ADAPT in Chicago – Day 2

activism, ADAPT, Our News & Commentary Blog

Breaking news:

Disabled protesters block downtown Chicago building

CHICAGO – A group of disabled protesters is blocking access to elevators and escalators in a government office building in downtown Chicago.

A wall of wheelchairs is preventing occupants of the James R. Thompson Center from exiting or entering their offices, although people are being allowed into the building.

The protesters from the advocacy group ADAPT made a similar effort Monday, blocking the entrances to the American Medical Association in Chicago for more
than three hours.

The group wanted the AMA to push for legislation that could lead to more housing options for people with disabilities.

It isn’t immediately clear if the Thompson Center protest has the same focus.

Obviously, they haven’t read their press packet if they’re not sure what the focus is of the protest. Here’s the list of demands ADAPT came with today:

  1. A commitment from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Speaker of the IL House, Michael Madigan, and President of the IL Senate, Emil Jones, Jr., to pass and sign the IL Community First Act.

  2. Commitment from Gov. Blagojevich to actively involve ADAPT in the development of the operational protocols for the state’s Money Follows the Person Demonstration Program.

  3. Commitment from Gov. Blagojevich that the state will develop a data use agreement with CMS so that people in nursing homes who indicate that they want to return to community living are automatically referred to community organizations that can assist them.

According to my sources, Diane Coleman, Rahnee Patrick, Gail Kear and Monika Heffner are currently on the 16th floor of the State building, and have presented the demands to DHS officials. Diane sent me a pic of the view from the 16th floor:

The picture above is taken from the the sixteenth floor of the State building in downtown Chicago. Protesters can be seen – barely – surrounding the building below.

3:00 pm Central

Update:

Oread Daily: “With a swipe of a pen, a doctor can take away your freedom“

Rich Miller, at the Capitol Fax Blog, is providing a lot of eyewitness comment and updates from some of his readers who work in the area in This just in…

For the best, complete accounts of the action, go to ADAPT Action Report. It reports on the happenings of the previous day at the action. Yesterday’s account – with pictures – is here at Fifty-five arrested – ADAPT stands firm at the AMA.

Latest news: This just in from Diane Coleman:

The negotiations were a success.

  1. The governor has agreed to meet with ADAPT by no later than October 17th.
  2. There will be no re-opening of Lincoln Developmental Center as a residence for people with disabilities during the present administration.
  3. Rahnee Patrick will be an ADAPT liaison on the Governor’s “Money Follows the Person” Advisory Committee.

(caveat – I got all this in a rushed phone call with lots of background noise so there might be some details slightly off that will be edited later.)

Coverage:

Chicago Tribune – After AMA, disabled take aim at state

Chicago Sun-Times – Disabled protest again

Video coverage of the action at WGN – Protesters in Wheelchairs Block Thompson Center

Disability Activists Make a Housecall at the AMA

activism, ADAPT, AMA, Our News & Commentary Blog, professional accountability

As many or most of you know, disability activists “on a mission from ADAPT” have landed in Chicago.

Right now, 500 disability activists are making a housecall at the headquarters of the American Medical Association (AMA).

The activists have a set of demands for the organization:

1. Endorse the Community Choice Act and actively promote passage (e.g. include on AMA website and on advocacy agenda);
2. Work with ADAPT to develop an action plan to assure that pwd’s and seniors get REAL CHOICE in long term care (ltc) services/supports and are able to live in most integrated setting. Provide membership with continuing medical education programs about community-based alternatives to institutionalization;
3. Require that AMA Board of Trustees and leadership divest themselves of all financial interests in nursing facilities, etc.;
4. Develop AMA ethics policy that all AMA member MDs must full disclose their financial interests in any ltc facilities to their patients when discussing ltc issues, and not refer any patient to a ltc facility in which they have any financial interest.

More news as it comes in… (will add links to news, other bloggers, etc.)

Update: 1:35 pm central.

Police are getting ready to arrest protesters.

The picture above shows a long line of ADAPT protesters being confronted by police officers in front of the headquarters of the American Medical Association.

Update 2:00 pm Central: Diane called and says they’re processing arrestees. She estimates maybe 100 people or so. Pictures below:

The picture above shows an appearance ticket held by an ADAPT activist, with two police officers in the background processing paperwork for another protester.

