by Penny Reeder
I kissed my two youngest children and sent them off, suitcases and backpacks in hand, to spend the weekend with their best friends. I stocked the larder for their two older brothers who would be spending the weekend on their own, and waved good-bye to my husband as he headed off to catch a plane for a week-long west-coast conference.
Miraculously, my paratransit cab arrived only 20 minutes late, and I was off — to my first ACB legislative seminar!
Here’s what it was like.
The Advocacy Seminar
The Doubletree Park Terrace Hotel is a delightful little hostelry, with well-appointed rooms, terrific food and drink, a piano in the main lobby which was destined to get a pretty thorough workout during the late evenings of the weekend, and — best of all — a staff that seemed to enjoy being accommodating to their visually impaired guests.
Seminar events began right on schedule with opening remarks by ACB President Paul Edwards, introductions by the 120 people in the room, and an overview of what we could expect of the weekend.
Melanie Brunson took off her attorney’s hat and put on that of an instructor — as she taught us the rules and strategies for effective advocacy.
A highlight of the afternoon was an impromptu drama executed with great enthusiasm by Ray Campbell who played an earnest, if not entirely well-prepared advocate, and Charlie “Show-Me-The-Desk-Where-I-Can-Put-Up-My-Feet” Crawford, who played a reluctant legislator whom Ray was trying to persuade.
The audience laughed and applauded and learned. We were all energized and empowered to work with the federal, state, and local powers that be to explain our issues and secure a place in an accessible mainstream for people who are blind.
The Capitol Steps
There were two events scheduled for Saturday evening. One was a reception hosted by ACB Second Vice President Pam Shaw, and the other was a trip to a local club where the popular “Capitol Steps” were putting on a show.
From the reports of several people who attended Pam’s reception, I understand that the event was a rousing success. Members from as far away as Alaska and as close inside the beltway as Connecticut Avenue mixed and mingled and enjoyed each other’s company.
I chose to board one of the buses for Petitbon’s in Arlington, Va. The Capitol Steps kept us laughing from beginning to end of their very entertaining show! Topics ranged through the political gamut and featured performances by John McCain and a very tall Bill Bradley, as well as skits featuring Bill Clinton, Al Gore and George W. (Yes, there were a few references to interns who happened to be wearing big blue dresses.) The parodies were funny, the caliber of the musical performances was high. Sharing jokes and food and drinks with friends was the best part of all!
Understanding the Issues
Bright and early the next morning, we assembled again in the ballroom at the Doubletree to learn about the issues which would take precedence at this year’s seminar. There were four major topics which we all planned to present to our legislators, as follows:
• ACB urges Congress to take no action with regard to the Americans with Disabilities Act that would undermine the effectiveness of this landmark legislation.
• ACB supports increased funding for installation of audible signs and other measures to make the U.S. Capitol grounds more accessible to people who are blind and visually impaired.
• ACB supports the increased availability of descriptive video programming. We further urge members of Congress to thank the Federal Communications Commission for recognizing the importance of descriptive video programming as a means of giving a significant part of our population fuller access to the public air waves.
• ACB supports HR 2870, the Medicare Vision Rehabilitation Act, which provides Medicare reimbursement for the services of orientation and mobility specialists, rehabilitation teachers and low vision therapists.
The Issues Forum
The issues detailed above are pretty straightforward. No debate about whether we should or should not be taking these positions was anticipated, nor did any occur.
What about the issue of sub-minimum wage for blind industries’ employees, however? ACB had resolved at the 1999 convention to do what we could organizationally to end the practice, as it applies to workers whose only disability is blindness. It was common knowledge that the Federation had made this issue the focus of its own legislative seminar about six weeks before ours. In December, Jim Gibbons, CEO of National Industries for the Blind, had convened a summit of all the leaders in the blindness community, where Gibbons had assured attendees that the various industries who still paid blind workers less than the minimum wage would end the practice.
To find out where we were at this point in time — a month and a half after NFB members had brought the issue to the attention of their senators and representatives, and three months after Gibbons had made promises to do the right thing at the summit — we held a briefing on the topic of sub-minimum wage for blind industries workers at our own legislative seminar.
We weren’t hosting the Lincoln-Douglas debate, but watching the rapt attention of the audience, one might have thought we were. The Doubletree’s small ballroom was bursting at the seams with about 150 people in attendance.
Chris Cox, who works for NFB as a Washington lobbyist, spoke first. Although the major focus of her presentation was on Social Security linkage and the need to convince our senators to remove the earnings limits for blind SSDI recipients, Cox did spend a few minutes talking about the plight of approximately 170 blind workshop employees who, despite having no other disability, still earn less than the minimum wage.
“Blind people,” she said, “can perform just as well as their sighted colleagues ... This issue is different for people who are blind than it is for people with other kinds of disabilities ... We are not supporting the efforts of other disability groups to have the General Accounting Office (GAO) do a study. This issue has been studied and studied.”
