[nfbmi-talk] (no subject)

[Larry Posont]

Dear Michigan Federationists:

     This article demonstrates why we are all in the Federation
helping to change what it is to be blind. It is well worth the read!

Sincerely,
Larry Posont

The Courage to Fight for Chocolate Cake by Haben Girma From the
Editor: Haben Girma is currently a law student at Harvard and has just
been recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change. She was
recently singled out by Justice Clarence Thomas, but let me not
interrupt her story. Here is what she said at the mid-winter meeting
of the National Association of Blind Students in Washington, DC: Last
week Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas paid a visit to Harvard Law
School. During a public talk he gave before the whole school, Dean
Martha Minow asked him to name his heroes. He named his grandparents
and one of his law clerks, and then he said, "I saw a young woman this
morning. What's her name? Dean Minow immediately understood. Haben.
Justice Thomas continued, "Haben. I admire her. I admire that kind of
courage. Justice Thomas was among the first African Americans to go to
Yale Law School, and I am the first deafblind student to attend
Harvard Law School. I would not go so far as to compare the challenges
I faced to those Justice Thomas encountered growing up with Jim Crow
laws in Georgia. When he graduated from Yale, he struggled to find a
law firm that would hire a black man. By contrast, I have not finished
my last year of law school yet, but I already have a job lined up,
despite being a woman, black, and deafblind. While I was fortunate not
to have grown up battling blatant and fiery racism, I do agree that it
requires courage to become an attorney with disabilities. I have a
little vision and a little hearing, but, to avoid perpetuating
hierarchies of sight or hearing, I describe myself as deafblind. When
I thought about possible careers during my high school years, the
prospect of going to law school seemed incredibly difficult,
stressful, and downright crazy. I knew there were blind lawyers, but I
had never heard of a deafblind lawyer. In order to become an attorney,
I would have to pioneer my way through a thousand big and small
obstacles. In the many times I have needed to advocate for myself to
get to where I am now, I have relied on courage. As we advocate for
blind Americans on the Hill tomorrow, we'll need courage. Being a
disability rights advocate starts with self-advocacy. There are two
very important components to self-advocacy: the first is being able to
educate people about the legal rights of people with disabilities; the
second requires creative problem-solving skills to find alternative
techniques for accomplishing tasks. I'll use stories from my own life
to illustrate each point. After graduating from high school in
Oakland, California, I attended Lewis and Clark College in Portland,
Oregon. My college experience was good overall, except for some
initial challenges with the cafeteria. The college cafeteria had
several food stations that served different items each day, and the
printed menu hung on the wall by the entrance. I tried asking people
to read the menu to me, but, with the noise level in the cafeteria,
hearing people read the menu proved nearly impossible. At first I
quietly approached a food station, accepted a plate from the staff
behind the counter, and then discovered what they were serving only
when I sat down to eat. As a student with a busy schedule, I felt
frustrated that I did not have access to the cafeteria menus. I then
asked the cafeteria's manager to email me a copy of the menu before
each meal. Since the cafeteria always had its menus in electronic
format, emailing them to me involved only copying and pasting this
information. The manager agreed to email me the menu since it was
simple and easy enough. I still remember the excitement of getting
those first few emails. Instead of picking a station at random and
taking whatever the staff behind the counter put on my plate, I could
finally actually choose what I wanted to eat! If the menu said station
three was serving fried rice and eggrolls, I could skip stations one
and two and go straight to station three. And of course I was thrilled
to have choices for dessert! Whenever the cafeteria emailed me the
menu, life was delicious. But every other day the staff would forget.
I stopped in their office one day to remind them politely that I
needed those emails. They said they were very busy but would try to
send the emails consistently. Unfortunately they continued to forget
to send the menu nearly every other day. As a busy student with a full
load of classes, I found eating well very important. I explained the
situation to the heads of the Student Life Department and Student
Support Services. They told me the cafeteria was operated by an
outside company and was out of their control. So I wrote an email to
the manager of the cafeteria explaining that since I paid to eat at
the cafeteria like all the other students, I needed access to the menu
so I could fully use the services I was paying for. The manager
responded saying that the cafeteria was very busy, that they were
doing me a big favor, and that I should stop complaining and be more
appreciative. I don't know about you, but, if station four has