The image above shows four arrestees – names provided at a later date.

Rachelleb.com has an entry titled “Wheelchair Protest” – she watched the march to the AMA building from her office. She took pictures too – one of them up is up on her page with a link to a few more.

Martha Bayne, a senior editor at the Chicago Reader, noticed something was up this morning when she arrived at work, which is across the street from the AMA headquarters. A little later, a horde of disability activists arrived on the scene. She writes about it in ADAPT Storms the AMA. Be sure to check it out for her impressions of the protest and the great pictures she took of the protesters there.

WGN aired to lengthy pieces of coverage. I have managed to link to them (there will be a short commercial before the news piece):

Nursing Home Protest on State Street ran in the afternoon sometime.

Protest for Health Care Rights ran on the newscast aired at 9:00 p.m.

Oregon State Board of Nursing Protected Nurses Over Patients – Report

assisted suicide, media issues, Oregon, Our News & Commentary Blog, professional accountability

There’s a big story in Oregon, but you wouldn’t know it from the amount of coverage it is getting.

Due largely to a series of investigative reports by the Portland Tribune’s Peter Korn, the state initiated an investigation into the practices of the Oregon State Board of Nursing. Last week, the report was released and it was as bad as anyone could have imagined, as Korn’s August 31st story reveals:

Among the most serious allegations in the stories were that the board routinely hid the actions of nurses who had committed crimes from criminal justice authorities.

Also, the stories highlighted abuses in the board’s monitoring program, which allows nurses with drug and alcohol addictions to continue working while they receive treatment.

In some cases, nurses in the monitoring program were allowed to continue in their jobs even after multiple instances of stealing medications from patients.

The state report issued Wednesday supported the Tribune’s stories and found even more problems. According to the report, even cases of alleged sex abuse and attempted rape that came before the nursing board were not referred to criminal
authorities.

And, the report found, the nurse monitoring program “does not protect the public as effectively as it protects a participant’s license to practice.”

That last line from Korn’s story is an exact quote from the report itself.

That’s not all. One of the cases that the Board let slide was one in which two nurses were found to have “assisted” a patient in committing suicide. I put the “assisted” part in quotes because Wendy Melcher’s daughter doesn’t believe that there ever was a request on the part of Melcher to die and has suggested some less-than-noble motivations on the part of at least one of the nurses. Since this all happened in 2005, the delays will make this a difficult case to prosecute, according to authorities.
Technically, what these nurses admit to is a serious crime. Melcher never made any application for lethal medication to a physician. The nurses in question didn’t report Melcher’s alleged request to hospice. It is illegal for them to administer drugs to end a life – even under the assisted suicide law. The Board never reported them to the police, but “disciplined” them. One nurse had her license suspended for 30 days and the other was placed on probation for two years.

If you check out the links you’ll find that they all point you to stories by Peter Korn at the Portland Tribune. That’s no coincidence. Coverage of the investigation and the report regarding the Oregon State Board of Nursing has been scant in Oregon.

That’s really odd. This report was as damning as any report I’ve ever read. As mentioned above, one of the cases under review involves the issue of assisted suicide, which is touted by euthanasia advocates as a system that has strict controls, oversights, and eliminates unregulated practices through the system of safeguards that is widely touted. Given that, we can understand why Compassion and Choices isn’t featuring the news on its website. It’s not exactly the kind of thing they would want to publicize in their showcase state.

But what about the other journalists in Oregon? This is a huge story. It’s important in terms of its impact on public health and safety. It’s also the kind of story that generates interest – scandal sells, doesn’t it? So why are Peter Korn and the Portland Tribune virtually the only ones reporting on this? Is it because they’d have to give credit to Korn and the Trib for breaking this story? It’s hard to understand. This was so bad that the Director of the State Board of Nursing resigned. Her interim appointment fired the person in the number 2 position. The rest of the board members remain, though.

This is something we should all pay attention to. As the American Medical Association (AMA)announced this summer, they’d like to see review boards to replace legal authorities in investigating and disciplining medical professionals whose conduct is called into question, at least in declared disaster areas. In a joint press release from the AMA and the American Nurses Association (ANA) on July 17th regarding the “criminalizing of medical decisions,” they said:

“During any disaster, health care providers — doctors, nurses and others — must work together to make the best decisions that they can given available resources.

