[IL-Talk] at large minutes june 2024

[datemeyer at sbcglobal.net]

NFBI AT LARGE CHAPTER MINUTES

June 2nd, 2024

ZOOM MEETING

CALL TO ORDER

At Large Chapter President David Meyer called the meeting to order at 7:02
PM. Persons in  attendance included:

President David Meyer, Vice President Linda Hendle, Michelle Ault, Ken
Schad, Eileen Truschke, Kyle  Chellino, Marilyn Green, Yvonne Agyarko,
Debbie Pittman, Cathy Randall, Bob Randall, Jermal Powell,  Denise Avant,
and Bill Reif

Approval of May At Large Chapter Minutes were approved

PROGRAM

Tonight we will be covering business of a financial nature.

First thing we covered was the popcorn fundraiser. The popcorn fundraiser
was billed as supporting  people attending conventions so that is how the
money has to be spent. Debbie Pittman made a motion  which was moved to
donate $500.00 to the State Affiliate as money to be donated for National
Convention assistance and the motion was seconded. All supported the motion.

Regarding PAC, we are in a position to do something for PAC. We can make a
contribution as little  as $5.00 a month. A motion was made to move $5.00 a
month to PAC and it was seconded. All supported  the motion.

The third financial consideration is donations to National Funds. We have
four, the first being the  White Cane Fund, which is a general operating
fund. The second fund is the tenBroek Fund, which  pays for our property in
Baltimore, and pays for the upkeep of the property. The third fund is the
Sun Fund which is our rainy day fund so we have some money to fall back on.
The fourth fund is the  Jernigan Fund, which provides assistance for people
to go to National Convention with a emphasis on  first time attendees. Last
year we gave $100 to each of the four funds. A move was made to donate
$150.00 to each of the four funds this year. This was seconded and the
motion was approved. 

PRESIDENTIAL RELEASE

This is Presidential Release 539. This is the final Presidential Release
before National  Convention. It is being hosted in our NFB of Utah
Auditorium and we are hosting our first ever IEP  Advocacy Academy from
today thru June 1st. In the audience we have our first ever cohorts of
advocates in training. The goal of this program is to increase the number of
advocates available to  help families thru the IEP process, but equally as
important is to connect them with the network  that is the National
Federation of the Blind. 

The President also wants to thank our affiliates across the country that are
getting ready to host  or have hosted the NFB BELL Academy or STEM 2U
programs.

We are heading into June and June is designated as PRIDE month. This is a
time to celebrate and  commemorate the LGBTQ+ communities around the world.
We do have a NFB LGBTQ in the National  Federation of the Blind and if you
are interested in being part of the group you can email Sanho  Steele
Louchart, our group chair, and he would be pleased to get you connected to
the group. His  email is  sanho817 at gmail.com . This time last year a number
of our LGBTQ members raised concerns about the various locations  where we
would host our national convention.

The National Board last June knew that we would be coming to Florida in 2024
and grappled with the  difficulty of having a convention in a place where
the laws had changed and really presented some  concerns for a number of our
members, and our board gave this a lot of thoughtful consideration,  knowing
that it was really not going to be a possibility to change our convention.
The President of  the NFB worked very closely with our LGBTQ group to think
about how we might put some things in  place that could enhance the
experience of being in Florida, and maybe create some new connections  for
our organization, and this truly has created an opportunity for us to
connect with some  organizations that are in their own rights doing great
work, great civil rights work for other  communities outside of working with
blind people. 

One of those organizations that we have had the pleasure to connect with is
Equality Florida.  Equality Florida is the largest civil rights organization
dedicated to securing full equality for  Floridas LGBTQ community. And as
part of our effort to connect with other organizations, we were  really
pleased to find Equality Florida. Its always a true honor to connect in a
real way with  other civil rights organizations because we can learn from
the wisdom that they bring to the civil  rights activities, and its really a
great opportunity for them to also learn from the work of the  organized
blind movement.

