APRIL -- 1967
INKPRINT EDITION
VOICE OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
The National Federation of the Blind is not an organization speaking for the blind- -it is the blind speaking for themselves
Monitor Headquarters 2652 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708
Published monthly in braille and distributed free to the blind by the National Federation of the Blind, President: Jacobus tenBroek, 2652 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708.
Inkprint edition produced and distributed by the National Federation of the Blind.
Editor: Jacobus tenBroek, 2652 Shasta Road, Berkeley, California 94708.
News items and changes of address should be sent to the Editor.
LEGISLATIVE BULLETIN: BURTON BILL TO OUTLAW "MEANS" TEST IN REHABILITATION
LEGISLATIVE BULLETIN: LIBERALIZED POSTAL RATES PROPOSED FOR BLIND AND PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED
MEDICARE FOR THE DISABLED--THE PERKINS BILL
LETTER FROM PETER SALMON RE: NATIONAL CENTER FOR DEAF-BLIND
BE ALERT, MICHIGAN, THE COMSTACS ARE COMING
NEW CASES ON THE WELFARE FRONT
BLIND PICKET ST. LOUIS LIGHTHOUSE
SPECIAL PARK FOR THE HANDICAPPED
CAMP FOR BLIND TOLD TO END BIAS
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA ADMITS BLIND STUDENT TO ELEMENTARY TEACHING PROGRAM
FEDERAL WELFARE RULES TO BE PUBLISHED
LADY HILTON ROOMS AVAILABLE AT JULY CONVENTION
NEW YORK TOWAWAYS ANGER DISABLED
SCIENCE FOR THE BLIND OFFERS CONTINUITY CHECKER
AMERICAN BROTHERHOOD ANNUAL BANQUET
BLIND TEACHER BILL SIGNED BY GOVERNOR ROCKEFELLER
MICHIGAN HOLDS HEARING ON ARCHITECTURAL BARRIERS
BLINDED BY POLICE, COURT RULES NO DAMAGES
PETITIONS SEEK DISMISSAL OF CSB DIRECTOR
RESEARCH CENTER SEEKS NEW REHAB IDEAS
BRONX BUILDING DESIGNED FOR PARAPLEGICS
NORTH DAKOTA PASSES WHITE CANE LAW
FEDERATIONISTS HAIL "WHITE CANE WEEK"
SUES 'FOR BEING BORN' BUT LOSES IN COURT
BLIND U.S. OFFICIAL RECEIVES M. A.
BLIND BOOKIE CAUGHT IN BRAILLE TRAP
BRAILLE TRANSCRIBING STARTED IN PAKISTAN
BLIND CUBAN CARVES OUT NEW LIFE
FROM THE NEW DEAL TO THE NEW LIFE: LIBERTAS OR CUSTODIA LEGIS?
H.R. 7396, a bill to prohibit states from continuing to use economic need as an eligibility requirement for any vocational rehabilitation service, was introduced in the House of Representatives on March 16 by Congressman Phillip Burton, California.
The purpose of H.R. 7396 is to finish the job begun in 1965, when the "means" test was eliminated as a federal requirement in vocational rehabilitation. It was our belief in 1965, that most states would not take advantage of this change in federal law and abolish the "means" test in rehabilitation. The experience of the past year and a half has demonstrated just how right we were!
As of March 15, 1967, only fifteen states and one territory have so acted, either administratively or through their legislatures. Only ten states have eliminated the "means" test in vocational rehabilitation programs for the blind--Arkansas, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon. So far as can be learned, only Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon have abolished economic need in vocational rehabilitation programs for all disabled clients, whether blind or otherwise impaired.
It is now time for the federal government to forbid the "means" test in all states in all vocational rehabilitation programs for all disabled clients.
Congressman Phillip Burton, sponsor of H.R. 7396, cooperated very closely with the organized blind of California when he was one of the outstanding leaders of that state's legislature, and he has continued to champion the causes of the Federation since his arrival in Washington three years ago.
All Federationists and friends of the NFB are urged to write letters and to send telegrams in support of H.R. 7396 to: Honorable Phillip Burton, thanking him for introducing H.R. 7396; Honorable Carl Perkins, Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor, explaining your interest in H.R. 7396, the need for its adoption in order that the existence of a physical or mental disability, not financial need or lack of financial need, may be the basis for determining eligibility to receive vocational rehabilitation services; your own congressman, telling him of the importance of H.R. 7396 to you and to other disabled people, and asking him to indicate his support of H.R. 7396 by advising Chairman Perkins of his support.
Letters and telegrams should be addressed: Honorable ____________ House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.
On March 14 Congressman Robert J. Corbett, Pennsylvania, introduced a new postal bill--H.R. 7192. This bill would bring about a great many changes in the present law. It would extend the free mailing privilege to physically handicapped persons made eligible for the federal Books for the Blind Program by congressional amendment in the 89th Congress. It would also increase the number of items which can be mailed free. These are set out in detail in the Memorandum which follows.
H.R. 7192 is the latest in a long series of legislative proposals introduced by Congressman Corbett at the request of the organized blind. Among them are: the music scores library for the blind in the Library of Congress, the reader assistants law, and the annual Presidential White Cane Safety Day Proclamation.
Federationists and their friends are urged to send letters and telegrams in support of H.R. 7192 to Honorable Thaddeus J. Dulski, Chairman, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service.
You should also communicate with your own congressman, and ask him to indicate his support of H.R. 7192 to Chairman Dulski.
Letters and telegrams should be addressed: Honorable __________ House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.
Chapter 69 of Title 39, U.S.C. , would be amended by striking out Sections 4653 and 4654 thereof and inserting new Sections 4653 and 4654, which would do the following:
1. Extend the free mailing privilege, presently available only to the blind, to other persons who cannot use or read conventionally printed material because of a physical impairment;
2. Extend the free mailing privilege to unsealed letters sent by blind or physically handicapped persons, and written in braille, in sight-saving type, or recorded on tapes or discs;
3. Include in the free mailing privilege: reading matter, musical scores, and sound reproductions; paper, records, tapes, and other materials for the production of reading matter, musical scores, and sound reproductions; sound reproducers or parts thereof; braille writers, typewriters, educational or other materials or devices, or parts thereof, used for writing by, or specifically designed or adapted for use of blind or physically handicapped persons;
4. Permit free mailing of materials which are for the use of blind and handicapped persons, and made available to such persons without any charge at all, or, if there is a charge, when the charge made is not in excess of the cost of production;
5. Provide for inspection by the Postmaster General, and materials would have to conform in size and weight to limitations prescribed by him;
6. Provide that free mailing matter bear the words "Free Matter for the Blind or Handicapped" (or similar words determined upon by the Postmaster General) in the upper right-hand corner.
A one-cent-a-pound postage rate is presently charged on braille, recorded, and large-type reading matter sold to blind persons or to organizations for the use of blind persons, or available on a rental basis, or for magazines for which a subscription price is charged.
Standard and large-type typewriters, and other aids and devices used by blind and physically handicapped persons to offset, reduce, or entirely eliminate the restrictions of their disabilities, presently go through the mail at the regular rates charged for packages of the same type.
Agency control to prevent abuse of this free mailing privilege is provided in the bill by authorizing the Postmaster General to open such free-mail packages for inspection, and the Postmaster General is also authorized to specify the size and weight limitations for packages mailed without postage.
Since taped letters have increasingly become a standard method of correspondence employed by blind persons, and a reel of tape is considerably more costly to mail than a typed or handwritten letter, this provision of the bill would be particularly beneficial to blind persons, by allowing them to mail such tapes without postage.
It would be beneficial to the partially sighted, too, who must cover more than the usual number of pages with their large handwriting, or large sight-saving-size print typewriting.
By providing that all matter coming under the free mailing privilege must be marked in a designated place and in accordance with a prescribed form, the bill provides a means of administrative control of the free mailing privilege.
A bill to include disability insurance beneficiaries in the Social Security Medicare Program has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Carl Perkins--H. R. 2368.
The Perkins proposal represents a long-sought legislative goal of the organized blind. Over the past several years. Federation spokesmen have appeared before congressional committees five different times in support of measures to provide Social Security-financed health insurance for the elderly. They urged with equal vigor that disability insurance beneficiaries be included in the proposed Medicare Program.
If H.R. 2368 becomes federal law, persons entitled to receive disability insurance payments will be also entitled to participate in the federal Medicare Program administered under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act and presently available only to persons 65 years of age and older.
Under the Medicare Program, the basic plan provides protection against the costs of hospital and related care and is financed by Social Security tax assessments . There is a voluntary supplementary plan, financed by a three-dollar deduction from monthly Social Security checks, which provides physicians' services and other medical and health services not covered by the basic plan.
Letters and telegrams in support of H.R. 2368 should be sent by Federationists to Honorable Wilbur D. Mills, Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means.
You should also write your congressman, asking him to advise Chairman Mills of his endorsement of H.R. 2368.
Communications to Chairman Mills and to your congressman should be addressed: Honorable ____________, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.
By Anthony G. Mannino
Convention plans are completed, and California the Golden State awaits your arrival. If you wish to vacation for a bit before or after the convention, or if you can find time between sessions, the setting is unbeatable and the attractions incomparable.
About 140 miles south of Los Angeles you can get a glimpse of Mexico, just across the border in Tia Juana. Horse races, bull fights and shopping are the outstanding attractions. In San Diego, just a few miles north of the Mexican border, see the world-famous zoo and also the Naval base. Just north of San Diego, stop at Mission Beach and visit Sea-World with its underwater sea shows, pearl divers and hydrofoil boat rides. Then comes Mission San Juan Capistrano with its lovely grounds and the resident swallows so well known in fact and song. Coming north into Orange County, Anaheim offers Disneyland, which is already scheduled on the convention agenda. Close by is Knotts Berry Farm, presenting a picture of the old west, a ghost town replica of an 1849 gold rush community. For the modern taste, there is food par excellance, from buffalo steak to chicken dinners.
