Note from ADAPT post-trial –
We went to court today. We received our punishment for unlawfully
protesting. Three of us plead guilty and received suspended
sentences and probation. Four of us plead guilty and received
deferred sentence agreements. Two received deferred prosecution
agreements. We are all banned from the US Senate side of the
Capitol for varying lengths of time.
We submitted the following statement to the Judge and asked to
read it before our sentencing. The Judge denied our request saying
that they weren’t going to allow political speech. Here’s what the
nine of us tried to say:
Sept. 12, 2025
ADAPT Sentencing Statement
Thank you, your Honor, for allowing us to address the Court. As we
are sentenced for unlawfully protesting in the US Senate, we would
like the record to reflect our answer to the question: “Why did you
protest and risk arrest, prosecution and punishment?”
We are disabled people. Many of us have more than one disability.
Some of our disabling conditions, that affect us most, aren’t visible
or obvious. We are also parents, grandparents and caregivers.
We are people that have had to fight for the most basic liberty – to be
in the community – our whole lives. We depend on Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid to pay for communication devices,
motorized wheelchairs, healthcare, in-home support and
assistance, as well as household bills and living expenses. Many of
us live in public housing or receive rental assistance from HUD.
Some of us, thanks to this assistance, are taxpayers. We all
volunteer in our communities. We are good neighbors and we all
belong in our own homes and communities.
The threats to make giant budget cuts and fundamentally alter the
way programs like HUD, Medicaid, Obama Care, Medicare, etc.
operate are unprecedented. We have been working decades to
develop and improve these programs so all disabled people and
aging community members can live in our own homes and
communities. The fact remains that notwithstanding significant
improvement, programs like Medicaid home and community
services, USDA Rural Housing, HUD, SNAP, etc. have all been
woefully underfunded and never fully covered needs for years.
These programs already have long waiting-lists and/or limitations in
benefits that still leave disabled folks and seniors unnecessarily
stuck in institutions, being isolated and not having a shot at life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness. Massively cutting funding of
already fragile, insufficient programs will cause suffering and death.
Those of us in the crosshairs of this radical social experiment are
being ignored, gas-lit and plain lied to by the majority of the US
Senate; same for the House and the President.
We emailed Congress. We rallied. We wrote letters. We asked for
meetings. We sang songs and did skits. Besides our small activist
group, lots of big, important organizations also tried to at least get a
listen from the Administration and over half of Congress, but to no
avail. To have such danger to our lives and freedom be so cavalierly
dismissed by policy makers, including most of the US Senate,
became untenable when every effort to even be heard was rebuffed.
You see, your Honor, we have been down this road once or twice
before, albeit never to this magnitude. These budget cuts neither
preserve the programs nor protect the people. When federal budget
cutbacks happen, negative consequences compound at the state
and local levels when matching funds are also lost and waiting lists
for services and housing lengthen and cut-backs in types and
amounts of services happen. It also becomes harder to find and
keep staff to provide services because pay for the workforce
stagnates and there are no benefits. The direct result is increased
institutionalization, loss of liberty and increased death and suffering
for disabled and aging people.
Our simple goal is to make our government care about us and listen
to us. We just want to be treated with the dignity and respect
afforded our non-disabled peers and to live our lives fully as equal
members of society. That is a cause worth fighting for even at the
risk of our own personal well-being.
Thank you, your Honor.
Mike Oxford, KS ADAPT
Rick Macias, KS ADAPT
Tom Earle, Philly ADAPT
Dillon Warren, KS ADAPT
Nancy Salandra, Philly ADAPT
Guy Anthony Brooks, Philly ADAPT
Misty Dion, North Central PA ADAPT
Ruben Fernandez, El Paso Desert ADAPT
Albert Metz, TX ADAPT
