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Fourth Wave Magazine (Washington University)
[This article continues in ADAPT 729, 721 and 739, but it is included here in it's entirety for easier reading.]

Wheelchair Warriors
Story and Photographs by Jan Neely

Editor's note: Last May, Fourth Wave editorial intern Jan Neely and I flew to Chicago for our first ADAPT demonstration.

ADAPT (or American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, as it is more formally known), first took to the streets 12 years ago in Denver, Colorado, to fight for wheelchairaccessible public transportation. Today, with the passage of the ADA securing transportation access, ADAPT has taken on the nursing home industry, institutions and the United States government in an attempt to provide community based personal attendant care and housing to all persons with disabilities in all 50 states.
Here’s what happened: ..... Editor

Photo: A city sidewalk jamed with wheelchairs and a couple of cameramen standing beside them between parked cars. Larry Biondi is on front right side of the photo. People are basically lined up waiting to move out.

Article begins:

DAY ONE:
ADAPT arrives in Chicago. Its my first demonstration and my first job as a photojournalist. "Click, click" goes my camera. Everybody else may look cool. but I'm shakin' in my shoes.

Try to picture 300 people (most in wheelchairs) on the same mission.

No pro-nursing home advocate is safe here! I feel as if I've just entered THE ADAPT ZONE!

Actually, the first day was mellow and taken up with pre-action planning.

ADAPT doesn't have any membership rules or requirements. You just have to believe that people with disabilities have the right to live without putting up with abuse of any kind. I'm real excited because this is the first group I've ever been involved with that has people with all kinds of disabilities, not just developmental disabilities.

DAY 2
Here's ADAPT (photo 1) blocking the doors of the auditorium in hope of catching Dr. Sullivan when he leaves. The Chicago police and the Secret Service put up barricades and pushed back the activists. Victoria Medgyesi, editor of Fourth Wave and my traveling buddy, used her press pass to get into where Dr. Sullivan was to ask him some questions. He refused to talk to her about Medicaid, ADAPT or nursing home abuse.

PHOTO 1: A line of Chicago police officers face off against a line of ADAPT protesters in wheelchairs who come up to about the middle of the officer's chests. In the forground there is a barricade, but further back they are just right up against each other.
PHOTO 2: Three men in wheelchairs (__________, ___________ and JT Templeton sit in an open area in front of a barricade. Behind the barricade is a crowd of people. JT holds a poster that reads "Sullivan where are you?"

Article continues...
DAY 2 cont.

Usually ADAPT doesn’t go around the country crashing graduations, but this one was different (photo 2) Here we are at the University of Chicago where Dr. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Human and Health Services, is speaking to students who are going to be medical professionals. For the past two years, ADAPT has been trying to talk to Dr. Sullivan about redirecting 25 percent of the Medicaid budget for personal attendant care into a home-based program. But he has refused to talk to ADAPT or to change the rules.

As the graduation crowd went in, ADAPT passed out flyers. As l told one person, “What if you become disabled someday? What if your family couldn't take care of you?" As for the police, at this time they just stood back and watched.

One of the reasons ADAPT has public demonstrations is to make the public aware of what's important to people with disabilities. Actions like this keep us going to meetings back home even though what we say is usually ignored.


DAY 3

The next day we went to one of ADAPT's all time favorite places to "act up": the state office of Health and Human Services. It was only a few blocks away from our downtown hotel. so all 300 of us got in a single line and went for a little walk.

Did I say little? Wait a minute. a line of 300 people in wheelchairs plus their supporters? Little? I will admit it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. ADAPT does not stop when it goes on one of its “little walks." It does not stop for lights, trucks, cars, cops, or anything else. It also goes right down the middle of the street.

But that's not to say ADAPT isn't nice, oh no! All along the way ADAPT gave the people of Chicago (who lined up on the curbs to watch as we wheeled and walked by) little gifts of knowledge: flyers with the real scoop on nursing homes.

PHOTO 3: Amid a long line of ADAPT folks marching in their wheelchairs, a man (Mark Johnson) in a wheelchair talks with a man (Bill Henning) and a woman who are walking beside him.