Almost directly west and before returning to Los Angeles city, you can ride to Portuguese Bend leading you to Marineland. On the way, you may stop for a few moments at Wayfarer's Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright's creation, a beautiful glass church overlooking the blue Pacific. At Marineland, the giant aquarium with its outdoor shows, you will see performing whales, educated porpoises and clowning sea lions. Don't leave the area without visiting the Fishermans’ Wharves at Long Beach, San Pedro or Redondo Beach and having a meal at one of the many outstanding restaurants.
Most of California lies north of Los Angeles. See beautiful Yosemite National Park or the Redwoods. Visit San Francisco with its cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge. See the Hearst Castle at San Simeon or the Danish village at Solvang with its exotic foods, unusual liquors and varied crafts.
East of Los Angeles is the desert country, with Indio and the date palms to the south and Death Valley to the north. And throughout California are the orange trees, walnut groves, wineries, race tracks and vast expanses of incomparable scenery.
In Los Angeles itself, the list of attractions is inexhaustible. For the baseball fans, we can say that the Dodgers will be out of town but the American League, California Angels, will be playing the Yankees on July 1 and 2; the Boston Red Socks, July 3, 4 and 5; and the Kansas City Athletics, July 7, 8 and 9. For those who are not going to Hawaii, arrangements can be made to see the All-Star game at Anaheim Stadium on Tuesday, July 11.
For the Los Angeles sightseer, we can list only a few places. Of course, there are the night spots on Sunset Strip, homes of the movie stars, the movie and television studios; for sky gazers, there is Mt. Wilson Observatory and the Griffith Park Planetarium; for the culture seekers, we have the Music Center, the Hollywood Bowl concerts, Greek Theatre productions, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Huntington Library and Art Museum.
Read the foregoing and hesitate no longer! The 1967 Federation convention should be the best ever. Send for your reservations today. While you are about it, send for your reservations for the Hawaii tour, too. There are still a few places left, but they are going fast. Remember that the Hawaii tour is open to your family and friends as well as to members of the Federation.
(From the Washington Post, December 1966)
Mary Louise Ruth, a 62-year-old blind woman, groped her way into Landlord and Tenant Court to fight for her one -room home which costs her $52 per month.
Miss Ruth, whose total monthly income is $87 which she receives from the District's Welfare Department, also feels she is fighting for her freedom.
If she is evicted, she thinks the Welfare Department will try to force her into a nursing home. Although welfare officials and social workers declined to discuss the case yesterday, Miss Ruth's landlord said the eviction suit was brought to help the Department get Miss Ruth into a nursing home.
The Acme Rental Co. owns Miss Ruth's room and is suing her for $18. The company also is seeking to evict her on the grounds that she has broken the rental contract by keeping the room in an unsanitary and "filthy" condition.
Miss Ruth, a former secretary who has been almost totally blind for three years, admits she owes $6 and says she has tried to pay it. Jerry Taylor, an Acme Rental official, told a reporter that the company "does not want her money. We are working with the Welfare Department to get her out. She needs hospitalization. She cannot take care of herself."
Taylor said the $18 the company is seeking includes court costs and lawyer's fees.
James Temple, of the Legal Aid Society which is representing Miss Ruth, got the case continued to prepare a defense. Judge Milton S. Kronheim, Jr., is hearing the case.
Miss Ruth, wearing a heavy brown coat with two frayed plastic red roses pinned to it, was led into court by 60-year-old John D. Keane. Keane, who says he works as a newspaper deliverer, said that he looks after Miss Ruth.
Miss Ruth, who lost her sight because of cataracts in both eyes, said she would move out of the room if the landlord would give her a month in which to find "a little home for myself."
"Otherwise, the Welfare Department will force me into a nursing home," Miss Ruth told a reporter. "They look for places where I can't have my freedom."
Miss Ruth, who has lived at the rooming house for a year, said she had rent receipts to prove that she owed only $6. But she said her pocketbook, containing the receipts, was stolen from her on the street. She reported the theft to police.
By Florence Grannis
The Civic Auditorium in San Francisco will serve as the head- quarters for this year's American Library Association's Conference from June 25 - July 1, 1967. The week's activities will include program and business meetings of divisions, sections, committees, and round tables. The opening general session will be held on Sunday evening, June 25, at the Civic Auditorium, when the major address will keynote the overall conference theme of "The Library Manpower Crisis: Myth and Reality." The second general session will immediately follow the inaugural banquet scheduled for Friday, June 30th.
The Round Table on Library Service to the Blind will hold its meetings during the conference. We plan to have as our speaker for the Round Table meeting on Monday, June 26th from 2:00 - 4:00 P.M., the noted author, Irving Stone. Mr. Stone has often sought out the downtrodden and the disadvantaged as subjects of his books; many of which have already been put into media that blind people can use. Just recently THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY, a novel about Michelangelo, appeared on tape. THEY ALSO RAN, the story of the men who have been defeated for the presidency--from Henry Clay to Thomas E. Dewey--has been transcribed into braille. Additional titles of Mr. Stone's books are available in both braille and talking book. At the present time his latest book, THOSE WHO LOVE, is being recorded as a talking book.
On Tuesday, June 27th, the Round Table will have its luncheon meeting at 1:00 o'clock when the second Francis Joseph Campbell Award will be presented. This citation, new in 1966, is given each year during the ALA Conference to a person who has made an outstanding contribution in the advancement of library service for the blind. Mr. Howard Haycraft, author and publisher and the winner of last year's award, will present the citation to the new winner. George Shearing, the well-known blind pianist and composer, will play and talk about what libraries and books have meant to him.
March 6, 1967
Dear Friend:
On Monday, February 27, 1967, President Johnson, in his welfare message to Congress, urged the creation of a National Center for the Deaf-Blind, with the following wording:
"Among the most tragically neglected of our citizens are those who are both deaf and blind. More than three thousand Americans today face life unable to see and hear.
"To help reach the deaf-blind with the best programs our experts can devise, 1 recommend legislation to establish a National Center for the Deaf and Blind."
The Industrial Home for the Blind and the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration have been urging the creation of such a center for some time, and we believe that a brief letter or wire from you to the President, thanking him for his thoughtfulness and his recommendation, will be most gratifying, both to him and to all of us. It would be most helpful, too, if the members of your Board could send some word to him on this matter.
May I urge you to write or wire him?
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Peter J. Salmon
P.S. I would be very grateful if you would send me a copy of anything you write to the President. A word from those of us who work in the field for the blind will be most valuable when Congress acts on this matter.
It appears that the blind in Michigan are about to suffer from an onslaught of Comstac-itis. As with some of the modern-day ailments caused by unknown viruses, this disease as yet is not fully understood in all of its ramifications. It is known, however, to work seriously debilitating effects on blind persons. Perhaps the situation will not reach epidemic proportions, but the blind of Michigan and elsewhere will do well to be wary of what is taking place. Comstac, the scheme to formulate and standardize a new custodialism in work with the blind, is apparently on the move.
Warning of the coming trouble is found in a rather brief report (following this article) called "Description of the Proposed Rehabilitation Center at Kalamazoo" by Dr. Edward A. Fitting, Supervisor, Division of Services for the Blind, State Department of Social Welfare. Dr. Fitting declares what he considers to be most important in programs for the blind by giving top priority to a consideration of the building and grounds of the center rather than to the nature of the program. He says that because of limitation of space he will defer discussing program plans until a later time. It is a wonder that a supervisor of a rehabilitation program could possibly stress physical plant at the expense of the philosophy, the program, and the goals of the center. It should be ovious to even the most unqualified observer that in any educational or rehabilitative program emphasis and priority must be given to the basic beliefs rather than to items of square footage or brick and mortar. But in this report there is not a word about why a rehabilitation center should exist, what it must accomplish, or what must be its underlying approach to the problems of blindness. These have been sacrificed in favor of buildings and grounds.
However, this very giving of paramount importance to the physical plant is in itself a strong indicator that an extremely erroneous philosophy of work with the blind will underlie not only architectural design but the entire program of the center. And the very description of the physical facility proposed for Kalamazoo is all the evidence needed for a realization that the philosophy of Comstac, with all of its custodial treatment of persons "suffering" from blindness, is the philosophy at work in Michigan. Consideration of the location itself, the layout of the building and its proposed contents preclude the drawing of any other conclusion.
The center is to be located across the street from a mental hospital- -a most auspicious beginning. Anyone who has followed Comstac's development will recall the great emphasis it placed on psychological and psychiatric services in programs for the blind. The location of a Comstac center across from a mental hospital will surely help the blind trainee. His family and associates already believe that somehow or other blindness must bring with it mental illness. The trainee will thus find added to the burden already imposed by society's misconceptions about blindness another artificial cross--that of mental maladjustment because of lack of sight. If the condition Comstac wants to cure isn't present, rest assured Comstac will bring it about.
This new center is to have four wings enclosing a central courtyard which will be developed as part of the mobility training area. Here the poor blind man can be sheltered from society's stares and society's realities. This is reminiscent of the fact that prison walls often enclose an exercise yard for those persons being excluded from society for whatever reason, or that some religious communities provide cloistered walls for their members who wish to withdraw from the world. But a rehabilitation center for the blind is supposed to help blind people get into the world not out of it. Comstac might be asked whether it is protecting society from the blind or vice versa. In either case, its point of view is blatantly custodial and very much out of date.
