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Denver ADAPT
ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit
or American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today
Atlantis / ADAPT - 201 S. Cherokee St. - Denver, CO 80223
303/733-9324 voice, 303/733-0047 tdd, 303/733-6211 fax
adaptbabs@atlantisommunityinc.com - e-mail, adapt.org - website
Contacts: Babs, Tim, Terrance, Latonya, Tisha, Sheila, Gil,
Rick, Larry, Dawn, or Dale
ADAPT is a project of the organizing staff and volunteers of Atlantis Community. Since 1983, its purpose has been to train, develop and empower disabled activists in order to win civil rights on a nationwide scale. The successes of the people of Atlantis in eliminating barriers and winning civil rights in Denver led to requests from around the country: "How do 50,000 of us get to ride the bus in Chicago?" "In El Paso, we must schedule paratransit rides three weeks in advance. Is there anything we can do?" "Dallas runs its few accessible busses on a random schedule! How do we get to ride?" "Salt Lake City has sold all its wheelchair lifts to Denver - HELP!"
Atlantis combined our experience in community orgainzing with some funding from the Presbyterian and Catholic churches to address these urgent problems. Low - income, severely disabled people from around the country were brought to an action site, some expenses paid, with the Atlantis staff serving as volunteer trainers and attendants. In seminars, the group learns the basics of community organizing: strategy, issue identification, addressing the media, etc., along with training in non-violent civil disobedience and disability civil rights. Experienced disabled activists serve as role models and peers, helping participants develop in the powerful disabled adults who are equipped to fight for and win their civil rights.
Group and personal power develops in the ADAPT street actions, as the activists confront the barriers and institutions that stand against them. Pickets, protests and "guerilla theater" are ADAPT specialities that bring both press coverage and public pressure to bear on the issue. When milder confrontations and negotiations fail, the ADAPT group is ready and willing to press the issue as far as civil disobedience and arrest. The sight of hundres of disabled activists being dragged to jail for fighting for access and civil rights is a dramatic one. Members of the public, police officers, authorities, other disabled onlookers are jolted into awareness as the issues gain undivided attention. Agencies and others who are maintaining the barricades and barriers that stand against us are forced to explain, to justify themselves, and finally, to change.
The most important change occurs within us - the participants. After a lifetime of being shunned and shut away, we are uniting and forcing modern society to admit us as full and free citizens. No one who has been part of an ADAPT action will never again tolerate oppresion and discrimination. We have already faced and triumphed over one of society's strongest sanctions - arrest. And with the support of a national network of powerful peers, with an ever - growing list of victories, with new recruits emerging from the back rooms and institutions of America - WE SHALL OVER COME!!
ADAPT and Public Transit
The first issue the disabled activists of ADAPT chose to address was that of access to public transit. We needed a federal mandate that all buses bought with tax funds be equipped with wheelchair lifts so everyone could ride.
Unders President Carter, we had such a mandate, but when Reagan came into office, the American public Transit Association (APTA) sued to void the lift requirements, saying each transit authority should decide how best to serve their disabled riders. Reagan agreed, and people needing lift - equipped buses became subject to "local option." Most cities decided to "serve their disabled riders" with inadequate, segregated paratransit buses. A few cities, Denver amoung them, were persuaded by Atlantis Community to equip all buses with lifts. By 1983, accessible transportation was the NUMBER ONE need expressed by disabled citizens throughout the country.
Because APTA was the professional association of all the transit systems in the nation, and because APTA did the lobbying in Washington for the entire industry, ADAPT activists set out to change APTA's policies against total access. We did this by meeting APTA at every one of their national conventions - picketing, protesting, blocking doors, demanding to be allowed to address the APTA members on the civil rights aspect of accessibility. We protested at conventions in San Francisco, where 130 disabled activists were arrested for blocking inaccessible cable cars and in Los Angeles, Detroit, St. Louis, Washington, Denver, Phoenix, Cincinnati and Reno. All witnessed hundreds of ADAPT members protesting and chanting, with many being arrested for refusing to leave the APTA conventions. As we educated the APTA members, we also generated huge amounts of publicity on the issue and created a national awarenss of disability civil rights.
ADAPT actions directly resulted in a number of cities' transit systems opting for access. Phoenix and St. Louis voted for lifts a few days before ADAPT's arrival to avoid being blocked and humiliated. The publicity and public discussions about the struggle for access and resulted in the recruitment of more than a thousand disabled ADApT members located in 43 cities who received ADAPT training and experience in actions. And the development and commitment of the disabled activists enabled the AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES CIVIL RIGHT ACT (ADA) to be passed by Congress in 1990.
