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Degemer / Rummadoù / Atlanta, fall 1996 34
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SPINAL COLUMN p.22 [Headline] On Their Own [Subheading] People with disabilities don't belong in Institutions by Alan Friedman Edwin McWilliams is considering pursuing a career in the ministry or perhaps owning an electrical supply business. Meanwhile, Linda Stinson Worley, is running for office as a candidate for state representative. Goals such as these would be considered ambitious under any circumstances. But for both Edwin and Linda, the pursuit of these goals is testimony to how the effective use of health care resources can empower people with disabilities. In 1980, 19-year-old Edwin McWilliams was severely injured when the car he was driving slammed into a telephone pole near his Macon home, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and dependent on a ventilator to breathe. Linda Stinson Worley is quadriplegic as a result of a virus that struck more than 20 years ago. Edwin and Linda have been given a second chance at living independently thanks to Georgia's Medicaid lndependent Care Waiver Program (ICWP). The state's independent care legislation was established in 1992, the result of efforts by Shepherd Center and local disability rights advocates to convince law makers that Medicaid funds could be more effectively spent on helping severely disabled people live independently, rather than paying for their care in nursing homes and long-term care facilities In some cases, attendant services at home are less expensive than the same services in a nursing home. In 1991, $105,000 was approved to fund a pilot independent care project for a half-dozen people. The following year, funding for the program was expanded to $1.2 million. Today, $5.6 million in state and federal funds allow l l2 disabled Georgians to get the assistance they need at home. Presently, there are 200 people on a waiting list. The 1996-97 increase is due in large part to Governor Zell Miller's budget redirection plan; that plan requires each state agency to trim its budget by five percent, and some of the money saved is being redirected to specific state projects. Edwin's acceptance into the ICWP in July 1995, helped end a crisis for his family, and especially his sister, lune, who lives nearby. Alter his rehab at Shepherd, Edwin returned home to live with his mother who provided him with 24-hour-a~day care for 14 years. 1n 1994, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she passed away earlier this year. When his mother became too ill to care for him, Edwin moved in with lune, who assumed his care. But the full-time demands weighed heavily on her, her husband and their two young daughters now ages six and two. Photo: A woman in a flowery button up shirt sits in a wheelchair with tubes coming off the side. Her head is back and her arms extended on the armrests and she is smiling slightly. Caption reads: Linda Stinsun Wurley is running for state representative — her campaign slogan is, “Paralyzed from the neck down, not the neck up." “Medicaid paid for two-and-a-half hours a day of assistance, but I still had to be there all the time," June recalls. “And they were going to stop paying because they only cover home health when it‘s temporary, and this was a long-term situation." Eventually, though she hated the idea, June tried to find a nursing home for Edwin, but none would accept him. Her only recourse, she was told, was to formally “evict" her brother from her home, forcing the state to place him in a nursing home. “l couldn't bear the thought of that," she says. Through an article in Spinal Column, she read about the waiver program. When Edwin applied, there was a waiting list of 200 people for 40 spots. But because of his acute situation, and through the intervention of his state senator, Edwin was accepted in July, l995, and began participating three months later. “It's a blessing," his sister says. “It's the first time since his injury he's been able to live on his own." The ICWP provides funding for a variety of services, including information and referrals, ‘personal support, home modification, skilled nursing, transportation, companion services, specialized medical equipment and supplies, counseling and personal emergency response services. BOXED TEXT: Managing one's disability is a personal matter first, and medical matter second. Back to article: Edwin has moved into a house in Macon which he rents. He received surgical attention for a pressure sore that had kept him bedridden for the previous five years, and which he could not afford to have treated before. He was able to get a new wheelchair, and under the guidance of his case manager, his home was renovated to accommodate his needs. The improvements included creating one big room out of two smaller ones, modifying the bathroom and shower, widening doorways and installing a deck with ramp to enable him to get around outside. June still cares for Edwin, but only for one eight-hour shift per day as one of three personal support sen/ice individuals. Having helped care for her brother since she was 13, June is qualified to care for him under the ICWP, and she is paid to train Edwin's other caregivers. Now that he's well on the road to independence, Edwin is looking into the possibility of furthering his education. "We are checking into schools," June explains. “He has a desire toward the ministry. But my lather is a retired electrician Boxed Text: What You Can Do - Find out what your state is doing by calling your state Medicaid agency’s home and community-based services