One wing of the center is to be given over to administrative and diagnostic facilities. There will be medical evaluations, psychological testing, rehabilitation counseling, and social services. Apparently, when the doctors from across the street come over, they will have good facilities in which to treat the patients suffering from whatever supposed maladjustments and psychological aberrations accompany blindness. Why cannot Comstac see that this emphasis on medical and psychological services can only be damaging to the blind person who already is convinced he is suffering from a severe "affliction"? The blind person needs, rather, to be convinced that he is still as much of a human being as ever- -not just that he might regain some of the qualifications for being a human that he supposedly lost when he became blind. One questions, too, why rehabilitation counseling is included in this "diagnostic" business. A rehabilitation counselor ought to be engaged in helping blind clients find the kind of employment they want-not in sitting in a rehabilitation center diagnosing the "ills" of some "patient."
Mention is made of a waiting room off the lobby where trainees may meet visitors. Obviously, such a meeting area is needed, but why carry out the cold, sterile concept of a "waiting room" in an institution? A center needs to provide a wholesome, educational atmosphere for all concerned. Let the trainee "rec" room be used for visitors--or let the trainee visit his family in the privacy of his own room.
But then he has no privacy in his own room. There are to be two students to a room-almost, in effect, four to a room when it is noted that each set of two rooms is linked by a bathroom. There are to be several single rooms used for short-term residents or for isolation in case of illness, so the old buddy system is in order. If a trainee wants privacy he can become ill and get a single room.
The rehabilitation process is a touchy one. That stage which finds the trainee in residence at a center is key. It is here that he needs to come to understand the real problems of blindness and to see that he can still be as much a member of our society as ever. This, over and above the learning of a few skills such as travel or braille, is of major importance. He needs to have a room of his own to which he can go in privacy to confront some of the problems of blindness which an effective center will bring to his attention. However, the two-to-a-room concept is orthodox Comstacology and certainly reinforces the theme of dependency and inadequacy of blind persons which runs through these insidious proposals, all of which are made with much pious platitudinizing in the name of professionalism.
Classroom areas of this proposed Comstac clinic call for some comment. Already it has been noted that the central courtyard will be used for mobility. There is also a large, general-purpose room which can be used as an auditorium. This room can be opened into the mobility area, thus providing a large practice space. Taken together, this large blank space in the building and the large courtyard within the walls provide what is probably a maximum of square footage for unrealistic, largely meaningless travel practice--safely removed from the real side- walks, streets, and complex buildings in which a blind person must ultimately travel. The crowning glory of this new mobility program is likely what is called a "map room." It is used for instructions and office space for training personnel. Military bases have map rooms and one can almost hear the briefing officer--pardon me , the travel instructor--telling his mobility trainees in the map room: "All right, men, our objective today is to storm and hold this northeast corner of the courtyard." Stuff and nonsense--if it weren't so deadly serious it would be highly laughable. This whole mobility concept inherent in the Kalamazoo proposal is part and parcel of Comstac' s approach to mobility and Comstac's concept of independent mobility is a stark travesty of the term.
There is also proposed a pre-vocational workshop for, among other things, occupational therapy. What is this nonsense? Remember, remember, remember--the trainees are not, I repeat, are not sick people. They are merely persons who are blind. They have no need for pre-vocational workshops where their work skills will be evaluated for them, and they have no need for occupational therapy. They could profit from a meaningful, old-fashioned shop course with a full complement of power equipment and the chance to really work on something meaningful. In this process, the blind person gains confidence in his ability to devise techniques of blindness which will lead to efficient and comfortable operation in the routine of living in general society.
Along with braille and typing classrooms, there is listed some anomalous thing called an oral communication classroom. This piques the curiosity if nothing else. What is it- -do they mean a speech classroom? If so, why not say so? And why should a rehabilitation center for the blind have such a classroom? Blind persons need classes in speech no more or less than anyone else. Or is Comstac still enamoured of that erroneous concept that a person loses "ease of spoken communication" as he loses ability to see? What correlation there is between the two has never been demonstrated.
Dr. Fitting is apparently planning a "modern" and "professional" center for the blind. Fie on such professionalism! In our more enlightened times, the blind should be able to hope for the opportunity to become regular members of society. These times are overly ripe for improvement in programs for the blind. The means and will are everywhere available. Unfortunately, if proposed programs are to follow the Comstac line --as seems to be contemplated in Michigan- -the blind can look forward only to a newer form of custodially oriented programs housed in finer and finer physical facilities and watched over by a new breed of pseudo-professional caretakers. It is time to object and dissent and to propose in lieu of this nonsense some common-sense views which see the problems of blindness in the light of reason.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED REHABILITATION CENTER AT KALAMAZOO
This will supply information about the plans for the Rehabilitation Center for Visually Disabled to be located at Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is now in the preliminary planning phase. Due to limitation of space, this report will be restricted to a description of the proposed physical plant. Information will be supplied at a later date in regard to program plans after funds have been provided to assure construction.
During the past year, approximately twenty meetings were held to carry out preliminary planning. The architects have now completed the final schematic plans, as well as site plans for the proposed center. These have been approved by the Building Division, as well as the Department of Social Services. To date, funds have only been available for such preliminary planning. However, the present budget for this department includes a request for funds to permit final architectural plans and to initiate construction during the fiscal year of 1967-68. If these funds are appropriated, construction may get under way late in 1967 or early in 1968. It is estimated that approximately one year will be required for completion of the construction.
The center is to be located on a 27-acre site on Oakland Avenue, directly across from the administration building of the Kalamazoo State Hospital. The center will include three service areas in four wings around a central court. According to preliminary plans, a total area of 39,400 feet of space will be provided in the center. The main entrance faces west, and the lobby is entered from the street and is glassed in, front and rear and provides a view into the central court, which will be developed as part of the mobility training area. The south wing, which will be at right angles to the street immediately to the right of the lobby, will be identified as the administrative and diagnostic wing. In addition to offices, it will include facilities for various medical evaluations, as well as psychological testing, rehabilitation counseling and social services. The west wing, across the front of the building parallel with the street, will include the homemaker training area, incorporating all of the facilities found in a typical home. There will also be a waiting room immediately off the lobby where visitors may meet privately with trainees. There is a large classroom at the front of the building which can be divided to permit it to be used by one large group or two smaller groups. Across the aisle from this area, with direct access from the lobby, is a large general-purpose room which can be used as an area for a portable stage, as well as folding chairs. This room can be opened up by the use of a movable wall to become a part of the mobility training area. Mobility training also provides for a map room which doubles as office space for training personnel. Just behind the mobility training room is a physical conditioning area, which includes locker rooms for men and women. At the north end of the corridor is the pre-vocational workshop, which will include space for paint room, storage room and a combined classroom and office. A corridor to the right leads into the north wing, which includes classrooms for instruction in braille, typing, and oral communication. Beyond this is a library, immediately adjoining which is a lounge room with direct access to the library, which includes a bank of listening rooms for talking book or tape use. Across the hall from this is the service area, including toilets, boiler room, and mechanical room, in which is located air-conditioning equipment. Beyond this is a kitchen and dining room, and in the very northeast corner is a recreation room which can be opened up to become a part of the dining area.
The east wing, which is directly across the court from the lobby area, is the only section which will have two floors. This is the dormitory wing, which provides for housing of thirty trainees in double rooms. In addition, there are six single rooms, four on the first floor and two on the second, which may be used for short-term residents, as well as providing for isolation in case of minimal illness. This wing includes a resident manager's apartment and a laundry for the use of trainees. An elevator is included in plans for those who will find it impossible to use stairways. Women trainees will be accommodated on the first floor beyond the resident manager's apartment, while the second floor will accommodate men. The rooms are designed to include studio-type beds, built-in desks and dressers, and closet space. Each room will have its own lavatory, with access to adjoining bath between two double rooms.
There will be an outdoor development to include a patio from the dining area, as well as a variety of physical conditioning areas, the most unique of which is a quarter-mile bicycle trail for use of tandem bike riders. A maintenance and equipment storage area will be located in the basement under the recreation area, which will be at ground level at the rear. Ample space is available to permit extension of the project should the need for expansion be demonstrated in the future.
The following are summaries and excerpts from cases reported by the February New York University School of Law Welfare Law Bulletin.
In a case of great importance to welfare recipients, a class action was commenced in the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against state and county welfare officials, attacking the Commonwealth's one-year residence requirement for eligibility for public assistance. The complaint alleges that denial of assistance to needy families who have not fulfilled residence requirements created an unreasonable, arbitrary and discriminatory classification denying due process and equal protection of the laws, as well as abridging privileges and immunities secured by the 5th and 14th Amendments, and constitutes a restriction of their right to move freely from state to state, guaranteed by Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution.
After protracted maneuvers between the Department of HEW and the State of Alabama, John W. Gardner, Secretary of HEW, announced on January 12, 1967 that unless Alabama gave satisfactory assurance by February 28 that its welfare programs would be administered without discrimination, federal aid would be terminated. The next day, Alabama filed suit in the District Court in Birmingham to enjoin the government from cutting off welfare funds. On January 24, the Secretary denied a motion by Alabama to postpone the effective date of the order pending judicial review; however, on February 1 the District Court granted a temporary injunction. State officials have declared the major issue to be whether the state is obliged to prevent discriminatory practices by third parties, such as doctors and rest homes.
The Appellate Division of the First Department in New York State unanimously rejected the applications of three proposed corporations seeking to establish neighborhood law offices, substantially financed by funds from the Office of Economic Opportunity, for the representation of disadvantaged members of the community, but invited resubmission of proposals "free from the infirmities in the present application."
