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Ten years ago, in September of 2003 the ADAPT Free Our People March began with a rally at
the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Over 150 Civil Rights activists headed out into the
pouring rain for the US Capitol 144 miles away; a 14 day adventure to stop people with
disabilities from being locked away in nursing facilities and institutions.
Following the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, ADAPT, the nation’s
largest grassroots direct-action disability rights organization focused on ending the
institutional bias in Medicaid. The federal program funds expensive institutions almost
exclusively for necessary services forcing people who need those services out of the
community, away from families and behind closed doors.
“In reality we are marching for our lives, or freedom,” said Bob Liston the March co-chair.
“We are marching for people in nursing homes and people at risk of being in an institution.”
Each day the group marched between four and sixteen miles, eating communal meals and sleeping
most days in tents, a bunkhouse, a church and an ice-rink in Baltimore.
The second day was the longest of the March, over sixteen miles into Delaware. About twenty
percent of the powerchairs just could not make it all the way on the long hilly trek
and were picked up by vans along the route where they stopped.On the third day, Vice
President Joe Biden, then Senator Biden, joined the marchers at a rally in downtown Wilmington
at the Rodney Square Park to cheer the group on.
“The most expensive thing to do is to put people into institutions. To those that say
that we cannot afford to do this,” said Biden, "I say we cannot afford not to do this.
When my wife and I talk about Attendant Services they just see me as a politician; when they
see you on this march they begin to get it and understand.”
While the line of Free Our People marchers was a visible symbol of the dedication of
ADAPT activists to end the Institutional bias; it was the individual experiences that demonstrated
the great commitment of each person on the march.
“I was in a nursing home for eight years, I was forced to move in when my parents divorced,”
said Karen Burrison of Philadelphia. “I saw people that got married in the nursing
home and still had to live in separate rooms. My mother did not understand why I wanted
out. She said ‘you get 24-hour care and in there you don’t have to worry about paying
the bills.’ I said: ‘Mom, I want a life and you can’t have a life in a nursing home.’
Now that I am out I have a home and a family.” The personal attendants on the march started
early. They had the task every morning of helping each person get up and ready for the
march that day. To keep on schedule, the entire group had to be out on the street and ready
to go by 9:00 am.
The organization was meticulous; the time for getting up in the morning revolved around
the recharging schedule of the powerchairs. Each night the arrangement of recharging would
rotate so that the same people are not asked to wake up at 4:30 am.
The Free Our People March would stop for about an hour each day for a lunch break at a park,
an open lot or a parking area along the side of the road. Accessible portable toilets on
a flatbed truck followed the march at each stop.
After dinner in the camp, the entire group would gather for a debriefing of the day and
plan for the next day's march. The meeting had a family feel to it and often included
more comedy than productive suggestions. Most nights Bob Kafka would take time to read email
support messages from around the country to the activists.
Every night about 80 powerchairs had to be fully recharged for the next day's march.
It was a odd site to look out at a sea of empty power wheelchairs. In Baltimore the
Free Our People March would add another 61 activists to the long line. The reinforcements
stayed at a downtown motel and received a overview of what life would be like on the
final leg of the march into Washington DC. The plan in the morning was for the two groups
to meet in the Inner Harbor at McKeldin Square where ADAPT would hold another rally.
The main group came into Baltimore and rather than set up camp, the group would sleep out
on the concrete floor of the Patterson Field ice skating rink. The group called it “the
bubble” because of the domed roof over the rink; the floor of the bubble was cold and
damp, the humidity was high due to the rain. In the morning, ADAPT activists woke up in
an eerie fog lit by soft green lights. As the people gradually woke up and got ready
to go, the fog slowly melted away and soaked the floor and everything on the floor. Bob
Kafka looked over the surreal environment and named it “Lake ADAPT.”
“Being in a nursing home sucks and I want out,” said Linda Merkle at the rally in
the Baltimore inner harbor. Linda lived in a nursing home and was working with Maryland
ADAPT at the time to get back into the community. “My son was taken away. I want out. I want
my life back,” she said.
