‘We want to ride’: the 1978 protest that sparked the disability rights movement

Let's go back in time to this exact day 36 years ago.

“It's when President George H.W. Bush picked up his pin”

and signed the landmark piece of legislation. And welcome to everyone of you out there in this splendid scene of hope spread across the south lawn of the White House. The legislation was the Americans with Disabilities Act, an immense civil rights law.

Disabled people could no longer be excluded from jobs, public transit, restaurant stores, and hotels. As he put his name on the law, President Bush thanked the biggest stakeholders, who were perhaps the loudest and advocating for the bill, the tens of millions of Americans with disabilities.

“And to all of you, I just want to say your triumph is that your bill will now be law,”

and that this day belongs to you. And on behalf of our nation, thank you very, very much. One major act of inclusion the law provided involved in dependence. The ADA opened the door to Americans with Disabilities to live and receive care in their own homes,

to live within their community rather than in a nursing home or institution. It's a hard fault right, gained after years of activism. Today on the Sunday Story, NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Stephanie Wolf of Colorado Public Radio are going to share their reporting on this bedrock of disability rights in the U.S. We'll be right back.

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of progress. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with this Sunday's story and an episode about the disability rights movement in America. Now I'm going to hand it over to NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Colorado Public Radio's Stephanie Wolf. I was on the south lawn of the White House. 36 years ago today, as a reporter to cover the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. People came from all over the country with

every kind of disability. It was a celebration. Let the shameful wall of exclusion. Finally,

come tumbling down. God bless you all. I've covered the disability rights movement for decades now. The ADA and all those protections won by the disability community. They're all tied to this right for independent living. And that's the idea that disabled people want the same lives as everyone else to go to school to get jobs to live with family and friends to be part of their community. They didn't want to live in institutions and nursing homes where before the ADA,

people often lived if they needed daily medical and personal care. Independent living is about

“getting that care in their own homes. And that's why we want to start our story by telling you about”

Nicky Bishop. Bishop has a neuromuscular condition called spinal muscular atrophy type two. I was diagnosed when I was about five years old and basically the person just gets progressively we've got as a age. Bishop's 39. She was just a kid when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. So she grew up in a world where so much more was possible for her as a person with significant disabilities. She has a full life now. She's a licensed clinical social worker in

the Denver area and a disability advocate. I've run into her at the Colorado State Capitol before as she lobbied in support of different disability rights bills. So I could walk until I was about

nine years old but always had sort of struggle walking and then just progressively got

weaker as I aged to the point where quite heavily limited upper mobility cannot walk at all.

They help her get out of bed, get dressed, bathed and ready for work because Bishop can't move her body

“on her own. She depends on AIDS about 23 hours a day. It's expensive care. Hundreds of thousands”

of dollars a year if she had to pay for it herself. Private insurance, the kind you get through your job doesn't pay for it but Medicaid does. That's the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. It allows Bishop to have not just her full-time career but also to be a parent to a nine-year-old. Without the disability civil rights movement, Bishop thinks she'd probably be in a nursing home today. Just the amount of opportunities that I've had, you know,

I'm incredibly grateful for that. But like with the gang in 19 and you know, that generation of

advocate, they paved the way for me so that I could be successful. The gang of 19, this really forgotten group of activists is a big reason Bishop is where she is today. In 1978, in Denver,

“this gang really was just a small group of young people in wheelchairs carried out an extraordinary”

act of civil disobedience. It helps set emotion and era of activism that one writes like getting Congress to pass the ADA. It's a fierce title, the gang of 19. But the group of young people met in a place where they had almost no power, a suburban Denver nursing home and not a good one.

No activities, nothing to do warehouse, physical injuries, bedsource, a lot of bedsource.

