[nabs-l] Appreciating our roots

[Joe Orozco]

Corbb,

Prior to the building expansion there was a third level where renovations
could have been made to accommodate large-scale events.  The Baltimore
chapter was more than sufficiently accommodated in the 4th floor conference
room, and if the scholarship committee was easily managed with the resources
the Center had prior to the expansion, I imagine any other multidimensional
activity could have been just as easily housed.  I'm not saying we were
wrong to expand the building, but I wonder how much of it was based on need
and how much of it came out of a want.  Fancy foyers and glass elevators do
nothing to advance our mission except to say that we have a swanky house to
live in.  Yes, it is our building, but as you can now see, it is also our
debt.  An expansion that ran an excess of twenty million dollars, to me,
translates to a lot of programs that could have more effectively reached the
masses.  I wonder what percentage of those funds could have been used to
preserve the Jobline service?  More importantly, you site special events as
the sole reason for reaping benefits from the expansion.  What about the
other 300 plus days of the year where the building ought to be used for
practical activities?  Even the NASA program is housed on a university
campus, so by your logic we have actually failed to meet the expectation for
the expansion uses.

Jedi,

I think you have a good sense of where I'm coming from.  Enticing young
people is difficult, because while you do not want to water down the
philosophy for the sake of drawing in new people, you do not want to run the
risk of alienating the new generation.  To keep the thread in line with the
original post, I think history taught us a lot about the unity that could be
derived from rallying around specific civil rights issues.  Today, we pursue
equality in the technology arena, but first, you alienate the older
generation who cares very little for technology; and second, we will never
fully catch up with the leaps and bounds of technical evolution.  Open
source is great, but because this is mostly volunteer-driven, how do you
enforce standards that fully accommodate accessibility?  I am very glad to
see the technology bill of rights offered as part of this year's legislative
agenda.  My only fear is that in time this legislation would be about as
effective as the web accessibility standards that did not account for
CAPTCHA and other features of the Web 2.0 era.  It's all about balance, and
even if we devote resources to crafting an equal playing field in
technology, there is still the issue of procuring jobs that make this
technology advocacy worth our efforts.

I do not envy the job of our NFB president.  I have mostly found Dr. Maurer
to be receptive to most ideas that are brought to his attention.  I think
the difficulty of his job is outlined in the way we want to stay on top of
the technological evolution that runs today's world versus the fundamental
reasons that necessitated the NFB in the first place.  He is open-minded,
yet I fear sometimes he may be a bit too open-minded.  A little smack down
seems to be in order at times, and from my vantage point it would appear as
though he is trying too hard to satisfy too many people simultaneously.  Too
many cooks in the kitchen at the National Center perhaps?

Or, maybe I'm completely off my rocker.  Maybe my theories will be proven
wrong.  Maybe I need to try to get into one of them there leadership
seminars to remind me of what it was that made me passionate about the NFB
at one point, assuming an invitation to the National Center is even
attainable after my tangents. *grin*  What I do know for certain is that
somewhere along the way I burned out on the NFB, and this alone would not be
worth your concern as a future leader, except, I'm not the only one.  The
difference between today and many years ago is that many years ago people
felt a good kind of exhaustion.  You can tell from the literature that it
was really a movement.  Today the NFB has transformed itself into a service
provider, and it's difficult to work up extra reserves of energy for
something that is not so much a movement as it is a well-oiled marketing
machine that caters too much to publicity and not enough to character
development.  The new breed of independence is good for print and
television.  It's not good enough for daily life where it matters most.

To me, this is most troubling.  Yet I appreciate the open debate.  I do not
know that this thread has a real right or wrong answer, because ironically,
only time will tell how successful the current strategies will turn out.  I
do hope though that the people that plan to build a career of working for
the NFB will take note of the points raised here on both sides and build an
organization that intrigues everyone regardless of generation.  And,
regardless of organization affiliation, because I think today's generation
is far more willing to cooperate across the aisle than our proverbial
parents.  This too will no doubt have an impact on how history evolves.

Best,

Joe

"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves,
some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."--Sam Ewing 
 

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