[nfb-talk] The real reason for a chapter meeting

[T. Joseph Carter]

Mike,

With all due respect, and you know I have a lot of it for you, your
message reads like an old person suggesting that kids just don't pay
attention today.  It's not actually the case.  Just last night, NWCN had a
story on Oregon's primary and how terribly seriously college voters are
taking it.

In my inbox this morning are SIXTEEN campus events, twelve of them are
there "for a good cause".  I think it's less about the sound bite and more
about us drowning in people who want our time, our interest, and oh yes,
our money.  This last thing is most amusing because college students
haven't got any, and they borrow what little they do have.

Everyone seems to talk a good game, and everyone wants something from US,
but who among them truly plans to give anything back?  Who among all of
the dozens of organizations is going to make us anything more than a
resource to be tapped to further their own existence while distracting us
from the things we really should be doing instead.

Everything from food drives to help people in some other country to campus
political party affiliates to political action groups to every sort of
social justice/civil rights/equal opportunity thing you can imagine is
crammed down our throats, daily.  And of course, just about everything
they send us turns out to have been intended as a fund raising event,
quite conveniently.

How is the NFB any different or better than that?  You know the answer to
that, and so do I.  But how do you get that message across to the others
who have so many others competing to do the same thing?

As for looking for quick victories, I think we do need those once in
awhile just for the sake of morale.  Those quick victories help us keep
going when we lose--and there are a few things we have lost, whether we
know it or not.  A blind person can't set in an exit row on a plane, for
example.  And whether we admit it or not, we've basically lost the APS
issue in many places.  (That one at least isn't a total loss, since we
have managed to get them to redesign the things so that they don't drown
out traffic and need not be used..)

There are some we cannot lose: CAPTCHAs, quiet cars, and access to the
software alternatives to Microsoft Office (which produce a file format
some state and local governments now mandate be used in place of the
Microsoft formats..), and probably several others.  These aren't easy or
we'd probably have solved them by now.  The small victories may help keep
morale high, but what I often don't see as we try to address these big
problems is a workable plan to get what we want.

I don't think these two issues--getting the attention of younger blind
people and fighting the big fights we can't afford to lose--are related as
much as you suggest here, but I don't believe they are separate issues
either.  We need the young blood so that we have the fresh perspective and
the stamina it is going to take to really address these problems.  That
leads right back to how do we get their attention, and how do we keep it
long enough for them to realize what we're doing is important enough to be
worth getting involved?

Joseph

On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 04:34:31PM -0700, Mike Freeman wrote:
> Joseph:
> 
> I tend to agree with most of what you say (shown below), at least in 
> part. I especially agree that young people seem these days to be rather 
> disinterested in speeches and abstract ideas, being used to ideas 
> presented in ten- or thirty-second sound bytes. And I believe you may be 
> right in saying that, to some extent, people in general seem not to 
> understand the relevance of events held in Baltimore or the invention of 
> devices that are somewhat expensive. (They mostly have computers, 
> though, so I sometimes wonder if it isn't simply a case of picking which 
> expensive hardware one thinks relevant.)
> 
> Yet I wonder if, in pandering to these trenes, we aren't reinforcing 
> them. And is it not our own fault, to some extent, that we seem not to 
> be able convey the relevance of our national movement and that it is 
> precisely in this fact that our strength and ability to get things done 
> lies.
> 
> I also wonder if some of the issues people wish we would tackle --  
> CAPTCHA's for example -- aren't the sort of thing that aren't 
> susceptible of easy solutions and, to some extent, at least, people 
> aren't in the mood to hear that we have a long row to hoe. What I'm 
> saying is that people often seem to expect easy and quick solutions to 
> problems that don't admit of such and said people don't want to hear 
> that message.
> 
> I know that here in my state, some of our NFB members are itching for a 
> struggle to take on but some of those proposed aren't easily winnable or 
> in the winning might cause as much or more harm than they would do good.
> 
> In the final analysis, people don't join organizations as much as they 
> once did and *all* service organizations are having the same problem.
> 
> Doesn't mean we shouldn't think out of the box, though, and your 
> solutions and activities have merit. My only hope is that we don't 
> forget the philosophical emphasis in our attempt to be "relevant".
> 
> Incidentally, this has a familiar ring to it for me as discussions of 
> "relevance" of academic subjects were very much in evidence forty years 
> ago!
> 
> Mike Freeman
> Please support me in the March for Independence by clicking on the link 
> <http://www.marchforindependence.org/site/TR/Events/General?px=1003466&pg=personal&fr_id=1040&et=GBr5wMrZqPHZj4iscRbQEw..&s_tafId=2031>
>  ... "It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly." - Anatole 
> France