The ADAPT action kicked off yesterday full force with many arrests as well as a celebrity ally, Noah Wyle. Several people, including Wylie were arrested yesterday standing up for our rights and trying to protect our freedom by protesting the attack on Medicaid that could land many people in nursing homes, force them to receive subpar care or no care at all.
These attacks on Medicaid should be viewed as direct attacks on us as a minority group and we need to hold people accountable for these assaults. Cuts to or restructuring of Medicaid directly impacts people today and jeopardizes the future for millions of other people with disabilities.
Our civil rights are not even fully recognized and yet we are being attacked all the time. First, its the threat to restructure Medicaid and threaten our freedom, then it’s the weakening of the ADA by allowing hotels to not be fully accessible. What’s next? We should be able to sleep in our beds at night without constantly having to worry about how we are going to deal with people trying to legislate our freedom away.
Whether it’s pool acces, subminimum wages or segregated housing we need to make sure that we, along with our allies, friends and family, are taking an active role in the struggle for our civil rights. We will not be locked away, paid less or forced to “deal” with inaccessibility. We must stand firm until our needs are met. It’s great that we have ADAPT showing up dramatically in great numbers and getting so much accomplished, but what if they weren’t around? What happens when the action is over and the presence isn’t there? I feel that we need to stay engaged and make our presence felt individually or in numbers. Massive actions are great, but we also should also have a constant stream of personal actions so we aren’t being forgotten or neglected. We cannot allow people to backslide on our freedoms and liberties.