As we go into Pride Month, we would like to invite to the Presidential
Release an individual from  Equality Florida for some brief remarks. This is
Jon Harris Maurer, who is Equality Floridas  public policy director. He is a
lawyer, and he serves as someone on the front line doing lobbying  work for
the LGBTQ equality effort in the state of Florida, and he has been involved
with us as we  have undertaken building this relationship with Equality
Florida.

He is their Public Policy Director, which basically means he is the front
line lobbyists for  Equality Florida in the capital, and they do local
policy work around the state. In addition, they  are working to secure full
equality for Floridas LGBTQ community through public education,  grassroots
mobilization and direct policy work. If people have been following the news,
certainly  for members in Florida, he is sure theyre aware, that has been a
challenging task in Florida the  last few years. Their 2023 legislative
session in particular really focused a lot on LGBTQ issues.  He is happy and
he will say relieved to report that we have now concluded the 2024
legislative  session in Florida and Equality Florida helped defeat or
neutralize 21 out of 22 Anti-LGBTQ Bills.  Jon Harris Maurer is really
excited about being engaged here and very happy to be a resource and  help
folks understand what it is like to be sort of on the ground in Florida. In
more detail,  Equality Florida has provided resources already that he is
sure can be made to available to anybody  who is interested. 

One of the reasons to have Equality Florida on this Presidential Release is
to talk about the  National Convention, and one of the things that we have
done is created a partnership with an  organization called Social Offset,
and this offers our attendees and supporters of the National  Federation of
the Blind who are coming to the convention an important opportunity to
offset some of  the harm that they may feel is being done by going to the
State of Florida and contributing taxes  to the base of the State. Social
Offset is a platform that helps organizations put together  campaigns. It
vets organizations and allows individuals to make donations, 100% of which
go to  those vetted organizations that are doing good work on the ground to
combat some of the local and  state public policies that might not align
with values that people have.

So we think this is a great opportunity for us. Social Offset is a new
organization. In fact, one  of the principal co founders works right here in
Catonsville, Maryland. So our Social Offset  campaign for 2024 allows you to
designate a contribution to one of two organizations. One of them  is
Equality Florida, and the other is Florida Legal Services, which is a
statewide leader in  advocating for economic, social, and racial justice in
the state of Florida.

You can find more information about the Social Offset opportunity at our web
site,  NFB.org/convention , and you will certainly find it in our convention
emails that will be coming out. And this one  more opportunity for me to
remind you that you can still sign up to be part of our Convention Ally
Network and thank you to those who have already done so.

If you want to register in person at the convention, you will be able to do
so, but it will cost  you 5 dollars more. However, if you are unable to
attend the convention, you can and should  register for our virtual
convention experience. And that registration is open now and will remain
open through a good portion of the convention. The virtual convention
experience option offers  access to pre-convention activities, exclusive
virtual sessions during convention. Also you get  access to the convention
app, to the streaming of the sessions and to pre-convention activities,  and
there are, of course, virtual door prizes as well. We are asking for a $10
dollar registration  fee for the virtual convention experience. There are
more than 40 hours of content available  through the virtual convention
experience.

He would also like to give us one more reminder, for those tuned in live,
that convention  resolutions will be due within the next week. Our
resolutions chairman is Donald Porterfield from  Arizona, and he wants you
to know that we are currently accepting proposed resolutions for this  years
convention. They must be email to the committee at  resolutions at NFB.org .
The deadline to submit a resolution is Tuesday, June 4 at midnight Eastern
time. A couple other  quick reminders about the convention. There are a lot
of volunteer opportunities available to help  with the convention. He
mentioned the convention Ally Network, but you can sign up to be a
convention ambassador. You can help out in the Independence Market. One of
the ways that we enhance  the work we do during the convention and even
leading up to the convention is promote it in social  media. President Mark
Riccobono notices a lot of people already on social media are using our hash
tag, which this year is #NFB24.

