PhilosopherCrip

At this point, I’m pretty tired and have to be up really early to get ready to hit tomorrow’s target.  Yesterday, I spent the entire day in the car.  I mean this literally. I left my place at 930am on Saturday.  I parked in Atlanta at 530am on Sunday.  It should have only taken 14 hours, but we had some setbacks.  I will leave it at that. My van is still functional and I am still functional, but I won’t be if I’m not in bed soon.  Not all of the ride was negative though.  My new friend Joe, who used to work as a radio dj, controlled my radio and we had quite the late night sing along (everything from the Rolling Stones to Jewel to Nine Inch Nails was to be had).

Today, I drank  an energy shot (called “Full Throttle” and it tasted characteristically like evil in a tiny plastic canister.in the morning and that has kept me moving, in some fashion.  At least I seem to be able to put these sentences together well enough.  I began with a training as a new “Color Leader.”  Now, when folks refer to ADAPT as the “militant” wing of the disability rights movement, they are more accurate than they may realize.  To some degree, ADAPT’s organizational structure is a representative democracy as actions are being dliberated and planned.  However, when the wheelchair tire rubber meets the road, we turn into a highly authoritarian, quasi-militaristic structure, complete with chain of command and an expectation to follow orders exactly.  This has all been a matter of reflection for me (particularly how trust relationships operate within a direct action activism structure), some of which will hopefully find its way into a future blog entry.  Anyway, a Color Leader can be described as anything from a sargent to middle management to a person trying to hurd a pack of cats.  I think the best I can do is to say that we are responsible for communicating between the strategists and the foot soldiers, keeping them orderly, safe, and fired up.

My favorite part of this is the chanting.  That’s always my favorite part of any action really.  It’s down right therapuetic for someone who spends almost every day identifying and analyzing social structures that oppress people with disabilities in various ways.  This leads to a great deal of pent up rage that a good chant can help release in a constructive way (constructive in that it  raises social awareness to at least sme degree).  Today, as color leader I was able to actually lead the chants.  I was even getting looks from other cover leaders for what I refer to as my “battle voice” (I don’t ACTUALLY refer to it as this, except to myself in my head).

Also, this was the first time i’ve experienced the rush of an act of civil disobedience.  I was one of a few chair users blocking traffic in downtown Atlanta so our rowdy procession could pass uninterupted.  A motorcycle cop came up to me, demanding I move and saying that he “couldn’t hold up traffic forever.”  I said I couldn’t do that.  He said “I’m an officer of the law.”  I told him, very calmly, that I was certain we had a parade liscence and that he didn’t have to help us block traffice, I had the situation under control if he had something else he had to get to.  When he saw I wasn’t leaving unless he was ready to physically remove me, he got on his bike and road off.  I wonder f I’ll see him tomorrow when we are out to actually be disruptive.  I had no guilt at holding up a few cars from their Sunday drives for a few minutes if it did some work to raising awareness around how people’s entire LIVES were being held up as they were institutionalized - indeed incarcerated - against their will by the Federal and State benefits system.

We finally ended up at the famous Ebaneezer Church, which is now a memorial, museum, and gravesite of Martin Luther King Jr.  The tone of the gathering changed as we entered the rose garden, the anger leaving our voices and our hearts as we heard from nursing home survivors, one of which who was institutionalized as a child because of seizures and hadn’t had anyone sing her happy birthday to her outside of an institutional setting for 43 years.  We also sang many community choice songs, and concluded the outing with a slow, deeply moving march home past a nursing home as we sang the famous civil rights song “We Will Overcome.”  The nursing home had a barbed wire fence around it and signs on the front doors that read “Do not open these doors” in red letters.  I do hope the residents there saw, heard, and understood what it was we were trying to do.

Tomorrow sounds like it will be a series of serious challenges to even get to our target.  This will include a march through a day long rain storm.  This will be a small price to pay compaired to the suffering of the people who live behind doors that refuse to be opened.  To those who would not have us open the doors to people wasting away in nursing homes, I leave some lyrics “Amp up and amplify, Defy, I’m a brother with a furious mind, Action must be taken, We don’t need the key, We’ll break in!”  Atlanta has no idea what kind of power is about to hit it.