ADAPT Action Reports

thumbnails are linked to higher resolution photos side of the Rayburn Building. Little John. Jeff Fox. Stephanie Thomas. Nadina LaSpina. Police officer talks on a cell phone. Chalk writing and pictures on the driveway of Rayburn. Chris Hildebrandt. Dawn Russell. Group waits for activists to be released from Capitol Police.. TLarry Biondi just released.. Group waits for activists to be released from Capitol Police.. Rick Knight released after 12 hours. Buddy Holmiller released after 12 hours

Boisterous, Loud and Proud

99 ADAPT Activists Arrested Demanding Hearings for the Community Choice Act

ADAPT Action Report: Monday, April 30, 2007.

By Tim Wheat

ADAPT marches toward the Capitol dome. (WASHINGTON DC) Ninety-nine ADAPT activists were arrested today demanding a hearing for the Community Choice Act of 2007 (CCA, S 799 and H.R. 1621). Remembering the multiple office shut-down that ADAPT engineered in September of 2005, the Congressional Offices in the House Rayburn bulding seemed to plead for quick action from the Capitol Police.

In the driveway on the east side of the Rayburn, the ADAPT Community was given three quick warnings to disperse before about forty people were arrested. Three groups who had gone through the intensive security screening took over the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health office, as well as the offices of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)

"We are here at the Rayburn," said Randy Alexander of Tennessee, "because it is time for Congressional hearings on the Community Choice Act."

ADAPT was visiting the Rayburn today to follow-up on written requests for hearings from the Congressional leadership. The hearings would allow testimony into the record from people with disabilities who have been forced into institutions because of the lack of services in the community. Hearings would give Americans who have been locked away out of site to face the lawmakers who continue to fund wasteful facilities that divide families and destroy lives.

"We've been waiting for ten years for this legislation to pass, and all the while Congress has refused to act on this national scandal of America forcing people into nursing homes against their will," said Dawn Russell, currently with ADAPT in Colorado. "I had to leave my home state of Tennessee in order to get the assistance that would keep me out of a nursing home. I want so much to be able to go home to Tennessee to be with my family, but I can't because then I'd be forced into a nursing home just because I need personal assistance to get through my day, and Tennessee refuses to provide that assistance to people in their own homes. I won't give up my freedom, my privacy, my dignity and the control over my life, so I have to stay in exile in Colorado."

In March of last year, ADAPT held an historic day of testimony in Nashville Tennessee to help focus light on the dark halls of institutions and nursing homes all over America. The personal accounts of mistreatment are horrifying and gruesome. But the real impact of the face-to-face narratives of rape, abuse, neglect and lonely death is not to say that the nursing home industry and institutions fail, but that the community works. People with disabilities need the CCA to join typical American life and Congress needs hearings on CCA because they have ignored and put out of sight people with disabilities too long.

"It's easy for Congress to ignore us," said Guadalupe Vasquez of Texas ADAPT. "After all, they all make a very good living and have great benefits, and so they will never have to face the prospect of forced institutionalization and loss of their freedom. On the other hand, many of us live on $600 a month, so we are the people who Congress, by its inaction, is guaranteeing will lose our freedom. We'll lose our freedom, and we'll be relegated to back wards where we will lie in our own waste until someone eventually takes the time to change us, and where we acquire deadly pressure sores because no one takes the time to reposition us. It's way past time for Congress to correct this travesty."

Colored wristbands noted where activists were arrested. CCA is an essential next step to ADAPT’s success with last years Money Follows the Person (MFP) legislation. MFP made it possible for US states to redirect funds to Home and Community Based services rather than expensive and undesirable institutions and nursing homes. Many US states either do not offer Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) or do not have programs that would allow people currently in institutions to move out. CCA will change the institutional bias of the current system and give people with disabilities the tools they need to live and work in the community. Many people see CCA as liberation because it breaks the mold of society "caring" for "the needy" to providing people with disabilities the instrument to participate equally.

Charged with disorderly conduct, the arrest documents said that each individual was "boisterous, loud and incommodin [sic]." Many ADAPT activists were held by the Capitol Police for over twelve hours and the processing was slow. The first group was released just before 9:00 pm, and small groups were released until long after midnight. ADAPT stayed up late into the night and welcomed the groups back to the hotel with cheers and pizza.

"When the officer told me that I was being charged for being boisterous," said Herman of Rochester, "he realized I was using sign and not talking. The officer had to ask the supervisor what to charge me; but the supervisor said everyone gets the same charge. I guess I was guilty of being with ADAPT."

"I will do it again tomorrow," said Kathy Curiso following eleven hours of detention by the Capitol Police, "I will fight for the right till the day I die."