The Capitol Crawl

THE CAPITOL CRAWL

Activists Brought Social and Physical Obstacles to Light to Help Pass the ADA

Story by Craig Collins

By March 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) had made significant progress on its way to becoming law. It had already passed the Senate by a 76-8 vote months earlier, and it had powerful sponsors and supporters in both the House and the Senate, in both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, it had stalled in the House, grinding its way through several committees. Given other abandonments of legal recognition of the civil rights of people with disabilities, like the implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and writing of regulations, people within the disability community were not entirely optimistic that things would work out well in the end.

The uncertain future of the ADA legislation explains why Capitol Hill became the setting for one of American history’s most extraordinary public protests – why 60 people with disabilities cast aside their wheelchairs, crutches, and walkers to crawl or drag themselves, step by step, up the 78 marble stairs of the Capitol’s West Front on March 12, 1990. The Capitol Crawl, as the protest came to be known, was intended to bring to light the obstacles, physical and social, that people with disabilities faced daily in their efforts just to proceed with their lives. By openly illustrating the struggles that people in the disabilities community faced, the protesters hoped to spur Congress to pass the ADA and protect the civil rights of people with disabilities.

The protest on the steps of the Capitol was not without precedent. Before there was a campaign to pass the ADA, there was a campaign to ride public buses.

It began in Denver, in 1974, when a radical minister by the name of Wade Blank, after being fired from his job as a nursing home aide for repeated acts of rebellion against the dehumanization of the nursing home residents, established Colorado’s first independent living center, the Atlantis Community; it was also one of the first independent living centers in the nation. Within a few years, it became obvious to Blank and the other members of the Atlantis Community that it would be impossible for people with disabilities to live independently if they couldn’t move about freely – and they couldn’t move about freely if operators such as local transit authorities continued to delay making the modifications, including wheelchair lifts on buses, required by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The residents formed an organization modeled after the grassroots, nonviolent direct-action groups that had achieved so much during the civil rights movement.

Atlantis staged its first protest on July 5 and 6, 1978, when Blank and a group known as the “Gang of 19” surrounded two inaccessible buses operated by Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD), boxing them in for 24 hours. These first activists – like the Greensboro Four who sparked the nationwide campaign to integrate public lunch counters in 1960 – inspired further action. As their battle for access to RTD continued, they took steps to address the transportation accessibility problem in communities across the nation. Atlantis began the Access Institute and recruited disability activists from around the country. These individuals eventually formed ADAPT, American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. Protesters blocked buses and crawled up the stairs of buses to illustrate the absurdity of the operators’ refusal to comply with federal law. In 1982, Denver’s Regional Transit District conceded, ordering 89 new accessible buses.

ADAPT’s Denver success led it to form chapters in other cities. For the next seven years, the organization mobilized protests at biannual conventions of the American Public Transit Association, or APTA (now American Public Transportation Association), the trade association for public transportation providers.

On March 12, 1990, a group of disability rights activists cast aside their wheelchairs, crutches, and walkers and crawled or dragged themselves up the marble steps of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., to bring to light the obstacles faced by people with disabilities. The demonstration, known as the Capitol Crawl, was part of a larger campaign to support passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act as a means to protect civil rights for people with disabilities.

Tom Olin Photography

In September 1989, as public and private bus operators were trying to load up on cheap, inaccessible buses in advance of the ADA’s anticipated passage, ADAPT members occupied the federal building in downtown Atlanta overnight, where they received a clear signal that the White House was on their side: As they were being arrested and cleared out by police, President George H. W. Bush himself called to request that they be escorted back inside. The next day, officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) arrived by helicopter to help negotiate a temporary moratorium on inaccessible bus purchases.

The Wheels of Justice Campaign

This was where things stood in March 1990: The ADA remained bottled up in the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation (now the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure). From the outset of the campaign to pass the ADA, the provisions that most concerned advocates were those covering transportation, which were opposed by a powerful lobby including groups such as Amtrak, Greyhound, the American Bus Association, and APTA. One of the most influential allies for these groups was Bud Shuster, R-Pa., a committee member who had authored a “poison pill” amendment exempting rural areas from making buses accessible.

