[Headline] Community Choice Act NOW
By Tim Wheat

[Subheading] Saturday-ADAPT Arrives in Washington, DC

On the heels of the success of Money Follow the person, ADAPT activists gathered in the capitol to follow-up with The Community Choice Act (S 799 and HR 1621). This legislation will address the institutional bias that favors expensive facilities over home and community services, a situation that forces Americans into undesirable nursing homes and state facilities.

ADAPT is leading the push for long-term

[image]
[image caption] Photo by Tim Wheat

[text resumes] Medicaid reform needed to end the insti-tutional bias. The logical next step to the Money Follows the Person legislation that passed last term is the Community Choice Act. MFP allows states to redirect long-term care funding from institutions to alter-natives in the community. This will allow many Americans to choose to live at home rather than an expensive institution. Do you want to live in a nursing home?

[Subheading] Sunday The ADAPT Community's Fun Run

It was a perfect day in the Upper Senate Park for the ADAPT Fun Run for Disability Rights. The event is unique in ADAPT history: a fundraiser on the first day of the Action to raise money for local grassroots actions and to support National ADAPT's efforts in system change.

The walkway around the grassy area of Upper Senate Park served as the quarter-mile track. Large deep green trees lined the path, providing welcome shade to the runners.

The fun and the fundraising were differ-ent, but getting the Community Choice Act (S 799 and HR 1621) passed is ADAPT's objective. All of the money is used to sub-sidize expenses to get ADAPT activists to the action. Many ADAPT members have spent years in institutions, isolated from the community and job opportunities. The subsidy is essential to get the real grass-roots message of people with disabilities to lawmakers who may have had no interaction with the disability community.

The morning was used for training and organizing, but at noon, ADAPT split into groups and made their way to Upper Sen-ate Park for the event. The detail on the massive marble buildings stood out in the sunlight as the shadows cut distinct lines in the elaborate structures. From Upper Senate Park, the Capitol dome is a powerful reminder that the Fun Run for Disability Rights has the ultimate purpose to change the direction of the national Medicaid policy.

Mark Johnson of Georgia, this year's winner of the Henry Betts Award, pledged $5,000.00 of his award money to match runners pledges. DJ Johnny Crescendo and "master of ceremony" Bob Kafka kept the energy level up and motivated Bunny McLaude to do one 100 laps.

"The Fun Run for Disability Rights is a way that disability rights activists can raise bucks for both national and their local chapters," said Kafka.
Jim Ward, head of the ADA Watch and Andy Imparato, director of the American Association of People with Disabilities, came to support ADAPT.

"I think it is an amazing day and a great turnout," said Imparato, "So what's not to love?"

Fun Run sponsors included: The Democratic National Committee Centene Corporation; Liberty Resources, Inc.; tri-County Patriots for Independent Living; AmeriGroup Foundation; Mark Johnson; Topeka Independent Living Resource Center; Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville , P.C.; Acumen Accent; Cornell Pharmacy; Holiday Inn Capitol; Janine Bertram Kemp and Tom Olin; Personal Assistance Services of Colorado; Alpha One; The Ability Center of Greater Toledo; American Association of People with Dis-abilities; Castro Enterprises-McDonald's in El Paso; Sovereign Bank; and Yoshiko Dart .

[Subheading] Monday -- Boisterous, Loud and Proud.

Ninety-nine ADAPT activists were arrest-ed today after demanding a hearing for the Community Choice Act of 2007. Remembering the multiple offices shutdown that ADAPT engineered in September of 2005, the inhabitants of offices in the Rayburn House Office Building pleaded for quick action from the Capitol Police.

In the driveway on the east side of the Rayburn building, the ADAPT Community was given three quick warnings to disperse before about 40 people were arrested. Three groups took over the of-fice the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, as well as the offices of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)

"We are here at the Rayburn," said Randy Alexander of Tennessee, "because it is time for Congressional hearings on the Community Choice Act."

Charged with disorderly conduct, the ar-rest documents said that each individual was "boisterous, loud and incommodious." Many ADAPT activists were held by the Capitol Police for over 12 hours.

[image]
[image caption] Outside Rayburn Building. Photo by Tim Wheat.

The first group was released just before 9 p.m., and small groups were released until long after midnight. ADAPT stayed up late into the night and welcomed the groups back to the hotel with cheers and pizza.

"When the officer told me that I was being charged for being boisterous," said Herman of Rochester, "he realized I was using sign and not talking. The officer had to ask the supervisor what to charge me; but the supervisor said everyone gets the same charge. I guess I was guilty of being with ADAPT."

"I will do it again tomorrow," said Kathy Curiso following eleven hours of detention, "I will fight for the right till the day I die."

ADAPT was following up on written requests for hearings from the Congressional leadership. The hearings would allow testimony into the record from people with disabilities who have been forced into institutions because of the lack of services in the community.

"We've been waiting for ten years for this legislation to pass, and all the while Congress has refused to act on this national scandal," said Dawn Russell, Colorado ADAPT member. "I had to leave my home state of Tennessee to get the assistance that would keep me out of a nursing home. I want so much to be able to go home to be with my family, but I can't, because I'd be forced into a nursing home.

"I won't give up my freedom, my privacy, my dignity and the control over my life, so I have to stay in exile in Colorado."

On March 19, 2006, ADAPT held an historic day of testimony in Nashville that focused light on the dark halls of institutions and nursing homes all over America. Sixty people related personal accounts of horrifying and gruesome mistreatment. But the real impact of the face-to-face narratives of rape, abuse, neglect and lonely death is not to say that the nursing home industry and institutions fail, but that the community works. People with disabilities need the CCA to join typical American life and Congress needs hearings on CCA, because they have ignored people with disabilities too long.

