Interview with Jim Parker

Elderly & Disability Services Division, State of New Mexico, Jim is an original Gang of 19 member who on 5 July, 1978, with Wade Blank and 18 other disabled people stepped off the sidewalk at Colfax and Broadway in the centre of Denver and trapped a bus for three days. Atlantis continued to campaign until 1983, when the bus company agreed to purchase only accessible vehicles. In 1983, ADAPT (the American Disabled for Accessible Public Transport) was born and staged its first national action in Denver, demanding that all disabled people could ride public transit. The We Will Ride campaign lasted until 1990, winning victories throughout the USA and inspiring disabled people all over the world to use the tactics of non-violent civil disobedience to “boldly go where everyone else has been before”. It inspired the birth in the UK of the Campaign for Accessible Transport and subsequently the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN). ADAPT played a crucial role in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 (ADA), with disabled people crawling up the Capitol steps in Washington, DC, to ensure that the act was not watered down (pictured far left). In 1990, with the ADA signed, ADAPT became the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, turning its energy to getting people out of nursing homes and supporting them in the community. They also stopped people going into these institutions. Over the last 18 years, ADAPT has been directly responsible for tens of thousands of disabled people getting out of nursing homes and living in the community. ADAPT fights for the services and the housing needed so that all disabled people can live where they choose, with who they choose, and direct the assistance they need themselves. With its unceasing advocacy at local, state and national levels, ADAPT is indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of disabled people living in the community rather than institutions. On Valentine’s Day 2007, as