department. Call or write your state representative and find out where he or she stands on the issue. -ADAPT is meeting in Atlanta November 2 through 7. For more information, contact Mark Johnson (404) 350-7490. -You Choose, an advocacy guide for lawmakers and citizens is available for Month at (716) 442-2916. -An Overview of Long Term Care Policy, findings and recommendations on home and community based services, is available from the Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia at (404) 373-5454. continued from ADAPT 985 & 984 who owned his own business, and Edwin's thinking he might like to do that. Nothing is etched in stone." Thanks to the ICWP, he has the chance to consider opportunities once considered unthinkable. While Edwin McWilliams is only recently becoming more independent, Linda Stinson Worley represents how far someone can go when they get the assistance services they need apart from a nursing home or hospital setting. Linda met her husband, fellow patient Will Worley, at Shepherd in 1978. He was killed by a drunk driver in 1994. “If not for the program, l would be in a nursing home," says Linda. “There’s no life in a nursing home." As it is, Linda Stinson Worley leads a very full life. She is up each day at 6:30 a.m. and out of the house by 8:30. She runs errands and goes shopping or to the post office. She also attends commissioners meetings in Forsyth County, where she is politically active. Other days, especially on the weekends, she spends much of her time making campaign stops. That's because she's a candidate for state representative. The campaign is personal, to an extent, because the man Linda is expected to run against, Mike Evans, opposes the ICWP. Prior to the waiver program, she spent some time in a nursing home, and was later cared for by friends who eventually found themselves burned out by the process. Linda credits the ICWP with allowing her to hire a caregiver whose expertise permitted her to end her dependence on a ventilator and around-the-clock care. “What people need to understand is that the money going toward these waivers is not new tax money, but money being redirected from nursing homes," Linda explains. “It is more cost effective for people to live in their homes, and it's more productive to have people who are independent and happy because of it." Photo of a door Boxed Text next to photo: Although most nursing home residents are over 70, some are as young as two. Not all require the services of nurses on a daily or even a weekly basis. Insert article [barely legible] The Fight to Live at Home Jenny Langley is doing just fine thank you. Jenny is a former Shepherd patient and high quadriplegic who in 1990 proved to Georgia lawmakers that people who need attendant care and financial assistance can have a lifestyle that is minimally burdensome to taxpayers and personally fulfilling. A diving injury at 14 and paralysis at the C5/6 level was followed 10 years later by an automobile accident which left Jenny paralyzed at the C1 level and dependent on a ventilator. Her parents and sister care her at home by the financial strain was too much. After 3 years her insurance was exhausted, family resources were depleted and her parents home was lost to foreclosure. Jenny was facing life in a nursing home when money from Shepherd's indigent care trust fund helped her establish a prototype self managed independent living arrangement. She rented a home in Lawrenceville when which she share with her sister and two nieces and the following year state lawmakers committed $105,000 to fund the pilot project that would eventually become the ICWP. Today Jenny lives in Jonesboro where she continues to advocate for people with disabilities. She chairs the state's advisory group on independent care. Mark Johnson and other disability rights advocates are working to make sure that program not only survives, but is available for more people who need it. Mark is Shepherd's advocacy and community support coordinator and liason with several groups, including ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) which is focusing its efforts this election year on independent living alternatives for peopel with severe disabiltiies. "ADAPT is not partisan and does not endorse candidates but it does educate folks and legislators about creating independent lving alternatives," Mark says. We need to let people know there is quality of life after disability. "Neither side (in the election) has elevated this to the level of importance we want but I'm optimistic" he adds. "I think there has been change and there will be greater change. How fast it goes depends on the outcome of the election. Boxed Text: 1.9 million Americans with disabilities have not choice but to live in nursing homes. Home and community-based services offer a choice. The end.
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A large crowd of ADAPT activists and friends are gathered in a park for a rally. In the background you cand see the Atlanta skyline. They are facing a large banner with the ADAPT Free Our People logo and, partially visable, the words "Our Homes Not Nursing Homes, Free Our People" printed beside the logo. In front of the banner is Justin Dart Jr. in his trademark grey cowboy hat and Alan Holdsworth (aka Johnny Crescendo), and in front of them, Bob Kafka with a big white beard. In the crowd you can see Danny Saenz, Joe Pitti, Diane Coleman, Alfredo Juarez among many others. Everyone has an American flag. Also in the crowd is Linda Stinson Worley, in her sip-and-puff-wheelchair, holding a huge packard that advertizes her candidacy for State Representative of the 28th District.
