[IABS-Talk] At Large chapter minutes-November 3

[Marilyn Green]

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From: PITTMAN ENTERPRISES & ASSOCIATES <pittmanenterprises at wowway.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 20:51:05 -0600
Subject: Draft 2 of the November 3 minutes
AT LARGE MEETING

NOVEMBER 3, 2019



Present:  Chapter President Marilyn Green, Kira O'Bradovich, Linda Hendle,
Dave Meyer, State President Denise Avant, Danny Mandrel, Natalie Shaheen,
Charlene Elder, Yvonne Agyarko, Leslie Hamrik, and Debbie Pittman. The
meeting was called to order at 7:05 p.m.



THINGS TO DO

1.    Everyone:  Those interested in going to Washington seminar get
applications in to Avant at davant1958 at gmail.com by December 1.

2.     Everyone:  Those donating auction items for the Chicago chapter
fundraiser get in touch with Meyer at datemeyer at sbcglobal.net.

3.      Everyone:  Those needing auction letters get in touch with Meyer at
datemeyer at sbcglobal.net.

4.     Everyone:  Those having ideas for next state convention should send
them to Avant at davant1958 at gmail.com.



SECRETARY'S MINUTES

MOTION

Meyer moved to approve the September 2019 minutes.  It was

seconded by Hendle and unanimously carried with the correction of the next
meeting date being corrected to October 4, not August 4.



MOTION

Hamrik moved to approve the October minutes.  It was seconded by

Hendle and unanimously carried.



      NFB PLEDGE

I pledge to participate actively in the efforts of the national

Federation of the Blind, to achieve equality, opportunity and

security for the blind, to support the policies and programs of

the federation and to abide by its constitution.

PRESIDENTIAL RELEASE



Presidential release transcript #488.



Greetings fellow Federationists, today is Wednesday, October 30, 2019 and
this is presidential release number 488. Yes, this is the November release
but I'm doing it a few days early as I'm going to be on the road traveling
to Washington, DC and Arkansas for our NFB of Arkansas convention and on to
Georgia for some Federation business so I wanted to get this release in
early. We are in the final stretch of the fall convention season there is so
much great stuff happening all around the country. And we're getting ready
for the fall meeting of the board of directors, that will happen here in
early December. So there's a lot of great things happening.



Let me begin this release by thanking each and every one of you for the
tremendous National Federation of the Blind Meet the Blind month events
around the country. I've gotten some great feedback from many of you and
some interesting things have happened to engage the community in
understanding the perspective, hopes and dreams of the members of the
National Federation of the Blind. So thank each and every one of you for
that and I look forward to the new creative ideas we'll come up for the
months to come and in the year ahead.



I have a number of things to talk to you about on this release. You may have
seen that there is a federal regulation that is receiving comments right now
regarding our Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act. The regulation that is
being clarified is the one that allows car companies to have multiple sounds
for cars. That means a car could have one or two or three different sounds
that a customer could choose from that their car would make. There's some
misinformation going on out there about this and I wanted to help clarify it
on this release.



First of all, you know that the National Federation of the Blind helped to
pass the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act in early 2011, it was signed by
President Obama and we were the lead organization in negotiating that law.
We also followed through with the regulations. Early on in the process we
agreed that there could be multiple sounds that car companies could have
multiple sounds as long as the sounds that they have meet all of the
qualifications that are required in the federal regulations. Now we agree
with the qualifications. We helped to set the standards. And so, from our
perspective as long as the sounds meet the federal standards for what we
want them to be we weren't too worried and still are not worried about there
being multiple sounds.



Every car company is permitted to come up with its own sound and some of
them want to come up with more than one sound to help with consumer
adoption. They're unlikely to come up with too many sounds because they have
to get each of them certified as meeting the federal standards and that
costs them a lot of money, so it's not likely to cause a problem. What has
always been important for us is that we have a soundscape that is hearable
and recognizable as a moving vehicle. And we have done extensive testing of
our own, we've been very influential with the car companies and they've come
to our point of view.



