Mark Riccobono:
Welcome from our Louisiana Federation family, here is the president of the National Federation of the Bind of Louisiana and first vice president of the National Federation of the Blind, leading our host committee for 2025. Here's Pam Allen.
Pam Allen:
Good Morning Federation family, who that we are the National Federation of the Blind and we are very happy to be back in New Orleans. I am overjoyed to welcome you back to our great city for our 85th annual convention right here in the heart of New Orleans.
We are so happy to host this year's gathering in our beautiful, bold city, A city that knows how to celebrate, knows how to persevere, knows how to bring people together, and what better place to mark 85 years of transforming lives, raising expectations, and building a movement grounded in love, truth, and power. For over eight decades, the National Federation of the Blind has been a force for change built by people, led by blind people. And today that force is stronger than ever.
We have come from all over the United States and from around the world, not just to celebrate our progress, but to chart our course forward. And as I stand here today, I am representing all of you. I want to give us a special shout out to the great National Federation of the line of Louisiana affiliate who has been working so hard all over this convention, helping everyone feel welcome.
I also thinking about all the giants whose shoulders we stand on, the fearless leaders, the tireless advocates, the quiet builders, and I think of everyone here today in this room and everyone who is listening to us virtually, leaders in our communities, teachers, students, parents, professionals in every field, organizers and dreamers.
This convention is not just a gathering, but a reflection of our shared belief in a world where blindness does not define us. We are here this week to dream big, to lead with purpose, to act with courage, and this convention we call on all of us to step up and be bold. Whether this is your first convention, let's hear it from our first time attendees or your 50th or more. I know we have lots of people who have been here for many decades.
You are part of our family, our community, a movement that is rewriting the story of blindness every single day. Now in a city where music flows from every street corner, we are here to add our own rhythm. A beat, built on progress, purpose, and power. So I want to welcome you to New Orleans, welcome you to a place in the National Federation of the Blind, where dreams are born, voices are lifted and changed is made together. Now let's get this party started.
Speaker 3:
All right, NFB family welcome to New Orleans.
This is the Jackson Square All Stars. Collective Jackson Square. All Stars welcomes you. Hope you enjoy your time here, go down to Jackson Square. Check these guys out. They are tradition steeped in the tradition of New Orleans cultural music. Mr. Dwayne Burns is our lead. Who's going to give us another tune right now? Go right ahead.
Now if you got a handkerchief, take your hand out and wave it around. Yeah.
Oh, I want to be in that number. Oh, when the saints go marching in. See Lord, when the sun, sun refuse to shine. Oh, when the sun refuse to shine, will I want to be in that number? Oh, in the sun.
One more chorus. One more chorus. All right y'all. That's just a little taste. The band's going to stick around for one more tune. So don't y'all go nowhere.
All right, all right, all right. NFB.
Speaker 3:
Alright, you rowdy people. Settle down. We've got to stay on schedule here. Pam said we've got to stay on schedule. Settle down, settle down. We got a special surprise. You got one more tune. I understand that there's a baby alligator in the house, so I don't know about you, but I got a little something to tell you about the history of New Orleans and Louisiana and I'm getting out of here.
Alright, so real quick, alligator man, getting ready here we quick. In 18, I'm sorry. In 1791, something called the Haitian Revolution took place. It took, now you got to hang on, listen to me.
This is going to happen fast. I thought I had five minutes. I got one minute. It went from 1791 to 1804. What happened was the enslaved Haitians overthrew in the insurrection, the colonizers, and in 1803, Napoleon needed to make money, so he did something called the Louisiana Purchase.
We know what that was. He sold the land that French owned in the New World to the United States that became Louisiana. In 1793, Eli Whitney produced something called the Cotton Gin. What it did was it separated the seeds from the cotton. It allowed for the cotton to be produced a lot faster, which caused Louisiana to become one of the richest states in the country between cotton sugar and all the other products that Louisiana was developing and sending to the world.
We grew to a wonderful country. In 1815, the Battle of New Orleans took place where a very well-trained militia of British decided that they were going to attack the United States. Sorry, 1812 was a battle of New Orleans. A young man, a general named Andrew Jackson.
Major general led a group of new Orleanians. Some were enslaved, some were free, some were natives. It was a mixed bunch of people and what they did was a beat back the British and they established for the first time the spirit of democracy in our country.