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Photo only Newt Gingrich standing at a table in meeting with ADAPT members. Two people in wheelchairs are to his right.
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Newt Gingrich Agreement with ADAPT retyped for readability) Our Goal: To pass a bill (and get it signed into law) which will create choice so people with disabilities can get attendant services instead of being forced into Nursing home care. Our goal is to create incentives so States will otter personal choices to individuals and to do so without substantially increasing the total coat to the taxpayers. Our goal is to pass this into law as early as possible in 1997. To achieve this we will: Establish a National ADAPT legislative committee of 5 persons to work directly with the Speakers office in Washington; Establish a Georgia ADAPT legislative committee of 5 persons to work directly with the Speakers Georgia office; The Speaker will assign Ed Kutler in Washington and Nancy Desmond to coordinate the development and passage of this legislation; We will hold an initial legislative planning session before Thanksgiving; We will introduce the bill in January; We will request hearings in February and March; We will seek support beginning in the November, 1996 meeting; We will involve the Governor’: Association, the Congressional Budget Office, the appropriate House and Senate Committees and the Senate leadership in the November, 1996 meeting; We will seek final passage and enactment into law prior to the end of the first session of the 105th Congress. . Signed by Newt Gingrich Mike Auberger
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Photos only Left photo is of George Wolf lying face up on his back in a yellow ADAPT shirt and black ADAPT cap. He is handcuffed to the front bumper of a yellow scooter. The right photo is of a hand of a person dressed in black with a very large bolt cutter in his or her hand.
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THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON November 4, 1996 Mr. Michael Oxford ADAPT 835 800 East Road Lawrence, Kansas 66047 Dear Michael: The President is proud of his record on disability right issues. President Clinton's administration has continued to build policies based on the three simple creeds of inclusion, independence, and empowerment. Last year the President vetoed legislation that would have eliminated the Medicaid guarantee of health care and independence so important to individuals with disabilities. His administration has vigorously enforced the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, and other civil rights laws. To this end we will convene a meeting with the President, ADAPT, and other disability right leaders to discuss what we can do together to further our efforts on such issues as personal attendant, home and community based services, and other issues that are important to people with disabilities. Provided the President is re—elected, we will convene this meeting in the first quarter of next year. I will be in touch with you directly to discuss the appropriate arrangements for this meeting. Sincerely Alexis Herman Assistant to the President / Director of Public Liaison
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Photograph only Cluster of ADAPT activists. Cassie James and Spitfire, sitting on the ground, confer with woman who is bending over. Stephanie Thomas in wheelchair faces away.
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[Headline] Group urges assisted living for disabled by Laura Williamson, Staff Writer Atlanta Journal Constitution November 4, 1996 Diane Coleman is Not Dead Yet. The Illinois lawyer, in town for a five-day conference on disabilities and human rights, wants to halt a movement to let the chronically disabled take their lives and replace it with efforts to improve their lives. Coleman co-founded Not Dead Yet, a national advocacy group, to fight recent federal appeals court rulings in New York and Washington granting terminally ill and disabled people the right to die by assisted suicide. Such decisions —- which have been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court — send a message to people with disabilities that their lives are not worth preserving, she said Sunday, speaking in the basement of the Radisson Hotel in downtown Atlanta. "A public policy that says, ‘You people have such miserable lives as a group, we as a society understand why you want to die,’ is a dangerous public policy," she said, addressing the annual conference of the Americans with Disabilities for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT). Coleman's message — that if you give the disabled assistance living they won’t ask for assistance dying — dovetails with one of ADAPT's major goals. The Denver-based group is fighting for more Medicaid coverage of community-based care for the elderly and disabled that would allow them to stay in their own homes instead of being forced into institutions. At the end of the first day of their five-day conference, about 500 members of ADAPT marched and wheeled their way down International Boulevard and into Centennial Olympic Park to protest inadequate coverage for assisted living programs. In Georgia, as in many other states, Medicaid pays the costs of keeping the elderly and disabled in nursing homes, but often won't pay for less-costly alternatives that would allow them to remain at home with minimal assistance. Legislators approved $10 million in state funds for community-based care in Georgia this year; state Medicaid officials have said they hope to expand that program in the future. Several demonstrators Sunday said that institutionalizing people with disabilities is sometimes what makes them want to take their own lives. Tessa Johnson, 26, of Topeka, Kan., said she opted not to live in a nursing home so that she could hold down a job. Though her muscular dystrophy makes her eligible for nursing home care, her income makes her ineligible for full coverage of the home health care she needs, such as having someone come in to help her dress in the morning. “If I were in a nursing home," she said, "quite frankly, I would probably have absolutely no reason to live." The issue gained attention in Georgia in 1989 when quadriplegic Larry McAfee won a highly publicized court battle allowing him to terminate his own life. McAfee, who had been sent to an Alabama nursing home, was later moved to a personal care home in Augusta, where he chose to continue living and training for a job. 2 photos by Marlene Karas/Staff. Smaller one (top) a close up of a man with a disability wearing a Tyson hat, holding an ADAPT flag in his mouth and a small candle in his right hand. Larger one (below) a woman on a scooter with flags and buttons. She is wearing a Life Worthy of Life shirt, an ADAPT visor and there is a line of people behind her. Rally for care: Elaine Kolb of Connecticut (below) was stabbed in Atlanta l9 years ago. Today, she is back rallying for community care. Manuel Alvarado of Philadelphia (above) joins a vigil.
