[blindlaw] Blind Attorneys

[Sarah Clark]

It doesn't take everyone getting more involved.  It just takes a few people 
who are being affected, along with a strong legal attack.  I think that is 
the point.  Lawyers are the ones with the power to force the change, if it 
is done carefully and calculated.

Sarah

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "WB" <mruniverse08 at gmail.com>
To: "'NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List'" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: [blindlaw] Blind Attorneys


>I think all that you've suggested is really great.  I absolutely agree with
> the latter part of your e-mail.  It doesn't matter how much litigation is
> put forth if there is no fervor within the blind and visual impaired
> community.  Every example you gave was based upon a great demand within 
> each
> community.
>
> The question is, how do we get everyone more involved?
>
> Sometimes it seems as though many blind individuals, at least here where I
> am, tend to be sort of hermit like.  What do we do about that?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Dennis Clark
> Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 8:45 PM
> To: NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List
> Subject: [blindlaw] Blind Attorneys
>
> If you are a blind lawyer or second or third year law student please read
> on.  We are privileged to be lawyers and this is an appeal for you to join
> with me to begin formulating a long term legal strategy which will enable 
> us
> as blind people to make the same kind of progress in kind and degree as
> other minority groups have made during the past 60 years.  This will 
> involve
> each of us becoming experts on the legal histories of women, blacks, and
> gays, to understand the seminal cases and legislation which has led to 
> their
> progress, and to develop a well thought out, cohesive legal theory for 
> blind
> civil rights which uses the issues and cases of these other groups as
> precedent or persuasive support for our own analogous legal claims.
>
> When I was in law school I was fortunate to get to know one of the 
> attorneys
> who worked on the Jackie Robinson law suit which integrated professional
> baseball.  He was a celebrated law professor and lawyer who participated 
> in
> this law suit as a volunteer civil rights lawyer for B'nai B'rith.  Most 
> of
> the successful civil rights cases which have led to the equality that 
> blacks
> benefit from today were fought by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and B'nai
> B'rith both together and separately.  Thurgood Marshal was also a critical
> global thinker and player with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and it was 
> those
> successes which led President Johnson to appoint him to the Supreme Court.
>
> My professor told me that the Jackie Robinson case was planned long before
> Jackie Robinson himself was identified as the best plaintiff for the case.
> In the 40's and 50's a group of very brilliant lawyers and law professors
> talked and met together frequently to create a long term legal strategy
> which could shape and reorient the law to achieve civil rights progress 
> for
> both blacks and Jews.  They carefully decided which cases needed to be
> brought ahead of other cases because obviously some cases will become
> seminal and have a larger impact on society than others.
>
> The decision to challenge professional baseballs prohibition against black
> players was one of these key strategic decisions.  Once it was decided to
> file this important case, they set out to find the right player to be the
> plaintiff.  He said that they knew they needed a player who was perfect in
> every way.  The player would need to be a great hitter and be pretty much
> qualified to play every other position on the field at a professional 
> level.
> The key was to have a player who was so unbelievable in every way so that
> any argument which could be made against hiring such a black player would 
> be
> clearly irrational, and as such based purely on racial prejudice.  Beyond
> this, he said that they needed a player who could emotionally withstand 
> the
> abuse which would be aimed at him by players and fans once the case was 
> won
> and he was hired.  He was going to be the target of much hatred, he would
> not be permitted to stay in hotels with the rest of the team in many 
> cities,
> he could not eat in the same restaurants as the rest of the team in many
> cities, and his life really could be at risk.  It was undeniable that this
> was going to take a very special person and they waited quite a while to
> file the suit until they found jus that right person, and that man was
> Jackie Robinson.
>
> The main point here is that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and B'nai B'rith
> didn't simply file cases willie nillie, but rather they chose cases
> carefully so as to move the courts along slowly but surely.  Filing a
> dubious case where there is a fifty fifty chance of losing would have been
> understood as potentially counter-productive.  Clearly if we as blind 
> people
> win a case we have a precedent in our favor, but if we lose a case this is 
> a
> setback because we have created a precedent that is contrary to our civil
> rights progress.
>
> I am confident that I will be attacked for this, but I believe that we 
> have
> steadily lost ground over the past 30 years in both education and
> employment.  Obviously today's young blind adults can not know this 
> because
