Eighty-Nine Disability Rights Activists Arrested Protesting Paul Ryan's Medicaid Cuts in DC

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/160361/eighty-nine-arrested-protesting-paul-ryans-medicaid-cuts

Capitol Police arrested eighty-nine disability rights activists on Monday following the group’s occupation of the Cannon House Office Building rotunda.

The disability rights group ADAPT staged the event to protest Representative Paul Ryan’s Medicaid cuts, which would force people with disabilities to live in nursing homes rather than in their own houses.

Additionally, the House-passed budget resolution would turn Medicaid into block grants and reduce the program’s spending by more than $700 billion over ten years.

Combined with other Medicaid cuts at the state level, the protesters said, the block grant plan could restrict funding so much that people with disabilities would not have enough public support to be able to live independently.

Disability advocates take to Capitol Hill, demand rejection of Ryan budget plan

http://www.americanindependent.com/181851/disability-advocates-take-to-capitol-hill-demand-rejection-of-ryan-budget-plan

Mike Ervin, an organizer for the national disability-advocacy group ADAPT and founder of its Chicago branch, is one of about 300 protesters from 25 different states who traveled to Capitol Hill to tell congressional leaders how Ryan’s proposal would impact the disability community.

“The idea of block granting really scares us, because a lot of people with disabilities rely on Medicaid in order to stay out of institutions,” Ervin said. “Block granting … gets rid of the idea that people are entitled to a minimun amount, no matter what their situation is. Now there will be less money available.”

snip

Of the 300 people circling the rotunda in the Cannon Building, Ervin said about 200 of them are in wheelchairs. One aspect of the proposal to block-grant Medicaid that worries ADAPT, he said, is that there might not be enough money for all recipients to purchase the medical equipment and medicine they need.

snip

Tonight, Capitol Police have begun arresting ADAPT members from all over the country, who have remained in the Cannon House Office Building since midday. The ADAPTers want Representatives Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Michelle Bachmann to publicly withdraw their support for Medicaid budget cuts and Medicaid state block grants. Without this commitment, ADAPT has decided to make a point that we are willing to do whatever it takes to defend the right of people with disabilities and seniors to live in our homes, not nursing homes and institutions. It is unacceptable for our own government to treat the 60 million Americans who rely on Medicaid like garbage.

[Arctic Dave]

1. Can't be true, people who disobey orders are allowed to do as they want.

The US NEVER surpresses the right to assemble.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. More organized actions and more arrests...

Meanwhile, some on DU claim the people have done no organizing and no actions. This is because the activists are disabled, or GLBT and the professionals and the moderates, well they do not count gay people or disabled people as people at all.

[classysassy]

3. Will Ryan and his Republican pals

cause more deaths than Bin Laden?People stop,listen and behold the people that betray us everyday they enable the rich insurance companies to decide who live or who dies and we accept as justice when it is purely injustice,Ryan and the Republican are evil to the core,greedy men and women that care nothing about the voters once the votes have been counted,yet we keep sending the same evil men and women back to Washington when they should be sent to jail.Shame on us all,we deserve what we get and that is nothing but grief.