Date: Sat, 12 Nov 1994 14:22:12 -0700
From: ax611@Freenet.HSC.Colorado.EDU (Jaime Fradera)
To: al469@Freenet.HSC.Colorado.EDU
Subject: Hi!


Hi, Kathy.    
this file contains material that may interest you.  By way of
introduction, the organization I belong to is the National
Federation of the blind.  Our Federation philosophy is based on the
premise that blind people are simply normal people who cannot see. 
The Colorado Center for the Blind, where I work, is one of several
training centers operated by the National Federation of the Blind.
These are some things I have written and know how to send over the
phone, but there is better material available (which I don't know
how to send via e-mail) in print.  Read and enjoy!!!


    The following address was delivered at a siminar for teachers
and parents titled, "On the Move, Orientation and Mobility, a
Process toward Independence".  The siminar was sponsored by the
National Federation of the Blind of Louisiana, the Louisiana
Department of Education, and the Louisiana chapter of the
Association of Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and
Visually Impaired, Alexandria, Louisiana, October 29, #1994.


    I was asked to talk with you about how I function and travel
as a deaf-blind person.  Let me begin, however, by saying that I do
not consider myself to be exceptional, nor my experiences to be
unusual.  Most of what I have to say will not come as big news to
seasoned cane travelers.  But for those of you who are new in the
blindness field, for those who have not known active blind people
and are not familiar with the training centers operated by the
National Federation of the Blind, we will begin by first examining
prevailing beliefs and attitudes behind the operation of programs
intended to help the blind; for it is attitudes about blindness
that permeate every aspect of our society, and it is only by
examining and where necessary changing these beliefs that we can
truly make government our servant and  improve the quality of life
for all our citizens.

     Broadly speaking, there are two major concepts of blindness
in our society.  The accepted and most widely held view equates
blindness with inability and abnormality.  Blindness brings with it
multiple difficulties and peculiar problems thought to be outside
of normal human experience and that require a broad array of
specialized services.  The blind live in a state of permanent
deprivation and in a world of darkness, a world without color or
beauty, a world of no joy, no laughter, no pleasure and no sun. 
Accordingly, Blind people are seen to need a lot of compassion,
professional intervention and supervision.  Much emphasis is placed
on the psychological aspects and social adjustment of the blind. 
A good deal of personal counseling, along with a battery of
psychological and aptitude testing is employed for the purpose of
helping the blind person live an almost (but not quite normal)
life.  Because blindness is often the result of a disease process,
and because most blind people are old, Blindness is viewed as a
continuing medical condition, and independent living aids, like
talking scales or Braille watches, are considered medical devices
to be dispensed by a home teacher or a registered nurse especially
trained to perform this function.  Because most learning is thought
to be visual, the blind cannot acquire or interpret information as
well as the sighted, nor can they understand how to avoid danger. 
It is for all these reasons that we are taught to rely on the
better judgment and professional opinion of the agency counselor,
and why we are guided into stereotyped occupations touted as being
"good for the blind" but that offer no real comparison or
competition to the normal world.  Without sight, we are thought to
have only the maturity and common sense of small children--but it
is worse than that.  Children eventually grow up; but not so the
blind.  Moreover, we can never hope to, and as perpetual children,
our intelligence insulted and our humanity denied, we are insulated
and therefor isolated from both the stresses and rewards of a world
in which we can't live and with which we can't cope.  Sometimes
these views are overtly stated; but more often, they come shrouded
in euphemisms, cliches, abstruse phraseology, scholarly language
and professional jargon which mostly people "in the field" can
understand.  This model of blindness is expressed through heartfelt
concerns aboutsecurity and safety, and even by enforced custody
and care.  Clients of agencies holding this view of blindness will
generally be passive, minimally involved in training, and
marginally employed, often in a sheltered setting; and regardless
of how many services they receive, they will usually be seen to
need even more.  

    The second view of blindness is in the minority, but it is the
one we do our best to apply at the Colorado Center for the Blind. 
We consider blindness to be a physical characteristic and little
more.  Its problems, for the most part, are rooted in social
attitudes each of us has internalized to such an extent that the
problems attributed to blindness seem real.  Since blind people are
already using safe and effective methods of daily living,
independent travel and communication, we think the problems of
blindness are best addressed through an active program of
individual skills training, public education and legislative
reform.  We stress personal responsibility and self-advocacy; and
our objective is the creation of both a social climate and
opportunities for the inclusion of blind people into all sectors of
our society as full and equal citizens.  

