Update 9:00 p.m.: Hours after Esquire spoke with Kalyn Heffernan, police began dragging the activists out of Cory Gardner's office, where they had been for more than 60 hours.

Original post below:

Late last week, Mitch McConnell and Republican Senators revealed their secretive replacement to Obamacare. It's a healthcare bill that the Congressional Budget Office determined would strip 22 million Americans of insurance, cut Medicaid by $772 billion, and threaten life-saving care for the senior and disabled communities. At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Denver rapper Kalyn Heffernan (of the hip-hop act Wheelchair Sports Camp) and a group of activists from ADAPT entered Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner's office. As of Thursday evening they're still there. They refuse to leave until Gardner pledges to "not vote in favor of any bill that reduces Medicaid funding for seniors and people with disabilities." They've been going to the bathroom in bottles and trash cans, sleeping in office chairs, and clashing with police, Republican aids, and security. They refuse to leave.

In order to get up here, we have to take an elevator, which is controlled by a security guard. We barely—just barely—made it up here to the fifth floor on Tuesday at 9 a.m., and we've been here since then. We can't really go downstairs and get back up.

When we got here, Cory Gardner's staff was not very accommodating—like, they didn't let us use the bathrooms when we first got here, and his staff wouldn't give us the code to the restroom. They said it was not for public use. If we wanted to use the bathroom, we'd have to use the one in the Starbucks downstairs. So from Tuesday at 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., we had no bathroom. I peed in a cup. There have been some professional attendants that have come and brought a waterproof absorbing thing, we made a toilet out of a trashcan, and they brought in sheets for privacy, and we all figured out how to pee. Some people have catheters—one of the ladies emptied her catheter bag into a bottle. Then that night, as soon as everybody left, security opened the door. We kept it open all night, so we had access to the bathroom.

Kalyn Heffernan

It's just a waiting area with two chairs and C-Span. There's a glass case with some award and a picture of Cory. I've been sleeping between two leather chairs facing each other. I put those two together and it was like a makeshift bed. We have two blow-up mattresses that fit five or six people. One person slept on what was like a pool floaty. There are other people sleeping in their chairs, too. The first night, three people slept in their wheelchairs. We had one person leave because she had to plug in her ventilator.

There are nine of us staying overnight. We plan on staying here until we get a commitment from Cory Gardner that he won't vote yes on anything that shifts Medicaid from disabled people.

We've been here 54 hours, and we haven't heard from Cory. Police arrived the first day. They've had noise complaints, probably because we were chanting. Then I started rapping "Hard Out Here For a Gimp," and we got another noise complaint—our second noise complaint in a day. Security said they were going to have to call the police. There were six to a dozen of them who arrived. They kind of just hung out for a long time, trying to figure out how to get us out of here. A few of us got out of our chairs on the floor. They waited and waited, and the cops left. It was like a game: They think we have to listen to them, but they have to listen to us.

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But when the office opened yesterday morning, the tone kind of changed. Cory Gardner's State Director Andy Merritt started talking to us, and he gave us the code to the bathroom. We've been in communication with him, and he gave Cory Gardner our demand.

This Republican healthcare bill is going to cut our services drastically. Medicaid is the only proprietor that provides long-term care. Even if people have private insurance, their long term independent care will not be covered. There's some people here that I'm with that have to pay a buy-in—a Medicaid buy-in, so they're paying for Medicaid as insurance—in order to get those services covered. Things like Botox for people with cerebral palsy—other insurance policies won't cover that because they say it's a cosmetic thing, but this is a life-or-death thing for these people, and these long term services. So many kids depend on these services for getting out of bed and getting dressed and getting to work—if you're fortunate enough to have work, because disabled people have high rates of unemployment and underemployment. Wheelchairs cost $20,000, and some of my surgeries have costed millions of dollars. I currently don't pay for healthcare. I don't know what I would do if I were not able to afford healthcare. I don't know what I would pay, or if I'd be stripped of my services.

If I could talk to Cory Gardner or Mitch McConnell directly, I'd wanna say so much to those guys I'd probably get arrested. But I'd tell them that we have a right to live. We're not going to allow them to kill us. We're going to fight. This bill is going to kill so many Americans who pay taxes, want to contribute to society, and have already been marginalized. We've already fought so hard for the resources that we have. I would also say that this legislation should be read by the disabled people that they serve. No one is going to be able to tell them better what they need than us. It's all these rich, white, corporate capitalists that are controlling our lives and medical needs. It's a basic human right that affects the disabled first. Everyone gets sick, everyone gets hurt, everyone gets old.

Matt Miller Culture Editor Matt is the Culture Editor at Esquire where he covers music, movies, books, and TV—with an emphasis on all things Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones.

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