This Saturday April 30, a busload of Rochester area disability rights activists will travel to Washington, D.C. to join hundreds from around the country for a week of actions to defend our freedom from massive budget cuts to home and community based services. The message to Congress and the Obama Administration is to “Stop De-funding Our FREEDOM!”

The weather forecast in Washington, D.C. next week is predicting heavy thunderstorms. But ADAPT is a strong and determined group and will march to confront policy makers no matter what conditions they must face.

The budget battles that we’ve seen in New York are happening everywhere. As Bruce Darling says, “For people with disabilities and those who are aging, it feels like we are being drowned in a man-made tsunami of cuts to Medicaid services.”

After the New York budget fight, people who depend on Medicaid for the attendant services they need to live in their own homes are very worried. Everyone will be required to enroll in managed care in the near future. The fear is that “managed care” really means “managed cost,” in other words – cuts in hours of assistance that a person receives for tasks like bathing and dressing. Such cuts could force people who currently live in freedom into nursing facilities against their will.

The 1999 U.S. Supreme Court Olmstead decision, affirming Title II of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, mandates that people with disabilities of all ages should be served in the “most integrated setting,” which almost always is their own home and community. Olmstead further states that isolating people unnecessarily in institutions is segregation, and therefore illegal.

“Our own home states are treating us like second class citizens,” said Mike Ervin, ADAPT organizer from Chicago. “For 20 years we’ve been telling everyone that removing the institutional bias from the Medicaid program, giving people who need some daily assistance the choice to stay in their own home to receive services, would save the government money along with being in compliance with the law. And yet, even with research to back us up, Congress has chosen not to make this simple change in the law and save both money and lives.”

You can personally help Rochester ADAPT’s intrepid and determined disability rights activists by pledging your support for the Fun Run that will take place at Upper Senate Park on Sunday, May 1. Our own Bobbi Wallach, who just won her own freedom when she moved from a nursing facility into her own apartment this month, will be rolling laps to earn support for all who are still fighting for their freedom. You can sponsor Bobbi by going to http://adaptfunrun.org/runner.php?id=216 and pledging your contribution.

Please be as generous as you can, and then watch for updates on CDR’s website or sign up for “tweets” throughout the week as ADAPT Defends Our Freedom!