[nfb-talk] Youth Empowerment

[Cindy Handel]

You're exactly right, Mike.  But, the other problem, we've had, is actually 
finding the young people.  We know they're in schools or involved with 
agencies.  But, everyone is so careful about privacy, these days, it's 
nearly impossible to get to them.

Cindy
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Freeman" <k7uij at panix.com>
To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] Youth Empowerment


Lest we be accused of being the pot that called the kettle black (and I
know Judy did not do this), if we are honest with ourselves, we will
realize that, at least in this neck of the woods, it's getting
increasingly difficult to turn out droves of blind persons for
legislative hearings and such, no matter how important they may be. WE
who are older have incurred many obligations which we cannot or are
unwilling to get out of for last-minute NFB tasks and the young have
their MP3 players, the Internet and the like which they judge to be far
more interesting than having to sit thru some boring appropriations
hearing or even a hearing on something about which they care if the NFB
testimony is about eighth in or worse of the bills being considered. For
what it is worth, I don't think *any* of us, given the Internet and all
the information coming at us, feel the sense of community, comeraderie
and being in the same foxhole with brothers and sisters that we did
when, say, we were fighting for the various White Cane Laws, the right
of blind persons to serve on juries or, to make things local to my
state, struggling to break the School for the Blind out of the welfare
department.

So aside from the truism that we must make friends with the young and
show some interest in what they're doing, we face the task of making
activism fun again and showing the young that they have a real stake in
the future -- not an easy task when, for the first time, young people ma
end up with a lesser standard of living than we have.

Mike

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Judy Jones wrote:

> Very well put.  Who ever heard of Disabled Student Services when we went
> through school in the sixties and seventies?
>
> Judy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ryan O." <rosentowski at neb.rr.com>
> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 9:40 AM
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] Youth Empowerment
>
>
>> The blindness world is still rife with youth. The problem is that they've
>> had a good deal handed to them through legislation, technology and
>> monetary
>> advantage that wasn't available to previous generations.
>>
>>
>> RyanO
>>
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>
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