[nfbwatlk] Rami Rabby makes the news

[Alco Canfield]

Some years ago.  Maybe he was having a bad day.

Alco

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Kaye Kipp
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 10:57 PM
To: amcanfield at comcast.net; NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] Rami Rabby makes the news

When was that?  That doesn't sound like him.

Kaye
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alco Canfield" <amcanfield at comcast.net>
To: "'NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List'" <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] Rami Rabby makes the news


> Very interesting.  I will never forget the time he banged on all these 
> doors
> and was completely lost and angry at the hotel because they didn't have
> someone escort him to his room.
>
> Alco
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 8:54 PM
> To: nfbw
> Subject: [nfbwatlk] Rami Rabby makes the news
>
> An interesting article about Rami Rabby.
> carl jarvis
>
>
> The New York Times, USA
> Saturday, July 07, 2007
>
> A U.S. Diplomat With an Extraordinary Global View
>
> By MARC LACEY
>
> Caption: Avraham Rabby en route the U.S. Department of State in 
> Washington,
> D.C. Andrew Councill for The New York Times
>
> AS chief of the political section at the American Embassy here for the 
> last
> two years, Avraham Rabby has had the job of surveying Trinidad's political
> landscape for Washington.
>
> The fact that he has not actually seen the Caribbean island - or any of 
> the
> places on five continents where he has been posted - has not stymied him.
>
> "I necessarily listen more than a sighted person would," he said. "If I'm
> walking along a street, I can tell there is a building next to me because 
> of
> the echoes of my feet or my cane. A blind person sees the world 
> differently
> from a sighted person. Our impressions are no less valid."
>
> Mr. Rabby, who lost his sight at the age of 8 because of detached retinas,
> is the State Department's first blind diplomat. It is an achievement he
> fought for in the 1980s, passing three written entrance exams and two oral
> exercises along the way. But even then, the State Department barred him 
> from
> the diplomatic corps.
>
> "You don't ask a blind person to drive a bus or be a bank teller," George 
> S.
> Vest, who was the personnel director for the Foreign Service, explained in

> a
> 1988 interview. "There are jobs which are dangerous or unsuitable for 
> them.
> And in the Foreign Service, we're full of jobs like that."
>
> The department contended that diplomats, blind ones included, had to be 
> able
> to work anywhere in the world and to work with confidential documents
> without any outside aid. In addition, State Department officials said,
> diplomats had to be able to pick up on nonverbal cues, such as winks or
> nods, which can sometimes have more meaning than the words being uttered.
>
> But Mr. Rabby illustrated another essential quality of diplomats:
> perseverance. "No international treaty has ever been decided on the basis 
> of
> a wink or a nod," he retorted, after hiring a lawyer and challenging the
> State Department's policy, which dated from the 18th century.
>
> Aiding Mr. Rabby's effort was a federal law barring the government from
> disqualifying prospective employees because of disabilities. Eventually,
> after the news media and Congress found out about his case, the State
> Department reversed course. The new policy would consider disabled 
> diplomats
> on a case-by-case basis. Mr. Rabby became case No. 1.
>
> In 1990, he was off to London, where he was posted at the embassy there as

