Montreal Daily News

Title: A wheelchair Army Goes to War!
[This article continues in ADAPT 385 but the entire text is included here for easier reading.]

Photo 1 by ALLAN R LEISHMAN/Montreal Daily News: In a crowd of uniformed police officers and others, two policemen stand on either side of a protester sitting on the wet ground. The protester sits, back to the camera, wearing a cap and his face and head are obscured by a white trash bag under his jacket. These two police officers are looking back beside the camera. The police barricade is just visible in front of the protester.
Caption: Roundup: Police are kept busy by demonstrators last night.

Photo 2 on the left and below the other photo by ALLAN R LEISHMAN/Daily News: A person in a manual wheelchair is tipped completely back by attendant and protester Jan Ingram the front wheels of the chair are hooked over a very low heavy metal barrier. Behind that barrier are standard police barricades and uniformed officers are standing behind them. One policeman is in between the standard barricades and the low barrier and he is looking at other officers and pointing at the person in the wheelchair.
Caption: Protesting: One of the wheelchair demonstrators near the barricaded Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

Title: 25 arrested in downtown demonstration
by Ron Charles Montreal Daily News

MUC police arrested 25 wheelchair-bound demonstrators last night after they forced their way into the lobby of the Sheraton Centre in downtown Montreal.

The demonstrators were protesting the American Public Transit Association's (APTA) reluctance to endorse wheelchair lifts on new buses.

They crashed their wheelchairs through a luggage-cart barrier hotel employees had built in an attempt to ward off the protesters.

[Subheading] Came along

When APTA, a Washington-based transit authority organization, brought its annual conference to Montreal this week, the protesters came along as part of the ticket.

The demonstrators, from a group called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), have been protesting at APTA conferences for eight years.

Only a few members of a local disabled rights group took part in the demonstrations — the rest were from the U.S.

Police said all those arrested — who are expected to be charged with assault — were American citizens, many of them Vietnam veterans.

About 50 MUC police officers showed up to clear the Sheraton's marble-covered lobby after the protesters, singing "we want to ride," blocked elevators and escalators.

Police wheeled the demonstrators one by one to a waiting wheel-chair bus being used as a paddy wagon.

Police snipped chains linking protesters Mike Auberger and Bob Kafka's wheelchairs to a handrail in the lobby.

Although the APTA conference is taking place at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, some of the 3,000 attendees are staying at the Sheraton.

Earlier in the day, police turned the Queen Elizabeth into a fortress with metal street barriers as about 75 demonstrators wheeled toward the APTA conference headquarters.

They blocked traffic in both directions on Dorchester for more than two hours as police tried to pen the group in with the barriers.

Police took two protesters who had crashed the barriers out of their chairs in order to lift them and their chairs over the barriers.

[Subheading] Took chair

"The police took his chair away, separated him from his legs," said Lori Taylor as she watched from the side-walk when police lifted her husband, Lester, over the barrier.

"He can't walk, he's just sitting on the wet ground and all he wants to do is ride a bus like you and me."

Bill Bolte, who started ADAPT's Los Angeles chapter, said police overreacted to the demonstration.

"This really confuses me because I know that after the Canadians (hockey team) won the Stanley Cup, all types of terrible activity went on," said Bolte.

"People overturned cars while everyone, including the police, just looked the other way and went and had a cup of coffee."

Several demonstrators who broke through the police perimeter smashed their chairs into barriers in front of the hotel entrance, but hotel security and police stood their ground.

Police arrested some 25 wheelchair demonstrators after they forced their way into the lobby of the Sheraton Centre. They were protesting the American public transit association’s reluctance to endorse wheelchair lifts on new buses.

It was showdown time yesterday, as wheelchair-bound protesters took on city cops outside the Sheraton hotel on Dorchester Boulevard Some demonstrators where roughly carried and wheeled away as the melee grew ugly.

The protesters were making their case for better accessibility to buses at the American Public Transit Association convention.

Created on

Thursday 11 July 2013

Posted on

Thursday 18 January 2018

Tags

ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, APTA - American Public Transit Association, APTA conference, arrests, Bill Bolte, blocking elevators, blocking escalators, Bob Kafka, Canadians, chains, ET Ernest Taylor, Jan Ingram, local people with disabilities, Lori Eastwood, Mike Auberger, Montreal, police barricades, Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Sheraton Hotel, Vietnam Veteran

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