ADAPT and the ADA
Most people are surprised to learn that before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it was NOT illegal to discriminate against people who are disabled. It was fairly routine for people in wheelchairs to be asked to leave restaurants, theaters, etc., because they were "fire hazards." They could be arrested for trespassing if they refused. Separate schools for disabled students, refusal of admission into recreation and training programs, public accommodations built with steps that meant "Able-Bodied People Only!" were also routine. Transit systems ran buses without lifts that only people who were the able - bodied could ride. Accessible housing was in short supply. Finding a barrier - free store or office in which to work or spend money was a rarity. Even churches didn't install ramps to welcome people with disabilities.
A bill in Congress that would mandate integration of people with disabilities in all aspects of American life was stalled in committee. Hearings on our civil rights bill (the ADA) were said to be the most extensive in recent history. Greyhound wanted interstate buses exempt from access requirements. Religious groups were asking to excused, too, as were insurance companies associations of all kinds, homebuilding corporations, etc., No opposition group could say they were opposed to civil rights for people with disabilities, but, "the change, the traditions in architecture, the inconvenience, the MONEY!"
After a year of watching our civil rights bill being nibbled to death, ADAPT activists decided to take action. Three hundred disabled volunteers met in Washington and organized a civil rights march that numbered more than a thousand people. A rally at the Capitol began as seventy disabled citizens crawled up the monument's steps to dramatize their need for access. The rally ended as 105 ADAPT activists were arrested for refusing to leave the Rotunda until their civil rights were recognized in law. The huge volume of national publicity generated by these actions had the desired effect - the bill was blasted out of two committees and became law within six months. The regulations pertaining to transportation were the first to be implemented.
ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today)
With the victory of the ADA, public transportation was no longer an issue, ADAPT activists began to look for a new issue. The new issue went back to the roots of Atlantis Community - the right to live and receive services in the community on a national scale. Nationally over 85% of our Medicaid dollars spent on long term care was spent on institutional services. In 1990 only 27 states provided funding for personal assistance services that millions of Americans with disabilities require in order to live indpendently. Of those states, many were on the scale of pilot programs, all were underfunded and could not meet the demand, and all were restricted in terms of disability, level of functioning, income level, and other factors. These limitations force people that need assistance into nursing homes - for lack of any other source of help.
Media stories abound with people with disabilities who would rather die - commit suicide - than live confined to nursing homes. A multitude of our disabled sisters and brothers silently endure their losses of freedom, income, self - determination and dignity in these institutions. And they die as prisoners.
The Federal government mandates that all states receiving Medicaid money provide nursing home care but not community based services. The nursing home industry AHCA (American Health Care Association) is obviously one of our biggest opponents with powerful Washington lobbyists. At the beginning we followed the AHCA conventions disrupting them with protests and civil disobedience. We went to Baltimore, blockaded the massive Social Security Administration building and the HHS (Health and Human Services) headquarters in Washington. This gained us be - annual meetings with Secretary Donna Shalala and later Tommy Thompson.
By 1996 we created our own legislation MiCASSA (Medicaid and Community Attendant Services and Supports Act). We persuaded Newt Gingrich to introduce it. We testified at the House health and Environment Sub Committee Hearing. We won two Supreme Court cases in which the rulings assured that every individual in an institution (Nursing Home, or ICFMR (Intermediate Care Facility for Mentally Retarded)) gets the choice to live in the least restrictive and most integrated setting appropriate.
In 1999 we rewrote MiCASSA to include support services. Senator Harkin and Spector have introduced it. Congressmen Davis and Shimkus have introduced it in the House. Essentially MiCASSA gives people real choice in long term care options by reforming Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Medicaid by ending the institutional bias). (see MiCASSA at www.adapt.org)
As of the fall of 2003, we have had 25 national actions where hundreds of activists have been arrested from coast to coast. We have succeeded in moving the institutional bias from 85% spent on nursing homes and ICFMR's to 70%. We have allocated $160 million towards moving people out of institutions. Every state now has a program for personal attendant services in the community. It may only include four counties and fourty people, though. In Colorado there is more money spent on community based services than in nursing homes and ICFMR combined and there are 3,000 more people living in their own homes than warehoused in nursing homes. We have over 700 groups signed on as MiCASSA supporters. The battle is far from over, but piece by piece and one by one we are freeing our brothers and sisters from their incarceration for the crime of disability.
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