[Arizona-students] Arizona is lagging behind!

[Allison Hilliker]

Hi everyone,

There's an important movement in the U.S. congress to obtain more money to
fund the NLS Talking Books for the Blind program.

There is a letter circulating the congress in support of this talking book 
funding.  What I find sad is that currently 68 members of congress have 
signed this
letter and not one of them is from Arizona.  Not even one!  This could mean
that the aArizona reps are just totally against providing book access for
the blind, but I doubt it.  To me what this is saying is that none of us
from Arizona are calling our congressmen and asking them to sign these
letters.  Come on guys, we can do this!

I know you've likely been ignoring the legislative update notes that come
from the NFB national office.  I know I do.  They are too frequent, too
vague, and too boring, but sometimes a piece of info comes through in them
that is actually really important for us to respond to.  I believe this is
one of those important issues.

I called my congressman this morning and had a good conversation with his
aide.  Now I urge you to do the same with your representative.  Just call
them up and say this one thing.  I'll lay it out for you so you don't have
to go do research on the letter.  Just say.

"I'd like to ask the congressman to sign Congressman Towns' "Dear Colleague"
letter to support the Talking Books for the blind program."

That's all you have to say.  That's it.  Easy... I promise.  If they ask
why, you can just explain that the program does not currently have the funds
to change from tape books to digital ones.  But it's likely that they won't
ask why.  What they may ask is which person in congressman Towns' office is
handling the letter.  The answer to that is Dana Grayson.  Note to screen
reader users.  Grayson's first name is pronounced dayna, with a long a.  I
add this because at least for me, JAWS says her name so that it sounds like
Donna and it's important that we pronounce it correctly.

The person you talk to on the phone at your rep's office won't be able to
tell you for sure whether the congressman will sign the letter.  So what I
did is to ask the person to call me back with the congressman's decision on
the issue.  You don't have to do this, but I like too.  Also, I got the name
of the person I talked to so that if I don't hear anything in a few days I
can call the office again and ask to speak to the individual who originally
took my call.

Now, how do you call your rep?
Call the capital switchboard at (202) 225-3121.  When you do, you can ask to
be connected to your rep.  If you don't know who your representative is,
then E-mail me and I'll help you out.  I'm working today so I'll be checking
my E-mail all day and can respond quickly.

So come on all, I wanna see some Arizona congresspeople signing this letter!
So let's call our reps... yes, Ryan, Arielle, Gabe, Darrell, that means you
too!

Best,

Allison

E-mail: hillikera at gmail.com