ADAPT’s leaders – including Mark Johnson, national leader Mike Auberger, and Bob Kafka and Stephanie Thomas of ADAPT of Texas – decided the time had come to press their advantage: They would go to Washington, publicize their cause, and demand to meet with House leaders, including Shuster, to persuade them to vote the ADA out of committee and bring it to the floor, where it was sure to pass into law.

ADAPT members came together in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, March 11; a total of about 200 activists congregated at a hotel sharing the only three wheelchair accessible guestroom bathrooms. The following day about 475 people, many in wheelchairs, gathered on the sidewalk in front of the White House to launch what they called the Wheels of Justice Campaign. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, where they were joined by another 250 people at the bottom of the marble steps leading up to the West Front of the Capitol Building.

In the years leading up to the Capitol Crawl, disability rights activists had engaged in nonviolent direct actions protesting public transit authorities and private transportation companies that failed to provide accommodations for people with disabilities.

Tom Olin Photography

Here Kafka introduced several speakers: First was Justin Dart, the new chairman of the President’s Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities, who praised the marchers as the “pioneer patriots of the 20th century.” Several others followed: members of Congress; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Evan Kemp; I. King Jordan, the first deaf president of Gallaudet University; and James Brady, the former White House press secretary who had been shot in the head during the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

Activist Mike Auberger locks himself to a revolving door during a protest in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tom Olin Photography

The crowd of approximately 1,000 people – one of the largest and most diverse disability rights protests in history, with people representing many different disabilities – was spirited, occasionally erupting in shouts of “Access is our civil right!” and “We will ride!” Protesters became electrified, however, when Auberger wheeled up to the microphone to tell his story: As a ninth-grade student on a tour, he said, he had once walked up these very steps, but a 1971 accident had left him with quadriplegia. “Today I sit here with you as lessthan-second-class citizens who are still legally discriminated against daily,” he said. The crowd shouted encouragement as he continued, his voice rising with emotion:

Among us are those who have been forced to live in institutions against their will. There are those among us who have had our children taken away solely because we were disabled. We have been denied housing and jobs. These indignities and injustices must not go on. We will not permit these steps to continue to be a barrier to prevent us from the equality that is rightfully ours. The preamble of the Constitution does not say: “We the able-bodied people.” It says: “We the people.” That was the agreed-upon cue for ADAPT protesters to throw themselves out of their chairs and begin crawling up the marble steps of the Capitol. A few people knew something was going to happen, but only a handful knew the plan. Yet as people saw what was taking place, more and more joined the crawl. Some who could not crawl were assisted by others to make their way up. Sixty people joined in.

Justin Dart, pictured here among a crowd of protesters, was the first person to speak at the gathering at the West Front of the Capitol preceding the crawl.

Tom Olin Photography

Kafka found the 78-step crawl more physically demanding than he’d expected: “It took me forever,” he said. “It was embarrassing. People were passing me on the steps. I think it must have taken me 45 minutes. Some of the stronger people actually pulled their own wheelchairs up to the top. I was fascinated by that.”

Though the march, and the ensuing crawl, comprised one of the largest disability direct actions to date, it was still pretty small by Washington standards, and didn’t make it into many of the next morning’s national newspapers, though the New York Times had both a story and a beautiful photo. But Kafka and the event’s other architects hadn’t aimed the crawl at the print media. For the people who saw the crawl on regional television newscasts that night, the imagery of disabled people dragging themselves up the Capitol steps was so bizarre and shocking that few likely remembered the purposeful actions that followed.

