Monroe County’s Cancellation of CDR’s Contact is an Assault on a Hard Won Victory of the Disability Rights Movement to Establish the Right to Control Our Services and Our Lives.
Posted on July 29, 2010
By Diane Coleman, Director of Advocacy
I first became involved in advocacy for consumer directed services in 1982 in Los Angeles. Like many people with significant disabilities, I wanted to limit medical control and intrusion into my personal life. Nurses and social workers can really mess up your love life, and other freedoms most people take for granted.
By the 1990s, many policy makers began to see consumer controlled services as a best practice to be emulated. As the executive director of an Independent Living Center in Cook County, Illinois, I ran one of a dozen research and demonstration projects about consumer direction, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in the late 1990s. Support for the concept grew. More and more states adopted the model as an option for people with disabilities and seniors who could manage their own home care. Read more
Filed Under Advocacy, Americans with Disabilities Act, Attendant Services, Attitudes, CDR Programs, Community-based services, Consumer Directed Personal Assistance, Diane Coleman, Independence, Independent Living, Medicaid, Self Help, Take Action!, Voting | 3 Comments
No Matter What You Call it…It’s Still a Cap!
Posted on March 12, 2010
By Anita Cameron, Systems Advocate
Disabled Activists Travel to Albany to Protest Proposed Budget Cap on Personal Care
38 activists from the Center for Disability Rights joined over 50 other people with disabilities from around the state, converging on Albany on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, to protest Governor Paterson’s proposed budget caps on personal care for people needing more than 12 hours of care per day.
Upon arrival, we broke up into teams of 10 – 15 people and visited the office of every member of the state legislature. Decked out in bright orange t-shirts and baseball caps that read, “No Matter What You Call it…It’s Still a Cap”, we were very noticeable as we scoured the Legislative Office Building. Armed with fliers and baseball caps, our members spoke to staffers and sometimes, the legislators, themselves, putting a human face on the issue by telling how these caps on personal care will send us into costly institutions. Read more
Filed Under Advocacy, Anita Cameron, Attendant Services, Attitudes, CDR Programs, Community-based services, Consumer Directed Personal Assistance, Home Care, Independence, Independent Living, Medicaid, Take Action! | 1 Comment
Camp DNC
Posted on July 22, 2009
By Anita Cameron, Systems Advocate
So there we were in front to the Democratic National Committee headquarters after we’d been physically removed from the premises. I’m sure DNC staff thought that ADAPT would head back to our hotel. Obviously, they don’t know ADAPT!
Several of our folks disappeared around the corner, and within minutes, tents and a large lean-to were erected. ADAPT members quickly settled down into what for many of us, has become a familiar routine. Banners were hung, a generator was set up, and a scene emerged that was reminiscent of DUH City and the Free Our People March, with strains of Colorado ADAPT’s vigil Read more
Filed Under ADAPT, Activism, Advocacy, Anita Cameron, Attitudes, Independence, Independent Living, Institutions and Institutionalization, Medicaid, Take Action! | 1 Comment
Four officers and indecent exposure.
Posted on July 22, 2009
By Chris Hilderbrant, Director of Advocacy
Yesterday, I was among 40 ADAPT activists that entered the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Washington, DC. Despite ADAPT’s deep anger with the democrats for establishing the institutional bias in Medicaid nearly 45 years ago and refusing to end that bias even today, things started off cordial enough. ADAPT’s demands were that the DNC facilitate meetings with Congressional leaders and senior White House staff and that the Democrats issue an apology for creating the institutional bias in Medicaid.
ADAPT spread throughout the DNC office, allowing space for staff to pass through. ADAPT leaders began meeting with staff, who relayed our message to higher level staff. While the chair of the DNC, Governor Tim Kaine, was not available, the DNC provided a meeting with a Senior Advisor – I think the name was Larry Roberts. ADAPT met with the advisor and that’s where the cordiality ended. Read more
Filed Under ADAPT, Activism, Advocacy, Americans with Disabilities Act, Attitudes, Chris Hilderbrant, Community-based services, Consumer Directed Personal Assistance, Independence, Independent Living, Institutions and Institutionalization, Medicaid, Police/Law Enforcement, Take Action! | 1 Comment
Not quite 100 days in office, not quite 100 people with disabilities arrested
Posted on April 27, 2009
By Chris Hilderbrant, Director of Advocacy
April 27, 2009
Today marks 98 days in office for President Barack Obama. Sadly, it also marks the day that nearly 100 activists (91 was the last semi-official account) with ADAPT were arrested at the Whitehouse.
After a meeting this morning with Obama’s Health czarina, Nancy-Ann DeParle, went very badly, ADAPTers took to the Whitehouse fence. Many cuffed or chained themselves to the fence, many sat, many stood, many parked. All chanted. All were angry.
I’ve lost count of how many meetings we’ve had with various staffers and departments within the administration. ADAPT’s message has been very clear, since well before the beginning of the Presidential campaign – pass the Community Choice Act – now! Read more
Filed Under ADAPT, Advocacy, Chris Hilderbrant, Home Care, Independence, Institutions and Institutionalization, Medicaid, Take Action! | 2 Comments
March – it’s not just a month, it’s an order!
