[IABS-Talk] chicago minutes draft 3.

[David Meyer]

NFBI CHICAGO CHAPTER

 

MEETING OF JUNE 13, 2020

 

The meeting took place using the Zoom format.

President David Meyer called the meeting to order at 1:00 pm.

 

Introductions: Of note, longtime member, Howard Wilson, who we have not seen
in a bit, reported that he is a new member of the CTA Transportation Board.
Another longtime member, Gregory Rosenberg stated that he had eye surgery
and he is doing better. We also had a scholarship winner, Sara Luna,
present. We had 32 folks present at the meeting.

 

We all recited the NFB pledge and the One Minute Message.

 

The May 9, 2020 chapter meeting minutes were approved.

 

Treasury Update: Treasurer, Steve Hastalis, indicated that we had a balance
of $6,323 right now.

 

State Presidential Report: Federal legislation. Marilyn Green stated that we
have 10 cosponsors for the Access Technology Affordability Act. The bill
number in the house is HR2086. The companion Senate bill is S815. In the
Senate, we have one cosponsor, which is Tammy Duckworth. As far as our other
legislative priorities, HR5312, which is AIM HIGH (Accessible Instructional
Material in Higher Education), we have 2 cosponsors. For our GAIN Act, which
Jan Schakowsky is the originating cosponsor. We only have congresswoman
Schakowsky as a cosponsor in the state of Illinois. Nationwide we have 94
sponsors for Access Technology Affordability Act,

State Scholarship Finalists: Debbie Stein verbalized that we have 4 state
scholarship finalists for state scholarships of $2,500 apiece, and they are
Alex Gamino many of us already know since he was 4 years old, David Kopp who
had attended the STEM EQ Program in 2019, Maria Sanders and a lady from Iowa
who will be attending DePaul University, Justine Yang. All 4 of these
finalists are all high school seniors We also determined to offer convention
scholarships to 2 other runners-up, which means that we will help them
attend the 2021 national convention and we will do the same for our state
scholarship winners. We will give each of them $1,000 a piece if they choose
to attend the national convention in 2021. Our 2 runners-up who are getting
the 2 convention scholarships are Elizabeth Sprecher and Ann Marie Norocki,
who is new to us. 

 

Bell In-Home Edition: Due to COVID this year, the BELL program is completely
free. It's being done virtually and at home with parents working directly
with their children. All of the participating families are sent packets with
materials that include slates and styli, Braille lessons, Braille books,
tactile drawings and they work on 18 different lessons throughout the 2 week
period. We also have volunteers who will contact each family on a daily
basis and check how things are going and answer questions, help out with
issues that might have come up. We had 1 student who took part in the first
BELL session. We have 9 other participants signed up for the remaining 2
BELL sessions. 

There will be a state board meeting on June 17th at 7:00 pm and it will be
on the Zoom platform. Denise posted the information to the Illinois list
serve. Denise will ask Dave to post that to NFB NewsLine, so people can get
the call-in information, meeting ID, and password. Everybody is welcome to
call into the meeting. 

National and State Conventions: We are having a national convention. It will
be done virtually. It is our convention where we will conduct business.
Registration for the national convention is due on Monday, June 15. It is
free of charge. If you hadn't already registered, you can go to our website
at nfb.org and scroll down and click on convention and you will find the
registration information. If you need assistance in registering, several of
us, including Denise, Patti Chang, David Meyer and Marilyn Green are willing
to assist you in registering if you need help, to actually do your
registration. Our affiliate caucus will be on Friday, July 17th between
10:00 am and 12:00 pm. You can buy Jernigan Fund tickets this year. If you
donate at least $20 between May 15 and July 18, you will have an opportunity
to win a ticket to win a Jernigan Fund scholarship to next year's
convention, which we believe will be in person. For every $20 you give, that
counts as an additional chance to win. So you donate the $20 and you should
put in the note field that it is for the Jernigan Fund. We had to change our
state convention and our face-to-face board meeting. Because of Illinois
restore policy, we know that we are going to have more than 50 people at our
state convention. So given that that would be beyond what the policy that
the state calls for, we will be having a virtual convention for October 30,
31, and November 1. We have not planned all of the details just yet. We will
not have a face-to-face board meeting this year. The Sheraton Naperville
Lisle Hotel reached out to us and we agreed to have the convention and the
face-to-face board meeting in 2021. Convention activities will include
something for the parents and something for students as well as our general
sessions. The agenda might not be as packed as it usually is. We'll have
door prizes. We have to figure out how we're going to implement all of that.