Unfortunately, we're a country that has many, many challenges, and in 1850 the Congress passed a law that was its fugitive slave law. What it said was that if an enslaved person crossed the Mason-Dixon line into freedom, then the white northerners were required to work with the southerners who were trying to bring them back.
This upset the white Northerners because they wanted nothing to do with slavery. This and many other things led to of course the Civil War, which took place from 1861 to 65. After the Civil War, the south was decimated, but it relied on cotton again.
To bring it back in 1884, one of the most important events took place in New Orleans. It was the world Cotton centennial exposition. There were many, many musicians and types of exhibitions that took place. One of the most important one was a band that came out of Mexico.
It was called the Mexican Band, and it was one of the largest bands around the most significant thing about the Mexican band. Similar to many musicians today, the Mexican band ran out of money in New Orleans and couldn't get back to New Orleans, so their musicians had to teach local musicians.
Many of them became the educators of individuals who were the pioneers of jazz. Let me say that again. The Mexican band members, many of them taught the early pioneers of New Orleans Jazz. So many don't know about the connection between Mexico and New Orleans.
One of the individuals who was born in 1901, a young man named Louis Armstrong. Ever heard of him? Yeah, no, I'm not sure if 1901 is the most significant date, or maybe it was 1912 when young louis at the age of 11 was arrested for shooting a gun in public because once he was arrested, he was sent to a home for young men and there he picked up the trumpet and the rest is history as they say.
From there, new Orleans became a musical dynamite for the world and we were there until an event that took place in August 2005. Many of Hurricane Katrina hit our city. Hurricane Katrina, not only New Orleans but all of Louisiana, Mississippi, the whole Gulf Coast. We were, many of us were displaced for years and the traditions of New Orleans, which were based on the oral tradition, were broken apart.
But New Orleanians and Louisianians are some people who are very, very spiritual and they're people who you can't hold down. Am I right about that? My Louisianans, we fought back, even though people said we weren't going to rebuild this state, they rebuilt it. Even though people say we can't thrive again, we are thriving.
One of the most significant points in our survival in our comeback took place in 2009, sorry, Indiana, 31-17 the New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl. And from that moment on, New Orleans has moved forward into the future. We are welcoming you to be a part of our future. We thank you NFB, we love you. We can't wait to see you again. And where's that alligator? We are on Mr. Alligator, thank you so much. Thank you.
Pam Allen:
Thank you. Thank you so much Daryl. Thank you for sharing a little bit about the great history of our state and the resiliency and diversity of our people. Just like in the National Federation of the Blind. Now it's my pleasure to introduce next to introduce a very special friend. Some of you have stopped by our Louisiana information table and taken selfies with our alligator, our stuffed alligator.
But today we have with us Captain Louie, who is better known as Swamp Guru, following in his dad's footsteps, just knows everything there is to know about alligators. And so he is here from the Jean Lafitte Swamp with his little friend Elvis, and he's going to tell us a little bit about Elvis and we are very happy to welcome Elvis to the convention.
Captain Louie:
Alright, good morning y'all. I'm Captain Lou from the Swamp. I come from a little Cajun town called where we fish for a living. We hunt, trap, we fish, we gather, we do all kinds of stuff. Today I got my pet alligator. His name's Elvis, AKA, Who Dat, Who Dat. There you go. Now I come from a little small bas and most people want to know what a bayou is. Well that is just a path through a swamp. You guys take streets, we take waterways. The term bayou means little river or a stream, a path through a swamp or a village. And later on if I see y'all walking around, I can buy you a drink.
A little bit more of an opening down in the swamp. We have a greeting. We generally go by in New Orleans. Is Leslie down in the swamp is? Yep. Got some New Orleans in here. Everybody can hear me. Can y'all understand me?
Yeah. All right, now we know who's getting home later. So my little gator I got with me today is approximately four years old. They grow very, very slow. Mama gators lay eggs approximately one month ago starting around June, they hatch around, they go into August and then we actually get out there in September with our boats and shotgun to go hunt a few of them.
And that's just the way we live down home. Alligators grow very, very slow in Louisiana. So as a family rule and a lot of actual families in the bayou, when we harvest the gators, they have to be six feet and above, but there's no rule on that.
The one I have with me today, 18 inches, four years old. See when an alligator's born, they're born at about six inches long. They are at the bottom of the food chain and only 10% of them will survive. Even the one I have in my hand isn't really out of the woods yet till about six foot long. We down home we have big cats and larger gators that love to eat alligators.