Following the rally and lunch in the Square, the Free Our People March snaked through the
urban milieu in the pouring rain. On the twelfth day of the march with less than twenty miles
to go, the Free Our People March faced its greatest crisis. A sudden thunderstorm soaked
the individual chargers that were necessary to recharge the powerchairs. The generator
was made to weather storms, but each wheelchair had its own AC charger that is not typically
used outdoors.
The ADAPT activists met in the dark to consider options. An inventory of the power available
at the time estimated that only a dozen wheelchairs had enough power to make it about halfway.
Several ADAPT marchers volunteered to work all night on the problem. The charging units
were taken to a nearby Fire Department to be inspected and dried.
Many people had gone to bed thinking the prognosis on charging the powerchairs was grim. Most
believed that after coming 120 miles, the march was going to be shuttled in vans to
the next site. At 9:00 am; however, when the Maryland State Troopers were ready to go,
most of the wheelchairs were on the street ready to go.
“We’re gonna’ make it no matter what,” said Nancy Salandra, co-chair of the March.
“You have to take a risk, that is what it is all about.”
ADAPT celebrated reaching Washington DC. The final day would be a march just over four
miles to the Upper Senate Park. The March would meet up with the Free Our People Train
that came from New York, picking up more activists in Philadelphia for a huge rally at the US
Capitol. Stephanie Thomas - This is not about any one
person, but how we work together. We will do it and it will be pretty great.
Adam Nielsen - I don't want this to end.
Jennifer McPhail - There is something about marching with this group of people that makes
you feel good even after 140 miles. For all the gnarlyness of this trip we are very beautiful
when we want to be.
Barbara Toomer - Stay to the right! Let the photographers get killed, just keep to the
right.
Observer on the side of the road - I saw you all down the road and thought I was looking
at the largest, fully integrated work-release gang.
Jim Etzel - (on day one) I hope we don't get too wet.
David Wittie - For some people this will be a walk in the park, for others it will be
the hardest thing they have ever done. I just want to be in somewhere in the middle.
Kurt Breslaw - All the bad things that you have heard about nursing homes; they are all
true, and then some. You just don't know unless you were in there.
Yoshiko Dart - You are the loudest voices of empowerment, the revolutionaries of the
Twenty-First Century, you are America the Beautiful. We will continue to march and fight
to the end of time to Free Our People."
Senator Tom Harkin - The door needs to be open so that people will have choices. It
is long past time that people could be in their own homes, not somebody else's nursing
home. Since the Free Our People March in September of 2003, over 75% of MiCASSA legislation that
ADAPT so passionately supported has been made into federal law; mostly through the Money
Follows the Person Legislation and the Affordable Care Act. The idea of MiCASSA is a proven
to be effective, but the part that remains to be realized is the end of the institutional
bias.
Most US states have made some progress to give people more choices to stay in their
home, live with their families and be part of the diverse American community. Expensive
nursing homes are a federal Medicaid benefit, while home and community services and supports
are optional state programs that can be cut by the state in tough economic times.
The loud chants of the Free Our People March are still needed today. ADAPT is working nationally
to completely pass MiCASSA, now called the Community Choice Act. Your help is needed
and your talents are welcome. Do you want to live in a nursing home? Tim Wheat has been
an ADAPT member for over seventeen years. His role of documenting the national ADAPT
actions on the ADAPT website: adapt.org has positioned him as the chair of the ADAPT History
Committee. Tim’s photography of civil rights actions has created a large disability rights
archive of the tremendous dedication of ADAPT activists all over the country.
Mr. Wheat has four photos in the January 2013 issue of The Progressive of the historic ADAPT
action in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.
“I am an ADAPT activist first,” said Tim Wheat about his work in civil rights. “The
passion and determination of by brothers and sisters in this movement is the amazing image
that I wish everyone could see.”
Tim Wheat is currently the Community Organizer for the Center for People with Disabilities
in Boulder Colorado. He began at the Memphis Center for Independent Living in 1996 where
he photographed more than 1,700 violations of the Fair Housing Act and was part of one
of the largest Fair Housing Complaints concerning accessibility. In 2002 Tim rode his bicycle
around the United States to document Independent Living creating a web journal called Independence
Across America. Tim worked as a volunteer with the Student Conservation Association
in Alaska following the Valdez spill and is a graduate of the University of Alabama.