Tag: STATEMENT

National ADAPT’s Position on Accommodations and the Political Process

ADAPT reaffirms our position against ableism and the negative stereotypes associated with it. We view holding an individual’s disability against them as an act of violence utilized by counterparts, who in their attempt to gain political power, run their campaigns on an ableist agenda. This type of situation sets the precedent that it is okay to view disability in a negative way.  

  • It is wrong to make assumptions about someone’s ability to perform a job based solely on disability.  
  • It is wrong to assume someone is incompetent based on other peoples’ biases towards disability.

Disability is part of life and the Americans with Disabilities Act affirms the use of reasonable accommodations that may be necessary to ensure accessibility to the person with a disability. Job seekers may need accommodations to perform the essential parts of any job. An accommodation is not something that should be looked down upon, rather, it should be viewed as a tool for equity.

John Fetterman, the current PA Lieutenant Governor, ran for reelection for the US Senate. He had a stroke earlier in the year and he is experiencing common symptoms of stroke survivors. As part of the campaign, he was challenged to and agreed to participate in a debate. Mr. Fetterman, who has difficulty with aphasia, struggled at times to get his words out. He used a closed caption television that included the questions and the opponent’s responses on screen. This is an example of a reasonable accommodation. Other potential accommodations could have been changing the format of the debate – for example receiving more time for responses, or not debating, since debating is not a requirement for holding public office. 

Instead, take-aways from some people who watched the debate resulted in questions about Mr. Fetterman’s ability to comprehend the information and his ability to do the job of a Senator.  

A disability does not equal incomprehension or incompetence. It does not make Mr. Fetterman less able to do the job. He stated that he is still making progress with his recovery and he is able to do the job. His doctor agrees. The ability to respond in the debate format is not an indicator of a person’s intelligence or fitness for a job. The negativity towards Mr. Fetterman as a result of the debate performance is ableism, and for every person who has experienced a disability, it’s an all too common problem. 

“My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically.”

 -Stephen Hawking

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.  

9/12/25 ADAPT Sentencing Statement

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

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National ADAPT ADA 31st Anniversary Statement

31 years ago, President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the ADA into law with the words, “ Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.” While there have certainly been advances during the past 31 years, and a reduction in disability discrimination, during the past year and a half we have painfully witnessed the enormous and preventable cost of the continued exclusion of disabled people from the general fabric of society.

For 31 years ADAPT has fought to undo the institutional bias in Medicaid that traps disabled people of all ages in nursing homes and other institutions, excluded from their communities.


For 31 years ADAPT has fought to make Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) the norm for disabled people of all ages so they can live in their own homes and communities while receiving the services and supports they need.

If Congress had listened to ADAPT over the past 31 years, the thousands and thousands of COVID deaths that occurred in the nation’s nursing homes in the past 18 months could have been prevented. If Congress had listened to ADAPT over the past 31 years, the Money Follows the Person Program that assists people to leave nursing homes and return to their communities would have been made permanent. If Congress had listened to ADAPT over the past 31 years, the nation’s workforce providing HCBS would be receiving the livable wages and benefits they deserve for the hard and essential work they do. Passing the ADA was a tremendous victory, filled with the promise of liberty and equity. Implementing and enforcing it has proven to be another fight at best, and an exercise in futility at worst.

The yearly anniversary of the ADA will only be truly and authentically celebrated when it’s long overdue promises become our everyday reality for all.

National ADAPT Statement Endorsing Chairwoman Waters’ Housing Infrastructure Bill

National ADAPT, the grassroots, activist, disability justice organization enthusiastically endorses the housing infrastructure bill drafted by Chairwoman Waters and her Committee. ADAPT has fought for over 30 years for disabled people to be able to live in their own homes and communities; marching, protesting, even being arrested. Lack of affordable, accessible, integrated housing remains one of the biggest barriers to independence for the disability community.  This bill supports disabled people in an unprecedented and historic  manner;  greatly expanding vouchers for rent subsidies and for relocating from institutions, doubling accessibility requirements in public housing and adding basic accessibility  called “visitability” in all federally funded housing.

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

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

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.