Interpreting Section 280 of the Penal Law, which makes it a crime for corporations to offer legal services without obtaining prior approval of the Appellate Division, the court held that practice by a corporation is "highly exceptional, permissible only in carefully circumscribed conditions consonant with the policy of limiting the practice of law to licensed professionals." The opinion stressed the need for two elements: (1) direct control and discipline by the courts and (2) primary executive responsibility vested in qualified attorneys.
In California, the Stanislaus County Bar Association is attacking another organization offering legal services to the poor. The Bar Association brought an action on October 7 , 1966 in the Superior Court of Stanislaus County to enjoin California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. from practicing law as or on behalf of a corporation and from employing social workers to act as solicitors of legal business. The parties are now awaiting a decision.
The "man-in-the-house" or "substitute parent" regulation is being attacked on various constitutional grounds in Alabama and the District of Columbia. The regulation denies assistance to mothers and needy children, otherwise eligible for aid, where the mother is maintaining a relationship in her home with a male, not related by blood or marriage, who is treated as a substitute parent to the children without inquiry into his actual support of the children.
In another matter, a New York welfare recipient contested the conversion of her payments to vouchers exchangeable for goods and asserted the privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to submit to investigation by the welfare frauds investigator. State Commissioner of Welfare George K. Wyman decided that the county welfare agency had "technically erred" in providing voucher payments in the absence of proof that the recipient was unable to handle cash payments, but he declared that because the recipient had thwarted the county's efforts to determine her continued welfare eligibility, her complaints were without merit.
The New York Appellate Division for the Fourth Department ruled unanimously that the district attorney's comment that the defendant was a welfare recipient was improper and constituted grounds for a new trial.
Is a welfare recipient entitled to bring an action in the courts in forma pauperis? The United States District Court in the District of Columbia has said no, not necessarily. The recipients are appealing that decision.
(From The New York Times, February 1967)
Epileptics whose seizures are set off by music, noise, or flickering lights are being protected from their attacks by a special conditioning process. More than ten patients have been conditioned, all of whom had been previously subject to frequent seizures despite regular use of epilepsy-control drugs.
In the conditioning, the patients were exposed repeatedly to stimuli like those which had produced the seizures. The sights or sounds were either changed enough to make them harmless or were presented to the patients under conditions that were found to be safe.
One patient, for example, had seizures whenever she heard Christmas carols. She was carried successfully through the Christmas season by having tape-recorded carols played to her while she slept at night. A man who suffered attacks only when a full orchestra played Debussy or Sibelius was started off with tape recordings of single instruments, which were laboriously combined by increments to the synthetic equivalent of a full orchestra. After 50 hours of exposure to this sequence, he was able to hear the full orchestration without a seizure.
The patients have since had to reinforce their conditioning regularly at home by use of the same visual or audible stimuli. A patient whose attacks had been brought on by flickering lights now spends a few minutes each day passing her hand, with fingers spread, before her face in order to produce a flickering light sensation.
The research and treatment program is being conducted at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine's epilepsy center with support from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness.
Sixty-two blind and partially sighted employees of the St. Louis Lighthouse for the Blind have been picketing the agency since March 6, when management locked the plant to end a sit-down strike in the cafeteria. The strikers, who have brought production to a halt, say they will picket "until hell freezes over" in an effort to force negotiations with management over a list of grievances.
Major Puckett, president of the United Association of Workers, a recently formed organization including 124 blind and partially sighted employees and former employees, said repeated requests by workers' groups to talk with management had been rebuffed. "We plan to stay off the job until they talk to us," he said.
Puckett said Lighthouse employees won the right to negotiate with management through a committee in an agreement signed in 1962. He charged that Paul A. Hennerich, director of the plant since 1964, broke the compact by refusing to meet with the committee.
The employees listed as grievances the hiring of more sighted than blind workers, the "arbitrary and unfair" demotion of a longtime employee from a supervisory position to a production job, abolition of the workers' safety committee, and derogatory remarks about blind people by members of management.
Puckett amplified these grievances by phone for the Monitor, saying that 133 sighted employees had been hired between May 1 and November 1 of last year, as compared to only 33 blind employees. As for derogatory comments, he reported that Hennerich had referred to blind workers as "mentally disturbed."
These grievances had been building up for some time, Puckett said, and when management refused to discuss them even under threat of a walkout, employees began a sit-down strike Thursday, March 2 in the cafeteria of the plant located at 2321 Locust Street. "The following Monday," he said, "we staged a protest demonstration march on the plant, and management locked us out. We then set up picketing and have stopped all production."
Meetings with the mayor and with the aldermanic council have been scheduled, and Puckett reported plans to expand the picket lines to the Hennerich residence and to the business establishment of Robert Hughes, president of the Lighthouse board of directors. He said that both the NAACP and CORE had offered their help.
Hennerich and other members of management were unavailable for comment, but they have been quoted in the local press as saying that the Lighthouse has always consulted with individuals, and that most of the hourly salaried work at the plant is done by blind persons.
Worker protests against the St. Louis Lighthouse are now new. The workers also struck from November 1961 to January 1962. At that time they were protesting lack of a set wage scale, no provisions for seniority or orderly layoff, and no hearing of grievances or indeed any form of labor-management communication other than dictation from above. An arbitration board was then appointed to review these grievances, and employees won the right to negotiate with management by committee. But the board's decision was on the whole unsatisfactory to the workers, and they carried their case to the National Labor Relations Board.
The October 1962 NLRB decision was based on the underlying assumption that the St. Louis workshop was essentially a custodial agency, whose workers were to be regarded as wards, according to Jacobus tenBroek's "Sheltered Workshops for the Physically Disabled," Journal of Urban Law, Fall 1966. It thus accepted the definition of the workshop's function and character advanced by its managers in their brief. That definition was set forth in these stark terms:
Disputes between the Lighthouse and its blind people [are not] in the category of disputes between employer and employees in private industry. Emotional and social problems are involved in dealing with the blind. In many instances the blind are also handicapped emotionally. The Lighthouse exists only 'because members of the community are willing to donate their time, services and money so that a helping hand may be extended to those in need. . .' The end results sought by it are philanthropic in nature and the social need for its existence must not be jeopardized by subjecting it to the full scope of the Labor- Management rules applicable to private industry.
The basic issues and Lighthouse attitudes which were the subject of controversy in the early 1960's now appear again in the late 1960's. Indeed these issues and attitudes are historical wherever such institutions as the Lighthouse exist.
The St. Louis Lighthouse is a United Fund agency.
(From the New York Post, January 1967)
The first park in the city for handicapped persons is being planned by the Parks Department.
In the designing stage, the park will be situated between the wings of the Goldwater Hospital on Welfare Island. Eventually, such parks may be built near hospitals throughout the city.
The proposed park for paraplegics and other wheel-chair cases is being designed by architect Max Urbahn without charge. The Hospitals Department and the NYU Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation are cooperating.
"Hopefully," said Arthur Rosenblatt, Parks Department director of design, "this type of park will be adapted into other parks. This is the first time the recreational needs of the handicapped have been considered in constructing a park."
The park at Goldwater will be built to accommodate wheel chairs. Among the numerous facilities will be special tables where the disabled may play games without leaving their chairs.
Special planting areas will be raised to a suitable height for those who desire to have their own small gardens. A greenhouse for all-year- round planting is being considered.
"It is hoped that many of the chronically ill who rarely leave their hospital beds will be able to get to the park and make use of it," said Rosenblatt.
There will be ramps in the park, "not as a practical element," but to aid the handicapped in getting used to some of the problems of navigating in the community.
Other training devices will be installed to prepare the handicapped for "outside" problems such as getting on and off buses.
Rosenblatt said the department "is hopeful donors will come forward to aid in the cost of such parks."
(From The New York Times, February 1967)
Trenton --Camp Happiness, a summer resort for blind men, was ordered by the State Division on Civil Rights to accept a Negro it had rejected last year.
George Wade, a 56-year-old widower who lives alone in a public housing project in Newark, had complained to the division, charging that his application for a two -week free stay at the camp had been turned down because he is a Negro.
The camp, a modest resort in Leonardo, is maintained through public fund-raising by the New Jersey Blind Men's Association, a private, nonprofit group directed by blind men. The association has no Negro members.
Mr. Wade, who repairs cane chairs in his Newark apartment to Supplement his Essex County welfare payments, said he planned to apply again immediately for a two -week vacation.
"I feel someone has to break the ice," he said in a telephone interview. "I don't bear no grudge. It don't bother me that they didn't want me. Sometimes men have to do what they don't want to do."
George E. Burck, the association's executive secretary and the camp's director, said that Mr. Wade "would get along fine here."
Mr. Burck, who is legally blind himself although he has partial sight, said that he could not recall the acceptance of a Negro in Camp Happiness in its 37-year history. But he said that this was because no Negro had ever applied out of the thousands of blind men who have spent vacations at the camp.
At a hearing of his complaint last November, Mr. Wade testified that he had made a telephone call to the camp last April, but was told by Mr. Burck's secretary that the camp did not accept Negroes.
Mr. Wade, who had helped support the camp by purchasing its raffle tickets, later received a letter from Mr. Burck that said the camp was filled and reservations had to be made a year in advance. Mr. Wade told his story to Mrs. Jean Poleshuck, who was then an Essex County welfare worker.
On the advice of state civil rights officials, Mrs. Poleshuck was told to make a "white test case." She had a friend write to the camp and ask if there was room for her father, "Dominick Russo." A reply from the camp indicated that there might be room for "Mr. Russo," and a brochure and application were enclosed.