This is Denver Civil Rights Attorney John Holland talking to us about that nursing home heritage house. It was a cesspool. I mean, they had cockroaches and cereals. Debbie Tracy, I had a photograph of her with flies in her face. She couldn't move her arms and just covered in flies. Heritage house was not a place where these young people could thrive. After all, Holland would later sue that nursing home

“for mistreatment and neglect. But the nursing home would also prove to be a turning point in their”

lives. That's where they met a man named Wade Blank and he would show them they were capable of extraordinary things. Blank who died in 1993 wasn't disabled. He was a Presbyterian minister who turned to political action. Blank was a student in seminary in Chicago when he marched with Martin Luther King at Sama. He did civil rights work in big cities and he was a chaplain at Kent State. But after four students were shot during a protest against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia,

Blank said he felt burned out. He needed a change. He moved to Denver. And he took a job at Heritage House, the nursing home, on the wing with the young residents. He was horrified by conditions there. So was his colleague, Barry Rosenberg. Most of the people who were there were not there because they wanted to be there that there was no place for them. The young residents of the nursing home received support through Medicaid. Back then, it only paid

for long-term medical and personal care inside nursing homes. Institutionalization of Americans with disabilities of all ages was common back then. We realized that some of it was a civil rights issue, you know. Wade Blank with the help of Rosenberg began taking these young people out into the community. They went to rock concerts and on camping trips. I had this Volkswagen van and I took people everywhere. It was a taste of freedom and Blank had pushing for more. He wanted the nursing

home to feel more like a college dorm for these young residents. He got them the registered of vote. He wanted them to make decisions for themselves like what they wanted to eat. And when they wanted to go to sleep, he wanted them to have more agency over their own lives. He challenged the way things were done. Wank had this idea, which some viewed as radical, that these young people should live in their own homes and get their care there. The nursing home eventually fired him.

That same year in 1975, Blank co-founded a Denver group to help find housing and provide other services, including a tendon care, for these young people who'd been stuck at the nursing home. They called it Atlantis community. Wade felt that there were people who were lost and were brilliant people who lived and were undiscovered. Blank convinced the city to least public housing to residents leaving the nursing home. But once these young people and wheelchairs were living

out in the community, they quickly learned getting around town was tough. Sidewalks lacked curb cuts.

So those with physical disabilities couldn't easily and safely get from one block to another.

“And even if they could, city buses weren't accessible. Wade Blank understood that”

writing a bus was a symbol of American civil rights. Here's Blank speaking to that in an old interview with a TV news outlet. "In measure the how I decided to use it in the press groups by how they feed them on public accommodations and you can't say higher the hand of cabin and I have public transport to be welfare accessible." Things came to a head when civil rights attorney John Holland learned that the Denver Metro Transit Agency was going to purchase

more than 200 new buses. "And they were not going to make them wheelchair accessible.

All the lifts had been invented." Holland immediately called Wade Blank. "And I said,

you hear about the buses?" he said I did. I said, "Well, how would you like to be a plaintiff?" They sued, but lost in court. Blank felt they needed a new tactic. He was a student of the civil rights movement and of civil disobedience. So, in that summer of 1978, just days after they lost their court case, he asked the disabled people he'd met at the nursing home to take their fight to the streets of downtown Denver. To one of the busiest intersections in the city,

“at a bus stop near the state capital building. "We have a right to ride on the buses so I think”

it's probably if you better idea to go out and board a few buses." Blank directed one of them, a man named George Roberts, to get in line for the bus in his wheelchair. "So, on July 5th, George Roberts sent patients there to bus stop waiting for the next bus to come. When the door is open, he said, "Can I get on?" This is Blank at a commemoration event for the protest. He recalled that since there was no wheelchair lift, the driver was confused. "And when the bus

driver closed the door, saying, "Noted George, we gave a hand signal and all the other 18 moved into the streets and blocked that bus." "I don't know, it was incredibly easy as long as you had these wolves to do it." Brian McCloud is one of the last living disabled activists from this demonstration.

“"Once the bus is stopped, you have somebody immediately go to the door of the bus."”