> a
> junior political officer. He moved next to Pretoria, South Africa, where
> Nelson Mandela had just been freed from prison and where Mr. Rabby 
> witnessed
> the country's first free elections. "It was one of the most stimulating
> experiences in my life," he said, noting that he was one of the embassy's
> election observers.
>
> "People ask me how I can assess a political rally if I can't see it," he
> said. "I tell them that I listen to the crowd and to the speakers. You can
> sense what is going on."
>
> He spent time in Washington at the State Department's Bureau of Human
> Rights, and in postings in Lima and New Delhi. During a stint at the 
> United
> States Mission to the United Nations, he helped write resolutions dealing
> with literacy, global health and the rights of the disabled.
>
> His final posting - he retired at the end of June at the mandatory
> retirement age of 65 - was to Port of Spain, where he became an expert in
> Trinidad's political system, which has long been divided between parties,
> one predominantly Afro-Trinidadian and one Indo-Trinidadian.
>
> When journalists descended on Trinidad recently in search of information 
> on
> the suspected plot to set off a bomb at a fuel line at Kennedy 
> International
> Airport that was traced back to this Caribbean island, he became one of 
> the
> officials to talk to.
>
> "A diplomat does a lot of writing, a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, a
> lot of talking and has to attend a lot of meetings," he said. Thanks to
> technological advances and a full-time assistant, Mr. Rabby could do all 
> of
> those things too.
>
> He wrote his cables to Washington using a machine that wrote in Braille. 
> He
> then read them back to his assistant, Rhonda Singh, who typed them up. He
> also had a computer with a speech program that allowed him to listen to 
> his
> e-mail messages.
>
> As for tracking news developments, Ms. Singh, an American citizen who 
> lives
> in Trinidad, read him the local papers. "I was basically his eyes," she
> said.
>
> BORN in Israel, Mr. Rabby, who is known as Rami, was sent to live with an
> aunt in England at the age of 10 because his parents believed there were
> better schools for the blind there. A Hebrew speaker, he quickly mastered
> English at Worcester College for Blind Boys.
>
> "I remember the headmaster used to go out and speak to groups about the
> school, and he used to say that we teach our boys to stand on their own 
> two
> feet and, if necessary, to step on yours too," Mr. Rabby recalled.
>
> He went off to Oxford, where he studied French and Spanish. Finding a job
> after college proved a challenge. "Time and time again I met recruiters 
> who
> felt that a blind person could not work in management," he said in the
> British accent that he has never lost.
>
> Eventually, he joined Ford Motor Company in Britain, where he worked in
> human resources. After about a year, he moved to the United States and
> earned an M.B.A. at the University of Chicago.
>
> After graduation in 1969, he sought out a management training program, but
> had few offers after "dozens and dozens, if not hundreds" of interviews.
>
> He finally landed a job with a management consulting firm, Hewitt
> Associates, and later moved to Citibank. He also spent time as an
> independent consultant, writing a number of employment guides, including 
> one
> giving advice to blind job seekers.
>
> "One of my problems in my working life, after a few years I get a bit 
> tired
> of what I am doing and I want to change," said Mr. Rabby, who became an
> American citizen in 1980.
>
> It was while living in New York that he decided to make the jump into
> international relations, a longtime interest. The State Department's 
> regular
> rotations of its diplomats proved a perfect fit.
>
> His fight to join the Foreign Service has helped others along the way. 
> There
> are now four blind Foreign Service officers stationed around the globe, 
> the
> State Department said, among about 170 disabled Foreign Service employees
> overseas.
>
> MR. RABBY said blind Foreign Service officers had recently been restricted
> from adjudicating visa applications because of their inability to verify
> photographs and signatures of applications.
>
> Mr. Rabby, who attributes the decision to the increased restrictions after
> the Sept. 11 attacks, said he did visa work at the start of his career in
> London, with the assistance of a reader, who verified documents for him. 
> He
> asked the questions and assessed the responses.
>
> "The State Department is not yet completely on the side of the angels," he
> said. A State Department official disputed that there was a policy in 
> place
> restricting the assignments of blind diplomats. Decisions on assigning
> personnel, the official said, are made on a case-by-case basis in 
> accordance
> with the law.
>
> Even before Mr. Rabby headed out into the world as a diplomat, he was
> already testifying before Congress on his quest for the job. He said back
> then that he did not want to be put in a pigeonhole as a blind diplomat.
>
> "Blind people are as different from one another as sighted people," he 
> told
> members of the House Foreign Affairs and Civil Service Committees in 1989.
> "There is no such thing as a category labeled, 'blind.' "
>
> Prior Beharry contributed reporting.
>
>
>
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