The current request for information about regulations you can go to our
website and see what we've said about multiple sounds. We've always been in
favor of it. It was in the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act so we continue
to support it. We believe that the sounds will be compliant with the federal
standards, which we do support. So you can go on to the government website
and enter comments if you would like, we're not necessarily calling for
members of the Federation to do that but I wanted to clarify the multiple
sound question because there are some things circulating that suggest that
this is rolling back what we got implemented with the Pedestrian Safety
Enhancement Act and that's simply not true.



We are going to have a convention in 2020 and I need to talk to you about
that. You may have already received this news. We have a great reputation in
the National Federation of the Blind for negotiating with hotels, being a
good partner with our hotels as well as the cities we're in. We announced
that the national convention this year that our convention next year in 2020
would be in Houston, Texas from June 30 to July 5. And in fact, we were
planning on that. The city of Houston came to us a couple of weeks ago and
said they had a need to talk to us about potentially moving the dates of our
convention. We initially told them there's no way we can do that.





We talked to them a little further and as I say, we have a great reputation
of working collaboratively and that is one of the reasons we get the rates
and benefits that we do to host a convention of our size. The board of
directors ultimately agreed to move the dates for the 2020 National
Convention back two weeks to July 14-29, 2020. These dates are now set in
stone, you can bank on them unless something really traumatic happens. These
dates are set in stone. And we apologize for any inconvenience that this may
have caused but we believe for the National Federation of the Blind and for
our relationship with hotels and negotiating future contracts that this is a
good move for the organization. we also believe that it will present some
opportunities for the convention itself.





It did occur to me that when we were in Orlando, we used to always tell
people that the convention dates were not set in stone until November 1 and
that was a provision, we had in our contract to permit some flexibility,
which helped with our negotiations. We may be should go back to saying that
again so people don't immediately jump up and make all sorts of plans. I do
apologize on a personal level if this has caused any inconvenience. It is a
little unusual but it was the smartest thing for us to do for the
organization overall. We are going to have a great convention in Houston.
We're looking forward to it and I do hope that you can still be with us in
Houston, Texas July 14-19. There'll be more information about the convention
in the December Monitor.





Now that we're approaching November 1, our national scholarship program
applications are available on our website. As you know, our scholarship
program is for blind students pursuing or planning to pursue a full-time
post-secondary program in the fall of 2020. The eligibility requirements and
frequently asked questions, the application can all be found on our website
at
<https://www.nfb.org/programs-services/scholarships-and-awards/scholarship-p
rogram> www.nfb.org/scholarships. I encourage you to help spread the word,
our scholarship program is the most extensive program for blind students in
the nation and as you know, it comes with mentoring from some of the most
dynamic leaders in the field of blindness.



And it creates personal relationships that are more valuable than the
dollars that it provides to the students. And as you also know, we have some
great partners working with us on our scholarship program that add value to
it. Please spread the word, we want to get as many blind students to apply
as possible so that we can also get connected with them. Visit our website,
talk to your local university, spread our scholarship information to all the
places you can think of.





Let me talk a little bit about Braille on this release. I've mentioned
previously that the Braille Readers Are Leaders contest is coming up and you
can now register for the contest, which is both a reading contest for blind
children and for blind adults. So it's a great opportunity to encourage
Braille reading, sharing of teaching techniques and reading techniques
within your chapter. The Braille Readers Are Leaders contest is administered
by the America Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, a strong partner
of ours and we continue to be a partner in this contest.





Blind children and adults across the country will compete in the contest to
read the most pages and you'll log those pages and submit them to the
contest. There will be prizes for participating and for the winners in each
category. The contest officially runs from December 1, 2019 to January 18,
2020. You can learn more about the contest at  <https://actionfund.org/BRAL>
actionfund.org/bral. I encourage you to use this as a way to promote
Braille, Braille reading, and sharing within your chapters.





Also, it's the time of year where we partner with Santa Claus. So we have an
announcement from Patricia Maurer, which says Santa Claus has made the staff
at the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute honorary elves
once again. He has asked us to help him send letters in Braille to very
young blind boys and girls. Those under the age of 10. The program is for
blind children in the United States and the applications or the form to fill
out to get a letter from Santa Claus will be available starting November 11
and will continue to be available through the 16th of December.