"It's easy for Congress to ignore us," said Guadalupe Vasquez of Texas ADAPT. "After all, they all make a very good living and will never have to face the prospect of institutionalization and loss of their freedom. On the other hand, many of us live on $600 a month, so we are the people who Congress, by its inaction, is guaranteeing will lose our freedom."

CCA is an essential next step to ADAPT's success with last year's Money Follows the Person (MFP) legislation. MFP made it possible for states to redirect funds to Home and Community Based Services rather than expensive and undesirable institutions and nursing homes. Many states do not offer those services or similar programs that would enable people to live at home.

[image]
[image caption] Tomas Esquibel and Pat King outside of Rayburn Building. Photo by Tim Wheat

CCA will change the institutional bias of the current system and give people with disabilities the tools they need to live and work in the community. Many people see CCA as liberation because it breaks the mold of society "caring" for "the needy" to providing people with disabilities the instrument to participate equally.

[Subheading] Tuesday ADAPT Power and Progress

ADAPT gained ground today, confronting two players in the campaign against institutional bias.

[image]
[image caption] Secretary Alfonso Jackson. Photo by Tim Wheat

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alfonso Jackson faced up to ADAPT, promising an end to housing discrimination.

HUD recently reported that 40% of the Fair Housing complaints are based on the "protected class" of disability. Jackson agreed to recover housing vouchers lost to bud-get cuts and to broker a meeting between Congress members on key committees. He vowed to eliminate the "outrageous" level of discrimination in housing against persons with disabilities and he said he would work with ADAPT.

"We are committed to work with you and we will do everything in our power to make sure you have affordable accessible integrated housing options in this country," he said, adding that he experienced segregation and discrimination while growing up in Dallas.

"You know, March 1965 on the E. Pettis Bridge — I was there," Jackson said, referring to the Alabama site where police attacked African American marchers. "I have the dog bite in my left leg still today."

The Secretary's comments were greeted with cheers, but ADAPTers knew they had to keep the pressure on. Activists held "WANTED POSTERS" with Jackson's photo. They hoped to tear the poster up as a demonstration of faith that the pressure was no longer necessary. Cassie James, however, asked the crowd to hang on to the poster until he made good on his promises.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) needed some ADAPT-style persuading before they agreed to a conversation about
discharging people with disabilities from nursing homes to their own homes. Two hours after the end of Sec. Jackson's

[image]
[image caption] Outside Parking Garage at American Hospital Association. Photo by Tim Wheat

visit, the whole of ADAPT marched to the headquarters of the AHA. One group rushed the doors, while a second group blocked the subterranean parking garage. ADAPT crowded into the lobby and blocked traffic, demanding that the AHA check the discharges of people with disabilities to nursing homes.

"I wanted to go home, but the doctor said that I should go to the nursing home for just one week to get better," said Lupe Vasquez of Austin. Two weeks later I was still in the nursing home. I never got any rehab or anything. They did not get me out of bed, or even reposition me. I was getting bedsores."

Dale Reid, an Advanced Practice Nurse from Denver, explained that if people with disabilities go to the hospital — even for something typical — they may be deemed not competent" to live in the community. "I believe people with disabilities are being tracked into nursing homes," Reid said.

ADAPT asked the AHA to support the Community Choice Act of 2007 (S 799 and HR 1621); to send a letter to member hospitals to ensure that referrals complied with federal law; to develop a protocol so that a discharge to an institution will not discriminate against people with disabilities; and to let ADAPT present on this issue at the AHA national conference.

[Subheading] Wednesday Capitol HID Success

ADAPT activists spent the day on Capitol Hill contacting lawmakers about the importance of the Community Choice Act. Introduced in March, CCA will end the nation-wide institutional bias in Medicaid funding and give Americans with disabilities the real supports and services they need to get out of expensive institutions and rejoin community life.

Our country's population is aging and more people with disabilities need assistance with daily living tasks. Although community services have been shown to be less expensive than institutional services, and home and community services are preferred by individuals, most public funding goes to facilities. In FY 2005 two-thirds of the $94.5 billion long term care Medicaid dollars were spent on nursing homes and other institutional services, with the rest going to community services.
ADAPT has recorded a small part of the human tragedy in the DVD that activ-

[image]
[image caption] March home from AHA. Photo by Tim Wheat.

[text continues] ists delivered to every Congress member Wednesday. The recording is from the 2006 historic Day of Testimony in Nashville Tennessee where 60 people testified about the inhuman conditions forced on people with disabilities.

Following up on ongoing efforts to get the support of the Republican National Committee, ADAPT members met with Mike Duncan, the Committee Chair of the RNC. Mr. Duncan agreed to send communications to state and local organizers to cooperate with state ADAPT organizers, but he said they would not yet endorse the bipartisan legislation. It was originally introduced ten years ago by a Republican, then-Representative Newt Gingrich, when it was known simply as CASA.

This action has been a great success. Sunday's picture-perfect ADAPT Fun Run garnered about $75,000. On Monday, Senator Arlen Specter agreed to request a CCA hearing after 99 activists were arrested when they took over congressional offices. Tuesday saw ADAPTers stormed the headquarters of the American Hospital Association, demanding an end to the practice of sending people straight to nursing homes. The AHA agreed to meet with ADAPT flooded the halls of our congresspersons, armed with DVD recordings of Nashville's testimonies, compelling CCA literature and most important, ADAPT member's own words.

And we'll be back!

[ADAPT symbol]