ADAPT HUD Actions
All this month (April), ADAPT chapters around the country will be trying to get HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson to keep his promise to meet with us to discuss issues of accessible, affordable, integrated housing for people with disabilities. DRAC/Utah ADAPT has already begun theirs. I’ll keep posting on other chapters as I get the news.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:09 am
On Friday, April 7th, 12 members of The Disabled Rights Action Commmittee (DRAC. also ADAPT/Utah) met at the Utah Federal Office Building where the HUD office and the offices of most of the Utah Congressmen are located. DStarting at 11:00am, we were promptly met by security who advised us of our boundaries on the public sidewalks-OFF the property, if we were planning a protest or distributing literature, which was ok by us.
We began distributing the wanted poster with additional information and the history of why we were there on the back side of the flyer that had Secretary Alfonso Jackson’s picture on it to people who were coming out of or going into the federal Building, and those who were waiting at the corner to cross the street with no problems.
We even took the opportunity to speak with several of them about why we were there, and what ADAPT was expecting of Secretary Jackson. Ricki Landers and myself (Lopeti) went inside and up to the offices of Senator Hatch, and Senator Bennett to speak with them but they weren’t scheduled to be back in Utah until this week, so we were received by a representative of their staff.
We also paid the offices of HUD a visit, but nobody was there, (were they tipped off?) so we left the posters and some literature with highlighted sections referring to the ‘cancer’ from a speech given by Jackson with notes to expect us in the coming weeks. Ricki and I are planning to visit them again this week while the rest of our crew are passing our flyers again.
We decided to stagger the date so as to get as much coverage of the people by re-visiting the Federal Building every week 1 day ahead of the last on, so the next visit to the HUD office was on Thursday the 13th of April, and the next visit will be on Wednesday the 19th, and our final visit (at least this time around) will be on tuesday the 25th.
Once we “Free Our People” we want to make sure we can “House Our People!”
April 18th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Cool…thanks for letting us know about what Utah has been doing! Will you let us know about tomorrow’s action?