Voices
It was a beautiful, sunny, spring day as adapt rolled in a convoy of wheelchairs for two city blocks through the streets of Washington D.C. As a deep, male voice chanted in the background “Free our sisters, free our brothers, free our people now!” Sometimes the male voice would change the chants “To Our Homes, not nursing homes!” To me this was my favorite chant, to tell the world that people with disabilities have feelings and rights just like everyone else. “We are the People…” Abraham Lincoln once wrote for all the people not just some. He freed African American from slavery. Now it’s President Obama turn to free us in the health care reformed bill.
Community Choice Care Act allows people with disabilities the right to choose between nursing homes and their own homes, which makes sense in these economic times. Medicare and Medicaid pays double or even triple the amount for nursing homes making our national debt increase. Rather then giving people with disabilities a choice their natural basic right, to choose where and how to live.
Community Choice Care Act also stimulates the economy by giving jobs to the unemployed. Helpers, aides, and PA they help people with disabilities lives to make them much easier to live with. People with disabilities can do just anything attend college, to live on their own, and get a job to pay taxes to decrease the national debt with the right supports. However most people cannot afford to be helpers, aides, or PA, people with disabilities hire and fire their own staff without benefits. Helpers received minimum wage sometimes paying dues into a union that doesn’t always look out for their best interest. Before my trip, my helper had a bad toothache. Without insurance her tooth could not be saved. I felt really terrible about it as her employer but there was nothing I could do about it. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell can pay their employees nine to ten dollars an hour for fast foods. Why are people with disabilities human beings with feelings and rights are below fast foods? It just does not seem right somehow.
Our wheelchair convoy went to the White House to talked President Obama’s spokes people to include the Community Care Choice Act in health reform. They refused so ADAPT took action. President Obama endorsed this act while he was a senator in Congress. What changed his mind? People with disabilities were good enough to believe and vote for him. Now we are not the majority. He is betraying a promise. ADAPT sent a very clear message to him. “We won’t go away!” I got arrested for standing up in what I believe in.
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