[IABS-Talk] chicago may minutes third draft

[David Meyer]

NFBI CHICAGO CHAPTER MINUTES

 

MAY 9, 2020

 

This is our first virtual meeting on the Zoom format. We are all meeting
either by phone, computer, or other devices. The meeting started at 1:00 pm.
Patti Chang was the official host of the meeting and she went over some
ground rules and commands that might be useful for the people on the phone
or computer.

Introductions: First-time attendees are Christopher Walker from Virginia,
who is the president of the Winchester Chapter, Nadia Sherman. Longtime
member, Ken Staley, who has not been able to attend chapter meetings, joined
us. Ed Birmingham stated that Mary Lou Grunwald was elected to the Illinois
Committee of Blind Vendors and Giovani Francese as chair with Marco
Giannotti being reelected as well as Ed Birmingham. Sara Luna is a national
scholarship winner. Mary Jo Seiler from Effingham joined us. Pam Gilmore
said that she had been calling people the last couple of months. Robert
Hansen says that he had purchased a home over a month ago and that he is
trying to get into an academy of an urban school leadership program. Paul
Shepherdson stated that Nick Robertson had a cataract operation. We had a
total of 29 attendees. After introductions, we recited the NFB pledge. 

 

Approval of Minutes: The March 7, 2020 chapter meeting secretary's minutes
were approved.

Treasurers Report First Quarter-January, February, March 2020: Beginning
balance Wednesday, January 1, $6,047. Income: Sox tickets 3 at $30 each,
subtotal $90; dues $5 apiece, subtotal $145; lifetime membership $100,
additional donations $100; Games Night (24 reservations) , subtotal $600;
monthly collections January 11, $103, February 8, $97, March 7, $63,
subtotal $263; cane tips 4 at $2 each, subtotal $8; total $1,306. Expenses:
Preauthorized contributions (PAC) $50; electronic withdrawal transaction NFB
monthly contributions to National, January, February, March subtotal $150;
monthly room rent Exchequer Restaurant and Pub $75 for the first 3 months of
2020 as follows: January 11, February 8, March 7, subtotal $225. Games
Night: We paid Exchequer Restaurant and Pub 32 dinner reservations at $15
each, subtotal $480; total $855. Ending balance Tuesday, March 31, 2020,
$6,498. The treasurer's report was approved. 

 

Elections: The following people were elected to the Chicago Chapter board:
President David Meyer, First vice-president Patti Chang, second
vice-president Jemal Powell, Secretary Eileen Truschke, treasurer Steve
Hastalis. Board positions: Denise Avant, Kira O'bradovich, Marilyn Green,
Ken Borst. Dave thanked the outgoing board members, Gina Falvo, Marco
Giannotti, and Debbie Stein.

 

STATE PRESIDENTIAL REPORT:

State president, Denise Avant, stated that we need to give hearty
congratulations to our scholarship finalist, Sara Luna. Denise also says
that our national convention will be held virtually. Denise urges everyone
to go ahead and register for the national convention. The convention is free
of charge. The dates are from July 14 to 18. 

BELL in Home Edition: Debbie Stein reports that we have reconstructed the
BELL program and it's going to be called the BELL In-Home Edition. On the
positive side, this is an opportunity for us to reach the families who might
not have been able to get their kids into a real brick and mortar BELL
program, but they are able to work from home. It also means that people all
over the country maybe whose states that had not been set up to do a BELL
program will be eligible to sign up. The way it's going to work is that
there will be 3 two week sessions run by BELL teachers from the national
office. The first one will be from June 1 to June 12, there will be one from
June 22 to July 3 and the final one is from July 27th to August 7. So
families can sign up for whichever one is going to fit their schedule. All
of the materials necessary will be sent to the students who are registered
and each day during the program there will be two hour-long sessions when
the students, teachers, and volunteers will meet virtually. There will also
be opportunities for volunteers from each state affiliate to contact the
BELL students on a daily basis by telephone or online. To talk about what
has been going on in the program and maybe help them with some of the
lessons. Debbie will be recruiting some volunteers. Sara Luna had
volunteered to help do that, we will be finding out how many Illinois
students have applied. Debbie has been in contact with several parents who
are interested. Some of them are kids who have been in the program year
after year and want to continue to be involved. 