    Let us turn our attention now to services for the deaf-blind. 
Most programs that try to serve deaf-blind people generally serve
the deaf, and this is so for several reasons.  First, the deaf
community is large, visible, well-organized and active; so
misconceptions about deaf people are not easily supported.  Second,
Deaf people (for the most part) function visually, so public
programs or services need only minor modification to meet their
particular needs, as illustrated by the fact that information about
telephone relay services is generally available, whereas
information about where to get Braille or travel instruction is
generally not.  Third, most agencies for the blind, being part of
the general culture, still subscribe to one degree or another to
the accepted view of blindness and have little understanding about
the true nature of both disabilities.  They don't know what to tell
or how to help their deaf-blind clients; and the result of this
state of affairs is that the deaf-blind usually fall through the
cracks between programs geared to meeting the mass needs of larger
populations, are chronically under-served, and typically left out.

     Let me talk to you now about how I came to know all these
things.  As a long-time member of the National Federation of the
Blind, I have heard the stories of very many people.  And as a
survivor of nearly two decades of traditional rehabilitation, I
have seen the damage that bureaucratic inertia and
institutionalized ignorance can reek in a person's life.  I have
felt privation and the denial of opportunity, I have watched
helplessly as my ambitions and dreams of freedom and a better life
were smashed.  Here is how it happened, and as you listen to this
story, bear in mind that it is all too often the rule, not the
exception.

    I was born in Texas and spent many years there as a virtual
ward of the state.  My parents separated when I was eight years
old, and when I was ten, I was sent to the Texas School for the
Blind in Austin.  In those days the Texas school was not only
divided by gender but racially segregated as well. there were
separate drinking fountains, staircases, even seating areas in the
auditorium for girls and boys, and woe to anybody who didn't obey
the rules.  Two years earlier, half of the senior class was not
allowed to graduate, apparently because they were caught off campus
having a graduation party without permission.  TSB was a gloomy and
indifferent place, and for the most part, I was not happy there. 
I was lonely and painfully homesick, and for many nights that first
fall I cried myself to sleep.  

    It was at the Texas school that I got my first mobility
training.  Actually, it didn't amount to much.  I was taught to
walk along hallways by trailing the wall with the back of my hand,
and that's really about all I can remember.  In those days I had
near-perfect hearing and could follow voices and crowds.  I
followed sidewalks by running one foot partly on the grass; and I
found steps or curbs by either slowly shuffling along or falling
off them.  When my parents came to visit me later that fall, I had
a grand collection of bumps and bruises in various stages of
healing to show.  (Not all of these were from accidents.  Some were
perpetrated by my tormentor, the class bully.  You remember; we all
had them.  Such was the level of supervision of us children that
one day he made me fall downstairs and thought it was great fun to
make me bump into things and tell me he was going to knock my teeth
down my throat).  Eventually I learned to avoid crashing into
things by listening to their echoes and acoustic shadows.

    When i was seventeen and a junior in highschool, I was given
a cane.  It was of the short, fat, heavy variety and had a crooked
handle.  I was taught that there were different cane techniques. 
These included such things as touch, touch-and-drag, touch-and-
slide, etc.  I don't remember the fine points of all those
techniques, and I guess I didn't find them very useful since i did
not use a cane regularly until my senior year.  By then I was being
taught how to cross intersections by listening to the traffic.  I
was beginning to loose hearing in my right ear, and at first I
could do this in a limited way.  But as the disease progressed and
my hearing worsened, I couldn't interpret the traffic flow at all,
and my mobility classes stopped.

    This was a big disappointment to me.  I saw that other kids
were getting mobility and I wasn't.  I was beginning to sense that
at TSB we were living in a sheltered setting, that there was a
greater world outside the school fence, a world where people
traveled, or went to college, found work or got married.  I felt
that it was in this greater world that I truly belonged, but I knew
I didn't have the skills; I didn't know how I might break out.

    So it was with great joy and anticipation that I finally
graduated from TSB in the spring of #1974.  I was sure I would
finally be free, free in a limitless world with endless
possibilities for a better life--but my sense of freedom and joy
were short-lived.  Although I had left the school for the blind, I
was still caught as firmly as ever in the rehabilitation machine. 
The truth was I didn't know anything about how to live outside the
institutional setting in which I had been raised, and was about to
enter the darkest and most terrible chapter of my life.  Over and
over I was sent to the same rehabilitation facility for training. 
time after time I was tested and measured, analyzed and
interviewed, probed, cajoled and documented to reveal almost every
intimate detail of my personal life and habits to anybody who
needed to look at my ever-expanding case-file--except me, of
course.  Again and yet again I was told, by a procession of
counselors and rehab teachers, that my notions about entering a
profession were unrealistic, that I was handicapped, learning
disabled, and needed to understand my limitations, that I needed
more evaluation because then still didn't know anything about me. 