Posted on March 20, 2009
By Chris Hilderbrant, Director of Advocacy
It’s the month of March, but looking at our schedule this month, it’s more like time to MARCH!
It’s not often I say this, but I’m exhausted. Some of my problem is that I’m seeing the tiresome trips coming up as well as those we’ve just finished. We now have a class of trips that Diane and Terrie refer to as “whirlwinds”. These are the overnighters… from Rochester to Washington, DC, overnight, and back again. 36-40 hours on the road and in the nation’s Capitol.
We had one of these whirlwinds two weeks ago. Rochester ADAPT took 45 people to Washington, DC, for the Senate Aging Committee’s hearing on long term care. I drove our accessible van on the way down, overnight. It was a fruitful trip, most noticeably securing NY’s new Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, as a cosponsor for the Community Choice Act. Read more
Filed Under ADAPT, Activism, Advocacy, Attitudes, Chris Hilderbrant, Consumer Directed Personal Assistance, Home Care, Independence, Institutions and Institutionalization, Medicaid, Take Action! | 1 Comment
Opposing a bill to legalize assisted suicide
Posted on February 19, 2009
By Diane Coleman, Assistant Director for Advocacy
Many people know that CDR is active in advocacy on the national level, and provides support and technical assistance in other states. That is also true of Not Dead Yet, which now has its national headquarters in CDR’s Rochester offices. Today, February 19, 2009, the House Judiciary Committee in New Hampshire held a hearing on HB 304 (http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2009/HB0304.html), which is titled “AN ACT relative to death with dignity for certain persons suffering from a terminal condition.” In case the wording leaves you in doubt, this is a bill to legalize assisted suicide.
This particular bill is broader in terms of who would be eligible for assisted suicide than any similar bill introduced in the U.S. so far. Other bills limit “eligibility” to people diagnosed to have less than 6 months to live, but the NH bill actually expands the definition of “terminal” in a way that makes virtually anyone with a significant disability or chronic condition “eligible” for legal help in killing themselves. You can find an analysis of this element of the bill at the Not Dead Yet blog at http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-hampshire-poised-to-redefine.html. Read more
Filed Under Activism, Advocacy, Diane Coleman, End of life decision-making, Physician Assisted Suicide, Take Action!, Voting | Leave a Comment
Rochester Disability Activists Join National Protests Against “Humanitarian” Award for Jerry Lewis!
Posted on February 18, 2009
By Diane Coleman, Assistant Director for Advocacy
Many people are surprised to learn that is a long standing movement of people with disabilities, including former “Jerry’s Kids,” who oppose what Jerry Lewis has done with the Annual Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Among the most prominent disability activists who have spoken strongly against Lewis’ pity-based approach are Evan Kemp, former head of the EEOC under the Bush Sr. Administration, attorney Harriet McBryde Johnson, Mike Ervin, who founded the activist group Jerry’s Orphans, and Laura Hershey, leading the current campaign to protest a “Humanitarian” award being presented to Lewis at the Oscars on Sunday, February 22, 2009.
Like them, I have a neuromuscular disability. I was raised to believe that Jerry Lewis was a friend of people like me. My mother volunteered for the Telethon every year. I was never an official state or national “poster child,” but was often put in front of a local TV camera during the Telethon where I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In my late teens, I began talking about my education and plans for work, trying to put forward a positive disability image, but I know now that my two minutes on camera was twisted and overwhelmed by everything Lewis said and did. Read more
Filed Under Advocacy, Attitudes, Diane Coleman, Independence, Take Action! | 4 Comments
A Call to Civil Disobedience
Posted on September 22, 2008
By Anita O’Brien, Recreation Director
“Did you see we were in the newspaper?” calls out a 10 year old girl as she arrives at the Recreation center. “You were in the paper?” I asked. “Yes, from when we went to Albany and met with Governor Paterson!” she exclaimed with great pride as she took out the article in the newspaper to show me.
A ten year old is growing up understanding the importance of advocacy. She is seeing first hand the impact speaking out can have on influencing legislation and creating systemic change. She was there chanting along with a hundred other voices, calling on the governor to resist making budgetary cuts that will directly, and drastically, impact the Read more
Filed Under Advocacy, Anita O'Brien, Attitudes, Take Action!, Voting | Leave a Comment
Affordable Housing for the Man with Seven – or so – Homes
Posted on September 15, 2008
By Chris Hilderbrant, Director of Advocacy
The headline will read something like “Disability Activists Arrested at McCain HQ”, but that’s such a vague silhouette of the reality of what took place in Washington, DC, today.
At about 4:30 AM, 500 ADAPT activists took over the plaza in front of the headquarters of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). There were no cops in sight… ADAPT was up too early and had been too secretive about what they were doing and when they’d be doing it. The one security guard at HUD reportedly tried to get ADAPT to not set up shop on his watch, but he was one little speck in a swarm of ADAPT. Read more
Filed Under ADAPT, Activism, Advocacy, Chris Hilderbrant, Housing, Independence, Take Action! | Leave a Comment