"A second person rolled their wheelchair in front of the bus." "And then I'm a third person going

into the side of the bus where the driver can't pull out and go on his way." "So, he's basically trapped. He knows he's cruising. He can't move anywhere." 19 people in wheelchairs surround of the two city buses. They held signs that said things like taxation without transportation and they chanted in the streets. "They would become known as the gang of 19 and they were demanding access to get on to the bus and ride." "And we stayed in the streets all night until

10 o'clock the next day, July 6th. That was our shop around the world." When the police came after the buses were occupied, the police came and they shouted and they got him people's face and no one budged. "This is Barry Rosenberg again. He came to the demonstration to help the protesters." "No one spoke, no one talked back and they just sat and were quiet." The gang of 19 had been taught how to do civil disobedience by a white blank. They knew to

stand their ground and that created a problem for the police. "Well, they weren't going to arrest anybody in the wheelchair. That was pretty obvious." Bill Rome was a personal care attendant. "Not only would the optics look bad but the actual process of trying to get them off the street and getting them into wheelchair inaccessible vans to take to the police say, "I just don't think that was on their itinerary." The police could not figure out how to arrest people in

wheelchairs. Buses weren't accessible nor police vans, the jail or the courthouse. So instead, they began detaining the AIDS assisting those in wheelchairs. "Lisa Wheeler, one of those attendance, challenged the officers." "Why are you resting at the able-bodied person? This person, this person in the wheelchair has been here for longer than I have and it's, you know, it's their fight or rest them. Why won't you do that?" He said, "You know, he told me I needed

to be quiet and I'm going to be charged with a resisting arrest, then you know, I got handcuffed." Wheeler and Rome were not disabled nor were they protesting. As attendance, their role was to help the disabled protesters eat, take medicines, empty catheters. In other words,

on the grounds of equal protection violation." Attorney John Holland, what the court to get the

“charges against the attendance dropped. "Well, less than were they teaching. The lesson was,”

you don't even deserve to have a civil rights movement, which pissed everybody off." Holland argued that the disabled members of the gang of 19 had been denied their civil right to be arrested. The right to be arrested for protesting is an odd right, but it is a right. You have the right to be taken seriously and you don't get that right if they don't. The judge agreed. The gang of 19 protesters won the right to be arrested and treated like

any other protest group, and they achieved their biggest goal. The Denver Metro Transit Agency

eventually agreed to pay for wheelchair lifts on the new fleet of buses. Disabled people can now

get around town. It made the city a nationally recognized leader in having accessible buses. The right to be in the world. That's what the movement was about. That is what the movement is about. "Shund excluded, barred, and barricaded." And the right sought was the right to be included.

“Bobby Simpson, another surviving member, says it was important, and that's why he did it.”

"It kind of scared me a little bit." "You're part of it now, don't you?" "Yeah. It changed lies." "You're listening to the Sunday's story. We'll be right back." "This is our glass of the American Life." "Do you know our show?" "Okay. We'll be the way I'm going to tell you about it." "We make stories that hopefully pull you into the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations

and then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening." "That's right. I'm talking about stories to make you miss appointments." "This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts." On the streets of Denver, 19 disabled protesters block buses to demand accessible transportation.

“"The right to be in the world." "That's what the movement was about."”

On the Sunday's story, how an often forgotten group of activists in 1978 helped spark the modern-day disability rights movement. Listen now to the Sunday's story

from the up-first podcast on the NPR app.

Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Hey, take a break from the 24-hour news cycle with us and listen to long-form interviews with your favorite authors, actors, filmmakers, comedians, and musicians. The people making the art that nourishes us and speaks to our times. So listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. "We're back with the Sunday's story and reporting from Joseph Shapiro and Stephanie Wolf

about 19 disabled young people. In 1983, they became founding members of a national grassroots advocacy group called Adapt. At first their mission was to get wheelchair lifts on all public buses across the country, but eventually they started fighting for a wide range of disability rights. Adapt became known for its very in-your-face theatrical style of protested. They'd go to public transit conventions and chain themselves to the building or buses,

or organize sit-ins at government offices, demanding to talk with officials and policy makers." Adapt members also began demonstrating for the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, the new federal legislation to protect people with disabilities. By the time Congress was debating the ADA, it had been more than a decade since the gang of 19 had blocked the buses. Adapt had grown its ranks and their were chapters around the country.