    All of this was indescribably demeaning and degrading.  What
if it was true?  I didn't know if I could refute any of this.  I
was only a client; what did I know of psychology or case
management?  I didn't know how to set boundaries or protect my
privacy, and despite the services I was already receiving, I often
spent months or even years at a time sitting at home, doing
nothing.  I didn't know how to build a private support system; I
didn't even know what that was, how it could make the difference
between life and death.  I only knew my surrogate parents, the
counselor and home teacher, who could only offer more counseling,
more therapy ,,,

    It would be hard to describe how year after year of this
constant hammering, this ceaseless battering, this mind-numbing
pseudo-rehabilitation can stifle the soul, how it can assault and
break the human spirit; nor can I find the words to convey the
depth of my sadness, my utter hopelessness, my total despair.  And
as the pain grew unbearable, as the illness ravaged and destroyed
more of my hearing, I lost interest in going out, then in eating,
and finally in living, for everything around me said that no-one
cared.  But that was the past, and it will suffice to say that my
life did not end, that it was touched and changed forever by people
who did care and who believed in me even when I didn't, and it is
largely a testament to there love and to their faith in me that I
am standing here today.

    With this background, let me describe how I felt as a student
at the Colorado Center for the Blind.  I had heard many stories,
and I knew theCenter program would be very demanding.  But I also
knew that the alternative would be to sit at home, year after year,
waiting for them to send me another therapist.  For the previous
five years I had been waiting and working for the opportunity to
move to Colorado, but nothing had prepared me for what was about to
happen.

    The day of my arrival, Jan. 8, 1992, there had been a massive
snowstorm, and I had no idea how I was going to walk on that deep,
treacherous snow.  Back where I came from, if it snowed like that,
(if you had any common sense) you stayed home; but there was no
staying home here.  In the wake of the storm system the weather was
bitterly cold, with high winds and daytime temperatures in the
teens and single digits, but my new friends were very patient and
showed me how to dress in layers, even helped me get back up when
I lost my balance on the ice, which happened with distressing
frequency, usually in the middle of the street.  It was only by
degrees and through necessity that I learned to travel easily over
snow deep enough to obscure almost everything.

    The unconventional nature of the program soon became apparent.

On my first day of training (it was fifteen degrees) I was given a
tour of the center.  Kimberly Johnson, the cooking teacher, asked
me if I would need a guide to walk with.  Students at the Center
are usually not taught to rely on guides for travel, but I was the
first deaf-blind student to enroll.  I had given this much thought,
and told her that as long as I could follow directions and could
get needed information with my cane, I would not need a guide.  I
also knew from personal experience how easily it would be to become
dependent on a guide to think and make judgments, and that I would
have no incentive to improve my travel and problem-solving skills. 
To my surprise everybody agreed with this, and off I went,
guideless, on my first travel lesson--inside, where it was nice and
warm. 

    Before proceeding I should explain that I draw a distinction
between mobility training and travel instruction.  I think
"mobility" is what you get from traditional programs, and that what
is taught at facilities like the Louisiana Center is travel.  The
word "mobility"  suggests that the blind will go limp as a wet rag
unless we are prodded to do something, but you can sit in a rocking
chair and get your mobility.  Travel implies something broader and
wider, something that requires active engagement.  Consider that
when you go to your job or the grocery store, you don't mobility
there, you travel; and traveling is something all of us can learn
to do.

    But back to the Center.  As was the case with all new
students, one of the teachers or senior students accompanied me
each morning on the walk from our apartment complex to the bus stop
for the ride north to the Center.  Reaching the stop involved
crossing Broadway, a major north-south artery that divides Denver
in two.  This crossing was chosen to teach students how to listen
for and cross with the parallel traffic; but I couldn't hear the
parallel traffic, or rather, I couldn't tell where the traffic was
and what it was doing.  So for several months I was escorted across
Broadway with the students while we looked for a way for me to come
to class by myself.  The solution was that I could take advantage
of the circular nature of bus routes by first catching a southbound
bus, ride to the end of the line, then north up the other side of
the street to the Center.  Although this added an hour to my
commuting time, it was worth it because it gave me the independence
I so much wanted. 

