Guest blog post: Anita Cameron, ADAPT History Project
Anita Cameron is an activist and a member of ADAPT. She describes herself this way: “I’m a disability rights activist, CERT instructor/Program Manager, writer and cat lover who has been fighting the good fight for almost 30 years.”
ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom.
The follow excerpt is a story by Anita about her direct action in Chicago in 1992:
Ah, Chicago! I remember that action well. Chicago is my hometown, and it was the first time in four years that I had been back since moving to Colorado. On Sunday, a Mother’s Day action was planned, but ADAPT learned that Louis Sullivan, Secretary of Health and Human Services, was in town. We certainly weren’t going to snub the gift that the ADAPT gods had placed before us! Sullivan was in Chicago to give the commencement address to two graduating classes at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle – which happens to be my alma mater! I was excited to be one of the 30 or so ADAPTers who made it into the UIC Pavilion. We went in undercover, which for us, meant not showing our ADAPT T-shirts. The rest of us were outside leafleting the folks who were going in for the ceremonies. Once inside, we unfurled our huge banner that read “State Schools/Nursing Homes: Hell No We Won’t Go”. That banner hung across the stage for a while – maybe twenty-minutes or more that I can remember. Of course, the majority of us got kicked out immediately, but a few – Bob Kafka, myself, and a couple of others managed to stay inside. When Sullivan began speaking, we began chanting and disrupting his speech. I remember Bob Kafka and me scooting on our butts down the steps to try to get onto the stage, but we were picked up and booted out.
For the entire blog post: http://www.adapt.org/freeourpeople/adapt25/narratives/19adapt.htm
Check out other stories by ADAPT members celebrating their history of activism: http://www.adapt.org/freeourpeople/adapt25/
For more on ADAPT: http://www.adapt.org
More on Anita Cameron: http://wefollow.com/adaptanita
Blog: http://www.angryblackwomyn.com/blog
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/anitacameron
Twitter: https://twitter.com/adaptanita
Anita’s profile at The Mobility Resource: http://www.themobilityresource.com/author/anita/
Anita’s articles at Yahoo! Voices: http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/691438/anita_cameron.html
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Would you like to write a guest blog post for us?
Email Alice: DisabilityVisibilityProject@gmail.com
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