So please take the opportunity to put that in your posts, regardless of what
network its on, to  promote, as you are getting ready, what you are excited
about, what you are hoping to accomplish,  the things that you are
interested in, the people you want to connect with. Its a great way to
boost the work that were doing.

Now, the last Presidential Release we talked about that Dream Big Give 25
Drive. This is our annual  campaign to encourage donations to the National
Federation of the Blind and this years effort is  really exciting, because
as you promote contributions to the National Federation of the Blind,  you
have got a shot to win some very cool things. The new twists we put on it is
really fantastic. As  we announced on the last release, the big prize for
those who contribute to the drive is a Monarch,  which is the most
innovative tactile graphics and Braille display available anywhere in the
world,  and you can be one of the first people to get your hands on it, and
actually own it.

This year we have done some really cool things to make it possible for our
members to do some peer  to peer fundraising with your friends and family.
You can reach out and you can get additional  chances to win, because if
someone makes a donation and designates you as the person they want to
honor with their contribution, you will get an additional entry into our
Give 25 Drive drawing for  the Monarch or a trip to our 2025 convention. 

But if we can get the word out and get others to give, that is where the
real power is going to  come in this. And especially with the monarch being
available, we should be getting families and  teachers and all sorts of
people to give and honor individuals in their giving, so that they have  an
opportunity to win the monarch. I am very excited about this. I think these
dollars are going to  create tremendous opportunities for our educational
programs and the advocacy work we want to do in  the National Federation of
the Blind.   NFB.org/give25donate  is the page for the campaign.

So give25donate, all one word. Spread it around and encourage people to give
and then to use your  name so that you get entered into our drawing. Its
going to be exciting to see who gets the  Monarch at our National
Convention. 

Now, as part of our National Convention, it means that we focus all of our
resources on making sure  the convention is great, and one of the things we
will be doing as a result is closing down our  Independence Market so that
we can bring it to the Convention. Our Independence Market will be  closed
from Monday, July 1st, through Friday July 12. It will be at our National
Convention. You  will have to go to the Exhibit Hall during the time the
convention is open to get to the market,  but if you do want to reach out to
order things, your last opportunity before the convention will  be Friday
June 28th, and then the market will not be open again until -- and taking
calls until  Monday, July 15th. 

President Mark Riccobono has some more news for us on this release. He wants
to congratulate all  Federationists on a job well done, because our
tremendous advocacy work over the past few weeks did  pay off because the
Senate and House of Representatives passed HR3935. which is the legislation
that re authorizes the Federal Aviations work for the next 5 years. The FAA
reauthorization was  signed by President Biden on May 16th, It includes a
number of accessibility provisions that  benefit blind people and other
disabled travelers. These include training requirements for  assisting
passengers with disabilities, better access standards for the accessibility
of in-flight  entertainment. Also improved access to airline web sites. The
bill also initiates a pilot program  for air passengers to register their
service animals, which eliminates the problems that blind  people and others
have faced with completing paperwork with some of the airlines.

So these are great provisions and Congress heard from many, many blind
people across the country  about this bill, so congratulations to us on
getting that work done. As many other pieces of  legislation that continue
to move through Congress, but at the same time we are pushing on the
regulatory front, and on May 23rd, we did submit comments to the Department
of Transportation  regarding its continue use of the forms to register
service animals with the airlines. 

We have continued to push back on those provisions even as this bill makes
its way through  Congress. Hopefully the new system will help, but we have
continued to advocate very strongly with  the Department of Transportation
about our opposition to the work that they are doing, and our  comments are
making a difference there. Now, you can read all of our policy comments on
our policy  statements page at NFB.org, and you can also read the full text
of our press releases by going to  the press room page on our web site. We
publish all of these things on a regular basis.So any time  you are looking
for the work that we are doing, you will find it at NFB.org. convention.

