[nfbmi-talk] Fw: This works well!

[joe harcz Comcast]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Donna Rose 
To: joe harcz Comcast 
Cc: Joe Sibley ; Fred Wurtzel ; Jo Ann Pilarski ; John Scott ; 'Larry Posont' ; Lydia Schuck ; Mike Geno ; Terry Eagle ; Patrick Cannon ; Mark Eagle ; Charis Austin ; Casey Dutmer ; Deb Wild 
Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 2:20 PM
Subject: This works well! 


Joe,

Yep, this is how it works.  You have just proved my point.  Those insults have gotten me right on board with you.  Thanks so much for pointing out your view of my life and its lack of meaning to the world in your email below.  I am so sorry that so many of us don't live up to your expectations.  Good thing you are there to tell us all what we are supposed to be doing.  I couldn't live without this guidance. lol

You are not the God of civil rights.  Anyone can sit all day at their computer hurling out insults under the guise of the law.  It's easy to attack people when you know they have to just sit there and take it, like the State employees.  By the way, I am not one of them.  It doesn't help any cause to abuse them or anyone else.
Being right is right, but name calling and insulting won't get you anywhere.  You have to act as if you are at least able to keep your head, not be a bully and help people be invested in you and your position.  Otherwise people just shut down even if you are asking for legally mandated access.  Yes, we need progress.  I agree, and it won't be done one civil rights case at a time or even one person at a time.  Otherwise it will take forever or revert back when we go away or die.  

It takes unity, something the blind community has yet to achieve.  If the message is fueled too much by anger it implodes on itself.  Martin Luther King Jr. knew this and Malcolm X learned it too.  Both men lost their lives because of their understanding of this powerful premise, unity.  

This lack of unity is the sole reason we have made such little progress, while other disability groups have flourished in their ability to send a common message, and have the legal progress our population lacks.

you are not an advocate for me or anyone else if this is the way you want to do things.  You are just a grandiose angry old man, taking on the role of a victim.

I am not a helpless victim and have done and will do just fine whether or not the world ever complies with the laws I desire to see fulfilled.  You are not working to rescue me or anyone else.  I can rescue myself and do it without resistance.  It is a matter of a sense of self power and control.  I have chosen to have both.  I can get more done in one hour with my diplomacy, which you call" nicey nicey",than you will achieve in a life time.  I do it everyday.  I am so proud I am not like you.  
  
I will stay tuned to see how it all unfolds for you Joe.  My prediction is the Commission will soon be combined with MRS as administrators who make such decisions are becoming sick of all of the fighting, name calling, insults, immaturity and general three ring circus.  Just wait!   

This will be my last message on this topic.  Thanks again for your poignant message!  You really crack me up! 


Go Bravely,
Donna Rose, LMSW


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: joe harcz Comcast 
  To: Donna Rose 
  Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 7:39 PM
  Subject: Re: call for enforcement of ada


  This is simply psycho-babble. The law is the law. The reason that these scofflaw institutions get away with continuous violations of our individual and collective civil rights is that people don't make a stand and don't demand from public officials and our government full and complete compliance with this civil rights law that is now more than twenty years old and with Section 504 which is older.

  As both stated in statute and regulation the heads of these entities are ultimately responsible and, indeed accountable! 

  Your message is muddled with the standard pabulum of shooting the messenger for documented violations and the psycho-babble of presentation. Section 504 itself was brought into being by several lawsuits and by mass acts of civil disobedience including the longest takeover of federal buildings in this country's history.  And some of them were with ACB by the way including a former ACB president. He was a radical and check out your history on this. Mr. Rohern whom I didn't know has my admiration, but many timid and sell out types branded him an angry "radical". 
  And there were those in NFB and NAD and other groups whom were much more active in formulating and fighting for civil rights than I am or was at the last or other meetings. What a mealy mouth you are Donna.

  Oh yea they had sell outs in the community who said, "Those people were "angry" or "too radical". Yet the rights you got and your very home relative to your aforementioned complaints were brought about by those who acted.

  You Donna are indeed a "Fort Indian". I know that and my "Chippewa" blood slight as it is tells me that in your very words and actions here. Ho!