The general rule of thumb on alligators is they have peripheral vision so big when they swimming around, they got their head turned left and right. They kind of do like a horse, a rabbit, a chicken or basically birds. They can't see directly in front of 'em. They're 100% nocturnal.
The alligator I have with me today works in the union, so he has to be out during the daytime. But the general fact is they don't grow for about four years after that. They talk about maybe one foot a year until about six feet.
And once they hit six feet, it's a foot every 10 to 15 years. This has a lot to do with the climate here in Louisiana. It gets cool enough in the winter for them to go into what we call brumation, similar to hibernation, but they could go in and out of it depending on the weather and the temperatures of the water.
See when the water's cold, gators on the land, when the water's warm. Gators are way down in the deepest parts of the bayou where they can stay cooler. So at any point in time when they have these situations, they get into they can't eat. If it's too cold or too hot, they can't eat because brew mason means the more stress they in the lower the heart rate goes.
And this puts them in stages where they can't react to save their own life and or eat. So that's why they grow slower here in Louisiana. And so basically alligators are basically they're meat eaters, but I've been in this swamp for a long time.
I've seen them eating on vegetation and anything, but mostly rotten food is primarily what they're looking for because their hunting techniques involve smelling the food, feeling the food move, and vibrations from all these because they don't work on eyesight. They're nocturnal.
So they work on vibrations, then they can find it. Yep. They pretty neat. They grow fast in Florida and that's why you hear about people getting killed by alligators because in Florida they have a good climate all year round. So they eat all year round and they double in size, they get bigger, faster and a lot more aggressive. Yes, I am just checking time thank y'all so much.
Pam Allen:
Thank you, Captain Louie. Thank you Elvis. So just like Elvis, don't mess with Elvis and don't mess with the National Federation of the Blind. So Elvis is going to be heading up to kids camp in a little bit to say hello. So we now have a very special treat. I also want to mention before our next performance that the Mardi Gras beads that everybody will have.
We've got lots of Mardi Gras beads. The ones that you're receiving have our NFB logo on them and they are in Mardi Gras colors, purple, green and gold. Purple stands for justice, green for faith and gold for power. So you have some commemorative beads. Thanks everyone for our great bead handing out in our second line. Now as we are talking about who dat and who we are in the NFB, we have a very special performance coming up. This is a song from the NFB and the litigators, and I'm going to turn it over to them for a special performance.
Speaker 7:
But today, the blind are emerging from the shadows, and they are emerging in sports by the strength of their own organization, by the power of their collective will. Blind federation are rewriting the terms of their contract with society.
Speaker 8:
All these years we've been fighting the fight and I'm just trying to live my life the way I want, the way I need breaking down walls with the NFB. Don't even get me started on SSA. When are we getting rid of subminimum wage? The stupid such screens, they made me want to scream and please stop dragging me across the street, treating me like a baby.
Outrageous. You know, I'm blind, not contagious. Call a Uber before I leave. What's the driver going to do? Because bye God. My dog's going to get into, standing strong. We fight it all together, working every day. We're going to make it better.
No, you're not alone. We care. We share. We grow from Jersey to LA. Everybody here, you say, who are we? Who are we? NFB. Who are we? NFB. If I can't get all my books in Braille and cannot use it at school. You, I'm going to fail. Professor, can you read out what you're writing on the board following the laws, what they're paying you for, applying for a job?
You know I'm qualified, but then they see the cane and they deny. Prescriptions and websites and voting at the poll. It's hot….accessible, it’s all going to be prestigious. You both know that's egregious. If I want to be a doctor or the CEO, they keep on telling, no, no, no. Stand strong will fight it all together, working every day. We're going to make it better.
No, you're not alone. We care. We share. We grow from Jersey to LA. Everybody, let me hear you say, who are we, NFB. We are we? NFB. One voice, one love. There’s so much we could do. We could raise children in this world. We bringing this world for me and you. We can move mountains and mountain movements. Make a world where we don't have to keep proving our words. We're going to be heard, we're going to be heard. Who are we? NFB. Who are we? NFB.
Pam Allen:
Thank you to the NFB and the litigators. Thank you, Tim Elder, Kaleigh Brendle, Briley O'Connor and all our performers. Welcome to New Orleans and happy convention.