The Gazette, Montreal, Sunday, October 2, 1988

PHOTO by Allen McInnis, Gazette: A woman in a manual wheelchair (Stephanie Thomas) sits in front of a blank wall. She is loosely holding the push rims of her chair. Her left leg, closest to the camera, is broken and has a large cast on it. She is wearing a dark shirt with a button, and cotton wide legged pants with a floral pattern. Her eyes are slightly squinting and she looks determined.
Caption: Wheelchair-bound Stephanie Thomas: "We try to hit conventions as forcefully as we can."

Title: Transit activist expects ride to jail
By LYNN MOORE, of The Gazette

Stephanie Thomas of Austin, Texas, expects to see some sights most tourists don't during her stay in Montreal — like the inside of the Tanguay detention center for women.

Thomas and her husband are among about 120 wheelchair-bound members of the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) who are prepared to go to jail in their fight for better access to North American transit systems.

"We feel that degree of commitment is necessary to get our cause known and to get attention," said Thomas, who has spent 14 years in a wheelchair after a tractor accident when she was 17.

The group is in town to continue its battle with the 900-member American Public Transit Association, which begins its four-day convention in Montreal today.

The Montreal Urban Community Transit Corporation, a member of the association, is convention host. About 3,000 people are expected to attend.

Transit executives "don't have to think of this problem at all," Thomas said, alluding to inaccessible mass-transit vehicles.

"They can just ignore it. That's why we try to hit as forcefully as we can during their conventions."

Civil disobedience is the name of the game for ADAPT members, and one they have played in every city where the transit association has held a meeting for the past five years. They have chained themselves to buses and buildings, blocked traffic and created major headaches for police.

The group's Montreal targets are not yet known because it is keeping that information under wraps. But Montreal's Metro system, which is not wheelchair-accessible, has not gone unnoticed by the activists.

Thomas, her fellow activists and several representatives of a Montreal disabled-rights group met yesterday with a lawyer who briefed them on what to expect from local police, jails and courts. The meeting was closed to the media.

"Most of these people have done the letter-writing, the testifying and public hearings and things like that but it doesn't work," she said.

Public confrontation gets much better results, she said.

She pointed to the increase in the number of transit authorities that have bought buses equipped with mechanical lifts to replace their aging vehicles. According to APTA figures, the percentage of buses with lifts has grown to 30 per cent from 11 per cent in 1981.

Once arrested and charged, ADAPT members usually plead guilty and opt for jail terms rather than fines, Thomas said.
The end of article

Created on

Thursday 11 July 2013

Posted on

Thursday 18 January 2018

Tags

accessible transit, ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, APTA - American Public Transit Association, APTA convention, blocking, chains, civil disobedience, Montreal, Montreal Metro, Montreal Urban Community Transit Corporation, percent accessible, plead guilty, Stephanie Thomas, Tanguay Women's prison, wheelchair bound

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