Passings: Leta Boykin, Al McKenney, William T. Jones,Daniel Taverne,and
Queen Franklin.Please keep  all of these individuals in your thoughts and
prayers.

There will not be a Presidential Release live in July. Join us for our
National Convention or  virtually, in person, where President Riccobono
delivers a Presidential Report and annual banquet  speech. You can contact
President Riccobono at 4 1 0-6 5 9-9 3 1 4 or via email at
Officeofthepresident at NFB.org .

STATE PRESIDENTS REPORT

Next State Board meeting is on June 11th, 2024. This is an excellent
opportunity to find out what  is going within our Affiliate, things like our
BELL program. Please be there if you wish to learn  more about our programs
and the National Federation of the Blind of IL. We also have our face to
face Board meeting in August. It will be at our Convention Hotel, which is
the Chicago Marriot  Naperville Hotel out of Naperville, IL.The date is
August 17th, our meeting will start at 9:00 AM,  we will break for lunch
around 11:30/12:00 for a half an hour, we will come back into session and
usually end around 2 or 3 PM. It is an excellent opportunity to know what is
going on in our  Affiliate. A lot of that meeting will be about our State
Convention which will be about two months  away. If you are able to attend
you can make your hotel reservation at the Chicago Marriot  Naperville
Hotel. You can also make your hotel reservation for the State Convention at
that time  which is October 18th to October 20th. We are looking for ideas
for the theme of our convention,  looking for ideas of things that people
would like to see at our State Convention. There will  likely be a survey
going out in the next month or two to see if people are interested in having
a  lunch on Friday or maybe a breakfast on Sunday since we will adjourn on
Saturday night so people  know how to plan for that.

We have National Convention July 3rd to the 8th in Orlando, Florida. The
pre-registration has  passed for our room block and to pre register and get
your banquet ticket to save a little money  but you can still register and
come to the convention and register at the door. We will be at the  Rosen
Center, down in Orlando, Florida.

We have our Bell Program. We will be doing Springfield First this year and
that is July 15th thru  July 19th. The Chicago Program is July 22nd to
August 2nd, We do currently have 9 students  registered for Chicago and for
the first time in our history of having BELL we have a wait list for  our
Chicago BELL. If you know any students between the ages of 4 to 12 we are
taking a wait list  for Chicago but if the families are able to get to
Springfield for the Springfield one week  residential program we put the
families up in a hotel so they are able to stay with the students so  they
able to get a good understanding of how we live the lives that we want at
the National  Federation of the Blind. We are working very hard to get out
the word and get more students into  our Springfield Program. Debbie Stein
also looking of Adult Blind Mentors for our Chicago and  Springfield BELL
Program. If you would like to be a blind mentor or know anyone that you
would  think would be a great candidate to be a Blind Mentor give Debbie a
call or send her a email. You  can email Debbie Stein at  dkent5817 at att.net
. or you can call her at 7 7 3-2 0 3-1 3 9 4. WE have 9 students at Chicago
Bell and 4 students for  Springfield.

OLD BUSINESS

Debbie Pittman let us know that we will be getting some kind of check
regarding the Honey Baked Ham  Fundraiser. The way Honey Baked has it set up
is not simple. One of the problems that people ran  into was the second step
of having to purchase a gift card people ran into problems. It was not as
simple as the Popcorn Fundraiser for people to purchase.

NEW BUSINESS

Due to National Convention a motion was made to cancel the July At-Large
Chapter meeting. The  motion was seconded and all in favor said AYE. The
next At Large Chapter Meeting will be August 4th.

We will have our IL Caucus at National on July 5th at 7:00 AM. Have your
banquet ticket in hand so  that we can get ready for the exchange so we can
have a table at the banquet and get ready for a  great speech. There will
not be ZOOM for the Caucus

Meeting Adjourned at 8:12 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,

Michelle Ault

Secretary