by Paul Edwards
(Editor’s Note: The following words are based on the speech which ACB President Paul Edwards delivered to assembled affiliate presidents and representatives at ACB’s annual mid-year meeting in Louisville, Ky.)
Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to look forward to these mid-year reports, which encourage me to pause in the middle of the year and reflect upon what we have accomplished since the last national convention, and also to share with you some of the concerns that have emerged since last July.
The Issue of Minimum Wage for Blind Workers
First, I want to describe some of the events that have occurred around minimum wage, and also some of the dilemmas that place ACB in some interesting situations.
Last fall, the National Federation of the Blind began to propose legislation at the national level to require all industries programs that employ people who are blind to assure that anyone who had no other disability except blindness should receive no less than the minimum wage.
Now, those of you who follow our resolutions will know that that viewpoint corresponds essentially to the position that ACB has also taken. So, one of the more interesting things that that action did for us was to lead us to a place where we agreed absolutely with the Federation’s suggestion.
Well, in December, Jim Gibbons, who heads National Industries for the Blind, called together the blindness community. The leadership of ACB and NFB were there. Many NIB industries were there, and the General Council of Industries for the Blind had representatives at the meeting. The objective was to figure out a way to assure that the blindness community could take action as a whole. We all wanted to assure that whatever policy we developed would not only protect the rights of blind folks to get the minimum wage, but also give the industries enough time — especially in light of some of GSA’s recent actions — to develop and implement viable programs which could also pay workers at least the minimum wage.
At that meeting, ACB took the position that, if the blindness community as a whole were prepared to stand together, then we would be comfortable giving National Industries for the Blind an opportunity to try to build consensus within its own industries. Furthermore, we stated that we thought that, in the long run, the interests of the blindness community would be better served by allowing that to happen.
We said very clearly, however, that if an organization within the blindness community chose not to join with us, all bets were off.
I don’t think that it will surprise any of you when I say that the National Federation of the Blind chose not to participate in the consensus-building effort that that meeting attempted to forge.
ACB supports minimum wage for blind folks. ACB also supports the building of a strong industry program. We support NIB because, compared with most rehabilitation agencies, NIB agencies and the NIB itself are taking innovative and effective approaches to the rehabilitation of people who are blind which may exist long after rehab itself has gone away.
I want to suggest to you that the role that ACB tries to play is often not merely the role that we can play, and that we’re allowed to play. We took a position of support for the Federation’s position with regard to minimum wage for folks who are blind. We did this because our resolution said that we should.
Subsequently, we also took the position that, if we are really going to open this Pandora’s box, we ought to open it all the way, and take a look at minimum wage across the board.
The Blindness Community and ACB’s Position in It
The general point that I want to make, and that I want to leave you with here, is that the blindness community as a whole still remains small and still remains fragmented. The ACB’s place in that blindness community is becoming more and more important.
The ACB has participated at a leadership level in meetings with regard to separate agencies. We will probably, if we ever get to the place where they’re ready to hold the next range of meetings — actually be hosting meetings on that subject.
However, here again, what we have found is, whereas everyone in the blindness community seems intent upon building consensus, there is one organization within the blindness community that seems more intent on going in its own direction, regardless of what the rest of us believe, and that organization is the National Federation of the Blind.
I say to the National Federation of the Blind, and I say to the blindness community as a whole, we are too small to be divided. We should, and must, stand together when we can.
But, I also say to the National Federation of the Blind and to the blindness community: If our community means anything as a concept, then the blindness community must stand up against organizations that consistently refuse to build consensus.
Celebrating Victories
I want to spend just a few minutes talking about the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind. It is important to celebrate the victories that we achieve, and we need to recognize the degree to which the American Council of the Blind has assumed a leadership role in fostering both the separate agency notions of tomorrow, as well as the kinds of attitudes that consumers will have toward their state agencies.
While you will remember that the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind was initially somewhat recalcitrant in becoming involved with us with regard to the Randolph-Sheppard issue, I am pleased to tell you that that organization has now held an initial conference with us and has committed to actually sponsor a major conference that will happen later this year to try to build the Randolph-Sheppard program into the strong program it can be.
That exercise, ladies and gentlemen, is an absolute result of the work that RSVA and the ACB did. We started it. We finished it.
