ADAPT (formerly American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) is a United States grassroots disability rights organization with chapters in 30 states and Washington, D.C. They use nonviolent direct action in order to bring about disability justice. This includes working to change laws, policies, and services affecting disabled people, but also to challenge stigmatizing stereotypes and to empower disabled people to advocate on their own behalf. History The Atlantis Community was started in Denver, Colorado, in 1975, when Reverend Wade Blank, a non-disabled former nursing home recreational director, assisted several severely disabled nursing home residents to move out and start their own community. In 1978 protests were held in Denver by members of the Atlantis Community, and Blank, against the wheelchair inaccessibility of public buses in that city. These protests included the nation's first demonstration for wheelchair-accessible public buses, which was on July 5 and 6. At that protest nineteen members of the Atlantis Community (called the Gang of Nineteen) chanted "We will ride" and blocked buses with their wheelchairs, staying in the streets throughout the night. In 1983, the Gang of Nineteen started ADAPT after several years of similar local bus protests. Originally, ADAPT's name was an acronym that stood for Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, since the group's initial issue was to get wheelchair-accessible lifts on buses. Throughout the 1980s, the campaign for bus lifts expanded out from Denver to cities nationwide. ADAPTers became well known for their tactic of immobilizing buses to draw attention to the need for lifts. Wheelchair users would stop a bus in front and back, and others would get out of their chairs and crawl up the steps of an inaccessible bus to dramatize the issue. Not only city buses but interstate bus services like Greyhound were targeted. By the end of the decade, after protests and lawsuits, ADAPT finally saw bus lifts required by law as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. At that time, the group began looking for the next logical step in disability rights advocacy, while ensuring follow-through of transportation provisions in the ADA. That year the group changed its name to Americans Disabled Attendant Programs Today. In 1992, the protest on July 5 and 6, 1978, was commemorated with a plaque at the intersection of Colfax and Broadway (which is where the protest was held). This plaque was replaced in 2005 to commemorate the