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First, note the details of how this activists' group "was hurting many of the rank-and-file workers who joined state government to help people."
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The streets they chose effectively boxed in drivers in several parking garages and large surface lots designated for state workers. The Tennessee Tower, for instance, in the heart of the protest zone, is the workplace for 2,300 people.Many state workers left work late — and angry.
Secretary Carolyn Newman said she needed medicine at home that she takes for her epilepsy."At 7:30, I was beginning to get a little frightened," she said. She said she asked the protesters to let her leave and they refused. That was stunning, she said, because the group was hurting many of the rank-and-file workers who joined state government to help people. Now, this group was preventing many from picking up children at day care, catching planes, or getting medicine."They said, 'We don't have our medicine, either,' " Newman said. "Don't they know we are the people up here helping people?"
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My experience in attending hearings and task force meetings regarding mainly protecting institutionalized or group home residing mentally retarded and the severely autistic, was that these NON mentally retarded, NON autistic, wheel-chair bound "activists" would try to take over and make such meetings focus on THEIR agenda, which had next to no overlap. For instance, we'd have a three hour hearing scheduled months in advance. Every speaker would submit written comments and have 15 minutes to verbally summarize their position and take questions from the task force members. Each speaker was representing a group - perhaps an association of family members, or various special interest groups dealing with mental retardation, autism, etc. The speakers would have traveled from around the state to get there, and often many members of their groups came along to sit in the audience.
Then the representative of ADAPT would wheel him or herself up for their 15 minutes. But they would proceed to filibuster - 30 minutes, 45 minutes, a whole HOUR, for god's sake. What ADAPT counts on, and it usually worked, is that the chairman of the panel would be so afraid of appearing to be "mean" to someone in a wheelchair, that they wouldn't interrupt and say, your time has long expired, let alone have a security guard simply move the person in the wheelchair away from the microphone.
By these actions, ADAPT pre-empted the concerns of every other group at the hearing.
On another occasion, we held a hearing in suburban Philadelphia. Again we had people scheduled to address the panel for 15 minutes each. There was a fairly large auditorium full of interested citizens/members of different groups. The chairman of the panel was a GOP representative who had incurred the wrath of his party and Governor Tom Ridge by shining a bright light on abusive practises of severely retarded people living in corporate-owned, big profit making "group homes." It was at the point that when this man went to GOP gatherings, the governor and others would snub him and refuse to speak with him. As far as I was concerned, this man was a saint.
So here we are at this Phillie hearing. ADAPT members lined the entryway, screaming at us as we entered. There were other ADAPT members in the audience who, after the hearing began, and speakers got up to address the panel, began chanting in loud screams which drowned out the speakers. After about 10 solid minutes of this, the chairman had to close the hearing and state police were called in to guard the House representatives as they left the auditorium. This was the only time I have ever heard of in decades, of a legislative hearing having to be closed down because of audience protesters.
Unfortunately for me, I stayed behind to collect all the copies of the statements which the various speakers were submitting to the committee. This was particularly important since ADAPT had robbed them of the opportunity to address the panel. As I was leaving, a female ADAPT member came up behind me and rammed her wheel chair foot supports right in to the backs of my ankles. All she knew about me was that I was with the group from Harrisburg/ state government. I was also a person who was fighting tooth and nail to help the families and their severely retarded sons, daughters, aunts, children, etc. I was a person who lost sleep at night from the horror stories I had uncovered about abuse of the retarded ingroup homes and prisons. I was both stunned and frightened by the attack. I got into my car ASAP and for the first 30 miles that I drove, until I got on the Turnpike, I was checking my rearview mirrors to see if any of these nuts in their special vans were getting ready to run me off the road.
Among my various qualifications are a degree in Psych. and 3 years as a research fellow for the National Institute of Mental Health. I'm here to tell you that the people in ADAPT are mentally ill. They see themselves as above the law. They have a lot of unmanaged rage at their handicaps which keep them in wheelchairs. They have no empathy for people who have different problems. And they count on the fact that it would be so difficult to arrest or jail someone in a wheelchair that the cops will leave them alone.
We have a president who is attacking the Rule of Law from the top; and we have these crazies attacking it from the bottom.
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