NDY Protests the World Federation Conference – From My Vantage Point

Not Dead Yet and other disability rights activists from around the U.S. and Canada held a three-day protest vigil at an international assisted suicide and euthanasia conference held in Chicago last week, hosted by the U.S. group Final Exit Network.   Some of the first day’s events, including an opening rally, were covered here.  We plan to post video of the rally soon, and want to thank our speakers:

• Marca Bristo, President/CEO, Access Living
• Bruce Darling, Organizer, National ADAPT
• Mike Ervin, Chicago ADAPT
• Amy Hasbrouck, Director, Toujours Vivant/Not Dead Yet Canada
• Pam Heavens, Executive Director, Will-Grundy Center for Independent Living
• Gail Kear, President, Illinois Network of Centers for Independent Living, Executive Director, LIFE CIL
• John Kelly, Director, Second Thoughts
• Carrie Lucas, Executive Director, Center for Rights of Parents with Disabilities

We also want to thank disability rights folk singer and musician Elaine Kolb who lent her talents to the rally and throughout the 3-day action.  Elaine also shared her collection of percussion instruments for many to use as our voices became over extended from chanting messages like “Help to Live, Not to Die” and “Final Exit: Stop the Lies.”

We distributed four leaflets in English and Spanish.  The area was high in foot traffic, so by the end of Day 1, we had distributed almost 2000 and had to make more for Day 2 and 3 and, having underestimated again (trying to be frugal), we had to make more again for Day 3.

Day 2 began with leafleting, singing and chanting until our press conference at noon, which focused on our concerns about the urgent situation in Canada.  The press release announcing the press conference was posted here.  Amy Hasbrouck, director of Toujours Vivant/Not Dead Yet Canada and Nic Steenhout, director of Vivre dans la dignité (Living with Dignity) each spoke, and we plan to post video of their remarks as soon as possible.  Hasbrouck echoed the discrimination theme of the protest: “Do we want to be a country that says some suicidal people will get suicide prevention while other suicidal people will be killed?  I think that goes against our values of fairness, equality and solidarity.”

On Friday early evening, the World Federation conference planned to hold its Gala Banquet and Awards Ceremony at the John Hancock Building about half a mile away.  Knowing that delegates would be leaving the hotel, protesters in wheelchairs sat in the hotel’s primary doorways (though there were many security doors we left alone).  Our assumption was that we would be pulled off the doorways by security or police fairly early in the process, but would then be forcing all the departing delegates to look at our faces, our signs and hear our chants up close.  It’s hard to convey the emotion of that in words, but it has an impact.

I’m not yet sure about all that transpired in the 60 – 90 minutes of that action.  Early on, some people who wanted to get into a certain door at the hotel became very angry at a protester from Texas, and I was asked to go there to help if needed.  It turned out that I was not needed.  As harsh as they got, pushing against her wheelchair, she maintained her nonviolent discipline perfectly, and simply kept to her message, sometimes adding her own personal experience of disability oppression.  Five of us stayed together in this group until I was asked to go and talk to the hotel manager.

By then, security or police had opened three individual doors around the hotel, but were apparently concerned about being able to keep them open (if a wheelchair goes into an open doorway, it may effectively become closed again).  I agreed to meet with our leadership team and we decided to conclude the action for that evening.  There were no arrests.

It so happened that Not Dead Yet had six people staying in three rooms at the hotel being used by the World Federation.  Over the course of that night and the wee hours of the morning, these paying hotel guests each had a few visitors in their rooms.

The pride of the Embassy Suites Chicago hotel is an 11 story open atrium, which is surrounded by floor upon floor of guest rooms that look down over the atrium from a balcony surrounded by a glass railing.  At 7:45 am our guests and visitors all went to the same upper level floor, held the elevators there and began chanting, “We don’t need your suicide; Not Dead Yet keeps us alive!”  The famous atrium was an echo chamber for delivering our message.

Within an hour, the protesters at the elevators were escorted by security and police down the elevators and taken to rejoin the protesters holding vigil outside.  Again there were no arrests.  The leafleting, chanting and music continued until noon, when we marched to a nearby park, and passed around a bullhorn to hear our members recount their experiences and reflections on the action.

There will be more stories, photos, video and thoughts to share in the days and weeks ahead.  Here is the reflection that is most in my thoughts today.  Not Dead Yet formed in 1996 because disability rights advocates, who had been addressing the problems of assisted suicide and euthanasia by traditional advocacy and public education approaches, called for a street action group like ADAPT to focus on this.  (ADAPT is the direct action group that got lifts on public buses included in the Americans with Disabilities Act and since then has been working on establishing and implementing our right to receive long term care services at home rather than being forced into nursing facilities.)

We started out with folks from New York, Colorado, Illinois and Canada.  Then a significant number of ADAPT leaders, and the ADAPT youth movement, already committed to a direct action in Little Rock, Arkansas earlier the same week, decided to get on a bus from Little Rock to Chicago and add their numbers to help make this bigger.  Exhausted as they were, they changed from their ADAPT t-shirts to their Not Dead Yet t-shirts and summoned the power to make our voices heard.  This made all the difference.

It’s not likely that the delegates to the conference of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies will soon forget, “We don’t need your suicide; Not Dead Yet keeps us alive!”