The Arizona Republic, Monday April 8, 1987

Title: Handicapped Hold Protest
Photo by Pete Peters/Republic: People in wheelchairs in ADAPT T-shirts form a picket line in front of a hotel, the Regency Phoenix. They are holding posters. Behind them, in the shadows of the entrance-way to the hotel people are standing looking on.
Caption reads: Members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit picket before the Hyatt Regency. The ADAPT demonstrators have targeted a meeting by the American Public Transit Association.
Photo top right Photo by Pete Peters/Republic: A woman standing uses a sprayer to cool a woman in a wheelchair holding a large poster.
caption reads: Carla Montez squirts Kelli Bates with cool water. They traveled to Phoenix from Denver to participate in an ADAPT protest.

subtitle: Disrupt event; ask transit access
By Chuck Hawley
The Arizona Republic

About 100 members of a militant group of wheelchair-bound activists blocked the roads and entrances to Rustler’s Roost on Sunday night in an attempt to stop those attending a steak fry for the American Public Transit Association’s convention.

Chanting and carrying place cards members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit lined up across the two roads, a stairway leading form a lower parking lot and the doors including the handicapped entrance to the restaurant, which is at the Pointe at South Mountain.

Police monitored the protest. The 450 people attending the weeklong convention arrived in six Phoenix buses. Some were forced to scramble up a steep gravel incline and enter through the kitchen. Others walked up the back driveway.
“We plan to be here all week and to inconvenience you as much as we can,” called out one protestor, who was blocking the stairs.

Earlier in the day, protestor had picketed at the Hyatt Regency, where the conventioneers are staying.

The protestors at the restaurant carried placards that said, “Police wagons accessible; buses not,” and chanted, “What do we want? Access. When do we want it? Now.”

The group, well-known for militant protests across the country, wants all public transit to be accessible to the wheelchair-bound.

“I think they have a just cause, but I think they are carrying it to an extreme,” said Bob Hicken, general manager of the Phoenix Transit System, who walked up the hill from the lower parking lot.

“We’d like to serve them all, but we can’t. If there were enough money in the world, we could do everything we wanted to.”

Created on

Thursday 11 July 2013

Posted on

Monday 18 September 2017

Tags

APTA - American Public Transit Association, blocking doors, blocking roads, convention hotel, cost, Phoenix, Phoenix Transit, protest, Rustler's Rooste, wheelchair bound, wheelchair militants

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