Inside ACB
One of the things that I get to do every two years or so is pull together committees for the American Council of the Blind. This year, I got the officers involved in that activity, and while there were certainly some glitches in that system, our committee lists are now out.
I think these committee lists are representative of our efforts, as an organization, to try to broaden the range of leadership opportunities that are available to our members. Seventeen of the members of committees this year have never served on an ACB committee before. I think that’s exciting.
Our ACB committees are formed with members from 35 states, which is pretty broad geographically. Also, each member of our ACB board of directors, including our officers, has been limited to serving on a single committee. So, our intent is to create and to build new leadership, and assure that new people have the opportunity to come up in the national arena. I think this is exciting, and I think it’s what ACB needs to be all about.
The American Council of the Blind has completed the last phase of its reorganization, and we have created a new position of financial officer for both the American Council of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind Enterprises and Services. I am pleased to tell all of you that the person who is assuming this new and exalted position is Jim Olsen.
The reorganization is going to enable us to do something else that is exciting: The American Council of the Blind Enterprises and Services is now going to go out and hire a smart, effective, competent, capable, go-getter executive director, who is going to make ACBES immensely rich, which will then make ACB immensely rich!
I Will Not Remain Silent
Now, sadly, I must turn to a subject which has come up in virtually every mid-year and convention report which I have given to this organization since my presidency commenced. If you look back at all of my reports, you will find that a recurrent theme has been my very real concern about increasingly obnoxious attitudes of the general public and of some disabled people, toward disability itself, and, to a greater degree toward blindness, and services for people who are blind. It seems that my whole presidency has been spent trying to justify what I ought not to have to justify. That is, the fact that blind people should, and do, have the right to receive appropriate services, delivered by well-trained individuals, and that those blind people also have the right to choose the kinds of services that they receive, and should not be told by other people the kinds of services they ought to have.
This year is probably a year where, if anything, I am more concerned than I ever have been. In an increasing number of states since my presidency started, the issue of separate services has become an issue for debate. The degree to which small government is shrinking the willingness of states to provide specialized services for people who are blind is an indication to me of one of two things: Either we in the blindness community are still not doing a good enough job of getting the word out, or, alternatively, this is a much larger issue than we initially gave it credit for being. In fact, I think the answer is the latter.
I’d like to suggest a couple of reasons why I believe that’s true, and also suggest to you a few concerns that are new.
Last July, there was a gentleman at our convention who was, it seemed to me and some others, crying wolf in the wilderness. This gentleman’s name is Charlie Hodge. Last July, Charlie Hodge suggested that we needed to be concerned about the kind of decisions that he felt were going to emerge from the court system with regard to the ADA. He proposed resolutions, which ended up being sent to our lawyers’ affiliate for them to look at and make recommendations and send back to us. In fact, Charlie Hodge has certainly been proven more right than I was. While the ADA is still there, it is being challenged more and more, by state governments, by local governments, by national organizations, and by the media.
We need to be concerned over the degree to which the Americans with Disabilities Act is being threatened. We also need to be concerned about the response that the disability community is making to this threat.
I think it’s extremely important for all of us to recognize that the Americans with Disabilities Act is important as a symbol. I don’t respond often to the question about what the Americans with Disabilities Act has done for people who are blind, because for me that isn’t the issue. The issue is, ought there to be a law which protects the civil rights of people who are disabled? And, if the answer to that question is yes, then, since the ADA is the only civil rights law that protects the rights of disabled people, albeit not very well, and albeit not very much, we had best protect that law!
It is not enough, however, to simply protect the law. We must actually begin, I believe, to be more assertive about our needs as people with disabilities.
One thing that has happened over the past several years is that the disability community has retreated into a zone of complacency. If you talk with a number of the leaders of the national disability community about the distortion that happens in the media, about the whittling away of the ADA by congresses and by states, their response tends to be: "Well, we know you’re right. But, let’s be quiet and careful — because, if we get too noisy and quarrelsome, they’ll take away what we have now.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t accept that argument.
I can’t accept the notion that I can be quiet in a society where 70 percent of people who are blind are unemployed, while the unemployment rate for the general population is 4 percent.
I can’t accept the idea that I should be silent about the discrimination that occurs for people with disabilities when the income for people with disabilities is half the income for people without them.
