[Education and Welfare] an observation and a few thoughts

[Elton Thomas]

When we advocate we are speaking for others who need us to take a stand for something. I'm all for looking at both sides but at the end of the day we must choose to be on one.

When a Rep like Ryan Silvey runs his mouth to the press saying he doesn't think blind folks don't need Medicaid and that retailers/manufactures/newspapers who have sales tax exemption which protects them from being double tax are on corporate welfare I have the right to advocate against it. To announce public ally my opinion on the issues. Yes facts help. You can't advocate if you don't know anything about the issues. We are supposed to be learning how this affects the people we are advocating for.

Elton

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 20, 2012, at 3:19 PM, "dauidr at juno.com" <dauidr at juno.com> wrote:

> Hi, everyone.
> 
> Please, bid me a couple minutes to make an observation that troubles me. That is how we who are blind often view the world of adaptation and advocacy from a fatalistic point of view. What I mean is that 1. We seem to want all or nothing. 2. We take an us-versus-them approach to our sighted counterparts in such a way that we view them as having an innate disregard for our neds and concerns.
>    Now, anyone who has read my posts since beforeand during my tenure as education and welfare knows that I am all for advocacy. I am all for adaptation and, in the words of CharlieCrawford, “changing the world with ACB.”
>    Yet, when we turn our reps into bad guys or insensitive brutes, we suppose our agenda automatic sets opposed to theirs. When we speak about freemarket, small business America with the same disdain we presuppose they feel toward us, we lose our sense of objectivity, even when a solution to problems is presented.
>    For example, yes, we agree the proposed budget transfer is wrong and hurtful the the livelihood of blind and visually people. However, to vent our frustration in a personified way on one or two reps as if they “should know better” by default, puts them in a gotcha position where, in our eyes, nothing they do or say can help. When we paint individual general managers of a hotel or the overexuberant, well-intended passer-by on the street in a bad light, we cloud our own perceptions and, what either person does in helping us correct a situation is automatically “not good enough” in our eyes.
>    I think we can picture a four-sided table with four seats an analogy here. Often, we speak of sitting opposite each other to dialogue. Great, that way we don’t to have to turn our head to make eye contact for get in relative facial alignment. So, it’s easy to oppose each other at the four sided table where we’re sitting on opposite sides.
>    How about taking that same table and sitting two parties a round the corner from each other. Both parties need to turn their heads toward each other about forty-five degrees to make relative eye contact since they are at a ninety degree angle from each other.
>    When doing advocacy or discussing points of view—whether concerning blindness issues or the like, it behooves us to think of ourselves sitting on the  side of the table which is adjacent to the one onn which our counterpart sits. Then, we’re are more or less working with them, gaining common understanding of language, aims, ideas, etc.
>    Whether we are negotiating reimbursement for a restaurants burning our food, discussing audio pedestrian signals with the city council or encouraging our Congressmen to vote a certain way on a bill, advocacy usually takes a long time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Often, the social changes we want to see, we present to government now. But, our children and grandchildren may benefit from such changes more or in a different way than we do.
>    That’s why I often think of legislative victories like care packages. When sent, their purpose is to support our body and life. They cheer us as we face the tasks adapting of home, work, and school. When we propose an idea to our local, State, or Federal legislatures, we are helping them do the vocation for which each of the  members are called.
>    Or, think of parents. Do you who are parents always know how to help your children or tend to their needs? No. So, a friend or relative lends you a hand. Like someone who daily takes being the head of a family seriously, governing officials serve us like parents. Do they always what’s best for us on their own. No. Do they always get it when we present our side, hopefully with tact, to them? No. Yet, what an opportunity we each have to make that call to an office in order to be that friend or relative to them.
>    Yet, friends and relatives snit at each other from time to time. But, even in a family demanding our own way never works for the household. Rather, sitting at that dinner table on adjacent sides, we can more easily work with each other and with those whose daily vocation is to care for our needs of body and life.
> David rosenkoetter
> Kansas City, MO
> 
> 
> 
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