  And that comes from one who with ADAPT has engaged in acts of civil disobedience for the rights of all disabled including several takeovers of state, federal and other buildings. It comes from one who has acted in acts of civil disobedience to outrages of the government during the Vietnam War and other wars and who in fact has been arrested, tear gassed and assaulted by police powers for actively putting my life on the line, non-violently for my rights and the rights of others.
   It comes from one who has engaged in the "Days of Mourning" actions at Plymouth, Massachusetts on several occasions.

  The accountability measures I demand now and forever of VR institutions including MCB are mild. Your and other supercilious glad handers are fiddling while Rome burns. No, you donna have got yours and now blame victims of mass discrimination. for asking and demanding social justice for others while not receiving or asking for one thin dime of compensation by the way.

  Oh yea we need one more freaking sell out who gets a pay check to be a temporary "ADA coordinator" for not complying. what a freaking sham.



  If your way work for all then we'd have compliance eh?

  Let's all hold hands and sing songs eh?

  Ho!

  You are an "Aunt Tom-Tom" both in this community and in others.

  Ho!

  Oh yea and the BRA issue goes to the right to satire and parody and the defensiveness and those sorts of excuses for the elites is just that.

  What silly little contradictions you present here Donna! It's all form over substance. All a defense of perpetrators of mass discrimination over ephemeral issues. It is all "Aunt Tom-Tomism" and again blaming the victim for crying "rape" when being raped by a scofflaw system and scofflaw public employees like Cannon, Highly paid ones at that by the way.

  I'm sick to death of everyone covering the  ass of documented abusers which get paid $125,000 per year like Cannon  and pointing the finger, including the middle finger,  at the abused. And then signing up or enlisting willing suck ups like yourself to again point the finger at the likes of me for presentation" of message and not the actual villains. Oh yea and there are issues of accountability like simply asking where in the flying fig all the federal, trust and other monies have gone with no coherent answer to accountability over the public trust which is supposed to be something that purported leftists and (so-called right wingers rightfully  call for. We both call for the basics of reporters and that is: "who, what, when, why, where and how. We call for public openness and transparency and above all else accountability of our government! Yet, the likes of you again put form over substance and miss the rights involved and violated here and it all becomes a "suck up to the perpetrators" sort of thing whether you know it or not.


  It is like those racist who slaughtered our people saying, "Look at those angry savages who we just persecuted along the "trail of Tears" getting all pissed off at us killing them off. See how angry they are!"

  Ho!

  Blind people and others with disabilities have been and are being pushed over the cliff in this state daily by a corrupted "reservation system" and listen to me and listen good "sister": "You better figure out whether or not you are going to be a part of the problem or part of the solution!"

  Psycho-babble and dancing with the very perpetrators and denigrating advocates as you've done here over and over again is part of the problem

  Ho!

  Anger is irrelevant except that if one is not angry at such documented injustices then I contend that one is either an "idiot" or just doesn't care as Ani di Franco wrote.

  Finally Donna here is a piece of poetry read at a day of mourning that should apply to all victims of persecution and if people ain't angry at persecution including persecution of the blind, again they are stupid or just don't care:

  First Public Reading

  Thanksgiving Day, 1999

  Cope's Hill

  (Overlooking Plymouth Rock)

  Plymouth, Massachusetts

  The National Day of Mourning

   

  Fever blankets

  By joe harcz

  Second draft Tuesday october 25 1999

   

  Wrapped in fever blankets

  Sores redden, bodies shiver

  Genocide for land and trinkets

  Our great white brothers

  In christian charity

  Relieve us from heathen ways

  By sowing maladies

  Reaping a harvest crazed

  Calling for visions

  And power from mother earth

  Our festering religions

  Weeping for rebirth

  And resurrection

  Of time told ways

  Fighting for clarity

  Amidst the dying haze

  Stillborn hope mockingly

  Dancing with the ghosts

  Mistaking it for a vision

  To deliver us from the hosts

  Descended upon our shores

  Shivering in fever blankets

  Promised blistered sores

  A people once proud

  Whose death roars

  Strong and loud

  Through the ages

  Until truth can be

  Told even on paper pages

  Setting spirits free

  Denied no more

  Whispering tears on the wind

  Healing scars and sores

  Soft penance for the sins

  Bringing forth new life

  A child called truth

  Spirits arise from strife

  A people from the mouth

  Of god come to life

  As father sky

  Opens truth beyond pain

  Those dead and dying

  Walk among us again

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   





    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Donna Rose 
    To: joe harcz Comcast 
    Cc: Joe Sibley ; Mike Geno ; Fred Wurtzel ; Lydia Schuck ; Jo Ann Pilarski ; Patrick Cannon ; John Scott ; 'Larry Posont' ; Terry Eagle ; Mark Eagle 
    Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 7:24 PM
    Subject: Re: call for enforcement of ada