> as is true for all people, our reality is shaped mostly by what we are
> experiencing.  Moreover there is a human prejudice that today must always 
> be
> better than yesterday.
>
> but my claim is that those of us who were teenagers and young adults in 
> the
> 60's and 70's had more opportunities than similarly situated blind people
> today.  When I took the PSAT, SAT, ACT, GRE LSAT, and 4 bar exams, I was
> given fair exams by competent readers.  To have done less than this in 
> those
> days would have been regarded as unthinkable and absurd by the agencies
> providing these tests because it would have been thought as simply unfair.
> Today one is lucky if the reader provided by any of these agencies is 
> barely
> literate.
>
> For me most of these exams predated the ADA and my claim is that the ADA 
> is
> the problem.  I have dealt with a number of these agencies on behalf of
> disabled clients who have come to me for help, and I can tell you that the
> agencies think the ADA empowers them to simply give blind people a reader 
> of
> the agencies choosing.  On numerous occasions I have been told by
> representatives of these agencies that all they are required to do is
> provide a reader of their choosing.  I point out that the ADA says
> "qualified reader," not just a reader.  Inevitably they then claim that 
> all
> their readers are qualified even though they can not articulate what steps
> they have taken to verify this to be true.  Further discussion usually
> results in a very smug acknowledgement that they hold all the power and if
> we think we can do something about it then go ahead.  They are right.  We
> have become powerless, but that can change if those of us with law school
> educations come together and force a change.
>
> I would be curious to know how many blind students there are today at the 
> 5
> top ranked engineering schools in the U.S.  My guess is zero, but I hope I
> am wrong about this.  Throughout the 60's and 70's there were a number of
> us.  I attended Stanford in Mechanical Engineering from 1977 to 1981 and 
> all
> of my materials were provided to me in Braille including thousands of 
> raised
> line drawings, and without these materials it would have been impossible 
> for
> me to do the program.  One of my engineering professors was a retired
> Admiral from the Navy and one day he asked me if an optacon would be 
> useful
> to me and if I would like one?  I told him that I had a little experience
> with it, but they cost $5000 and I wasn't sure that I could afford it or
> that it would be useful enough to justify the cost.  He had an interesting
> response.  He said, Dennis first of all Stanford is rich so they can 
> afford
> it.  Second, he said, "Stanford admitted you and it is Stanford's
> responsibility to provide you what ever resources you need to be
> successful."  Has anyone heard any professors today say anything like 
> this?
> I think not.  On these forums I have read of a blind college student being
> told by a professor that he could not play in the school band because he 
> was
> blind.  I would have thought that even the dumbest professor in the world
> could have gotten this right simply because of Ray Charles and Stevie
> Wonder.  I recall a law school dean at the University of Alaska stating 
> that
> a blind applicant could not be admitted because blind people can not be
> lawyers.
>
> Another of my professors was Robert Hofstadter.  He had a Nobel prize in
> Physics.  I approached him near the midterm, and asked him if we could
> arrange for someone to read the midterm to me.  He immediately responded,
> Well why don't you come to my office the morning of the test and I will 
> read
> it to you, which he did.  I have read of professors who now shoot their
> exams over to the disability services office to be read aloud by someone
> completely unable to read aloud.  The professor can't be bothered today.
> When we finished Professor Hofstadter said that he wished he could do this
> with every student because he would then really know what students did and
> didn't understand and he would then know what he needed to spend 
> additional
> time on in lectures.
>
> There was no disabled students office to function as an obstacle between 
> my
> professors and me.  There was no disabled students office which had the
> responsibility to provide me with Braille or readers or anything else, and
> this was a plus not a minus because today these offices frequently fall 
> down
> on the job and the student is left completely holding the bag.  No 
> business
> would rely on a vendor which comes through only 60 or 70 per cent of the
> time, particularly when the business has no power over the vendor.  This 
> is
> a formula for disaster and no sensible manager would do this yet blind
> students are now forced into this situation all the time.  Because of this
> lack of accountability by disabled students offices I have recently read a
> discussion where a blind student is asking how he can handle a college 
> math
> class using readers because he doesn't have a Braille math book.  No 
> sighted
> student would be expected to do college math without a print book and they
> can see the board.  During the past 20 years I am confident that we have
> spent tens of millions of dollars on disability student offices and the
> students now have less than we had in the 70's without all this money 
> having
> been spent.  Why?
>
> I  would argue that we as lawyers need to rethink our current situation 
> and
> get a handle on the legal twists and turns that brought us here.  My
