MENOMONIE — While on a nationwide trip, people in the City of Menomonie were able to welcome the Caravan for Disability Freedom and Justice on Tuesday as one destination of many throughout the country.
“We’re here to promote disability vote and how our votes matter, because a lot of the time people say, ‘Why do I need to go vote? One vote doesn’t matter,’” said Marilee Adamski-Smith, director of logistics and special projects of the Caravan for Disability Freedom and Justice 2024. “We just try to tell them that if you want things to change, if you want services or things to work in your favor, you need to vote for the people that will help you.”
The event also gives them a chance to celebrate the passing of the ADA, or Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law on July 26, 1990. As a civil rights law for people with disabilities, the ADA prohibits discrimination in many areas, including employment, transportation, public accommodations and access to government programs and services.
Adamski-Smith, who comes from Brookfield, Wis., and was joined by her husband, said the nationwide caravan began back in April. Starting in San Diego and traveling to places in Utah, South Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin and more, the caravan gets passed along to other members who will keep driving it until the last event takes place in New York in October.
As the caravan travels, it also advocates for the Latonya Reeves Freedom Act and shares information on what this bipartisan legislation does for people with disabilities.
Latonya Reeves, an African American woman with a disability, had to travel from Tennessee to Colorado to get the long term support and services she needed, said Adamski-Smith. With Reeves being institutionalized as a child in the ’60s and ’70s, Adamski-Smith said Reeves spent her whole life fighting for disability freedom until passing away in January of 2023.
“What we’re doing as we are traveling to all of these cities is that we are trying to collect personal stories of people that have been institutionalized, trying to get out of institutions or fearing that they may lose their services where they are going to have to go into a nursing home in order to get the care that they need,” said Adamski-Smith.
The legislation addresses disability freedom in many regards. It clarifies that any individual who is eligible for long-term services, including seniors and people with disabilities, have a federally protected right to receive those services in the community.
Adamski-Smith spoke from her own experience as a person with a disability and said creating this message of freedom is very important, because having a disability does not mean you cannot lead an independent life.
“We have a right to live in our own homes instead of nursing homes or places,” she said. “And we understand that there may be people that want to live in a nursing home because they want that care, but young people who don’t want to live there don’t deserve to live there.”
Meeting with the community and organizations like Centers for Independent Living of Western Wisconsin, or CIL; Adamski-Smith said the event went really well today in their advocacy and celebration of disability freedom. Before the caravan moves on to the next driver, she said they will make many more stops in Wisconsin before passing the vehicle along to continue the message.
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