PHOTO 4: A city street lined by tall buildings, is filled by ADAPT protesters apparently crowded from one side to the other. Several people standing closest to the camera but facing away (Jimmi Schrode is on the far left) raise their hands, thumbs up.

Article continues...
DAY 3 cont.
It was a thrill to watch ADAPT in action. When the whole group got to the Federal building, it was a big mess. We blocked off streets and almost shut the building down. As ADAPT told the police, the media and all the people who gathered; “We declare this building a Federal nursing home... only this time, no one goes in or out without our permission! "

The reason many activists do this is because they once lived in nursing homes and other institutions and know how bad those places are. Boy, can I relate. I have mild cerebral palsy and I’m lucky to have always lived at home.

But will I always be lucky? I feel that as long as there are institutions, they will be a threat to the kind of life my friends and I want to live.

This laid-back looking guy is Mike Auberger. He is one of the original ADAPT activists. ADAPT may look like a bunch of disorganized hippies who lost the map to Woodstock 20 years ago, but the opposite is true. In Mike's backpack is one of ADAPT's three cellular phones and the base walkie-talkie!

Bill Scarborough, an activist from Texas, keeps the computer nerds in the know by sending the word out from his laptop computer to computer bulletin boards across the country.

ADAPT also has a media person who goes to whatever city ADAPT is demonstrating in several days ahead to let people know whats going to happen.

PHOTO 5: A very intense looking man (Mike Auberger) in a power chair is sitting sideways to the camera. Behind him is some kind of vehicle and the ADAPT crowd filling the street. Tisha Auberger (Cunningham) is squatting on the bottom right of the picture.

After nine long hours of blocking the building's doors, representatives from HHS finally agreed to meet in the street with ADAPT. It turned into a regular media pow-wow. Activists told the administrators and the media what was needed by people with disabilities.

Photo 6: A gaggle of reporters and photographers tightly encircle the Regional HHS Director and several ADAPT protesters (Teresa Monroe, center, and Bob Kafka, right side).

Article continues...
We talked and they listened, but I have a feeling the concern I saw on those experts' faces was just the same old B.S.

All of ADAPT's demonstrations are non-violent, but they are important battles in a war fought by people who are fighting to lead decent lives.

The possibility of being arrested did make me nervous. It made me feel a little better when ADAPT told the new people that, if you got arrested, the group would never leave you alone. They said ADAPT would tell the cops your needs, get you a good lawyer, and stay on the outside of the jail chanting so you would know ADAPT was with you.

Photo 7: Portrait shot of a man (Gene Rogers) with long brown hair and glasses, sitting in his wheelchair. He is wearing a T-shirt with a larger than life sized photo of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's face and the words "VIOLENCE IS IMMORAL" and a lengthy quote below that is too small to read in the photo.

Article continues...
DAY 4

As l was getting dressed I thought to myself “Today ADAPT is taking on the AMA."

Oh God. what have l gotten myself into? l mean the AMA! The Big Brother of the medical world; the people who are not only in charge of admissions to nursing homes, but who are also in charge of giving prescriptions to people like me. I thought: What if my doctor saw me and did not like what I was doing with ADAPT? Would he stop giving me my blood pressure pills that I can't afford to buy? What would happen then? What about the others? Aren't they in the same boat?

I got a lot more out of my trip to Chicago than just a story and a few good pictures. I met some people who are important to the disability rights movement. I felt accepted and I came home with the feeling that together we can really change things.

People with disabilities need to keep talking. We need to demonstrate. We need to tell the so-called "experts" the real truth and try not to be too afraid while were doing it.

Insert text box: Incitement, Stephanie Thomas Editor.
What's happening on the front lines? Read INCITEMENT, the official newsmagazine of ADAPT, and learn the who, what, when, where and why behind today's headline news. Free!
To order contact: ADAPT/INCITEMENT
1339 Lamar SQ DR Suite B, Austin, TX 78704 (512)442-0252

Second text insert at end of article: Jan Neely is a photography student at Olympic Community College and an editorial intern at Fourth Wave. She is active in People First of Washington.

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