    Joe,

    Yes, you do have the right to speak of your grievances.  I am only suggesting thinking about a different way of presenting them so you can be heard and not dismissed as a nut or something.  You could make great progress with your knowledge, but it's all in the presentation.  There are always more ways than one to solve a problem.  I don't want us to throw away the baby with the bath water as it were. 

    It's like you didn't even read my entire message!

    I am not ignoring my rights to equal access, but I refuse to allow any agency, person or governmental entity to have so much power over me that I am consumed by anger.  Life is too short.  Kidney failure and staying alive by means of a dialysis machine has taught me to prioritize.  I could die tomorrow waiting for a kidney and I will not allow the crap that happens in this hard life to ruin today for me.
        
    That doesn't mean I am unaware of those things which need to be done, such as issues related to equal access.  You don't have to prove to me your position.  I get it.  I can be gritty and scrap with the best of them, after all I was born in Detroit.  I am not a fort Indian and will not accept that label.  

     If you don't rethink how you are portraying your message and prioritize your issues, though, you won't be heard.  That will serve noone.  It may already be too late.  

    I suppose you will choose the path of most resistance as usual and view my comments here as null and void!  Positive results are so much harder to gain this way, but knock yourself out!

          







    Go Bravely,
    Donna Rose, LMSW

    Shiny Paper Is the Enemy!
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: joe harcz Comcast 
      To: Donna Rose 
      Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 2:14 PM
      Subject: Re: call for enforcement of ada


      Donna,

      I have the right as an agreived party to demand my civil rights and to points out years of violations.

      And I have the right to demand public accountability.

      If you choose to ignore your rights and they were violated at the MCB meeting too. So be it.

      Joe
        ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: Donna Rose 
        To: joe harcz Comcast ; nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org 
        Cc: Joe Sibley MCBVI Pres. ; Charis Austin ; casey354 at sbcglobal.net ; Michael Geno ; Elmer Cerano MPAS ; TOM MASSEAU MPAS ; Jeanette Brown MI CAP ; Richard Bernstein Esq ; Jo Anne Pilarski MCB, Chair ; Larry Posont ; lydia schuck ; John Scott MCB, Commissioner ; Fred Wurtzel ; Terry Eagle ; Patrick Cannon ; M    ark Eagle 
        Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 1:49 PM
        Subject: Re: call for enforcement of ada


        Joe, H.,

        Your message is right.  I want the government to follow all its civil rights and other laws.  Our previous resolution needs to be redistributed and I will work on that.  MCBVI often addresses governmental issues by way of distribution of resolutions, letter writing and by phone, but not always in public forums.  

        You need to be aware that the leadership of MCBVI are busy working to make a living and our time is limited as a result.  We are out grabbing the American Dream and so we must prioritize some of the issues you raise and develop ways to bring about positive changes as efficiently as possible.  We believe empowerment and adequate preparation lead to opportunity, so we are always helping individuals along the path to personal success.

        I have lived my whole life without proper accommodations, and although I want braille signage and other accommodations, I must prioritize those violations which are the most important to me.  There just isn't enough time in each day to tackle every issue when a person works.  

        You know I have filed civil rights complaints many times as related to higher ed and fair housing and have won in all cases.  But filing complaints is a cumbersome and lengthily process.  I have learned there are often more efficient ways to get what we want and need.  

        Did it ever occur to you instead of filing complaints all over the place that you ask the current governor diplomatically for a separate part time ADA Coordinator?  A person who could dedicate his/her whole time to this effort would be very helpful.  With your vast understanding of accessibility laws you should consider applying for such a position.