Steve read resolution 2020-02, commending Karen Tamley, Commissioner
Emeritus, of Chicago's Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD),
now Executive Director of Access Living. The resolution passed. Denise
mentioned that she was called by Laurie Dittman to participate in the
interviews to select a commissioner for the Mayor's Office for People with
Disabilities. On June 8, Mayor Lightfoot named Rachel Arfa, who has been an
attorney with Equip for Equality for the past 8 to 10 years and is very
active in terms of accessibility in the disability community, as the new
commissioner for the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. She will
be starting on July 6. Rachel is deaf and she is a very accomplished
attorney. 

 

Presidential Release #495, June 2020: President Riccobono stated that we had
great victories over the last month, making sure that we continue to connect
with and protect blind people across the country. We're quite proud of our
work with blind students to get access to the advanced placement exams
available from the College Board. We were able to get an agreement not too
long ago to make sure that these students can get Braille and tactile
graphics. 

Also, we are actively working on access to voting in so many places. We have
interim victories in New York, a great victory in Michigan, some great work
getting a ballot in the mail-in efforts in Pennsylvania. We're working in a
number of other states with our Federation affiliates to make sure that we
protect the sacred right of voting for blind people. 

President Riccobono says that he does expect that we're going to continue to
have virtual meetings for a while in some places and all places continue to
have virtual participation along with our in-person meetings. We are
encouraged to continue to follow best practices in terms of wearing masks
and keeping all of us safe. 

NFB 2020 Convention: Register for the convention at nfb.org/convention by
June 15. Affiliates should be reaching out to members to make sure that
everybody has access. If people don't have access to be able to register, we
should help them register. You're going to want to be registered to make
sure you take advantage of special announcements, deals, and door prizes. As
of June 1, total registered for the convention: 3,214 individuals. Our
convention is happening July 14 through July 18. Our primary platform will
be the Zoom webinar. Our general sessions will also be streamed via the web
in a variety of ways. The NFB board meeting, all of the general plenary
sessions, and the banquet will be live-streamed. You don't have to be on
Zoom or the telephone for the general sessions. We are planning to offer
options for voting amongst registered members of the convention, so you want
to be registered and you want to be a member of the organization. Members
who have door prizes for the convention can reach out to your state
president. We will have a rookie roundup meeting on Tuesday, July 7, at 7:30
pm central time.

We're going to be promoting the PAC plan at the convention. This is our
preauthorized contribution program. It's a way to support our organization
on a monthly basis. Welcome the NFB of Connecticut association of blind
students as well as the NFB of Indiana Circle City Chapter and the NFB of
Ohio Cuyahoga County Chapter. All recently got on the PAC Plan. 

Our partners of Lyft are offering us in NFB a coupon worth $25 per user to
assist blind people during the month of June. Make sure we use these coupons
before July 1. There are a limited number of coupons available, so please
work with your affiliate presidents on this. We're still monitoring both
Uber and Lyft in terms of their discrimination against blind people who use
service animals. We need you to continue to fill out our rideshare survey so
that we can collect data about discrimination against blind people with
service animals in a rideshare. Go to www.nfborg/rideshare- test. You can
also find the information at our NAGDU app from our national division.

We have another open house coming up on June 10 at 7:00 pm central time. If
you or someone you know is not a member of the Federation, you should send
an email to membership at nfb.org to register for the June 10 open house and
you will be sent information. 

