After camping out on a street median in South Berkeley for a month to protest proposed cuts to state disabled services, demonstrators packed up their tent city last Thursday, planning to take their cause – and their papier-mache statue of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – directly to the governor’s doorstep.

Since June 22, the tent city – dubbed “Arnieville” and located on the median of Adeline Street – has been home to dozens of disabled persons and caregivers, all protesting proposed state cuts to the In-Home Support Services program.

Arnieville organizer Adrienne Lauby said organizers reached their targeted protest length and wanted to join in on the weekend’s festivities honoring the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 20th anniversary around the Bay Area.

“You can protest, but you have to celebrate too and it was obviously time,” said Lauby, adding that the 30-day protest was the longest continuous protest held by people with disabilities in the nation’s history.

Now that the tent city is dismantled, the self-described “Arnie-villains” are reaching out to organizations around the state and inviting people to join their coalition.

“It’s clear that we have to go to Sacramento to go to the governor,” she said. “We have to go talk to him.”

Under the program, the state pays home caregivers to assist the disabled with routine household activities, allowing them to maintain some degree of independence outside of a nursing home. Proposals put forward by members of the California State Assembly include 40 to 50 percent cuts to IHSS funding.

According to a Berkeley City Council recommendation opposing the state’s budget cuts to IHSS, the program currently supports 490,000 Californians with disabilities – all of whom have low incomes.

“I was very happy to support their efforts to bring this to public attention,” said Councilmember Max Anderson. “Too often people just suffer silently when these draconian cuts come down. It’s really a dire and catastrophic set of circumstances that the disabled community faces along with their caregivers.”

Dan McMullan, Arnieville organizer and director of the Disabled People Outside Project, said the month-long protest was an experience that reminded him of when he was homeless for nine years.

“I had forgotten how hard it is to be out there like that,” he said. “It just makes me want to fight 100 times harder to keep that from happening to me again or anyone else.”

In the coming weeks, “Arnie-villains” will meet to plan the group’s next steps toward Sacramento and continuous efforts to speak out against the proposed cuts.

“Everything is open and we’re just having meetings and having discussions,” she said. “We’re not ruling out anything as a tactic or strategy.”

By Stephanie Baer, Contributing Writer
The Daily Californian
 Thursday, July 29, 2010