Celebrate Olmstead with Activism

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-06-03 16:00:00 UTC
Topics:

a smiling young woman with straight blond hair pulled back wearing a white t-shirt and peach sweater is holding a round white frosted cake with 10 lit birthday candles in it. in the background is a lamp and a white wall, in the foreground a table with a yellow and white checkered tablecloth and a forkTen years ago on June 22, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people with disabilities have a legal right under the ADA to live in the community and not be placed in nursing homes or institutions. This was a huge victory and indeed something to celebrate.

Unfortunately, there remain barriers to ensuring that this legal right is upheld, such as the institutional bias of Medicaid. And the fact that the Community Choice Act, one solution needed to get past these remaining barriers, was dropped from the national agenda.

AAPD has put out an action alert Organizing for Olmstead that gives a bunch of creative ways to both celebrate and protest on this upcoming 10 year anniversary of Olmstead. Pick something to do, email disabilitymovement@gmail.com to communicate and organize, and celebrate and make change at the same time.

Do go to the action alert and read the whole thing, but here are a few of its ideas,

* Call or visit your district's members of Congress, or the local Health & Human Services office; ask what they're going to do to implement Olmstead
* Get a group of people to go visit a nursing home -- tell the nursing home that you'd like to bring cookies and visit with people
* Deliver a signed copy of the AAPD petition to local Congressional offices, maybe deliver them with some kind of "Implement Olmstead" cookies.

And of course, if you haven't done it yet, sign the AAPD petition for health care reform.

Dora Raymaker
PREVIOUS STORY:
Obama Wants MedPAC on Steroids (Oh, and the Public Plan, too)
NEXT STORY:
Why I'm Asking Aetna to Cover My Surgery

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.