Gibbons, on the other hand, told those assembled that he sees no necessity for a Congressional mandate to eliminate sub-minimum wages for blind workers. He explained that there are fewer than 200 blind-only industries workers who earn less than minimum wage today, and that the leadership of the General Council of Industries for the Blind (GCIB) has, at his urging, developed a position paper which basically endorses the payment of minimum wage. Their policy statement has to be taken to the whole GCIB, and Gibbons said that he expected them to adopt the policy. (Editor’s note: As we went to press, we learned that the GCIB is expected to vote on this issue on Saturday, April 15.)
“We’ll crack that nut,” he went on, “and serve as role models for anyone else who employs blind people.”
Gibbons said that he keeps hearing anecdotal reports of blind-only workers receiving lifetime training (and therefore being constrained to sub-minimum wages), but he has never seen this kind of thing actually occurring. “I keep asking someone to show me where lifetime training exists,” he said. “We need to legislate in a way that does not eliminate opportunities for people.”
He told a story about a visually impaired woman who was not capable of doing a particular blind industries job at the production rate and would not have been hired if her employer were required to pay her at the minimum wage.
“This issue has been on the burner for 25 years,” Gibbons concluded. “There is not a lot of patience, and I understand that. We’ll see how — or if — the [GCIB] organization supports me.”
Questions for Gibbons
When asked for his comments on reported practices of some industries who hire just enough blind employees to procure lucrative government contracts, while the majority of their workers do not have visual impairments, and the somewhat questionable job focus of many blind industries on tasks such as printing, Gibbons replied:
“I have a great concern seeing these kinds of jobs being given high focus in the NIB Industries. ... My only accountability is to create more jobs for blind people ... Even if some agencies get a little creative with what they do, that’s how you get more jobs for blind people and find out what works.”
Charlie Crawford attempted to bring the focus of the discussion back to sub-minimum wage. “You have told us that NIB believes minimum wage is an important thing to get done, and that you are committed to doing it. While we admire you as a director of NIB, we can’t guarantee that you will be able to make that agenda happen simply because you want it to be.”
“We all have to make priorities,” Gibbons answered. “My view is that this [issue] is immaterial, relative to the more important SGA [referring to linkage] battle that you are fighting.”
Paul Edwards summed up the morning’s forum: “We have been able to take a look at a couple of issues where there are not hard and fast answers ... where the good of one group may have to be balanced against the good of another group. At its center, what political advocacy is all about is weighing what is good and right to do against what is possible to get done. That’s what this morning was all about.”
The Banquet
After a day of gathering facts and learning how to present our issues in the most effective ways, we were ready for some rest and recuperation. The banquet more than met our need for respite. Many said that the food at this year’s banquet was the best in recent memory. And the banquet speaker, David Hauck, managed to transport us from our cares of the moment while still sharing information which was exceptionally relevant to our goals of the coming day.
Hauck, who is Assistant Director of the Office of Special Services of the U.S. Capitol, took us on a virtual tour of the Capitol building. We felt like we were there, as Hauck whisked us through the Great Rotunda, stopping here to point out the tobacco leaves which adorn so many pillars, and there to tell us why a sculpture of three famous suffragettes is called “Three Women in a Tub.”
As the evening drew to a close, we felt relaxed because of the food and camaraderie, and energized for our journey of the coming day.
The Hill Visits
Early on Monday morning, we boarded buses for the Hart Senate Office Building, where ACB’s muster room, 902, was already staffed by ACB national staff members and volunteers who were eager to help us find our way to the various offices of our senators and representatives.
My first trip was to the office of my representative, Congresswoman Connie Morella (R-Md.). Although Al Pietrolungo, President of ACB of Maryland, and I did not get to speak with Morella, we were very pleased to meet with her legislative aide, Moira Shea, who happens to be a visually impaired guide dog user herself. She had a personal knowledge of the issues we were asking her to present to her boss — especially the difficulty of finding one’s way around the Capitol, and the need for video description — and Al and I felt confident that our message had been heard.
As we met others coming and going through the Capitol and sharing a boxed lunch in the muster room, we learned that our colleagues felt that their voices were being heard as well.
As we go to press, seminar participants are still returning feedback forms which describe their visits to senators and representatives. We can report that, during the week of March 20, at least 130 constituent visits were made by members of the American Council of the Blind to their legislators.
Impacts and Consequences
Congress took note of our presence on the hill. Several days later, at a hearing on the issue of eliminating the SGA for blind and other SSDI recipients, Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told committee members and the audience about his recent meetings with members of the American Council of the Blind.
“They explained to me,” he said, “how Clovernook Press ... has had a hard time attracting workers with disabilities because of the earnings limitation. They told me that blind people want to work, but they can’t because of the disincentives.”
We summarized the results of survey questions which we asked legislative seminar participants about the accessibility of the Capitol building and its surrounding Senate and House office buildings. Overwhelmingly, our members reported that traveling in the halls of government is needlessly challenging for people who cannot see. We have transmitted the results of our survey to the Architect of the Capitol, as that office begins — by legislative mandate — to examine questions of safety and access.
On Monday evening, reunited with my children, I shared stories about riding the underground subway between chambers of Congress, singing into the wee hours with members of an impromptu ACB chorus, and laughing at the parodies of the Capitol Steps. I fell into bed two hours earlier than usual, and was sleeping soundly when my husband called to ask how it was.
“It was great,” I mumbled, through layers of sleep. “I recommend it — highly!”