[NFBOH-Cleveland] Attention Cleveland, Please join this philosophical discussion on Tomorrow

[Suzanne Turner]

Cleveland Members,

The Ohio President is inviting all and I am also urging you to join him On
tomorrow, Wednesday April 22, 2020 from 6:30PM until 7:30 PM. 

The topic is: the movement AND the message
                
As educators and organizers we must be able to encapsulate the Federation's
philosophy into short, digestible messages with which people can connect.
The following ten-point summary, excerpted from Jim Omvig's book, Freedom
for the Blind, (provides an excellent overview of the NFB's philosophy about
what it does and does not mean to be blind:)

(1) Blind people are simply normal, ordinary people who cannot see.

(2) The blind are merely a cross-section of society as a whole, mirroring
society in every way with the same hopes, interests, and desires, the same
dreams, abilities, and potential as everyone else.

(3) The physical condition of blindness is nothing more than a normal, human
characteristic, like the hundreds of others which, taken together, mold each
of us into a unique human being.

(4) Given proper training and opportunity, the average blind person can do
the average job in the average place of business, can have a family, can be
a tax-paying and participating citizen and can be in every way a
contributing member of society who can compete on terms of absolute equality
with his or her sighted neighbors.

(5) With proper training and opportunity, blindness is not a tragedy. It
literally can be reduced to the level of a physical inconvenience or
nuisance.

(6) The actual physical limitations associated with the characteristic of
blindness can easily be overcome by using alternative techniques for doing
without sight what you would do with sight if you had it.

(7) The concept of the hierarchy of sight--that is, the notion that the
level to which a blind person can be competent and successful rises or falls
in direct proportion to the amount of vision he or she has--is nothing more
than a myth and is completely false.

(8) To sum it all up, "it is respectable to be blind," and the blind,
themselves, are primarily responsible for pushing back the frontiers of
ignorance and changing what it means to be blind in the broader society.

(9) "You can't have your cake and eat it too." That is, blind people cannot
on the one hand use their blindness to get some advantage or something they
want and then on the other hand demand equality and opportunity when it
would be nice to have it--the blind deserve freedom and equality, yes, but
hand-in-hand with equality comes responsibility.

(10) The real problem of blindness is not the physical loss of eyesight at
all, but rather is to be found in the wide range of societal
misunderstandings and misconceptions about blindness shared by the blind and
sighted alike. Putting it quite bluntly, the blind are, in every sense of
the word, a minority group, with all of the negative implications which this
phrase conjures up.

I would like for you to read and be prepared to actively participate in the
meeting.

To Join the Zoom Meeting

 <https://zoom.us/j/4081850851> https://zoom.us/j/4081850851

Meeting ID: 408 185 0851

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Meeting ID: 408 185 0851

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Richard Payne,  President
National Federation of the Blind of Ohio
937/829/3368
Rchpay7 at gmail.com <mailto:Rchpay7 at gmail.com> 
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the
characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
blindness is not what holds you back
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