[NFBMO] Blind Declaration of Independence

[Steve Cook]

Thanks for sharing!

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBMO <nfbmo-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Daniel Garcia via NFBMO
Sent: Tuesday, July 4, 2023 10:25 AM
To: NFB of Missouri Mailing List (nfbmo at nfbnet.org) <nfbmo at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Daniel Garcia <dangarcia3 at hotmail.com>
Subject: [NFBMO] Blind Declaration of Independence

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

***

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.


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