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Atlanta Journal-Consititution November 4, 1996 RALLYING FOR LIFE missing picture id Marlene Karas, Staff Activist Justin Dark of Washington leads a rally of disabled people down International Boulevard Sunday. Participants, in town for a conference, want programs to help disabled people live at home. Then, they say, fewer would demand the right to die. Article,page B1.
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ADAPTING ATLANTA What do you get when the American Health Care Association, AHCA, convention coincides with the Federal election in the backyard of the Congressional district of the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich? One of the best national ADAPT actions in history! Election time in Atlanta, the city which had just hosted both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic games international disability conference could not have been a better choice. November 3 through the 6, 1996 five hundred ADAPT activists marched on Atlanta to continue our battle to free our people from nursing homes and other institutions and get a national attendant services program. Commitments from the Speaker, a call from Airforce One pledging a meeting with the President and the chance to give the nursing home industry a taste of its own medicine were among the victories won at this historic occasion. This time it was the Speaker's people who called ADAPT asking for a meeting. Realizing ADAPT was not only not going away but actually was about to be in his face, his staff set up a meeting to negotiate ADAPT's demand that Gingrich sponsor a national attendant services bill. In hard hitting negotiations, ADAPT representatives from each state were able to hammer out an agreement hand written by Gingrich himself and signed by both him and Mike Auberger. ATLANTA The statistics may be faceless numbers, but at the vigil we remembered together. Photo: Tom Olin As these negotiations were taking place the other 470 ADAPT members marched down International Blvd. to the plaza in Centennial Olympic Park to hold a press conference and rally. At the press conference ADAPT announced we were filing a human rights complaint with the United Nations regarding the United States’ national policy of institutional warehousing for people with disabilities. Michigan ADAPT organizer Marva Ways read the resolution indicting the United States while ADAPT members, holding candles, looked on. Emotions ran high as the crowd, in memory of friends and family who have died in nursing homes, planted flags in the grassy hillside along the plaza. Just as the ceremonies were ending the Gingrich negotiators rejoined the big group to announce our successful talks. These powerful memories, this call for justice and the hope of a real solution were the perfect start for the actions of the next few days. Fed up with the Clinton administration's lip service on changing the focus of the nation's long term care, ADAPT was ready for bear on the second day. Since before the start of 1996 this administration had been acting like an advertising firm for the nursing home industry. Although some Medicaid policy had been changed, the focus and the funding bias remained in favor of the nursing home industry. Given opportunity after opportunity to call for a reform and redirection in support of community services, Clinton and his people refused to take that chance, and instead clung to the wretched status quo. Letters and calls to try and set up meetings had been ignored. The eve of the presidential election proved to be an excellent backdrop for our message, enough to get even Clinton's attention. Taking the light rail is some trick, when you are traveling with 500 people. But, it’s a trick ADAPT has become quite adept at over the years. So November 4th ADAPT set out for the office visit. It took only minutes to fill the lobby of the building which housed, on its second and eighth floors, the Democratic state headquarters and the state Clinton-Gore headquarters. It seemed to take hours to get folks upstairs. Though the elevators were slow, a steady stream of ADAPT activists flowed to the floors above, until both were packed. Our wheelchairs and bodies clogged the halls as our chants echoed down them. On the eighth floor the Democratic Party chair was in a huff, refusing to discuss ADAPT's demands. On the second floor staff were trying their best to divert us. Slowly the police began to appear, claiming the owner of the building wanted us arrested and removed. Obviously the idea of hauling hundreds of us off was a little daunting, but even the cops could not make Mr. 8th-floor-hot-shot negotiate. Back on the second floor ADAPTs crack team of negotiators was taking control. As their cohorts were being arrested and literally hauled off one by one, Day Leaders Faye Bonner, Marva Ways and Mike Oxford systematically worked their way up the chain of command within the White House. It was sickening to hear our alleged "friend" Carol Rasco offering a meeting with some junior White House advisors the week after the election. Did they really think we were that stupid’? ADAPTs intelligence forces we at work during these