        In Addition, I would like to mention the following to you.  You might want to think about why we are having MCB meetings in secured buildings now.  Could it be that MCB staff feel physically threatened by some of the audience behavior and the way comments are made?  For example, at the last meeting you said something about being a member of the Blind Rifle Association.  You may have meant this jokingly, but the obsessive tone of your comments is often so angry people begin to wonder about your intent and feel threatened, including me.  It is very off-putting and unprofessional to have individuals yelling during public comments or shouting during the meetings.  MCB Commission meetings are for the purpose of conducting business, which should be related to issues of blindness rehab and job acquisition.  Whether Pat Cannon is the ADA Coordinator, or not, has nothing to do with these meetings unless it is on the agenda.  

        Each of these people are civil servants, and the Commissioners are volunteers.  They aren't necessarily our enemies, just human beings trying to do the best job they know how to do.  In order to help them understand when they make mistakes, we have to keep our cool so they will listen.

        Joe, we all get very angry at the politics in government, but harnessing that anger properly will make more of a lasting impression when dealing with bureaucrats.  Otherwise you lose your creditability and then, even when you are right, no one listens.  You are too intelligent to allow this to happen to you.

        I hope you will accept these comments in the spirit of unity in which they are extended for the good of the entire cause.   








        Go Bravely,
        Donna Rose, LMSW

        Shiny Paper Is the Enemy!
          ----- Original Message ----- 
          From: joe harcz Comcast 
          To: nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org 
          Cc: Joe Sibley MCBVI Pres. ; Charis Austin ; casey354 at sbcglobal.net ; Donna Rose ; Michael Geno ; Elmer Cerano MPAS ; TOM MASSEAU MPAS ; Jeanette Brown MI CAP ; Richard Bernstein Esq ; Jo Anne Pilarski MCB, Chair ; Larry Posont ; lydia schuck ; John Scott MCB, Commissioner ; Patrick Cannon MCB Director 
          Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 8:44 AM
          Subject: call for enforcement of ada


           

          June 21, 2011

           

          Open Letter to Advocates in MCBVI and NFB MI

           

          Colleagues,

           

          All no by now the requirements of the ADA relative to signage and the accessible meeting requirements of the ADA. Now there is a special charge for the Michigan Commission for the Blind in these regards that is self-evident yet, once again the only accessible signage in Constitution Hall where MCB held its quarterly meeting on Friday last was on restrooms and elevators. To make matters even worse the ill-named Constitution   Hall was built after the effected regulatory date of the ADA, Title II (January 26, 1992.) I am shocked particularly at the disregard for enforcing these requirements or even a peep about them from the Michigan Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired especially in light of its 2002 resolution (attached after my signature line) in this regard. I am especially insulted by Michigan Protection and Advocacy Services which has been derelict in enforcing the ADA in these regards and routinely goes to meetings such as the aforementioned without a peep and which ignores multiple complaints. There is not a single state building with exception of state colleges in compliance. Not one.

           

          I urge all blind people to join together in multiple complaints with appropriate agencies for immediate remedy. I urge our brothers and sisters with MCBVI to put their money where their mouths are.

           

          Respectfully,

          Attached Resolution:

           

          Resolution 2002-04



           

          WHEREAS, raised character and Braille signage has long been required to be mounted on every permanent room of every public building by the Americans With Disabilities Act access guidelines and

           



           

          WHEREAS, such signage aids people who are blind and visually impaired in independently accessing the programs, services, benefits, and activities provided in these public buildings, and

           



           

          WHEREAS, such signage represents the major structural element afforded the blind in the ADA; and

           



           

          WHEREAS, this requirement has been grossly overlooked in this state, with many buildings having no accessible signage whatsoever, and

           



           

          WHEREAS, many programs, policies and procedures are not easily accessible to citizens who are blind in Michigan,   

           



           

          THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE Michigan Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired in CONVENTION ASSEMBLED AT THE Clarion Hotel in Lansing, Michigan that we urge the new Governor to make funds available for barrier removal in buildings owned or operated by the state; and

           



           

          BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: that the new Governor form a Taskforce on Disability to assist each department of state government in identifying and rapidly removing these barriers.

           



           

          Cc: NFB MI

          Cc: MCBVI

          Cc: MCB Board

          Cc: Michigan Protection and advocacy Services