At the hearing, the camp unsuccessfully contended that it was a private organization and thus exempt from the public accommodations provision of the New Jersey Civil Rights law.
George S. Pfaus , director of the division on civil rights, not only ordered the camp to admit Mr. Wade this year, but also to accommodate him "in successive summers so long as he continues to apply."
The division administers the state's civil rights statutes. The camp has 45 days to appeal the division's order. Penalties for noncompliance are set by the courts.
Another episode in the long struggle to open up teaching opportunities for the blind has resulted in the admission of the first blind student to the elementary teacher preparation program in the University of Iowa college of education.
In the fall of 1966 Miss Judy Young, a blind University of Iowa junior, applied for admission to the college of education, but instead of being routinely examined, she was screened by a special committee of college officials. Despite Miss Young's protestations that ability and personality were more important than a physical handicap, the committee-concerned with such questions as Miss Young's ability to tell if the light were on in the classroom-decided that a blind person would be incapable of teaching a group of young children.
Following this first hearing, the University Association of the Blind intervened with a letter to the editor of the Iowa City Press Citizen , charging the college of education with unusual and discriminatory treatment. The letter was followed by an article in the university newspaper, and the resulting publicity inspired the special committee to give Miss Young a verbal acceptance of her application at the next hearing. She was told that a formal acceptance would come shortly by mail, but two months passed and there was still no official word.
Miss Young then sent a letter to the dean of the college of education asking that either the acceptance or the reason for the delay be sent immediately. The University Association of the Blind requested a statement of general policy regarding blind applicants, and Mr. Kenneth Jernigan, Director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, threw his support behind Miss Young.
Finally, on January 17, 1967, Judy Young received written notice of her acceptance based upon her "apparent possession of adaptive capabilities" and her "willingness to be judged by the same criteria of success as other prospective teachers."
By Gwen Rittgers
The 1967 convention of the Progressive Blind of Missouri, Inc. was the most successful event in our organization's history. It was held at the Dixon Inn in Kansas City, Missouri from March 10 through 12. It began with a fine social evening in the hospitality room on Friday evening. At ten o'clock everyone tuned in radios to listen to a broadcast program on Nightbeat WHB, where Ken Jernigan was a guest, together with a panel of social workers. Ken was interviewed for about forty minutes and then participated in the rest of the three-hour broadcast.
The business session of the convention opened Saturday morning with an excellent attendance of members and friends. Ken Jernigan was there, and Manuel and Pat Urena came in with three young Iowans from the training center at Des Moines; Fred Lilly and Assunta Jackson of St. Louis came, and in the afternoon, Laura Wells arrived from St. Louis with Vic and Xena Johnson. We gained four new members from Joplin: Carl and Addie Lewis, Mrs. Grace Williams, and Miss Nell Speaks. Eight resolutions were passed. Among these were one on the Model White Cane law, H.R. 3064, and one on the World Fund for the Blind. Good reports were given by the officers and chairmen of committees, and everyone participated in discussions. The afternoon session was given over to a fascinating program for all listeners. Two state assemblymen spoke, Phillip P. Scaglia and R.D. (Pete) Rodgers. Miss Anna Green of the Telephone Pioneers explained the Eye Bank. A lively and informative round table discussion on the education of the blind was chaired by Kenneth Jernigan, and the participants were Dr. Robert Ohlsen and Mr. Robert Johnson of the Kansas State School for the Blind and Miss Alice Hoeltgen, pioneer teacher in Missouri for blind children in the public schools. Bernard Preuss of the Missouri State Bureau for the Blind explained new facets of the business enterprises and facilities for the blind, and W. H. Crowe, Director of the Kansas City Association for the Blind, spoke on the expanding horizons of sheltered workshops for the blind.
There were 118 in attendance at the banquet. Among the honored guests were legislators. Optimists, Missouri State Bureau officials, a business agent of the Teamsters' Union and his family, and several other friends of the Progressive Blind. Our own Vic Johnson was master of ceremonies, and he was in excellent form as he presented the two speakers of the evening, Walt Bodine, radio personality, and Kenneth Jernigan. Walt Bodine talked on the scenes behind his Nightbeat program and presented the Perrin D. McElroy Award to Miss Dora Tolle, home teacher for the blind. Kenneth Jernigan spoke as the first vice president of the National Federation on blindness, the rights of the well-trained blind, public attitudes, and often the hostility of the public when the blind people assert their rights and capabilities. He presented the Dr. Jacobus tenBroek Award for meritorious service in the cause of blindness to CM. (Mike) Combs, attorney at law. Xena was asked to take up a collection for the World Fund for the Blind, and she gathered in sixty dollars and ten cents.
It was a grand occasion with the Missourians, Iowans , and Kansans at the banquet, and Ken was superb.
Sunday morning the following officers were elected: president, Tiny Beedle; vice president, Cotton Busby; recording secretary, Sonia Carr; corresponding secretary, Gwen Rittgers; treasurer. Dr. Gerald Salter. Ray Jones of Joplin, George Rittgers and Floyd Mohler of Kansas City were elected to the Board. Doris Timmons was elected as chairman of the political action committee, and Helen Mohler as co-chairman. President Tiny Beedle was chosen as the delegate to the national convention in Los Angeles. Kirk Kirkpatrick was presented with an honorary lifetime membership in the Progressive Blind for his fine friendship to our organization, and the Uptown Optimists presented a check for fifty dollars to the Progressive Blind for some lazy Susans which George Rittgers had made, with the proceeds going to the two clubs.
Organizations of the blind will soon have an easier time of studying federal regulations and their applications to the blind when the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare carries out plans to publish a revised Handbook of Public Assistance Administration in the Federal Register. The handbook contains federal regulations which fix the conditions governing the administration of federally aided assistance programs by state and local public welfare agencies under the Social Security Act.
In the interim, copies of the current edition and special policy releases such as recent State Letters are available to those with an immediate and continuing need for information which cannot be met by examining copies of the handbook in state and regional offices. Requests should be directed to Welfare Commissioner Ellen Winston.
Handbook availability represents a sharp change in HEW policy-brought about by pressure from the increasing number of lawyers beginning to practice welfare law and projects devoted to the exposition and testing of the law of the poor. Just how much a change of policy will be realized when one recalls that a few years ago the Department even refused to supply a copy of the handbook to a congressman who requested it on behalf of the National Federation of the Blind.
Floral bouquets, jewelry trays, bubble bath, hosiery hangers, and fancy bath linen are among the extras which will add a feminine touch to the Lady Hilton rooms at NFB convention headquarters in July.
Miss Pamela E. Floyd, Lady Hilton representative, will be happy to reserve a Lady Hilton room for any women who will be staying alone or with another lady at the Statler Hilton in Los Angeles during the July 3-7 convention.
All reservation requests and inquiries should be addressed to Miss Pamela E. Floyd, Lady Hilton Representative, The Statler Hilton, 93 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90017.
Vehement protests by handicapped persons have resulted in some relaxation of New York City's abolition of special parking privileges for the handicapped. Until recently the handicapped, along with doctors and diplomats, had been given special windshield cards and allowed to park near their places of work in no-parking zones. Now, in an effort to facilitate traffic flow, all such illegally parked vehicles are to be towed away.
A delegation of 25 disabled persons demonstrated in front of city hall on January 24 to protest the new policy. City officials met with ten representatives and promised to provide special spaces for the handicapped within reasonable distance of their places of work in areas "where traffic can stand it." Until such spaces can be provided, the city offered to issue only warning tickets to handicapped persons who park illegally. The police also offered the disabled a free taxi service in which they would drive to the nearest police station, park in special zones there, and then be chauffeured free of charge in a squad car to and from their places of work.
But only about half of the 300 disabled persons who used to park downtown have taken advantage of this service. Others are indignant. "This is treating us like school children," said Mrs. Mary Derr of Brooklyn. "It is humiliating and degrading." Carl Ruff, chairman of a public relations company, tried the taxi service and found it lacking. "I called the precinct at 5:15 when I was ready to go home," he complained, "and they told me, 'please be a little lenient, we got a lot of people to pick up.' I stood in the street for a half hour and no one came. Then I took a cab to the precinct and told them to check me off of their chauffeuring list."
Science for the Blind announces the availability of a Continuity Checker which checks liquid levels, checks for burnt-out light bulbs or fuses, checks to see if lights have been left on, checks electronic components, and checks for lighted telephone buttons, switchboard signals, and computer panels.
The Continuity Checker consists of a small metal box measuring approximately 2" by 3" by 1-1/2" and containing a loud speaker, a 9-volt battery, a transistor circuit board, and a three-hole socket into which the accessories are plugged. Information is obtained from an audible tone ranging from a few ticks per second to a high-pitched squeal. A good light bulb, for example, when connected to the Checker's clip leads will produce a high-pitched tone; a burnt-out bulb will produce no sound at all. The level indicator squeals on contact with liquid, and the light sensor produces a tone whose pitch depends upon the intensity of the light.
The Continuity Checker with clip leads and printed instructions is priced at $15.00, and the following accessories are available: plug-in light sensor (for detecting light in a room), $3.00; light sensor on cable (for checking light bulbs), $4.00; liquid level indicator, $1.50; and tape-recorded instructions, fifty cents. The Continuity Checker with all these accessories costs $21.50. It can be ordered from Science for the Blind, Haverford, Pennsylvania 19041.
By Jean Dyon Norris
Twin Vision volunteers of the American Brotherhood for the Blind were honored at the Annual Awards Banquet of the organization, Friday, March 10th, at the Queen's Arms Restaurant in Encino, California.
Recognition in the form of book-plaques were given to: Scott and Scott Printers for their many contributions and services, and to William Pluth for his many devoted services. Mr. Pluth is the husband of Action Committee Chairman Marie Pluth.