We have a new partnership with an entity calledPinna. Pinna is an on-demand
audio streaming service that provides hundreds of hours of content at
children 3-12. Their programming includes podcasts, audiobooks, and music.
Pinna is providing a 60-day free trial to members of NFB, using promo code
nfbget60. This is only available to folks who haven't used Pima before. To
make an account on their website, go to pinna.fm/promo. When you go there,
you will need to put in the promo code nfbget60 in step 2 of the account
creation process. 

New to our Dream Makers Circle is Jean Rauschenbach of Moline, Illinois. The
Dream Makers Circle is a commitment to make an end-of-life gift to the
Federation, put us in a will, put us in a beneficiary. 

A few days ago, President Riccobono put out an open letter about Black Lives
Matter to members titled "Love Conquers Hate." You can find this letter at
nfb.org. In this release, we are releasing a public statement from NFB that
reflects the real commitment of this organization to work internally, but
also to be champions externally in the organization by demonstrating what we
do to be inclusive, to weed out racism, to make sure that we're not just
talking about what we need to do but we're putting real action behind it.
Our board of directors unanimously adopted this statement. You'll find it on
our website and on social media. 

Dave says that there will probably be some information about the convention
coming out on ill-talk and IABS talk. Those who are not on ill-talk or IABS
talk, please get on those lists. It gives you an idea of what's going on
within the Federation and you will get some announcements regarding how the
convention is going to proceed. Zoom will be a part of it. Those who are not
on Zoom will be able to stream. Patti states that we are trying to figure
out how you can manage different people accessing in different ways so that
people can't vote more than once. We are going to make sure that people
don't vote if they are not members. There will be a lot of information
coming out soon from our national organization about how to participate in
the convention. Gina said that she streamed the convention through the NFB
website through the link through there.

The board has approved that we again donate $600 to the National Convention
funds. The difference between this year and last year is that we are
donating $300 to the White Cane Fund and $150 to the tenBroek Fund and $150
to the Jernigan Fund. 

 

Fundraising during Virtual Meetings: There will be a number of fundraisers
that we are not going to be able to do this year because of meetings being
virtual. We are going to have a Christmas auction somehow. Whether this is
going to be completely live or run through an auction website and exactly
how things are going to proceed, we are going to take this up with the
Fundraising Committee. Nick Robertson chairs that committee. Patti stated
that the notion was to reach out to funeral home directors and give them
information about us in envelopes so that they can answer people's questions
on who to give in lieu of flowers. We're seeking In Memoria donations. We
will not go to funeral homes and approach mourners You contact the funeral
home director and we explain to them who we are, what we do and we tell our
story. Then you ask if we can send pamphlets and some pre-addressed
envelopes so that you could tell people that we're an option for In Memorium
gifts. One affiliate has turned this into a six-figure gift. It does not
take that much time to do. You have to make a couple of phone calls and get
the envelopes together and then mail a packet to the funeral directors to
agree to put this material out. We do this at the national organization all
the time. We could do the same for the chapter. We would have to be prepared
to also send out thank you and you have to keep a list of who gave to you in
memory of whom so that you can get back to people and let the family know
who they should acknowledge. Dave says that we could do a read-a-thon via
Zoom. We passed a motion to hold the read-a-thon in November since our
convention is in October. Dave explained how the Read-a-thon works. A motion
was passed to have the read-a-thon and Christmas auction as fundraisers, the
Read-a-thon in November, and the Christmas auction in December, November 14,
and December 12.

 

There is no July chapter meeting.

 

Old Business: None.

 

New Business. Patti says that her husband, Francisco, has taken his last
shift on a COVID floor. She thanked everyone for their thoughts and prayers.
Kira O'bradovich said that they are hiring census workers; The date to
respond to the census is extended to October 31st. You can do so online, by
phone, or the paper version that comes to your door. 

June birthdays: Marilyn Green on June 12, Kira McCall on June 18 and Gina
Falvo on June 29. We had no birthdays in July. 

 

The meeting adjourned at 3:05 pm.

 

Respectfully submitted: Eileen Truschke, Secretary

 

 

David Meyer, NFB of Illinois

Coordinator and Channel Administrator, NFB-NewsLine

Chicago Chapter President