Action!

No Assist meeting today, it's the end of the fiscal year, the agency is basically out of money till 1 July. That's okay though I needed to be downtown by 11 o'clock which is the time that Assist, Inc.has our meeting. I want to make sure that I would get over to the federal building in time for the action.I'm struggling a bit however with the changes we made on the chair yesterday when Tom moved seatmates backward a few inches. I didn't think it was going to really affect me negatively as much as the change has. Feels like I am almost lying down in my chair I don't like that. True the benefit is that I'm not chewing up the casters of the chair certainly makes everything uncomfortable.

The leadership of DRAC wanted us to wear red shirts, blouses or whatever so that we would be able to be identified as a DRAC person. I didn't understand this at first but when participants begin filtering in to the area I realized a number of different organizational type programs were being represented. This representation was loosely discussed at the meetings I just did not pay attention too much. Not that it really matters but still kind of felt weird to me. The only T-shirt that I have that is read I purchased a few weeks ago on the Internet and of course does not really fit me the shirt that purchased was too short. Not as bad as some shirts but bad enough. I thought perhaps I can get away with pulling my shirt down all the time and possibly I could have had I not had the seat base moved back. I was so concerned about vast quantities of belly skin showing that I actually stopped into it department store downtown and purchased a $6.95 shirt which at least fairly fit me. The shirt was not as red as I would've liked but ithe shirt kind of an orangey red was all that H and M had.

I had no intention of being arrested. I just do not want to have to pay to bail myself out of jail. I am not afraid of going to jail or been arrested I'm afraid of spending money that I don't have. DRAC leadership did go around and ask if we wanted to be in this line for that line not really explain what each line was. WhenDeeda asked me if I would be in the line or if I was going to be in line I said yes. I thought she meant just the duck walk of people wandering around shouting but what she was actually talked about someone to be in the actual line that stopped the traffic. I did not have time to get out of that so I went with it. I was either in the beginning of the end of one line holding up gigantic banner that stretched across State Street effectively stopping traffic. We stopped traffic for about a half an hour and was actually somewhat dangerous. There were a number of motorists who almost rammed the line because the motorist was so frustrated with us. I kept thinking of the incidents in Europe as well as his country of fanatics are people who are just plain frustrated going off the deep end and ramming as many pedestrians as they could. There I was the point of the spear stopping traffic in Salt Lake over lunch.

The cops obviously had orders to leave us alone. We ranted and raved for about 30 minutes in the blaring sun and decided to call it a day. Strike management said we had made our points Sen. Hatch had heard our requests/demands and that was that. I had understood the group was going to meet at a place called Cheesecake Factory for lunch sort of victory lunch. I went ahead and secured the seating. The place is not really accessible and then I realized only one small fraction of the group was going to this place that was incredibly overpriced and I did not want to pay that kind of money for food. Plus there really was no place for wheelchairs to set. I left which is probably the bravest thing I did all day.

I've often said that is kind depressing the end of action especially if you're not sure what you'd accomplished. I showed up, I chanted while I rolled around and try to be supportive held up my part of the sign I guess that's what it's all about oh yeah and wearing a red shirt.