Ask someone who ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) is, and odds are, they won't know. This lack of awareness is quite a shame. ADAPT is one of the most vital activist organizations that exist today. ADAPT is a grassroots disability rights organization with chapters in 30 states. It uses nonviolent direct action to bring attention and awareness to the lack of civil rights the disability community has. They advocate for millions of people who could never begin to appreciate the personal, physical and financial sacrifices they make in public acts of civil disobedience, wherein they face fines, prosecution, and sometimes, jail.

Remember seeing all the news reports last summer of Washington DC protests about the repealing of the Affordable Care Act? Many of those disabled men and women were members of ADAPT. Well-organized, educated on the issues, and politically active, ADAPTer's gave faces to the statistics that the ACA's repeal would have negatively impacted.

ADAPT also now practices legislative policy advocacy, grassroots education, and mobilization, and individual members may engage in legal advocacy. Over the past several years, the primary mission for ADAPT has been to bring attention to the unjust and discriminatory practice of institutionalizing disabled people. Its "Free Our People" campaign works to bring attention to the public policy and Medicare/Medi-Cal cuts that force disabled people to live in nursing homes rather than in the community. ADAPT's first advocacy issue, however, was transportation.

ADAPT's Access to Public Transportation

In 1983 Reverand Wade Blank founded ADAPT to advocate for wheelchair-accessible buses. ADAPT held its first protest against the American Public Transit Association on October 23, 1983. During the 1980s, ADAPT became known for blocking buses to draw attention to the need for accessible public transportation before they moved on to the issue of deinstitutionalization of disabled people.

ADAPT and Wheels of Justice

In March 1990, ADAPT organized a weeklong series of demonstrations in Washington DC to urge lawmakers to pass the ADA. Hundreds of people with disabilities came from all over the country to make their voices heard. 

Demonstrators proclaimed: "The Preamble to the Constitution does not say 'We the able-bodied people.' It says, 'We the People.'" 

The protest included a March 12 "crawl-up" staged by wheelchair users on the Capitol building's steps and a Capitol rotunda takeover. Like civil rights activists before them, they raised public awareness of the discrimination they faced and the barriers that kept them from fully participating in society. These protests gained widespread attention, providing the momentum disability rights supporters needed to pass legislation through Congress. The ADA was signed into law four months later.

For more information about ADAPT or to donate, go to their website at www.adapt.org.