Parents can go online at
<https://www.nfb.org/programs-services/early-childhood-initiatives/santa-let
ters> www.nfb.org/santa-letters and fill out a Santa Braille letter request
form. You can find the form there and if you need to you can print it and
fax it to 410-685-2340. Or you can e-mail the form to
communityrelations at nfb.org. The letters will start leaving our building on
Monday, December 2 so that they can be there in time. You'll want to get
your request in no later than December 16 so it's there just in time for the
end of December when it needs to be. If you have questions you can to our
website and read more information. This program has been one we are doing
for a number of years; it is one that is always met with joyful anticipation
by families.



It's made a great difference in our doing outreach and so I encourage you to
promote it. It's a fun thing I always look forward to our doing. By the way,
what gets sent is a Braille letter from Santa Claus as well as some fun
activities, often a tactile picture. I've heard rumors about what the elves
are thinking about for 2019 it's going to be really cool. And I'm sure we'll
have a change to talk about it in the future but get the little ones that
you know of that want a Braille letter from Santa signed up for this. We do
send a print letter as well so that the parents know what Santa has
communicated to blind kids across the country.



Speaking of Braille, I do want to let you know that in the last month we've
experienced some delay with the Braille version of our flagship publication,
The Braille Monitor. We apologize for that. The vendor that we used ran into
some difficulties and that put the August/September issue behind schedule in
terms of getting out and into your hands. We think that delay has now been
rectified it's possible it will have an impact on the October and possibly
the November issue as well. We certainly hope not but we've worked with our
vendor on what the problem was and you should be anticipating those Braille
copies of The Braille Monitor coming to you real soon.



And since I'm talking about it, just an opportunity to say please, send
articles, ideas for articles to Gary Wunder, our Braille Monitor editor.
He's eager to get content from Federationists about things you'd like to see
in The Monitor and especially if you write it, your stories, your
experiences, we'd like to consider them for The Monitor. You can send them
to gwunder at nfb.org.



I do have a couple of Federation family notes here on this release. I do
regret to inform you that this past weekend Herbert Maggin of Maryland
passed away. You may have gotten to know Herbert around our national
convention. He was a figure in and around the convention for many years
especially helping to promote our Kenneth Jernigan fund selling raffle
tickets and talking to people about opportunities to build the Federation.
Herb was sighted but he was blind at heart and came to be a strong marcher
in our movement. We're very saddened about his passing, he had been sick for
some time. Dr. Maurer had the opportunity to visit with him last week before
he passed away and to represent us at the funeral. I encourage you to keep
Herb and his family in your thoughts and prayers.





I do have a joyous piece of news coming from our Missouri affiliate. Ben and
Theresa Versalone report the birth of their daughter, Mi Kyong Lee Versalone
who was born on October 17, 2019 weighing eight pounds, 13 ounces and
measuring 21.5 inches long. Mi Kyong means beautiful and bright in Korean
and that is certainly what we expect her life to be. And we expect that she
will bring that also to the proud parents who are both doing well. I had the
opportunity to speak with Ben briefly, I noticed he sounded a little sleepy,
which is what you would expect from a new father. So congratulations to the
Versalone family and welcome Mi Kyong as the newest member of the National
Federation of the Blind.





We have been working on a number of other things throughout the Federation
including here at our national headquarters. We are almost done with our
construction. We went through the final punch list earlier this week. That
doesn't mean we're exactly done but we've given the construction team their
final marching orders about what they need to do. We've been putting in
comments on a number of policy matters at the national level including the
National Instructional Materials Access standard. You can find information
about that and other happenings on our website.



I continue to be so pleased with what's happening all across the nation and
especially with the new members who are coming into our organization, I want
to congratulate all of our chapters on doing some fantastic outreach to
welcome people into the Federation, help them know about our organization. I
encourage you to keep it up, this is a busy time of year with Federation
activity and holiday and families but it's one of my favorites. I also hope
that you had a very happy Halloween and that you'll have a great safe and
joyous time with all the many holidays coming up. I'm looking forward to
saluting our veterans on Veteran Day. It's just a great time of year, lots
of fun family things happening. It is always fun around the National
Federation of the Blind to celebrate our Federation family as well.



