[NFBMO] Blind Declaration of Independence

[Daniel Garcia]

Dear Friends:

Exactly 50 years ago, in convention assembled, the organized blind movement asserted the normality of blind people and proclaimed the idea that there is nothing about us without us; the organized blind can govern ourselves and can participate in society to find solutions to the problems that afflict us. These facts were submitted to a candid world in the form of a declaration on July 4, 1973 during our National Convention in New York City. The text appears in the September 1973 Braille Monitor. I will copy the text below my signature for your convenience. As you read this declaration of independence of the blind, I hope you will become more inspired to engage in the Federation, so we can achieve full equality and freedom for all blind people.

https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm73/bm73-sept.html

Regards,

Daniel

Daniel Garcia, Second Vice President
National Federation of the Blind of Missouri
dangarcia3 at hotmail.com
(816) 621-0902
www.nfb.org
www.nfbmo.org
Live the life you want

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DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
IN CONVENTION ASSEMBLED
July 4, 1973

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[Editor's Note. -This was read by the President of the NFB and adopted by the Convention as official NFB policy.]

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for blind people to dissolve the bands which have connected them with certain social agencies established to provide services to the blind and to assume the equal station to which a democratic society entitles them, they should declare the causes which impel them to achieve a more just and equal status and the right to attain the equality, security, and opportunity that are the requisites of first-class citizenship in a free society.

We the blind of the United States hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men, the blind no less than the sighted, are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights the National Federation of the Blind has been instituted among the blind, deriving its just power from the consent of the governed who are its members; that whenever any agency for the blind becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the blind through their own organization of the blind and by the blind to alter or to abolish it, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence dictates that authorities long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and the experience of the blind has shown that they are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations reduces them under despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such dictatorship.

The history of the blind and their struggle to be integrated into the majority world of the sighted as sightless, but no less normal human beings and no different from others in merit and ability, has been constrained and denied by those who control the gateways to educational, social, political, and economic equality for them.

Because of ignorance and subconscious, but no less malevolent prejudice, the blind have been the victims of discrimination-of employment ostracism, personnel directors and employers who have prejudged them on their disability, not their ability to do the job on a par with the sighted and who have denied them the opportunity to earn a livelihood in accordance with their professional and vocational education and training and developed talents and aptitudes; they have been denied equality of educational opportunity as students; they have been denied equality of housing, access to public accommodations, the right to serve on juries, to participate socially, politically, and meaningfully in society, et cetera and et cetera.

But before equal status for the blind can be achieved in the world at large, it must be achieved in the inside world of the blind itself. Here too the agencies with rare exceptions are for, rather than of and by the blind. And this is the crux of the problem of the blind as consumers of agency services-the status of the blind in their relations with those who serve the blind and also set the standards for those who serve the blind. Equality like charity begins at home, and equality is impossible without equal participation to attain it.

We the blind, therefore, here and now declare that we take our stand with the philosophers of democracy who proclaimed that free men had the potential to govern themselves, that given equality of opportunity to achieve their potential educationally, socially, and economically they would choose their own leaders and govern themselves wisely.

In individual and collective degree, the quality of life as lived by men and women in relation to others of their species has been determined largely by the relationship of leaders to the led in different ages and nations throughout the history of man's sojourn on earth. In the record of government and politics these relationships have been variously nomenclatured as dictatorship, autocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, monarchy, republic, democracy. Throughout history the blind have been the disfranchised have nots, and even now they are too often the docile, obedient wards of benevolent paternalistic agencies whose leaders are as supreme as any tyrant, king, emperor, or fuehrer. Too often has our destiny been determined by the dictatorial agency and its professional satraps and our lives been at the mercy and whim of their bidding and desires. The glory of democracy is the victory of the many in defiance of the few to take control of their own lives through representatives of their own choosing. Anytime this is transgressed it is a subversion and denial of democracy by those who self-select themselves to determine the rules for others to follow.

We the blind therefore declare that we cannot and will not accept accreditation standards that dictate the conditions that determine the direction of blind people's lives without their democratic participation in that determination. Else what we have is not democracy, but tyranny; not a democracy of equal free men, but of despots and helots, tyrants and slaves, autocrats and serfs. Even at its best it is benevolent paternalism and an anomaly, an anachronism, a contradiction, and an excrescence in a free society because it denies freedom and equality which are the democratic heritage and right of citizens and reduces them from free men to subjects whose ability to control their own destinies is aborted into the mute and abject acquiescence of emasculated wards deprived of the manhood which should be theirs as free men.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison, the political philosophers of the Founding Fathers, understood this against the background of history. To insure the conditions of freedom they and their fellows structured a Constitution and a Bill of Rights to guarantee the liberty of themselves and their posterity. That is why the right to be governed by representatives of their choice is a sine qua non of democracy.

The free light of day, equal and full participation are thus the necessities of the decision process of free men in a democratic community. To deny these primal essentials is to deny the tenets of liberty and freedom and the rights of free men, and to consign them to being wards or slaves.

The National Federation of the Blind declares that blind people are normal human beings-that blindness in itself is only a physical lack which can be met and mastered, not an impairment of mental powers or psychological stability. Therefore all arbitrary barriers and discriminations-legal, economic, and social-based on the false assumption that the blind are somehow different from those with sight must be abolished in favor of equality of opportunity for all who are blind. Because of their intimate firsthand experience with the problems of blindness-and because they too have the constitutional right to organize, to speak for themselves, and to be heard-the blind themselves are best qualified to lead the way in solving their own problems. But we ask our fellow Americans of the general public to be aware of these problems and to participate in their solution. These are the fundamental beliefs upon which the National Federation of the Blind bases its philosophy and programs.

We, therefore, the representatives of the organized blind of the United States of America, in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions do, in the name, and by authority of the blind people of this Nation, solemnly publish, and declare, that these blind are, and of right ought to be, equal and free citizens; that the blind have equal participatory power and partnership with the sighted public and the social agencies working with the blind to determine their own fate and to insist upon the equality of education, training, and opportunity-free from prejudice and discrimination for loss of sight-to merit God's grace and to rise in society by their own talents and abilities. And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.