Author: National ADAPT

ADAPT Talking Points To #ADAPTandSurvive

ADAPT DEMANDS Congress support our right to live in the community by funding home and community based services, supporting our Community Workforce, making personal protective equipment available, and ensuring we have affordable, accessible, integrated housing.

ADAPT has sent an Open Letter to Congress demanding action. We must ensure Congress pays attention and responds to our needs!

Post on social media, write an email, organize a car parade around your Congressmembers Offices! In any way you can, tell Congress: 

  • Unnecessary institutionalization has been illegal since at least 1990.  Now the COVID pandemic has exposed further dangers of congregate living.  
  • Forcing people into institutions is not only a violation of our rights, it is a DANGER to our safety, well-being, and our LIVES. 
  • We need the services and supports that allow us to safely shelter-in-place in the community.
  • Community services must be available to keep people from being institutionalized in congregate settings.
  • Programs, services, and supports must be available to allow people to move back into the community to live in the most integrated setting. 
  • Direct Service and Support Workers are essential to keeping us alive, safe and healthy. They deserve to be recognized and protected by receiving increased wages, overtime pay, hazard pay, and protective gear.
  • The number one barrier to home and community living is lack of affordable, accessible, integrated housing. Housing must be developed.  The shortage of housing that is affordable, accessible and integrated is past the critical stage.  Likewise rental subsidies must be vastly increased. 

National ADAPT Condemns Violence Against AAPI Community

National ADAPT condemns the attacks against Asian American and Pacific Islanders across the United States. National ADAPT believes that every human being has the right to be safe and to be treated with respect.

Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones as well as to the survivors of these brutal attacks. Nearly 4,000 hate related incidents have been reported against the AAPI community since the Coronavirus was first detected in the United States last year. Many of those attacks were against elderly and disabled Asians and Pacific Islanders, and over half occurred in the state of California.

National ADAPT is committed to anti-racism. We will continue to do the work required to be both inclusive of all people, and an active and responsible ally. We look forward to working with our siblings in the Asian American and Pacific Islander Community to build a more just and equitable society, while continuing to work to end the institutional bias that exists in the United States.

COVID Relief MUST Include Disability Community Needs: Take Action Today!

Negotiations continue in Congress on a COVID relief package.

The House has passed two different COVID relief packages since May. The Senate and the White House offers fail to meet the urgent needs of the disability community. The “Skinny” Bills offered to date do not include ANY of the priorities we have been urging our members of Congress to address, like targeted funding for home and community based services (HCBS). HCBS keeps disabled people out of congregate settings where COVID-19 is deadly.

Senate Republicans have been insistent that COVID relief include a dangerous provision that would give businesses – including schools and medical providers – immunity from being held liable for harm they cause in almost all circumstances. They want provisions that shield employers and people who own, lease, or operate public accommodations from violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Liability relief provisions such as these remove accountability. These demands are about protecting businesses and profits over people.

Congress needs to hear from us again. They need to hear from advocates about the importance of including the needs of the disability community in their COVID-response.

COVID Relief must contain:

Funding and support for Home and Community Based Services.

Extension of Money Follows the Person demonstration project grants.

Resources to help people living in the community with personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies for them and their workers.

Support for Direct Support Workers through sick leave, benefits, and wage enhancements, including hazard, retainer, and overtime pay.

Support for people to maintain and secure affordable, accessible, integrated housing.

Take Action!

Contact your Members of Congress today! It is critical our Members of Congress hear from us while they are negotiating a final package. Even if you have called your Members before, they need to hear from you again. Make sure to tell them why HCBS funding is critical, and that it MUST be included in the next COVID-19 package! Disability Priorities CANNOT be negotiated out of this next package.

-You can find your Senators’ contact forms at senate.gov and your Representative’s contact form at house.gov/representatives.

-You can find your Members’ phone numbers, Twitter handles, Facebook pages, and other contact information on Contacting Congress.

