A Tom Olin
Sampler

Tom Olin has covered the disability rights beat since 1983. Thanks to his photography, many of our finest activists will not be forgotten. Currently, he is archiving his work for the Smithsonian. Tom has a website under construction where you will be able to purchase rights to reproduce photographs from his half-million-image archive.

Still, when disability action is happening, Tom is there. He covers the national activism of Adapt and Not Dead Yet. He photographs conferences of the National Council of Independent Living, of TASH, of statewide independent living councils, and would likely photograph your group's work as well. (Note: he gets paid for these gigs.) Invite him by email to crippower@aol.com.

photo shows Adapt activists behind bars during a protest at the Health Care Financing Administration
Olin accompanied Adapt to Baltimore in 1991 to photograph a massive demonstration at the headquarters of HCFA, America's federal health care paymaster. Activists made it clear that they want the right to live where they please. Today HCFA has joined Adapt in pressing states to de-segregate their disability service systems.

 photo shows nursing home operators at a rich hotel ignoring Adapt activists out front who protest being sent to nursing homes against their will.

Olin was right in the thick of it when Adapt activists spoke truth to power at a convention of nursing home operators in Orlando in 1993.


Washington, D.C., 1995

photo shows hundreds of disability rights activists marching ten abreast over a bridge across the Potomac.

We are proud that Tom Olin worked for Mouth magazine from 1995 to 1999, and that his photography dominates its pages to this day.

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