Guest speaker was Miss Rosalie Calone , principal of the Los Angeles public schools' Frances Blend School for the Blind. Her talk related the Twin Vision Program to the educational program for blind children.
M.E. (Rockey) Spicer, master of ceremonies, introduced special guests including Dr. Jacobus tenBroek, President of the American Brotherhood for the Blind and a professor at the University of California- -Berkeley.
Jean Dyon Norris, Director of the Twin Vision Publishing Division, gave a talk on the accomplishments of this division on its fifth anniversary.
Twin Vision Books are conventional children's books which are interleaved with the identical text in braille. These books are sent free of charge to regional braille libraries of Congress, to state schools for the blind, and to individuals through the Twin Vision Lending Library. Two original books have been published with raised illustrations: The Shape of Things-Birds, and The Shape of Things-Rockets and Space Ships.
Other items published are Hot-Line to Deaf-Blind, in its third year, a newspaper published in braille twice a month, braille calendars, and other braille materials.
A bill barring discrimination in the training, certification, and hiring of blind school teachers in New York City--the only city in the state still holding to the old policy of prejudice--was passed by both houses of the New York legislature and signed March 14 by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.
The bill, which was introduced in the state Senate by Education Committee Chairman D. Clinton Dominick III, amends a I960 anti-discrimination law which the courts ruled in the Chavich case applied elsewhere in the state but not in New York City.
The Chavich case began in 1963 when the city board of education turned down Alexander Chavich's application for accreditation as a teacher in the city schools on the ground that he could not perform the tasks of a teacher because of "defective vision." Chavich was upheld in 1964 by Judge Frank J. Pino of the New York Supreme Court, Kings County, on the basis of the I960 statute, which had been passed after intensive campaigning by the National Federation's New York affiliate, the Empire State Association of the Blind.
The New York City Board of Education appealed Judge Pino's decision to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, and this time the judgment went against Chavich. Chavich's last legal hope vanished on July 12, 1965 when the Court of Appeals of New York--the state's highest court--affirmed the Appellate Division judgment by a 4-3 vote. The decision against Chavich turned in part on the court's ruling that the state law was not applicable to New York City, and that therefore the city's own ordinance disqualifying blind teachers could stand.
With further legal recourse at an end, the New York blind turned their efforts to persuading the state legislature to write provisions into the anti-discrimination statute making it applicable to New York City schools. This campaign has now borne fruit with Governor Rockefeller's signature, according to William S. Dwyer, Legislative Chairman of the Empire State Association of the Blind.
As of now, 16 blind teachers are employed in public schools in upstate New York, and it is hoped that many opportunities will open up in New York City when the new amendment goes into effect.
By Evelyn Weckerly
Last year legislation was enacted in Michigan to make public buildings accessible to and functional for the physically disabled. The act provides for administration and enforcement by the Building Division and the Department of Education, but leaves the drafting of specific standards to the Building Division. Accordingly, the two administering agencies drew up a set of proposed standards and sent copies of these along with invitations to a hearing to all who might be concerned about them: architects, engineers, local governmental officials, directors of rehabilitation agencies, and members of organizations of the physically disabled.
The hearing occurred on February 28, for the purpose of determining whether these standards were satisfactory and, if not, how they might be improved. Approximately forty persons were in attendance, representing most of the groups mentioned above. The Michigan Council of the Blind was represented by Evelyn Weckerly, and the Michigan Federation of the Blind by John Luxon.
Although much concern was expressed over such items as an adequate definition of the term appropriate number and the problem of enforcement, of most interest to readers of this account are the regulations affecting the blind. Although the proposed standards already provide for room identification through raised numbers or letters, both organizations of the blind argued for the identification of elevator stops and buttons through the use of raised numbers or braille. Throughout the entire hearing, the Michigan Council representative relied heavily on Section II, Part B, of The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the Law of Torts by Jacobus tenBroek and recommendations by local chapters.
It is interesting to note that the standards developed by the American Standards Association were not adopted outright. Although the drafted regulations follow them closely in most respects, two were left out which are worth mentioning. The first of these provided that, along with light switches and fire alarms, controls for heating and ventilation be within the reach of persons in wheel chairs. This was objectionable to building engineers and custodians because they felt that such controls should not be accessible to the general public. The second provided for the use of visual and audible warning signals. The group at the hearing agreed with the Building Division that these were both unnecessary and ludicrous.
Since the hearing the Building Division has been working on the final regulations, which will go into effect as soon as they are released. Although a considerable number of changes were suggested, the influence of those making the suggestions cannot be known until the final standards are released. However, the Building Division did record every word of the proceedings, and it was repeatedly recognized that only the disabled themselves could really answer many of the questions which were raised. It seemed to me that this was a positive acknowledgement of the need for maximum feasible participation by the disabled in the formulation of programs and provisions for their benefit.
[From the Los Angeles [California] Herald-Examiner, February 1967]
Austin, Texas--A man whose eyes were destroyed by a policeman with a tear-gas gun in the Eagle Pass, Texas city jail cannot recover damages from the city, the Texas Supreme Court ruled.
The doctrine of municipal immunity applies to cases where a city employee commits negligent or wrongful acts in the performance of a governmental function, the court said.
Hartford A. Luvaul sued the city for $375,000.
He was arrested by Officer Jose A. Sifuentes on a charge of being drunk June 24, 1964. Sifuentes took him to the city jail and ordered him to sit by a desk.
Sifuentes testified at the trial that Luvaul was cursing and got to his feet, picked up the chair and walked toward Sifuentes. Luvaul testified he got up to ask if he could go to a water cooler nearby. He said three officers, including Sifuentes, advanced on him and Sifuentes was holding the tear-gas gun. Luvaul said he thought "My God, he's going to shoot my eyes out," and that he picked up the chair to put it in front of his face. The weapon discharged. Luvaul was placed in a jail cell. No medical aid was given him for eight hours. He lost sight in both eyes. These facts were not disputed.
The trial court granted the city a summary judgment. The 13th Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the judgment.
Blind and sighted persons in the Seattle area are circulating petitions asking the Board of Trustees of Community Services for the Blind to dismiss Executive Director Charles E. Brown.
Brown, who holds a Master's degree in social work from Wayne State University and was for eight years a western regional consultant for the American Foundation for the Blind, has been a center of controversy since he took his post early last year with CSB, a tax-exempt organization providing facilities for the use of blind groups.
The executive director's troubles began in March 1966 when he put forth in letter form a policy advocating CSB oversight of the political, fund-raising, and membership activities of groups using its facilities. He asserted that his agency "could not condone" any such activities "which would in any way be contradictory to our principals [sic] and practices, or which would be, for one reason or another, embarrasing."
Protests by the White Cane Association of King County and other blind groups across the country resulted in the adoption of a purportedly new policy which in reality was every bit as restrictive. It flatly banned political activity and narrowly prescribed acceptable methods of solicitation, citing as a reason CSB's concern with preserving its tax-exempt status .
The recall petitions being circulated give four reasons for urging the Board of Trustees to take immediate action against Brown. First, "the present director has clearly demonstrated that he is quite lacking in any courteous regard for blind people which could give them a feeling of welcome individuals." Second, "the program the director has implemented represents duplication and overlapping of services already available to blind people previous to his administration."
Third, "his treatment of former employees and dedicated volunteer workers would seem to indicate that he is more interested in professionalism as an end unto itself than in the humanitarian goals which are commonly supposed to be the aims of professionalism." Fourth, "the curtailment of the former program of services to preschool blind children now leaves many of those most needful of service neglected."
(Nashville, Tennessee AP)
Cortelia Clark, singer and winner of one of the record industry's top awards, is back selling shopping bags on a downtown Nashville street corner.
Clark, 60, is blind. He won a Grammy on March 2nd for "Blues in the Street" as the best folk recording of 1966. Sales of "Blues in the Street"--the only record ever made by Clark--were unimpressive, but he won the Grammy over such folk artists as Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary.
"I lost my sight about 15 years ago, after an operation, and that's about the time I took up playing and singing," says Clark.
His album includes some songs that he's been singing for more than ten years while sitting on a sidewalk in front of a department store.
Mike Weesner, a 25-year-old music publisher and a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, is credited with bringing Clark to the attention of the record industry. Weesner says he recalls when, as a young boy, "Every time I came downtown, I would make my mother take me down to hear the blind man sing." Three years ago, Weesner made a sample recording of Clark's songs. Last July, he got RCA to record "Blues in the Street." "The Grammy isn't presented to the one with the most sales," says Weesner. "And it has nothing to do with whether a recording artist is well known. It is presented, simply, to the best."
The "best" folk singer, back at his usual place, singing and selling, has high hopes for the future. "I really am pleased," Clark said. "I hope now that they'll let me record some more." He's still got his shopping bags. "Business has picked up here lately," he said.
Names and addresses of blind persons doing unusual things in skilled fields are requested by the Johnstown, Pennsylvania Research and Training Center in Vocational Rehabilitation, which is interested in the integration of vocational training for blind persons with the training of persons with other handicaps.
"We most need help in reaching the blind workers who are doing the atypical, the unusual vocational choice so that systematic attempts can be made to prepare blind young adults for new endeavors as the traditional areas are automated out and as their stifling aspects become less acceptable," writes Mrs. Kay L. Maloney, Research Assistant at the Center, which is sponsored by the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration and located at the Pennsylvania Rehabilitation Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
"In addition," she continues, "it seems to us that such a collection of information and beginning of attempts to teach these skilled and technical jobs could open up the development of devices to assist blind persons in the performance of different activities." She also said that the Center is seeking information or data on the schooling, vocational training, and employment of the young blind adult aged 18-30 in hopes of preparing a brochure for prospective employers.
