Photo (by John Spink/Staff): Close up of a manual sports wheelchair's wheels. Person in chair is only partially shown holding the push rim. On the spoke guard of the back wheel are 4 bumper stickers that form a square around the hub: 2 read Proud and disAbled, one partially obscured sticker reads I (heart) Park Mill and the 4th one is unreadable. A second manual wheelchair is just visible behind the first one and the legs of someone standing behind that second chair.
Caption: A disabled protester uses wheelchair stickers to make a point during Wednesday’s demonstration at the Greyhound bus station.

9/98
[Headline] Demonstrators Get Suspended Fines
by Alma E. Hill, Staff Writer

Twenty disabled protesters pleaded no contest Thursday in Atlanta Municipal Court to disorderly conduct charges growing out of a demonstration at the Greyhound bus station that blocked buses for almost five hours.

Each of the protesters received a $75 fine that was suspended by Chief Judge Andrew Mickle in a plea bargain agreement. State criminal trespass charges filed against six other protesters were dismissed. A hearing on two aggravated assault charges against another demonstrator was rescheduled for early January, Judge Mickle said.

The court session marked the end of three days of demonstrations by more than 100 ADAPT activists to protest the lack of wheelchair lifts on public buses and private intercity carriers.

Although the group did not succeed in its initial demands to obtain an executive order from U.S. Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner requiring all new buses purchased with federal dollars to have lifts, ADAPT leaders were claiming a victory.

The demonstrators obtained promises from transit and federal transportation officials to meet with them. Also, they are counting on federal transit officials to discourage transit operators from making hurried purchases of buses without lifts before federal law mandates the devices.

Created on

Friday 12 July 2013

Posted on

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Tags

accessible transit, ADAPT 1989, arrest, court, DOT Secretary Skinner, protest, wheelchairs

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