-You can also tweet at Congressional leadership – Mitch McConnell (@SenateMajLdr), Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer), Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi), and Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader).

Here is a sample script for calling or emailing. Please personalize it and put it in your own words if you can:

Hi, my name is (NAME), and I’m from (CITY, STATE).

I am (calling / writing) to ask you to include funding for home and community based services in the COVID-19 relief bill. The need for dedicated HCBS funding is more urgent than ever. We have seen alarming rates of death in nursing facilities and other congregate settings. Many disabled people use HCBS to live in their own homes, but people are struggling to stay in the community. Without more funding, many more people will be forced into congregate settings, where they will be at much greater risk of catching COVID-19.

HCBS funding is desperately needed to ensure we can stay safe in our own homes. The House included funding for HCBS in the HEROES and HEROES 2 Acts. It is critical that this funding be included in the final Congressional package.

I also ask that you oppose efforts to shield businesses from liability for harm they cause related to COVID-19. This threatens the rights and safety of disabled people.

Thank you for your time, and I hope I can count on you to protect your disabled constituents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Your name)

COVID-Relief-Skinny-Bill-Call-To-ActionDownload

October 14, 2020 Press Release: ADAPT Protests Around The Country Re: SCOTUS Hearings In DC

For Immediate Release
For Information Contact:
Ami Hyten (DC) (785) 220-6460
Jodie Baney (Williamsport) (570) 477-0777
Latoya Chivon(Philadelphia) (267) 815-2050
Rhoda Gibson (Boston) (617) 504-1792
Heiwa Salovitz (Austin) (512)966-3666 & Sophia Donnelly (512)924-8449

ADAPT Protests Around The Country Re: SCOTUS Hearings In DC

Washington, DC—-ADAPT is in Washington, DC, again this week as part of a coalition of civil rights groups in opposition to the Republican attempts to ram through Congress the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition, several local ADAPT chapters will be staging local actions in opposition to a Barrett confirmation that threatens the Affordable Care Act (ACA) protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

Should Barrett be confirmed, the rights of women and the LGBTQIA+ community will be at risk, along with the health care that millions of Americans gained under the ACA. Opposition to Barrett’s appointment is based on her published positions and opinions in all of these areas and more.

Local ADAPT actions include one on Wednesday, October 14, in Austin, Texas, where ADAPT and allies will gather outside the offices of Sen. John Cornyn, 221 6th Street W., from 11 am to 2 pm to demand that the senator value the lives of disabled people, and vote no on Judge Barrett.

“According to the United States Health and Human Services Department, half of all Americans have a pre-existing condition of some kind,” said Texas ADAPT organizer Heiwa Salovitz. “ Everyone knows someone who is impacted by the issue. Before the legal protection of the ACA, insurance companies were allowed to deny people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions life saving and life sustaining coverage.”

In Boston, Mass ADAPT will protest in front of their statehouse from 12 noon to 2pm, demanding their Senators vote not to confirm Barrett.

In Philadelphia, ADAPT will demand a no vote on Barrett because she is a distinct threat to the ACA and the over 8 million people who have contracted the virus, and who will now be identified as having a pre-existing condition. ADAPT will also highlight the unconscionable 85,000+ deaths of disabled people from Covid-19, a number that would have been much smaller if Congress supported home and community based services over institutional settings.

In Williamsport, North Central Pennsylvania, ADAPT will spend the day at the federal building, again demanding a no vote on Barrett, and pressing for the continuation of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA covers people with lower incomes, pre-existing conditions, and it created the Community First Choice program that makes it easier for states to support aging and disabled people in their own homes, instead of forcing them into institutional settings where Covid-19 has killed so many.

In the nation’s capitol groups protesting with ADAPT outside the Capitol during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings include the Women’s March, Housing Works, the Center for Popular Democracy, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and local groups like SPACEs in Action, and Sunrise Movement, DC. Two ADAPTers were among those arrested at the sit-in outside the Capitol on Monday.

NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com
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Open Letter To The Presidential Campaigns

ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom. Formed by a collective of local ADAPT Chapters, National ADAPT has worked for the past 30 years to promote community living for aging and disabled people through reform of the long term service and support system. The undersigned represent the collective that constitutes ADAPT, as distinguished from other smaller, unofficial organizations representing themselves and their smaller, discrete groups and specific interests.

Current systems reinforce a “bias” in long term services and supports; Medicaid automatically pays for institutional placement. States have to build a parallel long term services and supports system to allow people to remain in their own homes and communities. Housing development has not kept pace with the need for accessible, usable units for people with disabilities. Wages and benefits for workers in homes are unequal to those offered to workers in facilities. Equipment as simple as shower benches or as essential as wheelchairs require users to navigate complicated payment and authorization systems. 

The situation aging and disabled people have confronted with COVID-19 has exposed how the biases in our current system mean death to us. COVID-19 has pointed to an imperative to shore up existing long term services and support systems and community resources to keep out of and deliver from aging and disabled people from institutional settings. ADAPT activists are looking for Presidential leadership through aggressive and explicit immediate plans to address gaps in the current system for aging and disabled people that result in unnecessary institutionalization and create barriers for returning to the community. 

National recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will offer the opportunity and the imperative to re-build the long term services and supports system. We will have the opportunity to evaluate the gaps in the past system that placed aging and disabled people squarely at the center of the tempest. We will be able to clearly identify how systemic racism has meant that Black, Indigenous and People of Color suffered higher rates of exposure, infection, and death. We will value housing that offers safe harbor and security as we are able to control who comes in and out of our homes. As more people learn the reality of living with disability, we will place more value on physical and programmatic access in all areas of community life. 

As we have for the past 30 years, ADAPT looks to the next Presidential Administration to lead the way toward building communities that support and fully include aging and disabled people. ADAPT challenges all systems and policymakers to promote community integration and aggressively dismantle the system of institutional bias that segregates, isolates, and discriminates against people with all types of disabilities, and compounds the discrimination and exclusion of disabled Black, Indigenous and People of Color. We have long embraced the reality that change does not happen in the absence of demand; social and political progress requires relentless advocacy and activism. ADAPT expects public servants and elected officials to share our commitment to the following and we look to the campaigns to provide concrete plans for moving these issues of our rights, our well-being, and our lives forward that include: 

Ending the Institutional Bias in health care and long term services and supports

Money Follows the Person as a permanent program

Housing – stabilizing affordability and expanding accessibility for integrated housing

COVID-19 Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Funding

Direct Support Workforce wages, benefits, recruitment and retention for self-directing aging and disabled people using community-based long term services and supports

Implementation of policies that keep people from going into institutions, rehabilitation facilities, group homes, state hospitals, detention and carceral centers, and any other type of congregate setting.

FREE OUR PEOPLE,

Arizona ADAPT Florida ADAPT
Philadelphia ADAPT South Carolina ADAPT
Kansas ADAPT Southwest Pennsylvania ADAPT
Massachusetts ADAPT ADAPT of Texas
Montana ADAPT Desert ADAPT
ADAPT of Erie, Pennsylvania D.C. Metro ADAPT
North Central Pennsylvania ADAPT Washington ADAPT
Central Pennsylvania ADAPT Wisconsin ADAPT
Capitol Region ADAPT, NY Downstate NY ADAPT
ROC ADAPT, NY

#DisabledNotDisposable #ADAPTandSurvive #LivesWorthyOfLife
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com

OPEN-LETTER-TO-THE-PRESIDENTIAL-CAMPAIGNS-finalDownload

HCBS FUNDING IN COVID PACKAGE ACTION SAMPLE PRESS RELEASE

ADAPT Advocates from across the Country Demand Senators Fund Services to Keep Disabled and Aging People Safe and Living in their Own Homes

MM/DD/YY PRESS ALERT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For More information: 
(Contact Name & phone number and/or email)

WHO: (ADAPT Chapter)
WHAT: Disability Rights Activists Send Messages to Senators to fund Home and Community Based Services and make Money Follows the Person permanent

WHERE: (Address for the location)

WHEN:  (Time if an event is happening)

Disabled and Aging people being held in institutions are dying of COVID at alarming rates. Congressional COVID Relief packages so far have pumped more money into institutions but people are still dying; more nursing facilities and other congregate settings are labeled as cluster sites every day. 

