Action Report

Check this same page later for current news and photos of the ADAPT Action

More than 800 activists, many of them former nursing home residents who have fought for their freedom, will gather in Washington, D.C. from Sunday, June 18 to Thursday, June 22 to advocate for a change in what they are labeling a broken long-term care system. The 800 are members of ADAPT, a national grassroots disability rights group, and numerous other groups representing people with disabilities. Ten people from Tennessee will join others coming from as far as California and Washington State, from Michigan, Montana, and Missouri, to demand that Congress and the Clinton Administration take legislative action to give "Real Choice" to all Americans in how and where they receive long term care.

ADAPT, during the weeklong protests, will send a message to the Clinton Administration to implement the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead, which was issued in June 1999. The Tennessee Department of Health has not made a simple answer to citizens' complaints or made the first moves to implement Olmstead.

A rally in Upper Senate Park will kick off ADAPT's series of protests to demand expanded home and community based services. They will send a message to Congress to pass MiCASSA, the Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports Act, S. 1935, introduced by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and co-sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA). This bipartisan bill allows people to choose to live and receive services in the community rather than being forced into a nursing home or other institution.

Several thousand people are expected at the "Faces and Voices" rally, which begins at 2pm on Sunday, June 18, in Upper Senate Park on the Capitol Grounds. A march will follow the rally, and kick off the protests planned for the week.

ADAPT also charges both presidential candidates with ignoring the issue of Medicaid long term care reform in their campaigns, angering the disability community. "We are the faces and voices of a failed public policy," said Bob Kafka, national organizer for ADAPT, "It's criminal that in the year 2000 people are still being forced into nursing homes. We are fed up with the rhetoric. It is time for Congress, the Clinton Administration, and the presidential candidates to take a position on MiCASSA."