     Manyof the travel techniques I learned at the Center were
standards taught to all students; but some we had to make up or
modify through experimentation.  The Center didn't have a sleep-
shade policy equivalent for deaf-blind people; but there were many
times when, either due to my illness or equipment failure, I needed
to come to class or run errands totally deaf.  It was up to me to
figure out how to find and identify busses, get directions, and
otherwise go about my daily business.  I didn't like it, but it
didn't matter.  It was up to me to tell myself it was okay to be
deaf-blind, and to consider the possibility that deaf-blindness,
with the proper tools and training, could be reduced to a normal
annoyance, like slogging through deep snow, with no obvious
landmarks, and finding my way to class or work without knowing
exactly how on earth I did that.

    It would be easy, I suppose, to go on and tell you stories
about my travel lessons, or about the times I got lost, or about
how I use my TDD.  And, of course, as I said at the beginning of
this talk, my experiences aren't very different from those of most
people.  But as we are gathered in this room and enjoy our lunch,
as we go about our daily business, commuting to secure jobs and
leading comfortable lives, I ask you, please, to consider these
sobering reminders:

     Remember that for each one of us who has broken free of the
rehabilitation machine, who has succeeded, who has known
opportunity and who has felt the gift of life, there are a dozen,
perhaps a hundred others who remain trapped and languish in the
dark dungeons of custodialism and despair, where it is always
night, where life is a dead end with no future and no hope, and
that we have an obligation to reach out to them with our message of
hope and freedom before it is too late.  Remember that tyranny may
come in many guises, and that it is never more invidious and more
destructive than in the form of benevolent compassion.  Remember
that as parents and human service workers you are a critical
influence in the lives of the people you serve, particularly
children.  Remember that you will teach them the skills and give
them the tools they will need for the rest of there lives; but
remember also that what you hold in your hands is a two-edged
sword, and that if not carefully handled, a sword can kill. 
Finally, remember that we who are deaf-blind are people too.  We
share with you the same fears and foibles, the same aspirations and
hopes, the same desire for love, the same power to dream, and the
need to live in peace.

    It is with this universal truth, that we are more alike than
different, that deep within our minds and hearts we are the same
that I close this presentation.  For the fact is that whatever our
callings and professions might be, each of us in this room is here
for a single purpose, and all of us work together in a common
cause.  The vision we share, and the task we face, is to help make
the world a brighter and happier place, a place where the value of
every human life is recognized, a place where education and equal
opportunities are available to all, and certainly, a place where
superstitious, irrational and archaic distinctions between those
who are disabled and those who are not are seen as outmoded and no
longer to be borne.  To be sure the obstacles we face are
formidable, and the challenges are great, but I believe that
through collective action and concerted effort, we can go a long
way tward making that vision of the world a reality.  Don't you?  

End of file:     

(edit document in conformance with style or space requirements)

                   Don't be afraid to sing:
          More from the Colorado Center for the Blind
                       By Jaime Fradera

    I came into the National Federation of the Blind in the fall
of 1983.  My primary reason for joining was not that I believed in
our CAUSE, but because I wanted to go back to school and my rehab
counselor wouldn't let me, and because somebody told me the NFB
would deal with her if I became a member--or something like that. 
By then, I had already been a client of the infamous Texas
Commission for the Blind for some thirteen years, and I had been so
steeped in the ways of the blindness system and subculture that
almost the last thing I wanted was to mess around with even more
blind people--but I needed help, especially money, so I swallowed
hard, and became a new Federationest, at least in name if not in my
heart.  After all, I just needed some help.  So I went through the
mosions of being a good Federationest, going to chapter meetings,
saying the right words, even attending my first national convention
in Phoenix in 1984.  I figured once the NFB finished whipping my
rehab counselor, once I got what I wanted from the "movement," I
wouldn't really need the NFB anymore, or maybe not as much.  And
for the most part, being a good Federationest was not hard, but
there was one thing Federationests did which I just couldn't bring
myself to do in public because it would be too embarrassing--how
could I sing those funny NFB songs?  And what was this nonsense all
about, anyway?

    in September of 1965, as a new 10-year-old fourth-grader at
the Texas School for the Blind, I remember going--well, being
taken--to my first pep rally.  This was a strange affair where you
were supposed to yell and holler about school spirit, and everybody
was supposed to go to the pep rally.  I was like an alien from
outer space and remember asking my roommate what all the screaming
had to do with pepper!  The answer, of course, was that it had
nothing to do with it; but I didn't want to yell.  the truth was I
really didn't care whether we won or not.  All I knew was I was
lonely and homesick, that I hated TSB and wanted to go back to
Mother.  