(Local ADAPT Chapter), as part of ADAPT’s national network of grassroots disability activists, is participating in a call to action. The call to action has been organized to call upon Senators to protect disabled and aging people living in the community by providing additional funding for Home and Community Based Services and help disabled and aging people in institutions move to the safety of their own homes by reauthorizing the federal Money Follows the Person program. 

Resources are needed to keep disabled and aging people in their homes safely. NONE of the laws Congress has passed to address the COVID pandemic have had funding to protect and support the 12 million disabled and aging people living in their own homes. None of the funding has supported the workers who keep disabled and aging people living in their own homes through better wages or benefits. None of the resources have ensured that personal protective equipment or other supplies are available to people living in the community and their workers. 

The federal Money Follows the Person program has supported thousands of people in moving from institutions into their own homes. Since the program’s ending in 2018, Congress has provided extension funding, but the loss of the formal program has meant some states have ended the program, and in all states the number of people who have been able to benefit from the program has sharply dropped. Permanent reauthorization is necessary to ensure a safe way for people to get out of dangerous institutions and back to their own homes. 

(Local ADAPT Chapter) will be (Describe what actions you will be doing on this day) to reach our Senators who returned to work in D.C. on July 21st. Funding Home and Community Based Services and re-authorizing Money Follows the Person must be first priorities for the next round of COVID relief. 

Download Sample Press Release HERE

#DisabledNotDisposable #ADAPTandSurvive #LivesWorthyOfLife
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com

National ADAPT Statement on 30th Anniversary of the ADA

The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was a watershed event in the history of disability rights. In the weeks leading up to its passage, members of ADAPT used the power of our collective strength and organizing to help push it across the finish line. ADAPT acted out the injustices facing disabled people by crawling up the stairs to the Capitol building.

When the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, it was meant to make our communities inclusive of all people. We expected the ADA to make accessibility available in all kinds of buildings. We expected the ADA to encourage service providers to make their programs open for all people. We expected the ADA to enable us to move freely in our communities. We expected the ADA to clear a path so we could work, play, and live with non-disabled neighbors, friends, and family members.

Since the signing of the ADA 30 years ago, the law has helped many people get jobs, move around in our communities, go to stores and use services, communicate, and participate in community life. On this 30th Anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we honor and thank those who came before us in the fight for disability rights.

30 years after the signing of the ADA, too many disabled people still live behind the walls of institutions. Too many disabled people are sent to state hospitals. Too many disabled people sit in prisons, jails, and detention centers. And now, in the shadow of global pandemic, too many disabled people are forgotten and dying in institutions. 

On this 30th Anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we commit ourselves to push forward with calls for disability justice. We embrace a more inclusive, more intersectional vision of our integration. We press forward on the unrealized vision that has left thousands of disabled people in institutions and invite well funded disability rights and justice organizations to join us by committing in word and actions.

Today, as it was 30 years ago and before, National ADAPT calls out to FREE OUR PEOPLE.