 Legislative Issues: Congresswoman Lauren Underwood is our newest cosponsor
for HR #2086, which is the Access Technology Affordability Act. With
Congresswoman Underwood's support, Illinois now ties California with 10
cosponsors. Illinois has 18 members of congress. We have a few other members
of congress, who were cosponsors in the last congress, Mike Quigley, Mike
Bost, Bobby Rush, Sherry Bustos, and Danny Davis. When Marilyn sends out the
legislative updates, please act as quickly as possible. When you can get
those emails out or make phone calls to your federal legislators, that helps
support all of our initiatives throughout the country. We still have only 1
cosponsor for S815, Tammy Duckworth. For our AIM High (Accessible
Instructional Materials in Higher Education) bill which is HR #5312, S
#3095, Illinois has 2 cosponsors who are Robin Kelly and Raja
Krishnamoorthi. For HR #3929, which is GAIN (Greater Access and Independence
through Nonvisual Access Technology), the originating cosponsor from
Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, is our only cosponsor in the state of Illinois.
Please email or call your member of congress and your senators asking them
to support our proposal which would wave the waiting period for SSDI which
is 5 months and for Medicare benefits which begins 24 months following
approval of SSDI benefits. If you have not already emailed or called our
senators or local legislators, please do that as soon as possible. The
Senate is back in session and the House should be back in session shortly.
You can reach out to Marilyn if you need any of the email addresses of any
offices or if you need the phone numbers to contact those offices. Steve
stated that Jan Schakowsky from the 9th district is the originating
cosponsor on the GAIN Act. Also, she is a cosponsor on a bill called the
Stop the Wait Act. Marilyn says the 10 cosponsors for the Access Technology
Affordability Act are Rodney Davis, Bill Foster, Robin Kelly, Raja
Krishnamoorthi, Darin LaHood, Dan Lipinski, Brad Schneider, Jan Schakowsky,
Lauren Underwood, and Jesus Chui Garcia. 

State Convention: Denise mentioned that we plan to have a face-to-face board
meeting, depending on Covid-19. We are planning our state convention from
10/30 through 11/1 at the Sheraton Lisle Naperville Hotel. If we need to
come up with a different plan, we will. If anyone has any ideas for the
state convention, please email them to Denise, so that she can begin
contacting our speakers. Denise has names for requests for national
representative. We are going to have a new head of the Talking Book Library.
We had planned on having breakout sessions. We will be having a STEM EQ
program in order to get more families to the state convention.

Denise reached out to Sarah Feigenholtz to express our concerns that voting
by mail may not be fully accessible to blind voters. She basically said that
people with disabilities should receive a ballot by mail. The trouble is
that there is a question of accessibility with regard to people who are
blind. Denise sent her an email expressing our concerns, however, she did
not hear back. Denise along with members of our state legislative committee
will be following up on that to make sure that we have a voice in what is
being said. 

 

PRESIDENTIAL RELEASE #494: 

President Riccobono hopes everyone is doing well. The board of directors
decided to take our convention online. If you made a room reservation either
at the Hilton or the Marriott, you will get a full refund of your deposit.
We have talked with the reservation staff at both hotels and they are
working on canceling the reservations at the Hilton and the Marriott and
issuing full refunds for the credit cards that were used. It might take up
to 2 weeks for all reservations to be processed and refunded. If you
registered for the convention and bought banquet tickets, you should have
had one of our team reach out to you already about your registration and
banquet fees. The dates for the convention are from July 14 through July 18,
not July 19. We want our members to treat this convention like a
face-to-face convention. We will have a rookie roundup. We are going to
schedule it in advance of the convention, so people can use that as a way to
prepare for what the convention will be. 

