(Washington D.C.)I wake up startled just after 8:00 am. I am still groggy from staying up so late and the general exhaustion from the ADAPT Action yesterday. The alarm did not go off and my girlfriend did not call; I guess I just got up because I did not want to miss any of the action.
I realize that I have less than an hour to get ready and I really should get something to eat. But, I have so much to do that eating keeps getting bumped down the list until it falls off completely. I try to find National Public Radio on the Holiday Inn alarm-clock-radio and I end up listening to about five minutes of The British News Service before I realize I have missed the NPR piece done by Joe Shapiro this morning.
Joe Shapiro wrote “No Pity” in the early 1990s about people with disabilities struggle for equality. He did a great article about us on NPR today and notably credited ADAPT for getting Money Follows the Person passed this year. I encourage you to read the article, or listen to it on the web.
At 9:00 am we gather in front of the hotel. This is always a “hurry-up and wait” part of the ADAPT experience. Most everyone makes it out to the street at 9, but there is some unstructured time when you must wait and small talk with who is next to you.
This morning I spoke with Raul Zamarripa who taught me how to pronounce his name. My first attempt was embarrassing, but Raul was considerate. We talked about my home in Boulder and his home in El Paso. I vaguely recall the Hulca Tanks east of town from riding my bicycle through the area fifteen years ago. Raul tells me that they have had unexpected and devastating flooding this year.
I asked Janice McGrane, who negotiated with the American Coalition of Catholic Bishops what she thought was the best part of the action so far. I thought she would say getting the support from the Catholic Bishops and having them endorse MiCASSA in a letter to Senator Harkin. I was surprised when she told me that the visit to the Republican National Committee was her highlight.
But, she said, she liked that we had the guts to go there and take over the lobby and building. Janice said that she was proud of our demands. We demanded that they support MiCASSA and Access Across America. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that Janice points it out, those demands are something to be proud of.
Wondering around the crowd along C street this morning, I asked a more general question to Mike. I actually met Mike when I was on my very first ADAPT Action ten years ago. So Mike has at least as much perspective as I do when comparing ADAPT Actions. I asked him what he thought stood out about this action.
“This was an easy successful action,” said Mike, “we had no arrests, no bullshit and no apologies. We accomplished our goals.”
Mike told me earlier he got a new job with the parks and recreation department that is more in his field of study. I didn’t mention to Mike that it has been ten years since we met. I wonder if we will be doing this ten years from now? Of course at our rate of success for this action we will be done next year. I wonder if Babs, Claude, Barbara and others thought the same thing following a successful action twenty-five years ago, or wondered if they would still be taking to the streets in 2006?
I caught up with Barbara in the lobby of the Hart Senate Office Building and she really is the most personable individual I have ever met. She also told me that she thought this action has been fantastic.
“I don’t think I have ever seen people yield so quickly,” she said. “I think it comes from the fact that we do just what we say we will do. If we say we are not leaving this hotel lobby without you meeting our demands – then that is exactly what we will do. We have a reputation with the police and they respect us for it. They tell the owner or bureaucrat ‘yeah, that is just what they will do…’ and it makes what we say very valuable.”
Barb would say more, but she had work to do.
To get to all of the congress peoples offices ADAPT had split up into groups of about 50 and spread out to the various security checkpoints at all of the House and Senate Office buildings. Once inside the group would split up further into teams of 4 or 5 to visit all of the congress members on a particular floor.
After leaving the hotel, my group marched up Capitol Hill past the House Office buildings, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Capitol to the Hart Senate Office Building.
I can’t help but feel awed around the gigantic well-known marble buildings. They convey authority and history, yet; I see the power of our nation in the diverse multi-colored-t-shirt clad group lined up on the sidewalk. The buildings are nice to look at, but I am really proud to be part of this group.
The object of the visits today are to deliver MiCASSA materials to all the Congress members, their offices and staff. MiCASSA, the Community Choice Act has a long history that goes back to before me. I was at the action in Atlanta Georgia in 1996 when Newt Gingrich said that he would introduce the bill in the next legislative session.
Back when it was introduced, the legislation was called CASA; it has gone through some changes that have made it a much better bill without being watered-down by compromise. MiCASSA is basically the same concept as when it was introduced nearly ten years ago. MiCASSA will be re-introduced in the 2007 legislative session and it will have its strongest support ever. This year it has a streamlined name: The Community Choice Act, to better describe the main advantage of the bill.
After the visits, I talked with Anita Cameron as we made our way back to the hotel. Anita is in a different group and I asked her how her visits had gone. She said that they were well received by all of the congress people, especially Senator Clinton who is a co-sponsor of the legislation.
“The Senator from Oklahoma brought the health-care policy person out to speak with us,” said Anita. “Most of the staff we met were also well aware of MiCASSA and ADAPT.”
I miss seeing Anita around Denver, she moved to Washington DC about a year ago. She is also one of the long-time ADAPT members who has much more perspective than me. I think about the ten years that I have spent working for MiCASSA, and I see the passion that she still brings to the fight. She and Dawn Russell led a constant chant and song session in the rain while our negotiation team was scrapping with HUD agents. I know that if the negotiators had needed all-night to make HUD see the light (they walked-out of negotiations once on Thursday), they could count on Anita to keep up the pressure from the mass outside.
Sometime in the afternoon, my friend from Boulder Mike McCarty got back. He had been on the House of Representatives side of the Capitol and had more visits to make. He said that they had been treated very good by the congressional staff.
“My group went to see Representative Danny Davis (The Sponsor of MiCASSA in the House),” Mike said. “We didn’t have time to chat, he is already on our side, so we said thanks and went on from there.”
The teams delivered copies of the legislation, a press release and the transcript of the Day of Testimony. Six months ago in Nashville to kick-off our ADAPT action there, people who had lived in nursing homes gave public testimony about their experience living in an institution compared with living in the community. The personal narratives are a compelling argument for MiCASSA.
In the evening of the final day ADAPT celebrates together. This action, in particular is one to observe. From the duel hit on Housing Authorities, to the reverberating walls of the Hilton lobby, to the back-to-back success with HUD and the RNC, finally to the accomplishments of today this has been a success.