So in March of 1990, Adapt members care of and from different parts of the U.S. to Washington, D.C. They organized a rally of hundreds near the U.S. Capitol building. I was there that day at 1990 when about 3,000 people came out of their wheelchair and crawled up the 83 marble steps of the U.S. Capitol. Each carried a scrolled paper to give the members of Congress with the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

The demonstration became known as the U.S. Capitol crawl, a visual protest of the barriers faced by people with disabilities. There was also a effect of behind-the-scenes lobbying from national disability groups. Every member of Congress got visits from constituents.

law. Soon after Congress passed the ADA with large bipartisan

authorities. It was a huge victory. Still advocates felt the ADA was the floor, not the ceiling. I went to Denver's central library branch to look through its archives on Adapt's history and found documents showing that after the ADA passed, Adapt members still found plenty to protest about and get arrested over. It's why their slogan became free are people. One of Adapt's big goals was to recreate what Wade White had done in Denver to get disabled

people out of nursing homes and other institutions, but now all over the country. That meant finding the funding for a tendon care and aid to help a disabled person get

“in and out of their wheelchair out of bed to get dressed, make meals. That assistance was key”

to living in the community. It's become the real undercurrent of what they advocate for.

Support for people to not get stuck in nursing homes. Then in Georgia, two women with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities who lived in state hospitals sued to get out. Their case reached the US Supreme Court. And in 1999, in what's called the "own-step decision" the High Court rule that disabled people who need long-term care have a right to get it in the community. This was huge. It forced states to create services and provide funding to help to

say what people live in their own homes, not in institutions. But in the last year, disabled people say the Trump administration has put much of that progress and funding in jeopardy.

“A recently released Justice Department memo questions decades of protections for Americans with”

Disabilities. They point to cuts and Medicaid and new work requirements to even qualify for Medicaid. And in June, the Justice Department issued a legal memo that suggests states no longer have that obligation to make sure disabled people can live in their own homes. That is set up a potential legal fight down the road. Now, many people in the disability community worry that they'll need to get their care in nursing homes. I mean, we are talking about life and death.

Right? Not just, oh, you know, some frivolous policy. Nikki Bishop, the Denver area mother in licensed clinical social worker who has a disability and relies on nearly round the clock at home care, is worried all of this independence she's worked so hard to build is at risk. That's because if the federal government is an acting as a watchdog, she's concerned states will start to chip away at programs that provide in home support

“services in order to save money and balance budgets. Almost dead is so fundamentally important”

for the rights of individuals with disability that it ultimately determines our survival

in our community. And so without those programs, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be able to live. Those cutbacks are already starting to happen in Colorado. And a tough budget year, the state legislature capped paid Medicaid hours for caregivers. Bishop still has professional care coming to her home most days a week. But her dad Roy has stepped in to fill the gaps. Yeah, my alarm went off at rated 11. So that's helping me out with some medication management.

It's getting harder. Still, Nikki Bishop shows what's possible for people with significant disabilities. She can work. She can be a mom. She can live in her community. And yes, care for someone with a disability can be expensive. But on average, it costs less to care for someone like Nikki Bishop in her own home than in a nursing home. So here we are on the 36th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and disabled people fear the rights they won with that

all are under attack advocates. I've spoken to including Bishop had hoped that by 2026, they'd be pushing for stronger and new protections versus affirming already existing ones. I'm devastated to watch all of this happening and to witness this after we've come so far over the last 50 years. At the same time, I also feel a sense of resiliency from my community and a person's with disabilities in general. We are very adaptable. We have to constantly

think on our feet. We have to constantly think outside of the box and how to solve complex problems on a daily basis at times for survival. Bishop says as the disability rights movement

mantle to protest, to fight, to be loud and to protect those hard one rights for disabled people

“to live in their communities like everybody else. That was NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Stephanie”

Wolf of Colorado Public Radio. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Ben Rappaport

withheld from Andrew Mombo. It was edited by Janice Schmidt, our rival audio from the US capital crawl is courtesy of documentary filmmaker Linda Latowski, engineering by Anlie Huang. The rest of the Sunday Story team and cool Sharon Machichi, Justin Jan and Liana Semstrom.

Our executive producer is Irene Naguchi. I'm Aisha Roscoe and up first will be back tomorrow

“with all the news you need to start your week. Until then have a great rest of your weekend.”

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