“Judgments regarding these decisions and subsequent actions would be more properly considered by the respective licensing boards.”

Would that be licensing boards like the one in Oregon? Or the licensing boards in California that found no fault with an attending physician who handed the care of a live patient to a transplant surgeon – and watched while the surgeon attempted to kill the patient quickly enough to harvest his organs? Or the review board who found no fault with the nurse who administered the lethal medications under the transplant surgeon’s direction?

I can see why that would make medical professionals sleep easier at night. I can’t see how that helps the rest of us, especially when we all have to wonder if the medical review boards in our own states are any better than the Board of Nursing in Oregon. –Stephen Drake

Katrina again – Black Agenda Report on “Euthanasia” Charges and Racism

Katrina, medical killings, Our News & Commentary Blog, racism

A lot of things called themselves to my attention during my daily news search today, but one particular item demanded attention.

In spite of what you may have heard, not everyone (besides us) is thrilled with the failure to bring charges against anyone in relation to the alleged murders of patients in the days after Hurricane Katrina.

Black Agenda Report (BAR) has published and aired a scathing indictment of the district attorney and the grand jury for failing to “value the lives” of the victims enough to do anything more than just brush them off as an unfortunate accident.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford describes both the killings and the lack of concern on the part of the justice system as part of a larger pattern of institutional racism that played out in New Orleans in a deadly way for many people:

It’s easy to kill a Black person in New Orleans. Or a thousand. If you are a doctor, you can kill nine of your patients, and get away free. Doctors at a New Orleans hospital were absolved of all charges, when they willfully killed nine people, injecting them with lethal doses of drugs. The doctors were white, and they killed people who were mostly Black. So they got away with murder. In the New Orleans Medical Center crisis, we can see the real crisis in American society – that Black life is not held in as high a value as white life. Murder results.

Read the rest of Murder in New Orleans: No Big Thing on the Big Easy.

As readers of this blog know, the AMA has already announced plans to draft model legislation to make sure that future suspected murders by doctors in disaster areas don’t even get investigated. This will give them set them apart from the rule of law in ways that don’t apply to police or even to soldiers on the battlefield.

On a final note, we (at NDY) are grateful to Ford for speaking out on the racist aspects of the handling of the Katrina cases. We can’t help but wonder, though, if being both Black and disabled (as the Katrina hospital victims were) or both Latino and disabled (as Ruben Navarro was) increase the chances of deadly discrimination within the medical system. –Stephen Drake

Another blog you should read today

blog recommendations, homicide, media issues, Our News & Commentary Blog

One of the nice things about a blog is that it gives us the opportunity to tell visitors to go read some things that other activists are writing about NDY-related topics.

So today, we want to point you to the latest two entries by Cilla Sluga, whose work has been referenced, linked and praised here before.

Letting Go: They Loved Him to Death is an analysis of a major piece that appeared in the Denver Post last year. In detail, it chronicled the decision and the process involved in ending the life of a disabled 4-year-old through removal of his feeding tube.

Here’s an excerpt from her entry on the Denver Post article:

Andy Cross, a Denver Post reporter wrote, Letting Go. It appeared in the October 28, 2006 edition. For his work, Cross received a runner-up journalist award for documenting what it is like to “slowly lose a child.”

The term slowly is accurate; it took 23 days for Dylan to die because of starvation and dehydration; “lose a child” is not at all accurate.

He did not run away at the mall. No one kidnapped him at night. He spent all 23 days in his mother’s apartment, with his parents, and a reporter documenting the entire
ordeal. Dylan’s parents, Kerri Bruning and Dave Walborn perceived his bad days
outnumbered the good and made the decision to withdraw food.

Ministers, grandparents and others came to the apartment throughout those 23 days without food. The article describes visitors coming ‘in waves”. Dylan’s grandma even threw a little party in his honor, the day before they withdrew food.

Today, Cilla has a new entry giving an update on Criste Reimer, who was allegedly pushed to her death off a fourth floor balcony by her husband. The article she found is a little dated, but has some new details from from family members.

So go read Criste Reimer Update while you’re on her blog.