Sitting In Wheelchairs, Standing Up For Their Rights
Bobbie Wallach, who has suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for 30 years and is wheelchair-bound, was arrested last year. Twice. Now she’s back for more, handcuffing herself to the White House fence and participating in other forms of civil disobedience with ADAPT, the direct action group that fights (non-violently) for disability rights. As they have every year for the past decade, the group has descended upon Washington, kicking up a stink about problems the disabled face everyday.
The central focus this year is nursing homes. According to the group, programs like Medicaid favor nursing homes, which they say provide a lower quality of life, as a means of caring for those who need assistance. “I’m protesting to get people out of nursing homes all over the country. I’m here for them, because they cannot come down here themselves, and I can,” says Wallach.
Having lived in a Rochester nursing home until recently, Wallach is adamant that nursing home residents “have no rights. They eat what they’re served. They get a shower once a week! That’s it. There is nothing for them to do in a nursing home.”
Kachina Rice, a Certified Nurse’s Assistant from Denver who spent 15 years working in nursing homes agrees. “After working in the nursing home for all those times, I think life is more beneficial on the outside.” She relays the story of one resident who hadn’t seen snow for five years because she was stuck indoors. Breaking the nursing home rules, Rice took her outside to enjoy the winter landscape. “She just bawled and cried.”
For ADAPT, plain old protest is not enough. Direct action and civil disobedience are acceptable and useful alternatives for making their voices heard. That’s one reason why Wallach, along with several of her wheelchair-bound compatriots, stop traffic with a blockade 4 wheelchairs deep and chain themselves to the White House fence, demanding to discuss their cause with political leaders.
Hundreds of wheelchair-bound individuals participating in acts of public disruption creates a jarring visual effect, says Josephine Williams, a 28-year old from Memphis, Tennessee (and one of the few participants in the crowd of several hundred who is not disabled). In her view, the very notion of disabled activists clashes with common perceptions of the disabled as helpless people.
“We don’t just stand there with signs. We holler, we get in the way, and we don’t stop,” says Joe Casias, a Coloradan who works with Center for Independent Living. Breaking minor laws is a “squeaky wheel gets the grease kind of thing. You get enough numbers and it makes the papers and it comes out there for the rest of the public and the nation to know what’s going on.” When asked why she participates in civil disobedience, a fellow protester indignantly replies “Well we’re not gonna be violent!”
Title IX of the Social Security Act, which promises funds for people with disabilities to go to nursing homes, was created with good intentions, says Fran Fulton, a disabilities advocate from the Philadelphia branch of Center for Independent Living. Yet, the homes have become an overused, expensive, and inhumane parking lot for the disabled.
“What it’s turned into is kind of a warehouse for people, especially people with disabilities. Young people who either don’t have a place to go to or maybe their parents have recently passed away and they have no caregivers assigned, or it could be someone who acquires a disability but can’t go home to their own house because it’s a row house with three flights of stairs,” says Fulton, who is blind. “So you go to a nursing home. And once you’re in it’s very hard to get out.”
While nursing homes are important for people who need constant medical attention, ADAPT is pushing to expand assisted home care as a more humane, efficient, and cheap alternative. Instead of spending money on the facilities and administration, says Fulton, the government could far more cheaply offer in-home care for disabled people. Fulton believes that the institutional favoritism toward nursing homes has contributed to their inefficiency. “Nursing home is an industry, and they get the Medicaid dollars to supposedly care for you.”
Wallach, who left her nursing home with the assistance of Centers for Independent Living, wholeheartedly agrees. “The nursing home costs me $3,600 a month, whereas I get my own apartment for $400 a month. Do what I want, get aids, eat what I want, have my own freedom of choice. I think that is in the constitution!”
Although ADAPT has few qualms with breaking laws to get its point across, it functions within a legal system that has adapted to standard acts of civil disobedience. Stunts like chaining yourself to a building or blocking traffic will lead to standard in-and-out of jail arrests and fines on par with speeding tickets. Yet by incurring these higher costs and breaking protest norms, such actions convey a deeper conviction than the typical sign holding and slogan chanting. It’s easy to understand why people like Wallach choose the more extreme option. “I never want to go back to a nursing home, I don’t have to go back to a nursing home, I can get home care,” she says. “It’s my civil right to live where I want and do what I want.”
-Niv Elis
