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Blind Arrestee Sees Lack of Access as Major Problem

By Penny Reeder

“It was the U.S. Capitol Police who arrested us,” said Joe Harcz of Mt. Morris, Mich. “They herded us all into the parking garage that’s underneath their headquarters, and we spent the next 14 hours there before our lawyer finally got us out.”

Harcz was one of more than 500 disability and civil rights advocates who went to Washington, D.C., during the last week of April to lobby, demonstrate and engage in civil disobedience in an attempt to convince Congress to take action on the MiCassa legislation that has stalled in the legislative process for a decade. He was one of the 99 demonstrators in the Rayburn House Office Building who were arrested while trying to convince staffers from the House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Health to pass H.R. 1621, now called the Community Choice Act (CCA).

“They’ve been talking about the Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports (Act) legislation for a decade now,” said Harcz, 54. “Every year, it gets reintroduced in the Congress, and then it languishes in one committee or another, never getting a hearing and never seeing the light of day. Talk is cheap; it’s action we need, and action we came to D.C. to get. That’s why we were at the Rayburn Building. Some of us were in Congressman (John) Dingle’s (D-Mich.) office – he’s the committee chair. Some of us were camped out in the co-chair (Joe) Barton’s (R-Texas) office, and some of us were in the basement and outside in the driveway.”

Harcz said he does not need to be “sprung” from a nursing home, which would be the much-sought-after consequence for thousands of people with disabilities if the Community Choice bill were to become law. He lives independently in Michigan, where he consults with local policy-makers and administrators on issues concerning making the world accessible to people with disabilities. He rode on a Greyhound bus for 18 hours to get to Washington, he said, because he has friends who just can’t wait another 10 years for Congress to make the changes in Medicaid that would provide coverage for the personal-care attendants and other services they need to function in the real world.

“It’s all about access,” said Harcz. “If you can’t read print (as he can’t) because you can’t see, then you need information in an alternative format. If you can’t get up the steps because you can’t walk, then you need a ramp. If you can’t hear what is being said, then you need a sign-language interpreter. And if you can’t live independently without your PCA, and your respirator, and your mouth stick for communications, then you need whatever it takes to maintain your life, your dignity, your personhood. And no one should have to be imprisoned in some godforsaken nursing home just to keep on keeping on.”

Harcz, whose blindness is the result of retinitis pigmentosa, has been a member of ADAPT, American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, since the early 1990s. “I joined because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s a civil rights issue, and if you believe in equal justice, then you have to get involved.”

Although Harcz said he has been an ADAPT foot soldier in at least eight organized actions over the years, April 30th marked his first arrest in connection with the movement.

“I was there to do a job,” he said. “It was my decision to join the line of demonstrators who were willing to be arrested. We were rallying in the hallway outside the committee room. The cops showed up with bullhorns and gave us the (traditional) three warnings. Each time they told us to disperse, our chants got louder, and after our third warning, they started the process of arresting and detaining us.

“Some of the folks with power wheelchairs put their chairs in neutral to make it harder for the arresting officers to remove them from the premises. Other people just came along non-confrontationally, with their police escorts. I was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. When the two Capitol policemen came over and asked me if I was willing to walk with them, I said, ‘No sir.’

“So they picked me up; one had my arms, and the other had my feet, and they carried me outside. When we got outside, they asked me if I would be willing to walk with them to the station, and I felt sorry for them, having to carry me, so I said, ‘Yes sir.’ They put me down, and I took one of their arms, and we walked the two blocks to the Capitol Police facility. I guess they couldn’t accommodate 99 people with significant disabilities; 73 of us were using wheelchairs. So they herded us all into the parking garage underneath the building. There we were in the gloom and doom and the exhaust fumes of a typical city parking garage, along with the cars and the Harleys. Most of us were there for the next 14 hours.”

Harcz said he tried, over and over again, to educate the cops about the laws that guarantee him equal access to information. But no Braille was forthcoming — not when he asked for the receipt for his belongings in Braille, not when he asked for a copy of his summons in Braille, not when he was required to sign that complaint to get released.

