-Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Chronology of National Actions
ADAPT Celebration of 25 Years of History Event, May 2008
ADAPT has a long history of organizing in the disability community and using civil disobedience and similar non-violent direct action tactics to achieve its goals. In 1983, as a project of the Atlantis Community in Denver, ADAPT began its national campaign for lifts on buses and access to public transit for people with disabilities. ADAPT started as American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. For seven years ADAPT blocked buses in cities across the US to demonstrate the need for access to public transit. Many went to jail for the right to ride.
In the early 1990s the County and City of Denver and Denver RTD placed a plaque at the intersection on Colfax where the Atlantis Community held the first inaccessible bus and this was one of the first historic markers in the struggle for disability rights. Wade Blank, a founder of Atlantis and ADAPT, used to take all visitors to see it, and always brought a bottle of Fantastic to clean it up.
ADAPT played a major role in gaining passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, particularly in ADA's stringent requirements relating to accessible transit, and its being seen as a civil rights law. Passage of this bill has meant victory for ADAPT in our struggle for lifts on buses.
Once the transit issue was won and access was begun to be guaranteed, ADAPT felt it was clear attendant services must be our next issue. In a national planning meeting July 1990, ADAPT targeted the reallocation of one quarter of the federal and state Medicaid dollars from institutional programs to consumer controlled community based programs. ADAPT now also stands for American Disabled For Attendant Programs Today. Since then, ADAPT has decided our name will no longer be an acronym (it's hard to fit all the issues into those letters) so we are simply ADAPT, but we are still fighting for community services and supports for people with disabilities of all ages.
Many of ADAPT's members have been locked away in nursing homes and institutions because of their need for attendant services. Many had to fight to get out, and were among the lucky few who were able to get enough support services to live in the community.
Because of outdated attitudes toward people with disabilities which label us as "sick", our needs are seen as "medical" and a huge system of institutional facilities has developed to provide for these needs. This institutionalized industry which has developed continues to use up massive amounts of funds to maintain the status quo. ADAPT wants to reverse the bias so that community based attendant services are the common option, and nursing homes are reserved as a last resort.
We are making headway with community services, though we are not done yet, and now we are finding the need for affordable, accessible, integrated housing is a tremendous barrier to freeing our people!