ADAPT Visits “Hallowed Ground”
Prepares for a week of disability rights activism.
After a delicious lunch served by local volunteers in Centennial Park, ADAPT marched to the Ebenezer Baptist Church at the King Center to pay homage to historic civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Olmstead Decision. Georgia ADAPT’s Mark Johnson started the rally with a moment of silence to remember all our brothers and sisters still trapped in nursing facilities.
He then introduced, Sue Jameson, who was on the Olmstead litigation team. She reminded us that Olmstead states: “It discriminates against a person to be held in a segregated setting,” and “a person is entitled … to appropriate individual supports in the community.”
"We need to make sure that Georgia and every other state understands that …we are fighting for our civil rights,” Jameson said.
The next speaker was ADAPT Organizer Mike Oxford. Oxford said the Center was an appropriate place to begin our week of activism since it was “hallowed ground for non-violent, civil disobedience, direct action activism.”
He reminded us we have made progress since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Olmstead Decision, but we still have more work to do to end the institutional bias in long-term services and supports, like including the Community First Choice State Plan Option in healthcare reform and then passing the Community Choice Act.
He talked about how being in Atlanta was an example of how ADAPT combines state advocacy with national advocacy and that people will be following what we do this week all around the country.
“We know that Atlanta is not going to have business as usual over the next few days," Oxford said.
We heard from local advocates and Georgians who were able to get out or are still trying to get out of nursing facilities and back into their own homes. Andrew Jones who was one of the first people to be able to get out through Georgia‘s Money Follows the Person Program, said he had seen a lot of bad things inside the facility and since he became involved with ADAPT he has come to realize there is no time for “lollygagging” in the struggle for freedom for people with disabilities.
Delores Bates was put in the state hospital as a teenager and again as a young adult, but just recently got out and today was her birthday. ADAPT had the honor of being able to help her celebrate her birthday for the first time outside an institution in 43 years!
Too often we take for granted simple freedoms like being able to celebrate a birthday with our friends or just enjoy being outside when we want to or go where we want to like Kathy Crowder and Bodi Watkins; two people who joined us who are still fighting to get out of Georgia nursing facilities.
“For the rest of this week," Johnson told the crowd, "if you’re ever wondering why you’re sitting out in the rain, why you’re cold, why you’re frustrated, why you’re waiting to go on that elevator, why you’re in that line, why you’re tolerating some insane single file line, … I want you to think of Delores being out after forty plus years and of Kathy and Bodi still being in.”
Lois Curtis, the surviving litigant in the Olmstead case, was there and will be joining ADAPT during the rest of the week.
Before Johnny Crescendo wrapped up the rally with the Bob Dylan classic, The Times They Are A-Changin', Mark Johnson pointed out the ironic fact that right next to the King Center, a great symbol of freedom in our nation, there still stands a classic symbol of segregation for Americans with disabilities, a nursing facility.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
ADAPT marched out of the plaza in front of the church and circled up the street past the nursing facility on their way back to Centennial Park energized for the next few days efforts to FREE OUR PEOPLE in Georgia and across America!