“I told them I had a right to read the charges against me independently,” Harcz said, “and the cops kept on referring my request for Braille up the chain of command. Finally, they said, ‘Either sign the complaint, or we can’t release you!’

“So, I signed it, and I’m going to file a complaint against the U.S. Capitol Police. Since they’re a federal entity, they’re required to follow Section 504 of the Rehab Act. Even a person who’s getting arrested has a right to reasonable accommodations, and that includes being able to read the complaint against him in a format he can access independently!”

Harcz was arrested around noon. An inventory was made of his stuff, most of which was confiscated, about four hours later. “They were fascinated by my slate and stylus,” he said. “They thought my stylus could be a weapon. I showed them how you use a stylus to punch holes through the indentations in the slate to write down things in Braille.”

His stylus was taken, along with his slate, tape recorder, wallet and cell phone. The police also tried to take his white mobility cane.

“You’re not taking that,” Harcz told them. “That would be like taking away my eyes.” They returned his cane.

They did not give him a copy of the receipt for his stuff in Braille.

Then, sometime around 9 p.m., fingerprinting was conducted and, later, mug shots were taken.

Once in awhile, the 18 or so Capitol policemen and women would ask the detainees if they needed a bathroom break, and then two of them would take a person upstairs to the facilities. It was slow going. The elevator would accommodate only two wheelchairs at a time, and the women’s restroom was not entirely accessible.

“The Capitol policemen and women were just doing a job,” Harcz said. “And, we were doing a job. I’m just a foot soldier in the ADAPT movement, and, although I was tired and frustrated and hungry and thirsty, I felt good about why I was there and what we were accomplishing. I saw people I had met before at other ADAPT actions, and I got to know them better. I met new people, and I was totally in awe a lot of the time, at the courage I was witnessing there in that parking garage. Some of those men and women were really medically fragile. Some had some amazing and terrible stories to tell about the hell they had experienced before getting out of institutional settings. These are some brave people. I was honored just to be in their presence.”

Why was the group detained in a smelly parking garage for 14 hours? Harcz said the cops were not in a hurry to process people, and “all that stuff they collected from everybody, well, they had to give it all back again after we signed our complaints and were ready to go, and everything took a long time. Shifts changed. Some cops left; new ones arrived, and still we were there.” He got out at about 2:30 a.m., after having been carried out of the Rayburn Building around noon the day before.

Harcz walked with others back to the Capitol Hill Holiday Inn, where ADAPT had slices of pizza waiting for them. Then he slept for a few hours in preparation for the next day’s return trip to the Hill, this time to deliver to individual representatives and senators informational packets and a DVD that contained filmed stories from some of the people who had experienced firsthand the horror of entrapment in institutional settings.

Would he do it again? Harcz was asked.

“In a minute,” he said. “ADAPT left D.C. with just about everything we came to accomplish. Hearings on the Community Choice Act will be scheduled, in both chambers, next fall. Meetings with the American Hospital Association resulted in that organization’s commitment to disseminate new policy directives to member institutions, which will direct discharged patients toward an array of options in addition to nursing facilities which, up until now, have been the only option mentioned to too many people and too many families. ADAPT garnered significant support from the Democratic National Committee, which co-sponsored the weekend ‘fun run.’”

Back in Michigan after another, even longer ride on the Greyhound, Harcz said he plans to file a Section 504 complaint against the U. S. Capitol Police, who couldn’t figure out a way to give him a copy of the complaint against him in Braille.

The Web site of the U.S. Capitol Police reads, in part:

“The U.S. Capitol Police Department is committed to providing access to our web pages for individuals with disabilities, both members of the public and Federal employees. To meet this commitment, we will comply with the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Section 508 requires that individuals with disabilities, who are members of the public seeking information or services from us, have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to that provided to the public who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on us.” [http://www.USCapitolPolice.gov/access.html] _________________

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Penny Reeder lives in Montgomery Village, Md. she currently works as a rehabilitation teacher for Maryland’s Office of Blindness and Vision Services

ILUSA.Com

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