negotiations, and leaks in the opposition's communications made it clear that sad as their offers were, even more sad was the fact that they did not intend to keep the promises they were offering. Faye, Marva, and Mike refused to back down. At one point cops started to haul off Marva, when suddenly the tone changed. Meanwhile down at the jail house the holding cells just got fuller and fuller and fuller. Guards began lining us up against the hall walls as our numbers totally over-whelmed the facility. The whole scene took on the air of a Fellini movie as we joked and waited to see what fate was to befall us. People just kept pouring in. Faye Bonner, with her Arkansas connections knew that the President planned to be flying to a party that evening so she demanded the White House call Airforce One. That was impossible. That was impossible. Then suddenly, Special Assistant to the President Alexis Herman was flying in from Montgomery to negotiate. Unlike those before her, Herman was apparently negotiating in good faith. She listened to our concerns and agreed to set up a meeting with the President in the first quarter of 1997, and even gave a letter of commitment. In jail the final count was 86 arrested. About 11:00 pm a judge came in and presided over our arraignment hearings in a holding cell. Like sausages squeezed out in a factory line, one by one all 86 of us were processed through the system and out into the cold night. Back at the hotel, a charming establishment, all the restaurant and bar staff had gone on strike. So we ordered 43 pizzas, took advantage of the lack of crowds and empty tables and celebrated the victories of the first two days. Just one target was left unaddressed. It had been a late night, so we started out later than usual. This time we were taking the ADAPT vans so we started shuttling way across town to the Georgia Nursing Home Association. It took hours, and despite jittery nerves, some false alarms and threats from a nearby gas station owner, we were able to wait undetected for hours until the whole gang was together. Once assembled we lost no time in marching down the highway to the Association's headquarters and surrounding the building. We had it shut down in minutes, and began tapping on the windows and door, calling for Fred Watson the Association's Executive Director to come and meet with us. To no one's surprise, Fred was downtown, partying it up with his AHCA buddies. Before long the police joined us, and overhead we saw their helicopter circling. Since Fred refused to come back to the office, negotiations came to a standstill. More and more police cars arrived and tried to pen us in by parking across the driveway to the parking lot. Our response? In one quick move we had taken the highway in front of the building. In the end we were four lines deep, handcuffed together and stretched across all four lanes. There were so many of us, though, that even with this formidable blockade we were easily able to keep the building as the afternoon wore on. The media were also there in force and began to prepare for their live-at-five stories. Finally, although Fred refused to show concern for his staff inside, we let them out the back door at quitting time. Fed up with Fred, the police finally gave him some kind of ultimatum, and by six o'clock he returned to negotiate with a delegation of Georgia ADAPT folk. GA ADAPT asked for his support for their state version of CASA, the Long Term Care Bill (check name), but he regurgitated the same pap his kind always spits out: we support community based services but we can't put anything in writing or get any more specific for you. After a couple of attempts to get anything real out of the louse it was clear further talk was useless, Pat Puckett announced the results of their talks, namely nothing except head patting and lip service. It was a dark and stormy night. No really, it was wet and cold and not yet the end of a long day -- with the nearest bathroom a hike away -- but ADAPT's troops held firm. We had simply to think of our brothers and sisters in nursing homes. They had no choice of who and where they would spend another night They had little to make them comfortable. They also probably were waiting to go to the bathroom, or be changed. Their bodies might not be cold, but how warm were their hearts and souls with potentially years of warehouse living stretching out into their futures? ATLANTA (Continued from page 9) If the enemy would not address our concerns seriously at the GA Nursing Home Association, we would have to go to them. Lined up in twos down the highway, our numbers stretched on and on. Even to the weary and jaded among us it was an awesome sight! On signal we moved out to the MARTA light rail station about a half mile down the highway. On route we passed the buses that waited to take us to jail. (One thing ADAPT has learned is how to get a paratransit vehicle to do all the things they never can do otherwise: be on time, wait patiently and without interrupting their riders, riders who have not subscribed or even reserved a trip in advance.) By the time the middle of the line had reached the MARTA station things were flowing alarmingly smoothly. Color leaders