National ADAPT mourns the loss of Representative John Lewis

National ADAPT mourns the loss of civil rights giant and disability rights community member, Representative John Lewis. As a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, his work and values inspired the founding of ADAPT and heavily impacted the work we continue to do. Many members of ADAPT have fond memories of running into Representative Lewis on the Hill where he often asked about the good trouble of the day and cheered us on. A tried and true activist, Lewis spoke several times at ADAPT rallies and bolstered the spirits of those in attendance. As a disability rights champion, he fought for legislation that supported the community and made impassioned speeches on the House floor in support of disability issues. During one such speech regarding his opposition to HR 620 the ADA Education and Reform Act, Representative Lewis said, “There is no place in our country for the burden to be placed upon those whose rights have and will be violated time and time again.” A statement he held true to as he continued to lift the voices of those who were too often silenced. 

At times like this, ADAPT strives to fight with the same spirit of Representative Lewis’ activism  for those whose rights are under attack. We hope to make the good trouble he always called us to make. This enormous loss weighs heavily on our hearts.

Rest in Power Representative Lewis. 

National ADAPT Statement on Covid-19 Deaths in Segregated Congregate Institutions

It is time to recognize the similarities between systemic police violence and systems that imprison people, how race and disability intertwine, and how all congregate institutions including prisons, institutions for people with developmental disabilities, psychiatric institutions, and immigrant detention camps arise from systems designed to oppress those whom society devalues.

Covid-19 has killed over 32,750  disabled people  in substandard nursing homes in the United States, with a disparate number of those being people of color, (https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-nursing-homes-racial-disparity.html). National ADAPT is compelled to speak out against this widespread and horrifying human rights catastrophe.

ADAPT strongly denounces the ongoing human rights violations committed against disabled people in all congregate care settings, and we reject the notion that age and underlying conditions sufficiently explain the outrageously high rate of death in these institutions. The occurrence of neglect, abuse, terror, and despair that disabled people experience daily in these facilities is well documented. Yet we continue to be socially removed from our families, homes, and communities in the name of cost-effectiveness, efficiency, or worse, for the convenience and comfort of non-disabled society, and the profit of health care professionals and shareholders.

No longer will we excuse or abide the socially accepted biases that dehumanize disabled people.

No longer will we accept the tired rationalization of “where else are we going to put them” that has been used to justify sending us to die in dismal human warehouses; nor, when deaths are expedited, that they are a natural outcome of age, chronic illness, and impairment, rather than the neglect and abuse fostered by ableist social structures and attitudes.

National ADAPT and our state chapters will no longer abide callous professionals, ignorant of disability theory and rights, who exploit us for their own personal career advancement, and for the advancement of their professions and agencies. We condemn the nonchalant discussions that we must regularly endure in professional forums—discussions, without us, about what is best for us, and questions about where significantly disabled people should be warehoused without any thought to community integration—and everyday discussion that dismisses or erases the annihilation of tens of thousands of disabled people as merely a “natural process” or even beneficial to society as a whole. We equally condemn the doctors with financial interests in congregate care institutions, who sign orders sending us there, again with no consideration of home and community settings and services.  

No longer will we accept the naive and hollow promises of institutional reform, as disabled people have endured neglect and abuse in institutions for over a hundred years without significant change despite countless acts, reviews, legislation, and congressional hearings. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) recently found that 82% of American nursing homes had an infection prevention and control deficiency cited in in one or more years, with about half of these facilities having had persistent problems and having been cited across multiple years. We need more diversion from institutions of all kinds, and more affordable, accessible integrated housing in our communities.

It is time to come to terms with the reality that abuse, neglect, and death are not isolated incidents that can be addressed individually through underfunded Ombudsman programs, insincere band aids of ‘culture change,’ or through impotent state regulatory agencies that remain stuck in antiquated medical model perspectives of disability. Instead, we must admit that dehumanization is the very bedrock of institutional segregation.


There is no excuse for the disregard of our basic humanity, especially 56 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, 30 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and 21 years after the United States Supreme Court Olmstead decision.  Enough is enough!

*This number does not include death tolls from states that have been negligent in reporting infections and deaths in assisted living facilities, state institutions, groups homes, or other congregate ‘care’ settings, or who have reported to CDC, but have chosen not to make their numbers public.