Showing up for people with disabilities

LOUISVILLE — Lyndsay Sullivan knew right away that she had found her people.

It’s not that the 39-year-old California native who grew up in the Chicago suburbs went out intentionally looking for community; she just immediately recognized when she had made that life-changing connection.

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“At first I didn’t know anything about the disability rights movement,” said Sullivan, who lives with a disability. “I got involved with ADAPT Chicago by someone inviting me to go to one of their meetings because I was already at Access Living for another meeting and my ride didn’t show up. Since I was just going to wait around anyway, I thought, ‘Why not?’ So I went to the meeting, and I knew that these were the people that I had been looking for!”

Today, Sullivan not only serves on the board, but she is also co-coordinator of ADAPT Chicago, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that says it “organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom.”

ADAPT Chicago is also one of nine organizations under the umbrella of the Alliance for Community Services, a grassroots, member-led organization that is partnered with the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People, a PC(USA) ministry that similarly seeks to change the structures that perpetuate poverty, oppression and injustice.

ACS was formed about 10 years ago when public aid offices were being closed and Medicaid benefits were being cut around the state. According to the group’s coordinator, Fran Tobin, and their published mission statement, ACS works to bring together people with disabilities, low-income families and front-line service workers “to resist threats, identify common ground and put the ‘human’ back in human services.”

“As justice, access and inclusion have been key issues in our society, the work of the Alliance for Community Services truly and profoundly illustrates the power of communities and their collective voices as they continue to proclaim economic justice in addressing intersecting issues such as health care, disability, collective bargaining, aging and education,” said the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of SDOP. “ACS’s work can truly be described as transformative power incarnate. Their emphasis on community ownership, organizing, empowerment and self-determination are all important values shared by the ministry of SDOP.”

The unique grassroots power at the heart of ACS’s work is made possible, in part, through a grant from SDOP, which is in turn supported by Presbyterians’ generous gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing.

For more than 75 years, its purpose of helping neighbors in need around the world remains constant, giving the PC(USA) and other Christian denominations a tangible way to share God’s love. In addition to SDOP, One Great Hour of Sharing also benefits the ministries of the Presbyterian Hunger Program and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.

Although the Offering may be taken anytime, most congregations receive it on Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday, which this year fall on April 13 and 20, respectively.

“Although there are a lot of benefits to working with SDOP, the centerpiece that makes the partnership important,” said Tobin, “is the moral centering that SDOP has of the lived experience of people experiencing poverty and oppression and engaging in making change in the world for their own world and the bigger world beyond us. And that’s really essential because there are a lot of groups that do funding and support that are less about that.”

At the mid council level, ACS benefits from the passionate, hands-on involvement of the Presbytery of Chicago’s Committee on the Self-Development of People, co-moderated by Hope Daniels and Paul Abraham, and staffed by the Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Wilson, associate executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Chicago.

“I remember when the Alliance first came to us with an application,” Wilson recalled. “I was a part of the team that did a site visit with their coordinator [Tobin], who is a volunteer. What’s extraordinary and exciting about the work of this organization is that it’s the work of people on the ground advocating for themselves. And our committee co-moderators, Hope and Paul, are phenomenal in mobilizing and organizing our members to do this work, too.”

Daniels, a retired broadcast journalist, college professor and media consultant, first became involved with the presbytery’s SDOP committee during the Covid pandemic. And even though their initial site visit with ACS was conducted virtually via Zoom, Daniels said that “hearing their stories was just amazing.”

“They are looking for ways to get things done politically, because people are having things done to them without being a part of the process,” said Daniels, whose background also includes professional experience in government relations. “I have seen [the musical] ‘Hamilton’ way too often. They need to be in the room where it happens!”

Reiterating the strengths highlighted by the committee, Sullivan added that the reason she stays involved with ACS is that it’s an entirely volunteer, grassroots organization, which makes her, if not exactly “excited” to be disabled, then proud.

“We’re not big, but we punch above our weight,” she said. “You would look at us on paper and say, ‘How are we doing the stuff that we’re doing? How do we have a bill in the Senate? How do we have all these organizations doing all these different things?’”

In 2024, members of ACS met with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to address the inequities in the taxi industry.

“If we were able-bodied people, we could call a cab in two to three minutes,” she said, “but now we’re waiting for an hour in certain places, and that’s not right. The mayor agreed, and he said that we need to look for ways to incentivize the cabs to take more wheelchair riders.”

ACS also staged a successful protest last August at State Senator Don Harmon’s office.

Sullivan explained that because the Illinois Senate president “took over $100,000 from the nursing home lobby,” the group showed up to demand a response.

“We papered his office with letters that were sent to him previously because we weren’t sure that he read them,” she said. “He has been taking tons of money from lobbyists, which is stopping the anti-retaliation bill so that residents of nursing homes don’t get penalized by speaking up. We will be back if he keeps taking their money and stops passing this bill.”

And, as a multi-year grantee, ACS will again be welcomed into the application process for the funding that One Great Hour of Sharing makes possible.

“We in the PC(USA)’s SDOP ministry, a beneficiary of One Great Hour of Sharing, are grateful for the partnership with this group of committed citizens doing an incredible job of organizing around disability issues,” said Margaret Mwale, SDOP’s associate for Community Development and Constituent Relations.

And community organizing is just what Sullivan will continue to do.

“Because I am completely disabled, I consider my job to be doing the stuff I do with the Alliance and ADAPT Chicago,” she said. “We’re not huddled in the corners and shriveling away from problems. We are attacking these problems and finding solutions. That’s what we do.”

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