chocolate cake and no one tells me, I'm definitely not feeling
appreciative. Remembering a disability rights workshop I attended back
in high school, I decided to invoke the power of the ADA. In my email
response to the manager of the cafeteria, I cc'd several others in the
management team to make sure they learned about the ADA. I explained
that Title III of the Act requires businesses to make reasonable
accommodations for persons with disabilities; if the cafeteria refused
to do this, I would sue. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what I
was saying. How exactly was I going to sue anyone? I couldn't afford a
lawyer. I could file a complaint with the Department of Justice, but
what if they thought my issue was trivial? What if a judge decided
that emailing me a menu before each meal was not a reasonable
accommodation? Part of me was nervous and worried, but another part of
me was excited. I had a dream of joining the civil rights movement, a
dream of pushing aside barriers for students with disabilities, a
dream of eating my chocolate cake. While I was eating dinner the next
day, the cafeteria manager came over to apologize and promise that I
would receive menus for each meal in a timely manner. And you know
what? He actually kept his promise. I couldn't believe how much he'd
changed, how much my life had changed, all because of the phrase, "I'm
gonna sue. The threat of a lawsuit seemed as powerful as actually
filing a lawsuit. By invoking the ADA, I forced him to set aside his
attitude toward blindness temporarily and instead consider whether my
request was reasonable. He originally thought providing access for
blind students was an act of charity, a favor he could do when he had
a free moment and was in the right mood. Slowly the ADA is teaching
people to change their attitude so that granting equal access to
people with disabilities becomes the normative attitude. Threatening
to sue is a very effective strategy for combatting discrimination, but
it is really only a last resort. Lawsuits are complicated, long, and
expensive. Countless times I have requested and received
accommodations through friendly discussions. The college I attended
provided nearly every accommodation I needed, and most of the staff
was very welcoming. The second component to self-advocacy is creative
problem-solving skills. Once you overcome discrimination, once people
have changed their attitudes about disability, you will need a
technique for getting the job done. Technology is constantly providing
new tools with which blind people can accomplish tasks. While some
accommodations require the development of complex software, such as
VoiceOver on the iPhone, other times the solution is simple, like
using Braille labels to distinguish between similarly sized bottles.
Growing up, I had many wonderful teachers who taught me many of my
most valuable skills: Braille, cane travel, and an attitude that
creative thinking would overcome any obstacle. Several years ago I was
part of a rock-climbing club for blind students. Rock climbing is an
accessible sport for blind students; by feeling for handholds and
footholds, you can pull yourself up the rock wall. We all learned to
climb and belay. The belayer is the person who holds the climber's
ropes. To my surprise the instructor told me I could not belay since I
would not hear a climber telling me to lower him from twenty, thirty,
forty feet in the air. Although I understood his concern for safety, I
felt frustrated that the other blind students were allowed to belay.
The instructor could not think of an alternative technique for
deafblind belayers, and unfortunately I couldn't think of any either.
However, the fact that he and I couldn't figure it out didn't mean
someone else couldn't. As in many other areas of life, if you can't
solve a problem, you look for an expert in the field. If your bike
breaks, you take it to the bike shop. Since I was looking for a
rock-climbing technique that would allow a deafblind person to belay
safely, I contacted a rock-climbing expert. The solution we came up
with was brilliant: when a climber is ready to come down, he tugs on
the rope several times to send a clear signal to the belayer. Since
the belayer is holding the other end of the rope, the belayer
instantly feels the signal. Finding creative solutions for people with
disabilities can be challenging. It's easy to dismiss something as
impossible. Many of you live with sighted family members, sighted
teachers, and sighted friends; for this reason you may feel pressure
to act as the sole expert on blindness. I want to remind all of you
that you don't have to be an expert on blindness. When you run into an
obstacle, contact an expert in a related field to develop innovative
solutions. Once you've learned to advocate for yourself, the natural
next step is advocating for others. We are all here to advocate for
blind Americans. If the thought of meeting legislators makes you feel
nervous, find your inner courage. Advocating for seemingly trivial
things like the right to eat chocolate cake develops an inner courage,
and that courage will serve you in the quest for greater rights.
Remember that advocating for others starts with learning to advocate
for yourself. When you assert your dreams, your needs, and your
rights, opportunities become limitless.