The Center is planning a series of regional and national conferences and seminars to cover the many facets of updating vocational rehabilitation of the blind. Mrs. Maloney has proposed the inclusion of the blind themselves and particularly spokesmen of their organizations on the panels of experts.
Blind readers with unusual occupations should write Mrs. Maloney about them at the Research and Training Center in Vocational Rehabilitation, University of Pittsburgh, 727 Goucher Street, Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15905.
(From The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 8, 1967)
It was the first fashion show most of the teen-agers present had ever seen.
"It was really wonderful," said Marilyn Sponaugle , 13, of Philippi, W. Va. of Seventeen Magazine's first "Please Do Touch the Merchandise" fashion show for about 100 blind teen-age girls.
"It'll be a big help to me," she added, when she picks- out new dresses.
Mrs. Hubert H. Humphrey, wife of the Vice President, was a surprise visitor to the Mayflower Hotel. She joined other Cabinet wives seated among teen-agers from the Washington area and as far away as West Virginia. Present were Mrs. Alan S. Boyd, wife of the secretary of transportation; Mrs. Orville L. Freeman, wife of the secretary of agriculture, and Mrs. Willard Wirtz, wife of the secretary of labor.
Hecht's Teen Board, under the talented direction of Eileen Mason, modeled 30 outfits starred on the pages of the March issue. Issues of the magazine specially printed in braille for guests present to take home were a personal gift from Editor-in-Chief Enid A. Haupt, along with a year's subscription for each girl.
Since October 1966 the Library of Congress has published a braille edition of the magazine which has met with tremendous response, Jean Baer of Seventeen noted in her opening remarks.
Anita Blanchard, merchandising editor of the magazine, did the commentary for the swinging, finger-snapping show which found the prettiest teen-age models in Washington dancing down the runway to the music of a quintet called "Project Sound." Her commentary was "absolutely delicious," declared the blind teen-agers who could see the clothes described as having a hem "cut out like the edge of a jig saw puzzle piece"; "green like the smell of fresh grass"; "patterned like thousands of tiny window panes"; and "buttoned in brass as exciting as a clash of cymbals." Fashion show commentators could take a lesson from the imagery evoked with the use of words appealing to all the senses. Other descriptions the girls giggled at were a knit dress of a pizza red, and a dress whose pattern was "zesty as a Hero sandwich." A yellow crinkly crepe triangle dress was "crunchy as celery" and "happy as a new puppy." Breaking the fashion barrier was done with sound.
For pretty 16-year-old Laurinda Steele, daughter of the Earl B. Steeles of Chevy Chase, the show was an extra-special treat. She sat next to Mrs. Humphrey and they "talked fashion." Laurinda attends Bethesda Chevy Chase High School which the Humphreys' children did also. "She's sweet," said Laurinda who two years ago lost her sight from a tumor on the optic nerves.
Mrs. Humphrey, obviously moved at the sight of so many young girls interested in a subject all women find fascinating, lauded the national program launched by Seventeen Magazine. "What Seventeen is doing is exemplary and exemplifies what President and Mrs. Johnson have done in many programs dealing with the personal problems of people."
After the show was over. Cokes were sipped and hot dogs eaten with relish, the girls carted home a shopping bag full of "goodies" presented to them by leading cosmetics houses. A souvenir to treasure in their scrapbooks was the specially printed, swatched and illustrated braille program made for the show by the Clovernook Home and School for the Blind in Cincinnati, Ohio and by Cincinnati's Kilgour Chapter 3 of the Telephone Pioneers of America. This, as well as everything else, gave them "the feel of fashion" unlike anything they had ever known before.
(From The New York Times, March 1967)
A circular apartment house designed for occupancy by wheelchair-bound paraplegics is to be built as part of the Bronx Park South urban renewal project.
Sponsored by the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, the $1.3-million building is planned for a site on Bryant Avenue between 178th and 179th Streets. Relocation of present tenants on the urban renewal site is under way and construction of the new building is expected to begin in April 1968.
The eleven story building will have 50 apartments, five on a floor. Forty-two of the apartments will be designed for paraplegics--persons who have the lower halves of their bodies paralyzed--and their families. The remaining eight apartments will be designed for quadriplegics--persons who have all four of their limbs paralyzed.
Stanford Weinzimer, president of the veterans group, a private, non-profit organization, said that the apartment building was intended as a demonstration project to point the way toward further housing to meet the special needs of wheel-chair-bound paraplegics.
Parking spaces for 52 cars will have wide aisles to permit paraplegics who drive hand-controlled cars to maneuver their wheel chairs as they enter or leave their cars.
Studio apartments are planned to rent for $80 a month, one-bedroom apartments for $110 and two-bedroom apartments for $150.
Financing for the project will be provided through a 50-year loan at three per cent annual interest from the Community Facilities Administration, together with contributions from foundations and private donors.
The NFB's push for adoption of the Model White Cane Law in every state has picked up steam with North Dakota's passage of the law. George Ryan, Legislative Committee Chairman of the Federated Blind of North Dakota, reports that the lion's share of the model law made it easily through the state legislature.
In a letter to President Jacobus tenBroek, he writes: "Thank you for your nice letter of March 8 which brought to our attention some angles that had been overlooked by us. Following are the answers to some of the questions you asked:
"First of all, there were no local funds available for lobbying or promotional expenses. And, because our Legislative Committee decided not to ask the NFB for any financial help unless absolutely necessary, we conducted our campaign mostly through the mails and telephone and personal contact. We made very good use of the many copies of the White Cane Law you so kindly furnished us. We solicited the mail support of several civic and fraternal organizations, many prominent citizens, and all of our friends. The response was most gratifying.
"The members of our Legislative Committee consist of Charles Pallach of West Fargo, North Dakota, Theodore Johnson of New Rockford, North Dakota, and the writer, who serves as chairman.
"We know of no organized opposition. And as far as we can learn, our agencies for helping the blind 'stood neutral.'
"Mr. Pallach mailed Senator Don Holand of Lisbon, North Dakota copy of the Model White Cane Law, and he in turn presented it to the North Dakota State Legislative Research Committee. This committee was somewhat concerned about the scope of the bill. They made the deletions before giving it their go-ahead sign. I believe Senator Holand conferred with them several times. After receiving this committee's okay, he introduced and steered the bill through the Senate by a vote of 48 to 0. Representative Omer Mathiason of Fargo, North Dakota steered it through the House by a vote of 88 to 0. We feel that this vote clearly reflects the very fine job done by these two members of our legislature. This also indicates that both parties supported or voted for it.
"We have two years in which to lay plans for having the deletions replaced by amendment and will, no doubt, be looking to you for advice at that time.
"Our very best wishes to you and again thanks for your splendid cooperation."
The North Dakota law as passed incorporates the model law provisions calling for full participation by the blind and otherwise handicapped in the social and economic life of the state, and guaranteeing the right of blind persons accompanied by guide dogs to be in public places. The model law guarantee of rights without a guide dog is implied.
The bill also includes in full the model law sections requiring drivers to take reasonable precautions when approaching blind pedestrians, and making it a misdemeanor to deny a blind person admittance to or enjoyment of public facilities or to otherwise interfere with his rights.
Handicapped persons under the North Dakota law are to be employed in the public service on the same terms and conditions as other persons unless the particular disability prevents the performance of the work involved. Deleted was the model law's qualifying phrase that employment opportunities should be equal "unless it is shown" that a handicapped person cannot do the work. This phrase in effect created a presumption of ability on the part of the disabled and placed the burden upon the employing agency to show that the particular disability prevented performance of the work, but its deletion leaves this question open.
Also omitted in the North Dakota bill is the governor's proclamation of October 15 as White Cane Day, which in effect gives notice that blind persons can be expected in all places where the public is expected, and that consequently reasonable precautions must be taken to prevent injury to them. As a result, blind persons would have greater protection, and when injured, their suits for damages would have much greater chance of success.
By Anthony G. Mannino
All is in readiness for a multi-pronged campaign which will focus attention on the many state affiliates, the NFB, and the work being done by the organized blind.
Featuring "White Cane Week," May 15-21, as a frame for a concerted effort, the NFB affiliates are fully prepared for a public relations campaign that is bound to produce results. Mailings of letters and brochures, radio and television interviews, special White Cane Week social functions, newspaper articles, and talks to service organizations- these are the publicity vehicles being utilized to spread the philosophy, the accomplishments and future goals of the NFB, its affiliates and chapters. State leaders have joined together in this annual nationwide drive spotlighting our own efforts on behalf of blind persons. Many of these leaders are veterans of White Cane Week campaigns, others are comparatively new in the field, and a few are plunging into the thick of the action for the first time. This is the current cast of the 1967 WCW drive.
A few of the objectives of the White Cane Week effort are:
1. To educate the public about the potentials of blind people.
2. To broadcast information regarding our organizations and services in behalf of blind persons.
3. To enlist more people, both blind and sighted, in our great crusade.
4. To raise funds to help support the work of the organizations.
Hundreds of Federationists and thousands of letters will be telling the story of the NFB, the state affiliates, the local chapters, and the achievements brought about by our united dedication to the cause of the blind. Old friends will hear about us again, new friends will respond to our call. The appeal will give the Federation vast publicity which will enhance its already recognized leadership in work with and for the blind.
This year we are witnessing both a new and renewed surge in White Cane Week interest on the part of some of the states. Alaska, under the enthusiastic guidance of Kelly Smith, has prepared a super-coverage mailing for the first time in that state. California and Washington are again doing their usual and great jobs with their campaigns. The same goes for Massachusetts, South Carolina, Colorado and Nevada. The Washington, D.C. Capitol Chapter is expanding its mail appeal as a result of a careful study of its past effort made by Tom Bickford.
