT shirts rolled up in their hands. They are outside in a parking lot.
[Image caption] ADAPT's Paulette Patterson cheers the group on. Golden and Porter Wagoner (right) look on.

Disabled activists who converged on Nashville to loudly promote their cause have left local disabled residents holding the bag, they claim.

"They're going to leave Nashville, leaving the ones of us who live here to deal with the backlash," Mary McDonald says of the protesters who disrupted operations at the state Capitol and the Opryland Hotel this week.

McDonald, 43, who has multiple sclerosis, uses a wheelchair.

She's not the only member of the local community of disabled people who disagrees with the tactics of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT).

Rick Slaughter, a 31-year-old man whose legs, in his words, "don't work," says the group has gone too far. Slaughter volunteered when Metro police needed someone to teach them the proper way to subdue a disabled person.

"These, people come into town and stir things up and then leave town," Slaughter says. "Today, I couldn't help but feel awkward whenever I encountered a stranger. It makes me look bad."

They should get what they're after, Slaughter says, but they're going about it the wrong way.

"They're making a lot of people in town uneasy--
they're making a mess in Nashville," he says. "If they want to raise Cain, they need to take it to the top. Why don't they go see Hillary?"

While McDonald, Slaughter and Mollie Ingram are critical of ADAPT's tactics, they do support its cause in wanting 25 percent of Medicaid money now going to for-profit nursing homes to be diverted to at-home care, or attendant programs.

They've chosen the American Health Care Association, currently holding a convention at the Opryland Hotel, as their primary target of protest. AHCA represents most of the nation's nursing homes.

"I believe in what they want," McDonald says. "No one wants to live in a nursing home. But I'm very much against the way they're trying to get it."

[Please see REACTION, page B-3] (unavailable at this time)


Oprettet den

Tirsdag 16 Juli 2013

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Tirsdag 4 Februar 2020

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• Nashville, fall 1993 Opryland

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