[Headline] Wheelchair Warriors with a Cause!
By Hareth Fenley

They smash curbs with sledgehammers to make curb-cuts, crawl up the stairs of city buses, chain themselves to steering wheels, block traffic with their bodies. They were carried off to jail in Atlanta, Georgia, this fall after shutting down the Greyhound terminal for six hours, chanting "We will ride!"

They are the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, a national organization better known as ADAPT.

The protesters say they have one simple goal: they want to ride the bus. It may be partly due to their efforts that 31 percent of the national transit bus fleet is now wheelchair accessible. Their demonstrations are replacing the poster-child idea of "poor, helpless cripples" with a new image of wheelchair warriors.

Like the Atlanta-based AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), ADAPT is willing to break the law. The two controversial groups admire each other's tactics and sometimes work toward the same objectives.

"Five years ago, my two oppressions were as far apart as the thumbs on my two hands," says Eleanor Smith, holding her hands out to the sides of her wheelchair. Smith, an activist in both organizations, says the spread of AIDS brought the two issues together for her.

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[no image caption] PHOTO BY KIMBERLY BOYD

"Gay rights activists and disability rights activists are now fighting for the same issues in Congress, side by side, not just out of empathy, but out of absolutely parallel self-interest. Young people have been thrust into disability issues," she said "It's different than they ever would Chair have dreamed on the dance floor."

AIDS and disability activists are pushing together for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The transit Ors w.th w provisions of this s comprehensive bill would require lifts on all new public buses and lifts on private carriers starting in five years. The Bush administration a Cause! backs the ADA and Congress is expected to pass it.

The lobbying and reform that led up to the ADA are often credited to mainstream organizations such as the Paralyzed American Veterans. "We kind of give those people leverage," says Mark Johnson, a quadriplegic who helped start ADAPT in 1983. "Until there's an emotional change, no intellectual persuasion will work."

Created on

Thursday 11 July 2013

Posted on

Monday 31 July 2017

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