Before we get to the customary endings, I want to leave you again with my
salute to your work and say let's go build the National Federation of the
Blind.

End of transcript



Miscellaneous

   Hamrik reported that she got a call from Wonder who will be

putting her article in the Braille Monitor about her being a

Symphony orchestra member.  She will be

playing in a string quartet.



State Report

Avant reported that she thought it was a good convention.  She

thanked those that came.  She asked for ideas to be sent to her

for future conventions.   There was a traditional general session

and then there were three differed breakout sessions.    Yoga headed by
Green, office sweet and Meyer headed legislation.

Scholarships:  Avant reported that scholarship applications for

Illinois and national are now open.  The application for Illinoisans is
available at nfbofillinois.org. and is due by March 31 at 11:59  p.m.
central time. National's deadline is the same day at  eastern time 11:59
p.m.

Washington Seminar:   Applications are due by December 1, 2019 to

Avant.   If assistance is needed people should let her know.  She asked that
people do not change the format  and fill it out completely.  They can be
e-mailed to davant1959 at gmail.com.  It is from February 10 to the 13.
Illinoisans are requested to come in on February 9 for training.  Green
encouraged everyone to apply to Washington seminar for a
good diverse representation for Washington Seminar for Illinois.



Braille readers are Leaders: Avant has plans on entering the contest and she
encouraged others to join since there is an adult section.

State Board Meeting:   Avant reported that there will be a state

board meeting right before the holidays.



PROGRAM ITEM

O'Bradovich did a presentation about the census for 2020.  She

works with an eight state  census bureau.

There will be a census on April 1 2020  and people will be receiving cards
in the mail and everyone is expected to answer all 10

Questions.  The census is used to determine state funding, number of
representatives in congress for each state. The census bureau is reaching
out to organizations such as NFB for the first time.  People can call, to do
it over the phone or over the internet. There will be some people going
door-to-door trying to get people to fill out the card. The census bureau is
hiring and they pay like $25 per hour and they are temporary jobs.  There is
a location downtown.  The census takers will be going out with I-Pads.
O'Bradovich's goal is to get the word out about JAWS.  She is in touch with
MOPD and having a disability informed speech about how to respond to the
census as well as getting the word out about jobs.

If our count goes down our representation in congress goes down.

The census on line will be available in March.  Each card will

have an ID number on it.   2020census.gov/jobs for jobs  and

the only requirement is to be  18.    O'Bradovich will be giving updates.
The jobs are full-time  and part-time jobs available.  There is no

question on the census regarding social security number.  Title

13 protects the data and the information is sealed for 72 years.

Census information helps to know where to put schools and

hospitals etc. in the community.  Green thanked O'Bradovich for her
presentation.

old business



new business



Next meeting will be on December 1, 2019.

Auction:  The Chicago chapter will have their Christmas auction on Saturday
December 14 2019 at the Exchequer at 226 S. Wabash the day of the December
meeting.  People can get auction letters from Meyer at
datemeyer at sbcglobal.net.  Meyer asked for auction items.

Meet The Blind Month: Pittman Distributed NFB literature at a number of the
downtown stores and the Library.   Hamrik gave three different presentations
for Braille, guidedogs

and cane travel At the Elmhurst Academy for Early Learning on October 31,
2019 for  meet the blind month.  Hamrik's dog is doing well.



Nation's Podcast:  Mrs. Riccobono is doing a podcast on meet

the blind month.  It is A chance to tell people about our organization and
to do outreach in the community.



Avant reported that Green was the MC for the banquet at convention and that
she did a good job. Green reported that Patti and Francisco received an
award at National.



New Member:  O'Bradovich is a new member.   she was born in Omaha, Nebraska.


She has come back to Chicago and she went on line and found NFB's

facebook pae.  She attended the October read-a-thon and she is adjusting to
her vision loss.   She did attend state convention.



MOTION

Meyer moved to welcome O'Bradovich into the At Large Chapter.  It was

seconded by Hamrik and unanimously carried.

ADJOURNMENT

MOTION

O'Bradovich moved to adjourn.   It was seconded by Hendle and unanimously
carried.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:21 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by



 Debbie Pittman on behalf of Charlene Elder.