Denver: A Cradle of Activism

Denver, CO (June 27, 2000) - The Spirit of ADA Torch Relay kicked-off from two locations in metropolitan Denver with each group of torch bearers, one east and one west, passing historic disability rights landmarks for the city, and in some cases for the United States.

Joe Ehman, an organizer for ADAPT and Head of Atlantis Community Inc.'s Department of Modification, participated as a torch bearer on the east route which began at ADAPT's original offices in Denver, passed by the site of the city's first curb cut, and stopped briefly at the McDonalds where demonstrators blocked entrances in 1984, resulting in McDonalds' decision to become disability accessible in all its locations across the country. The two groups, east and west, united at the Civic Center Park in downtown Denver.

Ehman explained that ADAPT, an organizer of Denver's Relay event along with Atlantis, once stood for American Disabled for Accessible Transportation. "When we won that one," Ehman said, "it became American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today." Ehman described ADAPT as an activist group with offices in 37 cities across the country.

On a national level ADAPT, which started twenty-five years ago in Denver, is currently dedicated to lobbying for the Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports Act (MiCASSA), a bill they wrote in 1999. "We've got legislation in the House and Senate which says every state in the union and the territories are suppose to provide nursing services under Medicaid law, " Ehman explained. "Home and community based services are completely optional so States don't have to provide them so when you become elderly or disabled or even as a child in some States your only option is to go to a nursing home, " Ehman said. MiCASSA establishes a national program of community-based attendant services and supports for people with disabilities regardless of age or disability, providing the people affected with choice.

It is no coincidence that the west Relay route began at the nursing home in Lakeview where some of the first people with disabilities in the Denver area went out to live in the community. The group of about thirty torch bearers on this path passed the torch over a 4 plus mile stretch to the Civic Center site where the roster of speakers included, among others, the Housing and Urban Development Deputy Secretary Saul Rameriz, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, and representatirves from Congresswoman Diane DeGette's office and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell's office.

Atlantis/ADAPT co-founder and Executive Director Mike Auberger opened the ceremony calling Denver "the cradle of the disability rights movement." "Because of the tireless advocacy efforts over the past twenty-five years of Atlantis/ADAPT and with the cooperation of the city and the county of Denver," Auberger continued, "Denver has been named the most accessible city in America."

Other events at the Denver festivities included a re-enactment of a bus demonstration that resulted in the 1989 decision of Denver's Public Transportation Department to voluntarily agree to buy lift equipped busses only from then on.

Today, RTD, Denver's bus company, spends $10 million annually on its access-a-ride program that serves nearly 360,000 passengers each year.

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