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Contra Costa Times, Monday, September 28, 1987
Serving Central Contra Costa County
(This article is continued in ADAPT 343, but the entire text is included here for easier reading)

Photo Title: NO TAXATION WITHOUT TRANSPORTATION
Staff Photo by Brad Mangin: A solid mass of mostly wheelchair using protesters fill a park. Above their heads you can see palm trees and a monument, on which a couple of camera people are standing. The protesters are chanting, mouths open, and some are raising their fist in the air. A man in the front is holding a sign that reads "No taxation without transportation."
Caption reads: DAN O'HARA of Walnut Creek, left, participates in Sunday's demonstration in San Francisco.

Title: Disabled arrested in SF protest
By Donna Hemmila Staff writer SAN FRANCISCO — Protesters in wheelchairs, chanting "If you can take us to jail, take us to work," were arrested Sunday at City Hall where they disrupted the opening of a national public transit convention.

More than 35 disabled people were hauled into special wheelchair-lift equipped vans on charges of disturbing the peace.

Groups of demonstrators blocked the entrance to the City Hall rotunda where delegates from the American Public Transit Association kicked off a five-day convention Sunday.

As San Francisco police officers pushed the wheelchairs into the waiting vans, other wheelchair riders parked in front of the vans to keep them from driving away. Captain Michael Pera said the demonstrators would be given citations at the Hall of Justice and released.

"The situation was getting out of hand," Pera said. "My understanding was by the demeanor of the crowd, they wanted to be arrested."

More than 150 disabled protesters and their families had marched from an afternoon rally at Union Square. The parade of wheelchairs had stopped traffic on downtown streets and demonstrated in front of the Hilton Hotel on Powell Street, where convention delegates are staying.

The five-day transit convention is expected to bring nearly 15,000 representatives from transit agencies across the United States to the Bay Area. Disabled organizers have vowed to disrupt the convention, being held at the Moscone Center, to call attention to the transit organization's policy on access for disabled people.

Disabled organizers say the APTA is responsible for weakening federal laws that require public transit agencies to equip their buses and subways to carry disabled passengers.

A successful lawsuit brought by APTA changed federal law to give local transit agencies the right to decide what type of accessible transit to provide.

Many transit districts have chosen to carry wheelchair passengers in dial-a-ride-type vans rather than equip their regular buses with wheelchair lifts.

Members of the American Disabled for Public Transit and the September Alliance for Accessibility are demanding to ride the same public transit system that able-bodied passengers use.

At the rally in Union Square, the protesters heard pledges of support from Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, feminist Eleanor Smeal, the Rev. Cecil Williams from Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco and labor leader Jack Henning.

During the rally the protesters chanted curses against APTA and waved signs with slogans such as "No Taxation without Transportation."

The songs and chants were punctuated with the clanging bells of passing cable cars, a San Francisco attraction none of the wheelchair riders can board because the cars lack lifts.

McCarthy said he backed the disabled community in its fight for independence. Many disabled rely on public transit to go to work and are being denied opportunities because they don't have transportation, he said.

"There is no footnote to the Constitution that says everybody gets these civil rights except the disabled," McCarthy said. Disabled speakers fanned the crowd's anger with accounts of their morning meetings with APTA representatives at the Hilton Hotel.

Disabled representatives said the wheelchair-accessible door to the hotel was barricaded and they were told to exit through the garage.

"The backdoor entrance went out in the '60s with the civil rights movement," said Judy Heumann, of the September Alliance. "We're not going to go through the back door anymore."

Albert Engelken, deputy executive director of APTA, denied his organization had ordered the hotel barricaded.

"This is not a happy situation," Engelken said as he watched wheelchair users demonstrating on the streets below from the fourth floor window of the Hilton. "Obviously it's a sore spot. Nobody likes this."

APTA's executive board has agreed to set up a task force to study their policy, but Engelken said the organization is not ashamed of its stand on disabled access.

Only California and Michigan have laws that mandate full accessibility on public buses and rail systems.

"You folks in California chose Artie you want and APIA thinks that's great," Englenken said. "We just wonder if the people in California should be telling the rest of us what to do."

APTA has estimated it would cost $13 billion to make every public transit system in the United States accessible to the disabled.

Staff Photo by Brad Mangin: A woman, Paulette Patterson, surrounded by protesters and signs, has her mouth wide in a chant. She is holding a sign on a stick that reads "We Will ADAPT". Beside her another woman, Maryann Collinsworth, holds onto her chair. Behind them another sign that reads "Transit Access Now" is visible.

Caption reads: Paulette Patterson of Chicago waves a sign during Sunday's demonstration demanding better access for the disabled on public transportation.

ADAPT (345)

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