were stationed along the route to direct the flow, one poor standing soul per elevator was riding up and down, up and down to ensure maximum efficiency loading and button pushing. Even the police and metro staff were helping the more foolhardy or brave ride down and up (at the other end) the escalators. As he steadied a power chair user for the ride back up out of the subway one cop said "l don't approve, but this sure is moving fast and easy..." The other end of our journey was back in downtown Atlanta. Once all had arrived at our rendezvous point we made a hasty march for the AHCA hotel, this time the fancified Marriott Marquis! As ADAPT's luck would have it, the hotel had hired two off duty officers to guard the hotel for the whole week of the AHCA convention. But both had gone to "lunch" at 11:00 pm when we arrived. We could not understand how we were able to saunter right into the lobby but we did not waste time pondering this puzzle. We just zipped on inside. You talk about glitzy! Red plush this and gleaming chrome that. Crystal dangling from here and mirrors sparkling from there. Best of all: the thirty-plus-story-high open atrium in the center of the building. ADAPTs motley troops massed at the bottom of the atrium, hand-cuffed ourselves together and took up our freedom chants. The echo worked its way up the atrium almost as fast as it worked our adrenaline through our veins. Finally we had another opportunity to confront the nursing home operators inside their hedonistic nest of creature comforts. Looking down on us from the mezzanine level one floor above, AHCA party-goers were slack jawed. Looking around at the opulence, ADAPT members’ jaws grew tight as we thought of the contrast with the dirty white walls, the bars, the lock-wards and urine stench of the nursing "homes" which had funded this gala event. One man came down to scold us, but after moments of talking with a few of us he found his way back upstairs to try and find AHCA Executive Director Paul Willging for us. But Willging was in hiding and did not show his face. Everything seemed to be held in limbo as our chanting went on and on. No one from the hotel approached us. Police were quite slow to appear. Meanwhile, AHCA continued to stare down from on high. After a while some among us grew restless and started to wriggle their way up a set of escalators that had been turned off on our arrival. Once on the mezzanine level they engaged those around them in conversation, explaining why we were here and what we wanted. Threateningly, an AHCA member several floors above tried to drop a cocktail glass on one of our people. The glass missed her and shattered, severely cut a man who was talking with her. The police made the AHCA conventioneers leave the atrium area, and soon began the arrests. City buses were lined up in the circular drive in front of the hotel and busload by busload we were hauled off. lt was almost six in the morning before the last of the crowd was taken away. When the last of the 110 of us were taken into the holding area, we had jam packed the space and were filling the halls outside. There was no hope for the militarized order jailers are so determined to maintain. Within a few short hours our lawyers, valiant volunteers that they are, were preparing us for court and we were being herded in bunches to a small room filled with inaccessible benches so we could appear before the judge. About noon the last of the batches had been processed, and everyone was brought back to the hotel for some much needed sleep. That night another historic ADAPT soiree took place. After a wrap up meeting and a buffet supper, DJ Leonard Roscoe, himself an escapee from a nursing home, had us rocking and rolling in the huge meeting room. A male stripper helped one wheelchair warrior and some of her friends celebrate her birthday. Outside a smaller group was singing freedom songs hootenanny style. intense private conversations, political debates and whoops of laughter punctuated the party as our folks from across the country enjoyed our last few hours together. ln the morning we would start the daunting job of piling on planes which would mess up our chairs, or cramming into vans which would carry many of us literally for days back across the nation to our own communities where we carry on the fight -- sometimes alone -- on the home front. <<<<<<<<<<<<< Some very special ADAPT people treated AHCA ’s partiers to a special bedtime story and lullaby. The lobby, open to the top of the hotel, echoed and echoed with the angry chants of ADAPT ‘s night owls on the prowl. Photo: Tom Olin
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Care options urged by Marlene Karas/Staff Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 5, 1996 Demonstrators (from left) Juliet Myer, Claude Holcomb and Cassie James, who want alternatives to Medicaid policies that limit the care options of people with disabilities, sit in Monday at Clinton/Gore campaign headquarters on Spring Street. About 400 members of Americans With Disabilities For Attendant Programs Today, which is meeting in Atlanta this week, blocked access at 1100 Spring St. for several hours before police broke up the demonstration.