I also will not be silent, ladies and gentlemen, because I’m not convinced that the folks who claim that the best attack is passivity are right. The truth, it seems to me, is that the media and Congress and state governments are able to do with disability what they are doing because disabled people have been silent. It is time for us to stand up and be counted.
The ADA nearly didn’t pass. What made the ADA pass were huge truckloads of letters sent by people with disabilities, detailing the kinds of discrimination that made it impossible for them to survive or to be integrated appropriately into the society.
Ten years after the ADA’s passage, is that kind of discrimination much less? I think the answer to the question is no.
Have people who are severely disabled benefitted substantially from the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act? One way to find an answer to this question is to ask if the employment level for people with disabilities has changed significantly. The answer is no.
Are people with disabilities more integrated into society? Are there more people with disabilities, for instance, holding management jobs within the private sector? Are there more people with disabilities holding management jobs in state governments? Are there more of us people with disabilities who are actively involved as effective participants within the political process — e.g., in state legislatures, or at the national level, in Congress? The answer to those questions is no, no, no, no.
Ladies and gentlemen, what do we have to lose by suggesting to the rest of society that, as disabled people, we are tired of it, and we’re not going to take it anymore!
It is absolutely crucial to recognize that we are not alone. It isn’t only people with disabilities who are being threatened by the new attitudes in our society. It’s also people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, it's also everyone who is poor, everyone who is under-educated. The philosophy that is rampant in our country at the moment is bound and determined to create a multi-tiered, multi-class society where we will categorically have the haves and the have-nots, and where the have-nots will probably never be able to climb out of the trough the society is throwing them into.
It is up to us whether people with disabilities choose to stay in this trough or demand that we be allowed to climb out. And, I think it’s absolutely crucial — and as President of ACB I intend to take this position from now on — that I will no longer stand by and allow people to slander persons with disabilities with inaccurate half-truths.
Our executive director will verify that, about a month ago, I called him, absolutely livid about a document that had just been published by the Congress. This particular document had been compiled for use by a Congressional committee that was exploring the degree to which the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to the Internet. Whereas there were a number of facts within this document which were accurate, taken as a whole, the document created an atmosphere of fear, created a belief that disabled people were being unfair, and tried at the end to suggest that, were we to make the Internet accessible to people with disabilities, virtually every small web site would have to go out of business. The document was filled with exactly the same kinds of arguments which had been used, 10 years before, by the chambers of commerce and other detractors of disability rights, i.e., that a civil rights law for people with disabilities would make all small businesses go out of business and that all the poorest little businesses would no longer be able to function if the Congress passed this vicious law against American business.
The Congressional document also put forth the ludicrous argument that making the Internet accessible would be a violation of the First Amendment rights of all of the people who are operating Internet sites, because, essentially, in order to make their sites accessible, the argument went, they’d be told what to say, and their freedom of speech would, therefore, be curtailed. What balderdash!
Yet, that kind of argument is effective for a bunch of Americans, who — if they’re persuaded that the flag is at risk, that the Constitution is the issue — will support elements of policy that they know, deep-down, are inappropriate and wrong.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have to say, to the people who publish these half-truths, “Stop it!”
Maybe it’s time that we say to newspapers — and often very capable and competent newspapers, like “The Washington Post” and “The New York Times” — “If you’re going to publish articles that talk about what you consider to be inappropriate suits under the ADA, publish the results as well.” And, if newspapers won’t do this, then we need to begin to launch a campaign of our own.
ACB Can Do It!
It’s been a pleasure over the last four and a half years — most days — to serve as president of the American Council of the Blind. Though I have reported lots of what may be considered negative things in my report this time, I’d also like to share with you my pleasure at the ongoing opportunity that the American Council of the Blind affords me to get to know grass-roots people who are blind from all over the country. I get an opportunity to build a sense within myself of the strength of this organization, by observing regular people doing important things in each local chapter, in each state. Each of us is a part of a huge tapestry. In a very real sense, the American Council of the Blind is the American quilt. We are different, we are varied. Some of us are larger, some of us are smaller, some of us do more, some of us do less, but the whole that we create, ladies and gentlemen, is a consumer organization of people who are blind that has already, in the 40 years it has existed, made a tremendous difference in the lives of blind people, and that is now poised, as we are getting ready to begin the new century, to become the organization that will be the most responsible for creating the future that blind people in our society will have.