The next day, Tuesday, 200 disabled activists, led by Kafka, Thomas, Auberger, Blank, and Johnson, showed up in the Capitol Rotunda for a scheduled “tour” of the building, but slowly chained their wheelchairs together, began chanting, and demanded to speak to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, R-Ill., and Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. (Other legislators were there; Steny Hoyer, D-Md., for one, spoke with protesters at length.) Foley and Michel spoke a lot about prompt passage of the ADA but would make no commitments, so the activists refused to disperse and Capitol police began arresting and taking them away, one by one in the building’s tiny elevator. One hundred and four ADAPT members were arrested, and it took more than six hours to get them out of the building.

On Wednesday, after a failed attempt to disrupt service on the Capitol train, activists regrouped and took over the office of Shuster, who had authored the amendment weakening the ADA’s transportation provisions. Sixtyfour more activists were arrested. Thursday and Friday were spent in court, where Auberger was slapped with a $500 fine and placed on a year’s probation; when he, Thomas, and three others reported to the federally funded probation office on Friday, they found that there was no ramp allowing them into the building. Marble steps were provided for those without disabilities, but the wooden ramp had rotted away and had not been replaced. Their lawyer was forced to intervene to get them registered for the year of probation.

A group of 200 activists with disabilities congregate in the Capitol Rotunda on March 13, 1990, demanding to speak with U.S. representatives to urge them to pass the ADA. One hundred and four members of ADAPT were arrested. (Stephanie Thomas is pictured in the center of the group with her fist raised.)

Tom Olin Photography

Shuster’s amendment was among several rejected in the House. The bill went to conference, where one of the last restrictive amendments, the infamous Chapman amendment, allowing employers to remove persons with contagious diseases (i.e., AIDS) from foodhandling positions, was excised after heated debate. The bill passed overwhelmingly and was signed into law by Bush on July 26.

The Crawl’s Legacy

After winning the fight for public transit access, ADAPT changed its focus to community-based services and deinstitutionalization. For years after 1990, ADAPT stood for “American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today.” Today ADAPT is involved in a variety of campaigns, and is no longer considered an acronym: It’s just ADAPT.

Protesters occupy the office of Rep. Bud Shuster, who had authored an amendment weakening transportation provisions in the ADA; 64 activists were arrested.

Tom Olin Photography

On the ADA’s second anniversary in 1992, the city of Denver dedicated a plaque at the intersection of Broadway and Colfax, honoring the names of Wade Blank and the Gang of 19. A large mural inside the transit station now memorializes Blank’s legacy.

Numerous observers – including many who had fought passionately for the ADA – questioned ADAPT’s tactic of crawling up the Capitol steps, and particularly the group’s inclusion of 8-yearold Jennifer Keelan – a woman who, Kafka pointed out, is now studying at Arizona State University and preparing for a career in occupational therapy. Mary Johnson, editor of the disability rights publication The Disability Rag, wrote: “One might question why a movement intent on showing that disabled people are adults, not children, would make their central media image a child.” The counterargument by crawl participants maintains that Keelan was one of 60 people who participated in the crawl – she was not the center. Additionally, organizers of the crawl saw the action as a fight for recognition and equality not just for themselves, but for the future generations of people with disabilities, as well – for children like Keelan.

Michael Winter, left, and Jennifer Keelan on their climb up the Capitol steps during the crawl. Of the action, Winter later wrote, “I felt that it was necessary to show the country what kinds of things people with disabilities have to face on a day-to-day basis.”

Tom Olin Photography

It’s also true, however, that the image of young Jennifer Keelan climbing the Capitol steps – like the image of Birmingham schoolchildren being blasted with fire hoses, or of a lone man with shopping bags facing down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square – is today an unforgettable emblem of a historic movement.

And that, really, was the whole point of the Capitol Crawl. Years after completing the crawl – just behind Keelan, every step of the way – the late Michael Winter, former executive director of Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living, contributed his reflections to ADAPT’s 25th anniversary “I Was There” series of firsthand accounts:

“Some people may have thought it was undignified for people in wheelchairs to crawl in that manner,” Winter wrote, “but I felt that it was necessary to show the country what kinds of things people with disabilities have to face on a day-to-day basis. We had to be willing to fight for what we believed in.”