> thinking is that we should begin by revisiting Plessy v. Ferguson an the 2
> law school cases which overturned Plessy.  The Supreme Court decided that
> separate but equal can never actually be equal, so Plessy was done away
> with.
>
> However, almost all the law which governs our lives, rights and
> opportunities as blind people is openly based on the notion that separate
> but unequal treatment for us is acceptable.  We actually spend most of our
> time as blind people asking for separate but unequal treatment as an
> accommodation.  Women, blacks, and gays do not do this.  They are clear 
> that
> separate is always unequal and they are having none of it.
>
> Consider this.  When I was in law school an issue arose concerning women 
> law
> school students.  For some reason there is a shower in one of the men's
> restrooms at the University of Chicago Law School.  The law school was 
> built
> in the 50's before there were many if any women law students.  There are
> certainly women's restrooms, but none with a shower.
>
> Men and women alike have taken in recent years to exercising while at 
> school
> and some of them wish to shower after they run or exercise.  This is not a
> problem for men since there is a shower, but what can women do?  It was
> initially proposed that women could go over to the main campus to the gym
> and shower there.  This is about 4 blocks from the law school across the
> midway.  This was a no go as far as women were concerned.  They asked why
> should they have to go a total of 8 blocks round trip to shower when men
> could shower without leaving the law school?  At first the administration
> argued that since women needed to shower because they were already
> exercising then why wouldn't they be willing to go across campus since a
> little additional exercise was all that was being proposed?  However, the
> universal consensus of men and women alike based on common sense and basic
> fairness was that this was not acceptable.  It was viewed as pretty much
> obvious that it would be unfair to expect women to have to do more than 
> men
> when they engaged in the same activity as men.  I dare say that those
> reading this would probably agree and I'm asking you to keep on that same
> fairness hat when you consider the following question.
>
> Why is it fair for a blind person to have to take twice as long on an exam
> as a sighted person in order to obtain an equivalent valid score?  My 
> claim
> is that it is not fair and women would not put up with it for a second.
> Women would tell you to figure out how to do it with out them taking on 
> any
> burden which is greater than that of men.  They would be right.  As a 
> matter
> of testing science and methodology it is possible to create an exam which
> blind people could take in the same length of time which would be equally
> valid, but it is not being done because we have permitted them to dump the
> burden of accommodation on us rather than requiring them to spend more 
> money
> validating their standardized tests.
>
> Would a professional quarterback ever be expected to play football in an
> important game with a center that he has never had the opportunity to
> practice with?  No.  This would be regarded as absurd and totally unfair.
> Yet we are expected to work with readers on exams that our entire futures
> and jobs are dependent upon; with readers who we've never met, tested or
> practiced with and who often can not even read English aloud accurately.
> Women would not put up with this.  Blacks would not put up with this.  We
> do, and the reason we do is that we feel powerless to do anything about 
> it.
> We have come to think like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, that we 
> must
> depend on the kindness of strangers.
>
> I worked for 5 years for a very large law firm, and we never ourselves, 
> nor
> did we ever advise our clients to depend on the kindness of the other 
> side.
> The parties on the other side wanted to win because they wanted their own
> way, and our clients also wanted to win because they wanted their own way.
> There was no kindness on either side and that is how it should be in 
> matters
> of law.  As lawyers it is our mandated responsibility to zealously 
> represent
> our clients which means it is our job to fight them with everything we 
> have
> to make certain that our clients win.  That's what lawyers do.  We are
> privileged to be lawyers.  We have one power that no one else has.  As all
> non lawyers must acknowledge, you can write thousands of letters to 
> someone
> trying to get them to talk with you and they can throw them in the trash.
> You can light up their switchboard all day long with phone calls and they
> can tell the operator to say that they are not in.  However, we as lawyers
> have the power to force them to talk with us simply by serving a complaint
> on them and they will definitely talk with us in front of a judge.  They
> will not ignore that.
>
> I'm sure I have offended some, bored most, and confused others.  But if 
> you
> are a lawyer and I have struck a chord with you and reawakened for a 
> moment
> a memory of why you went to law school to begin with, please contact me. 
> We
> have the knowledge and the power to make real change for blind people if 
> we
> choose to come together like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and B'nai 
> B'rith.
> Thanks for reading and I hope to talk with you.
>
> Warmest regards,
> Dennis
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