ADAPT and Not Dead Yet Collaborate on New York City Times Square Super Screen Message

This week ADAPT and Not Dead Yet launched a new messaging campaign which will be displayed on the New York City Times Square CBS Super Screen. The video message will be displayed once an hour, eighteen hours a day for three months.

The Super Screen is 26 ft wide and 20 feet high. You can find it under the CBS logo on 42nd St., between 7th and 8th Avenue. This is – no pun intended – kind of a big deal.

ADAPT issued the following Press Alert announcing the new messaging campaign.

12/18/2013 PRESS ALERT: For Information:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Bruce Darling (585) 370-6690
Diane Coleman (708) 420-0539
Jerry Costley (801) 347-0370

WHO: ADAPT and Not Dead Yet
WHAT: CRITICAL MESSAGES FROM THE DISABILITY COMMUNITY
WHERE: New York City—Times Square
WHEN: Beginning Wednesday, December 18, 2013—March 18, 2014

ADAPT AND NOT DEAD YET ANNOUNCE A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR COMMUNICATING ESSENTIAL MESSAGES FROM THE DISABILITY COMMUNITY TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

ADAPT AND Not Dead Yet, working in partnership, have created a unique opportunity to communicate three vital messages via the Superscreen in New York Times Square. The messages–Life, because we’re not better off dead, Liberty, in our homes, not nursing homes, and The pursuit of happiness—join our struggle at www.adapt.org and www.notdeadyet.org–also smash devastating myths that have historically prevented many individuals with disabilities from enjoying our full rights and an equal place in our communities.

These messages are displayed in a ten second video and will run once an hour, 18 hours a day for the next three months.

The first message avows that life, with or without disabilities, is worth living. Many misguided individuals have promulgated so-called “assisted-suicide” and euthanasia laws throughout the world that discriminate against elderly and disabled people by creating a state supported path to death. An all too common belief that a person is better off dead than severely disabled has been enacted as public policy. In Oregon, doctors report that people ask for assisted suicide because they feel like a burden on others, indicating that they may have even felt a duty to end their lives and relieve society of the “burden” of their existence. In addition, many individuals with newly acquired disabilities have been assisted to die before being provided an opportunity to experience all that life with a disability can offer. Not Dead Yet challenges the social message that we are “better dead than disabled” and that society is better off without us.

The second message asserts that the quality of our lives is greatly enhanced when we are allowed the liberty to live in our own homes and apartments, supported by attendants that we hire and direct. We view nursing homes as a type of segregation and incarceration that violate our civil rights, as affirmed in the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision.

The third message calls upon everyone—with or without disabilities—to join us in our historic battle for our civil rights. We are not helpless and we neither need nor want pity. We need equal access to jobs, businesses, places of entertainment, government offices and our own homes. Everyone may at any time join our ranks by acquiring a disability. Join us now and ensure that we will all have quality lives no matter what the future may hold.

Not Dead Yet is a national, grassroots disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination.

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.

For more information on our organizations, visit www.adapt.org and www.notdeadyet.org.

If you have received this press release in electronic format the ad itself has been attached.

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