Shafeka Hashash
Washington, DC
National Federation of the Blind
This is a compilation of thoughts I had throughout the week of the convention in Orlando, FL, June 30-July 7
It is amazing to see how with each generation from seniors to adolescents a greater percentage of people are increasingly independent. I think this is hugely attributed to NFB training centers such as the Colorado and Louisiana Centers for the Blind. Those centers operate with the philosophy that with proper training blindness can be reduced to no more than a physical nuisance. No matter what amount of vision one has when entering the center, you are immediately blind folded for the entirety of your training. Rather than training being the old fashion use what vision you have motto and learn little by little, come back as you lose more vision, aka the revolving door training center, this training makes everyone completely blind. If you can complete all training when completely blind than residual vision will not matter. Come for training once, and you will be set for the entirety of your vision loss.
These are also not babied training centers. They are intensive including Braille class, cane mobility instruction, cooking and home maintenance, and woodshop course (used more as a tool to build confidence) combined with daily life under sleep shades, people walk out absolutely permanently changed. With some alternative techniques everything from reading to tiling one’s own floor is achievable. People walk out with the new philosophy that it is respectable to be blind.
It frustrates me to see how parents are effectively destroying their blind children’s social skills by not allowing them to blossom on their own. My parents have never held me back because of blindness. They don’t knowingly let me do everything because we are Islamic and because of old school cultural reasons, but never because I am blind. I thank them for this.
NFB, like the world has their racism and sexism show. For instance, out of the board of 30 scholarship committee members I think 3 are non white and six are women.
NFB also has a lack of diversity in leadership. This funny enough resembles NYU’s Board of Trustees. The entire leadership is in one of two fields law or business. I want to see a good NGO leader, teacher, engineer, scientist, technical employee, artist, etc on the NBB board. I know these people exist because I’ve met them through NFB.
A congressman who supports the end of sub minimum wages said he cuts money from programs that do not need it. Seeing as we are in Florida, I’m going to say he is republican, and what he means is reduces welfare programs effectively destroying communities that need it most I.E POC communities. This kills me. I should not jump to conclusions, but need to look this up asap.
I hate to say this, but I think NFB will greatly flourish after the baby boomers have retired. They are amazing and inspiring, but their tactics and ideas are recycled and getting very old. NFB is known for being one of the most radical disability groups, but I think it could go so much further.
I have never known the difference between “of” and “for” to be so important until NFB. This is a federation “of” the blind. The leadership is blind, the membership is blind and sighted, but it is the blind speaking on our own behalf. Autism speaks for instance contains no one who actually has autism, speaking. It is a bunch of seemingly well-intentioned parents talking on behalf of their kids to doctors who see any deviation from what is perceived to be normal as requiring a fix. I am so thankful that NFB is not a “let’s talk about the cures for blindness group” and in the mean time not actually change our current circumstances. Autism speaks plays its hand by portraying those with autism as pitiful. This absolutely destroys me.
Speaking of which, this reminds me of the Jerry Lewis’s kids campaign where he sat in a wheel chair and described himself as being half a person. He used his telethons to portray MS as a travesty and the people as doomed for lives of nothingness. If you have the chance, The Kids are Alright is a fantastic piece to watch.
It is quite evident that the way one physically appears, as in dress, composure, and physical beauty has much to do with how they are spoken to and treated. I need to write a separate entry on what is independence on a world not meant for you.
Today I learned how to salsa dance using a Braille cell for steps. I had to miss self defense this year to go to the salsa workshop, which was amazing, so I guess my pepper spray will have to do.
By the time I know the hotel front to back, it’s time to go.
I could not have been more pleased to hear race, gender, and class being addressed during the banquet address.
NFB is to white Christian. I’m sorry I keep saying this and it isn’t to portray them in a bad light, but at a lunch in, all the options had pork. Three of us could not eat. It never even crossed the couple’s mind who put together the lunch in, that there are people who would be opposed to all pork.
I am so proud of my New Jersey Association of Blind Students group, and I am so proud to be the president. We are all colleagues and great friends.
I am best friends with and respect our NJABS VP, Mark Colasurdo, an incredible amount. He became blind at 16 when his ATV skid on ice and went into a tree, and his retinas permanently detached. One training center and four years later he is a junior at Cornell studying biomedical engineering and performing research in tissue engineering. Like I said, I love the people I work with.
I met a colleague of my research advisor. He is a brilliant scientist and engineer that is blind named Josh Miele. I signed up to test one of his new video description websites not knowing that he would be the engineer because it was under his company’s name.
Ray Kurzweil quite frankly freaks me out. It is great that he support NFB and makes so many blindness products, but I do not actually believe he follows NFB philosophy. He wants to eventually create technology that is implemented in humans that eliminates blindness. He believes that humans will one day essentially just be technology. He truly scares me a bit.
I need to download tap tap see, on my iPhone. You take a picture and it tells you what you are looking at.
I’m going to make a separate piece because this has gotten way to long.