PhilosopherCrip

Today, I came the closest to arrest I’ve been so far.  It was quite a wild morning.  We were up and out of the hotel before 5am so that we could make the many mile walk/roll to a Hilton Hotel to visit House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is NOT a CCA co-sponser (come ON Californians, get on that!).  She was scheduled to speak to the American Hospital Association.  We had a plant on the inside that witnessed them locking up the joint and setting up the police line 15 minutes before our arrival.  Now, our targets are generally not known even to the vast majority of ADAPTers themselves, to keep word from leaking out and give an early warning.  This means that they must have had a very organized effort to predict possible targets based on our trajectory.  Is it me or is that not kind of flattering?

So, all we were able to do at the front entrance was make some noise and make it a bit more difficult for conference goers to get through the front door (but we didn’t totally seal things off).  It would have been COOL to get in that building, but our message was heard at least by some folks today.  For an example, see the video inserted below.

However, I was not at the front of the building where the video footage was being shot.  Instead, I was part of a small contingent of mostly power chair users that was able to get around back and block off the parking garage entrance that Pelosi was planning to enter quietly.  Her motorcade arrived and we gave her a bit of an ADAPT style welcome as she went through the only door that had not been barricaded in the entire building.  When the time came for her motorcade to leave, we tried to rush the street and block her passage to force her to talk to us about long term care reform or get taken to jail trying.  The cops saw what we were trying to do and  stepped in our way after the first few of us got out into the street.  I had the experience of being the person between the group that got past and the group that got stuck behind the new, hastily created police line.  I couldn’t slow down fast enough and actually ended up colliding with a cop.  I’m REALLY glad he understood it was an accident and didn’t take me in on assaulting a police officer.  I had JUST finished telling him that we are a non-violent group and just wanted to talk to legislators who ignore our issue.

He then told me to back up and I refused, shutting off my chair.  I wasn’t going to budge unless ADAPT leadership told me to.  He asked me a few times and I refused each, and then he proceeded to keep extending the police tape, looping it under my chin and across my throat so that my head was on one side of the line and body/chair the other.  He told me “don’t even think about crossing this line” knowing i just had to duck a few inches and charge toward the motorcade.  I told him I didn’t come to get arrested needlessly, I came to talk to Pelosi.  In fact, I thought this made for better visual drama and lay there chanting as loudly as I could (which if you have met me, you know is quite loud) as Pelosi exited the building. I held my ground for a good 10 minutes and got away without “going all the way” as they say in ADAPT.  My arrest record is still clean, though this is DEFINITELY the closest I’ve come with my civil disobedience.

a friend called this my post-modern lynching... but i think that is too strong a description

Next, we paid a visit to the lobbying arm of the for-profit nursing home industry or, as I like to call it, the belly of the beast (an apt metaphor I think, as people’s lives are digested and excreted after all the revenue has been absorbed from them).  They came out and promised us a resopnse to our demands within 30 days, after only a few minutes of chanting.  Now, of course it is VERY unlikely that we will get any sort of positive response.  It’s hard to imagine what a compromise with the nursing home industry would even look like, as we are calling for it to no longer exist.  This would be like slave holders compromising with abolitionists.  It borders on logically impossible!