    I remember TSB as a gloomy and indifferent place, and in
general during my elementary and highschool years, I was not happy
there.  So when I graduated and was sent to the Cris Cole rehab
center, I was sure the gods were smiling at me at last.  Instead,
it was the beginning of the most painful and terrible chapter of my
life.  I would spend years in meaningless "training," and when I
wasn't in "training," months and even years at a time sitting at
home, doing nothing.  My social life, to the extent I had one, was
going to a club for blind people that was maintained by Commission
staff.  It was called Insight for the Blind, and the members seemed
mostly to sit around, drink, play dominos or beep baseball, and
remember the olddays at Cris Cole and TSB.  There was even a
psychologist, one Dr. Patton, who ran a therapy group just for
blind people and who ministered to our emotional needs.  

    Although going to the Insight blind club have me some social
stimulation, I was still unhappy.  I sensed that there ought to be
more important things to talk about and do, and I didn't want to
spend my life playing beep baseball.  What I really wanted was to
escape the trap my life had become--the same old blind people from
the past, the endless empty days with nothing to do, the sleepless
nights, the lack of social contact with any but blind people, the
crushing loneliness of having no one to go to and nowhere to turn
for help, the terrible anguish, the unbearable pain.  I lost
interest in going out, then in eating, then in living; for I did
not know about the message of optimism and hope of the National
Federation of the Blind.  I also worked with a series of counselors
and home teachers who told me that my plans to enter a profession
were unrealistic, that there must be something wrong with me since
they had been trying to help me for years, all to no avail, that I
was handicapped and needed to understand my limitations, and that
I might need more counseling, more training, more therapy--and in
spite of myself, I came to believe much of this.  

    But, as I said, in 1983 I joined the National Federation of
the Blind.  I had reservations about doing this, but soon realized
these were not like the passive, complaining, dependent blind
people of my past.  They were dynamic and energetic.  They had
families and jobs, things to do and places to go.  I discovered
that with these people I no longer had to apologize for or conceal
who I was, what I thought and believed in, and I learned that my
story was their story too.  I began to understand that many of the
things I had been taught about myself as a blind person were false
and wrong, and that the problems were not in me but in the negative
attitudes of the people in the rehabilitation system.  And I
discovered something else: that as I did Federation things and said
Federation words, even before I thought I could subscribe to them,
first my head, and then my heart, actually started to believe the
things my mouth was saying.  And as I struggled to absorb and apply
this new NFB philosophy, my life and expectations of what was
possible began to change.  There remained the problem of what to do
about the Texas Commission.  I was now also deaf, and the agency
had no idea what to do with deaf-blind people other than sticking
them in some lighthouse.  Since I knew I would never get decent
training in Texas, (and since I didn't like the climate there) I
decided that only by going to the Colorado Center for the Blind,
only by living and working round the clock in an atmosphere
saturated with NFB philosophy, could my transformation into a true
Federationest become complete.  So in January of 1992, I moved to
Colorado to begin a new life.  

    What exactly do we mean by "equal treatment," "full
participation," and "true independence?"  These questions, and
others like them, are discussed and debated endlessly here at the
Colorado Center for the Blind.  The Center is a living laboratory
where Federation theory and principals are applied to real-world
situations and to resolve the ordinary problems of daily living. 
For me it was the discovery that if I said I believed something, I
had better be ready, on a moment's notice, to give a convincing
public demonstration of that belief.  It was one thing to say I
wanted "independence" and to develop the "inner toughness" it takes
to live in the world, but just what does that really mean?   As a
student at the Colorado Center for the Blind, I discovered it might
mean getting up at four in the morning in order to get to work
through brutal sub-zero weather that has already shut down most of
the city; it might mean spending nine hours in the kitchen
preparing a four-course dinner for thirty people or more; it might
mean scaling a sheer hundred-foot rock face that seems to have no
footholds, or hurtling down a snow-packed mountainside at twenty or
thirty miles an hour.  It might even mean knowing you can face down
anything this world might do to you, or throw at you, and still
prevail.  And after realizing that, I was more careful about what
I told people unless I could back it up.  Yet even as I continue to
speak and write about my convictions and beliefs, the beliefs
become even firmer, and the convictions more deeply held.

    What I am saying all boils down to this.  If you feel
uncomfortable, if you're not sure you believe, if you feel self-
conscious about cheering at Federation functions and singing
Federation songs, remember what Dr. Jernigan has taught us: that a
thing must be said before it can be believed, and believed before
it can come true.  Remember that even if you can't carry a tune,
you can still sing.  Remember that you are a part of the most
dynamic social action movement of our time.  Remember that as we
change what it means to be blind, we also change the world.  So
don't be afraid to sing.  Sing for decency and fairness; sing for
justice and for truth.  Sing for all who struggle against tyranny
and oppression; sing for all who live and yearn to be free.  And
every song for us, is a song for all; and every song of our
Federation is a song for all the world.