Protesters for disabled block streets

By Joanna Horowitz
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Additional protests are expected this morning, and the Seattle Police Department advised commuters to expect traffic delays and possible street closures around the hotel between Fourth and Seventh avenues and Union and Stewart streets.

American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) was part of scheduled protests earlier in the weekend but decided to take to the streets again yesterday in an impromptu demonstration after a meeting with Matt Salo, director of the NGA's Health and Human Services Committee, didn't go the way the group had hoped.

ADAPT is lobbying for the governors to sign a resolution pledging to favor care for the disabled and elderly in their homes rather than forced institutionalization.

Mike Oxford, one of ADAPT's national organizers from Kansas, said that ADAPT asked Salo at the morning meeting yesterday to take the resolution to the governors but that he refused.

"Really he wasn't prepared to do anything," Oxford said. "People kind of shouted him out of the room."

Christine LaPaille, the NGA's director of communications, said Salo has met with the group a number of times in the past. He was surprised when he arrived at the Red Lion Hotel on Fifth Avenue and found a large crowd, including news-media representatives.

"It was a news conference, and he wasn't prepared," she said.

LaPaille said Salo told the crowd that long-term care was one of the issues on the agenda for the governors' discussion.

That answer didn't sit well with ADAPT members.

"There was only one thing that came out of that and that was nothing," said John Loyd, one of the core members of Missouri's ADAPT group.
 
"They don't want to open a can of worms," he said. "Well, this isn't a can of worms. This is a can of people, and we're being kept in a can."

The group blocked intersections between Olive and Stewart on Sixth, at Stewart and Westlake and at Fifth and Stewart. They chanted "NGA, pass the resolution," lying in crosswalks to write messages in chalk and carrying signs with slogans such as "Get government off my back, let me live at home."

"It's time for Washington and our legislators to see there is a powerful group nationally," said Katrinka Gentile, chairwoman of the Washington State Independent Living Council.

Protesters said they planned to stay until someone would speak with them.

"I'd rather go to jail than go to a nursing home," said Ricki Landers of Salt Lake City. "I'll stay here until whenever."

But LaPaille said the NGA is not the forum for that type of meeting.

"We do not set up meetings with them with the governors," LaPaille said.

She said that in the past there had been an agreement that protests would stop after meetings were held, but ADAPT continued to protest.

"It seems like what they really want to do is hold a rally," LaPaille said.

The ADAPT demonstration ended later in the afternoon.

Seattle police had not been told about yesterday's protest, said department spokeswoman Deanna Nollette. However, the department has been planning for the NGA meeting for more than a year and had officers ready to deploy, she said.

Joanna Horowitz: 206-464-3312 or jhorowitz@seattletimes.com