The structure of the convention will be a little different. Tuesday, July
14th is seminar day, like it always has been. On Wednesday, July 15th,
normally registration day, will now be board meeting and resolution day. On
Thursday, July 16th, that's still division day, however, that is going to
feature our opening ceremonies in the evening. On Friday, July 17th, this is
opening session day, including the presidential report. We will have a full
day of general sessions. Also, each one of our affiliates will be holding an
affiliate caucus on that day. On Saturday, July 18th, it is our business
meeting, our resolutions, and the banquet. 

We will be using the Zoom platform, although we are not fully committed to
the exact platform. Accessibility is a primary question for us. We want to
make sure we can include everybody, not just the folks who have access to a
computer, an internet connection. We want to connect with people via
telephone. As an aside to affiliates on voting, this is where your
membership lists being submitted is going to be critical.

Registration for the convention is open and registration is free. Go to
http://www.nfb.org.web/convention to register to be eligible to participate
in certain things, including door prizes. Registration will close on June
15th.

We are going to have door prizes at the convention, so please send door
prizes. You can send them to the National Federation of the Blind and you
should mark them Attention: Convention-FS for fiscal services. Our address
is 200 East Wells Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21230. Get your door prizes
to us as soon as possible. 

President Riccobono welcomes ideas about what the convention can/should look
like. Please send ideas at officeofthepresident at nfb.org.

We are asking everyone who is willing to participate to create a one-minute
audio or video but not more than one minute. Talk about your first
convention and what it meant to you. You can win some cash prizes.

With respect to social security disability, we are continuing to request in
the next stimulus bill that we are pursuing to get a waiver on the 5 month
waiting period for SSDI benefits or the 24 month waiting period for
Medicare. We are getting some interest on that in congress as well. Many of
you should have received your economic impact payment from the government.
If you are receiving SSI, you should be receiving your economic impact
payment before the end of May. If you are an SSI recipient and you have
dependents, you have until May 5 to add your dependent information to make
sure you receive the additional funds for dependents under this program. If
you have questions about the economic impact payments and the details around
them, especially for getting SSI or SSDI, you can go to
http://www.nfb.org/COVID. You can also email John Pare at Jpare at nfb.org. We
are seeking individuals who are currently in the process of applying for
SSDI benefits especially if you had to sign with a physical signature
various Social Security Administration forms. We also wish to speak with
blind persons who have recently filled out SSA 1696. This is the form that
is used to appoint someone to represent you in front of the SSA. We are also
requesting information about the inaccessibility of state unemployment
websites. If you or someone you know fits that category, please contact
Valerie Yingling in our office. Her email address is vyingling at nfb.org. Her
phone number is 410-659-9314, extension 2440. 

The National Association of Blind Merchants were able to persuade the
Secretary of Education recommending for a waiver that would allocate
vocational rehabilitation funds to replace spoiled food and expired supplies
for Randolph- Shepherd business owners Our merchants have been very active,
making sure we protect small business through that. 

We are coming up on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It's a good
opportunity to talk about web accessibility. We will be hosting a Twitter
chat on May 15 at 2:00 pm Eastern time. The hashtag we are using is
#Accessibility Now.

We are making sure that we are tracking and protecting the rights of blind
voters. Weve had great victories in Maryland and a number of other states.
If you are running into voting problems, please reach out to Lou Ann Blake
in our office. She coordinates our Help America Vote activities. You can
reach her at lblake at nfb.org or find her at Extension 2221 at our national
office. 

 We have had a partnership with Lyft during the last 2 months to provide
some support for transportation for those who might need emergency
transportation or have trouble getting out to get medicine or supplies
because of transportation issues. Our work in April, we got confirmation
that we can continue issuing travel credits to folks very late in the month.
So Lyft has extended our exclusive NFB Lyft credit program through the end
of May. So additional coupons for Lyft riders are available in the amount of
$25 that can be used for emergency purposes related to helping blind people
in need during COVID-19. There is a limited quantity of these available, but
if you know of a blind person who would benefit or you are a blind person
who is in need, please reach out to your affiliate president. Affiliate
presidents have more information. They can issue the code to you. We do need
to collect some data to make sure we can report back to Lyft on the impact. 

The Braille Monitor is our flagship publication. There are a number of
articles this month about issues related to COVID-19 that may be of
interest. You can get it in almost any form imaginable. An apology to our
Braille readers who get the hard copy Braille of the Monitor. Right now that
is delayed because the producer that does the hard copy Braille for us is
closed at the moment. But you will get your back issues in hard copy Braille
very soon and we are making the brf files available. 

Tuesday, May 5 is giving Tuesday. This is a global giving campaign to
support nonprofits in the work that they had been doing during COVID-19. We
need your help to get critical dollars into this organization to support the
programs that are innovating. All of our donations for giving Tuesday will
be matched by the Gibney Family Foundation. You can give online. You can
send us a check to our national headquarters. You can even call our office
and our main number and hit 4. If you get a voicemail, we can call you back
and we can take your donation via phone. If you donate online or send a
check, please writ4 GT for Giving Tuesday, so we know we can designate it to
the campaign and we can multiply your contribution through the generosity of
the Gibney Family Foundation. Please write a thank you note to the Gibney
Family Foundation. 

Federation Family Notes: A number of our members have been impacted by
COVID-19, however, we have had a number of members who have had the virus
and recovered. Dr. Brian Miller, Loretta Bun, and Johnny Wertz died from
COVID-19. Amy Barnes died, Doug Wolff, Ron Atchison, Joe Ferry, Travis Cain,
Barbara Briggs, John Bates, Richard Gaffney, and Susan Clark all died.
Finally, Rami Rabby died on April 17 in Israel. Rami was one of our charter
members of the NFB of Illinois and its first affiliate president. He was a
pioneer in getting blind people into the Foreign Service. Keep all these
individuals and their loved ones in your thoughts and prayers. Gloria Nathan
and Larry Cherry got married on April 15. Emily and Richard Gibbs adopted 5
kids on March 4. Sophia Regina Hernandez was born on April 8. Mateo
Francisco Carranza was born on April 27th.

 

Dave stated that since our last meeting, Rami Rabby who was instrumental in
starting the NFB of Illinois in 1968 and was its original president, has
died. Since our previous meeting, a longtime president of the NFB of
Illinois, former national board member, Stephen Benson, also passed away. We
all observed a moment of silence for both Steve and Rami. Steve Hastalis
said that Steve Benson also was a charter member of the Illinois affiliate.
He was president of the Chicago Chapter from 1974 to 1978 and then served as
the president of the state affiliate until 2002. 

 

The next Chicago Local Legislation Committee meeting will be on Tuesday
5/26. The phone number is 605-313-4819 and the passcode is 6324. We will
meet at 7:00 pm.

 

Old Business: Marilyn Green says that the Affiliate Sales Committee has been
selling T-shirts. It's a black T-shirt. The front says #bold #confident. The
back has the NFB logo and tagline and, on the left sleeve, it's Brailed NFB.
All of this is in yellow print or yellow ink on a black T-shirt. Because of
the COVID-19, the sales committee has decided to take them to our social
media to sell the remainder because we have a small quantity left. Marilyn
still has quite a few T-shirts. If anyone is interested in purchasing these
shirts, please let Marilyn know and she can set them aside. Also, whenever
we do meet again or, if you want them shipped, please let her know. You can
text, call, or email Marilyn. Her number is 312-343-8396. Her email address
is marilynvgreen at gmail.com. We are currently out of the long sleeve. We only
have short sleeve shirts left. They are $15. 

Steve Hastalis states that Metra will run a Sunday schedule on Saturdays on
all of its diesel routes and will continue running a Saturday schedule on
Saturday on Saturday on the Metra Electric Service. 

 

New Business: We will have our next virtual meeting on Saturday, June 13th
at 1:00 pm with the virtual board meeting starting at 11:30 am via the Zoom
format. 

Patti reports that her husband, Francisco, is seeing COVID patients, so he
is on an active COVID floor with all COVID positive patients. 

 

The meeting adjourned at 3:09 pm. 

 

Respectfully submitted: Eileen F. Truschke, secretary. 

 

 

David Meyer, NFB of Illinois

Coordinator and Channel Administrator, NFB-NewsLine

Chicago Chapter President