The analysis made by Mr. Bickford pointed out ways and means of improving the efficiency of the campaign and will undoubtedly prove to be a very beneficial set of guidelines.
Many of the other states are conducting drives along channels which have been followed through the years and proven to be satisfactory. Most of them use NFB literature and materials which suit their particular projects.
There are two things happening with each passing year. Competition for the attention of the public is increasingly keen among agencies and organizations, and we are learning more and more about the challenges to be met in the field of public relations. In the final analysis, we find that certain factors are strongly in our favor. We are the blind helping the blind to help themselves, possessing the subjective knowledge of the problems of the blind as well as the constructive answers to these problems. We have courageous and resourceful leadership in our NFB which is continually pioneering in the field of programs and services for the blind of our nation. We must go on with this strong and capable leadership, and White Cane Week is the time to headline our achievements and goals.
At this year's convention of the NFB in Los Angeles, we are scheduling another special luncheon meeting for chairmen, delegates, and members concerned with White Cane Week and White Cane Safety Day. This will be on Tuesday noon, July 4. New ideas and suggestions will be presented and discussed along with plans for the expansion and improvement of present White Cane Committee work. Last year's luncheon meeting was a decided success, and it is anticipated that even greater benefits will be derived from this year's gathering.
Meanwhile, as White Cane Week projects are launched throughout the nation May 15-21, we join all Federationists in the wish that the 1967 drive will be crowned with noteworthy achievements in all phases of the various projects.
(Trenton, New Jersey AP)
The New Jersey Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, has dismissed an appeal from a child alleging malpractice against two doctors for allowing him to "be born." Joseph Weintraub, chief justice, who dissented in part from the majority opinion, said he had grave doubts whether the state's 68-year-old abortion law was comprehensive enough. The law holds that abortions cannot be performed unless the mother's life is in danger or her health threatened.
The unusual suit, which had been thrown out of lower courts, sought damages against Dr. Robert Cosgrove, Jr., and Dr. Jerome Dolan, partners in a Jersey City practice. The suit was in behalf of the parents, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Gleitman of North Arlington, as well as their child, Jeffrey, 7, born deaf and blind, who also has a speech impediment.
The family alleged the doctors were negligent in failing to advise Mrs. Gleitman of the danger of defects to an unborn child because of German measles she suffered in her first months of pregnancy. They accused the doctors of lulling them into a false security and precluding them from seeking independent advice or arranging a therapeutic abortion. The doctors had maintained that they had informed Mrs. Gleitman of the possibility of a 20 per cent deformity. They said that advising an abortion would have been unjustifiable since there was reasonable chance the baby would have been born normal.
(From The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., February 1967)
A man who lost his sight during World War II but later became assistant chief of the Bureau of the Budget's legislative reference section was one of some 750 students to receive degrees last month at George Washington University's winter convocation.
James F. C. Hyde, a 1942 graduate of the Military Academy, was blinded when a hand grenade exploded in his face in 1944 at Anzio Beach. At first he felt despair.
"You feel kind of worthless," Mr. Hyde recalls, "worthless to yourself and others."
But he returned to school, and in 1949 received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Because he didn't learn braille--to this day he knows only a little--he studied with the help of tape recorders and readers he hired through the GI bill. Later he was admitted to the D.C. bar. The same year he became a legislative analyst for the Bureau of the Budget. Then, it wasn't a matter of convincing himself he could do the job--it was convincing others. But he did.
Hyde, who is now 47, is a hard man to catch up with. A caller at his office in the Executive Office Building is likely to find that he's attending a meeting.
His day doesn't stop when he leaves the office. He is president of the Blind Veterans Association and a member of several boards. At his home, 5402 Duvall Drive, Chevy Chase, his wife helps him catch up on his leisure and classroom reading. Sometimes his children, ages 12, 10 and 7, help out.
On February 22, 1967, Mr. Hyde received a master of arts degree in international affairs.
(From Inside News, Washington, D.C., January 1967)
The cops had been trying for three years to get the goods on Paul "Big Boy" Pugh, 48, a suspected bookie who was blind. But though they raided his apartment several times over the years, they never found anything upon which to build a case.
Then an alert rookie cop discovered that Pugh-who has been blind since birth--was recording bets in braille, the written language of the blind.
Arrested with Pugh in a raid on his New York apartment were 28-year-old Danny Brookes and 30-year-old Bing Goff. Both of the men were charged as accomplices in what police say was a $100,000-a-year illegal betting operation.
Pugh, police charged, was the mastermind, kingpin, and top dog in the ring. He allegedly took bets on everything from horse races to elections to the weather. The cops had been onto him for years but, without definite physical proof, they were powerless to put him out of circulation. Each time they raided his apartment, all they found were several books with their pages punched in braille. Thinking these were innocent reading matter, the cops ignored the books, turning the premises inside out in search of recognizable betting slips or other records which could be used as evidence in court. On each occasion, no luck.
Then, Patrolman. Frank Stevens , 23, joined the raiding party. Stevens, who had just become a member of the force a year ago, was told that the raid was just a routine harassment procedure. "This guy's too cagey to leave anything lying around," said a veteran officer, "so don't expect to find anything." While the blind bookie sat solemnly by, a sarcastic smile playing on his lips, the cops went through the motions of searching the place, knowing in their hearts they'd leave empty-handed. But this time, thanks to rookie Stevens, they were in for a pleasant surprise. Stevens, who had once been a volunteer worker at the local rehabilitation center for the blind, began rifling through one of the braille books on Pugh' s desk. And his trained fingers, which were able to read the braille impressions, discovered that the books were full of betting records. Instead of keeping slips in the conventional manner, Pugh simply purchased bound books with blank pages. At the top of each page, in braille, was the date of the entries. The bets themselves were recorded in braille below.
Released after posting $5,000 bail, Pugh complained to reporters: "These cops are just picking on me because of my handicap. All I was trying to do was make a decent living. What did they expect me to do-spend the rest of my life selling pencils?"
"We have been very busy establishing our pioneer Transcription Service in the country," writes Dr. Fatima Shah, President of the Pakistan Association of the Blind. "Braille transcription centers have been opened in many educational institutions, and I have succeeded in getting 'Braille Transcription' included in the syllabus of secondary education as an elective subject. I think we are the first country in which this step has been taken."
Dr. Shah, familiar to Federationists from her extensive travel in the United States and her attendance at the 1964 NFB convention in Phoenix, hopes the new project will alleviate the shortage of braille books which prevents all but 300 of Pakistan's 65,000 blind children from attending school. The first of the transcription courses was recently launched at PECHS College in Karachi, and the response has been excellent. The pilot class consists of 26 girls, each of whom should be able to transcribe a fair-sized book into braille within a week's time upon completing the course.
Dr. Shah said, however, that the transcription classes were only a start in making education available for Pakistan's half a million blind children and adults. Also needed are more and better schools, specially trained teachers, and technical equipment. There are presently only ten primary schools for the blind in Pakistan, most of them of poor quality.
The transcription program has won immediate press support, and articles and pictures have appeared in several publications. The newspaper Dawn praised the project and in a special editorial said:
"The good work done by the Pakistan Association for the Blind has remained more or less confined because of financial limitations. If sufficient private capital can be attracted to supplement these commendable efforts, their utility will be great and their benefits immeasurable. It is to be hoped that those who are in a position to do so will rise to the occasion."
Dr. Shah has also been busy on other fronts. She has already begun a campaign to get October 15 declared "White Cane Day" in Pakistan, and she is now studying the Model White Cane law in preparation for an effort to get it adopted as it stands.
(From The Miami Herald, January 1967)
Things have never come easy for Alberto Ulderico Hernandez. He has had to fight, here and in his native Cuba, against tremendous odds. In Cuba, Alberto made it through effort. After graduating from high school with honors, he went on to get a law degree and three other professional titles. Alberto is convinced he will make it here, too.
Alberto, 53, has been blind since birth. Full of humor and optimism, he shares a modest but neat one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Anuncia, 55, at 871 SW Third Street. Anuncia came to the United States in 1961. Alberto followed her five years later. Red tape kept him on the other side. The two live on a welfare allotment of $100 per month. Alberto's dream is to become self-supporting here, perhaps through teaching. He has already taken a first step toward this. He has successfully completed, with high marks, a course Barry College offers Cuban exile professionals to prepare them to teach Spanish in United States high schools and universities.
Besides his law degree, in Cuba Alberto earned certificates in journalism, advertising and radio announcing. He is an ardent poet, with four books published in Cuba.
New York Post, February 24, 1967--A man posing as blind robbed a pregnant woman of $45 on February 22 after his supposed seeing-eye dog attacked and bit her and grabbed her purse. The man, who had been standing on a corner holding his dog by the harness as Mrs. Tracy Goodman approached, suddenly took off his dark glasses and yelled to the dog, "Get her bag, boy!"
The New York Times, February 25, 1967--Burton A. Kolman, the only blind magistrate in Cook County (Chicago) Circuit Court, died February 24 of a heart attack at the age of 34. Kolman was blinded while in high school by a head injury in a sandlot baseball game. After passing the Illinois Bar, he could find no one who wanted to hire a blind lawyer. So he worked as a law clerk and in 1961 finally opened his own office in partnership with his younger brother. He was appointed to the bench in January 1966. Kolman ran unsuccessfully for alderman in Chicago in 1955, and he visited Europe and the Middle East in 1964 as a representative of President Johnson's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.
Arthur Sevigny, long-time Andover, Massachusetts rabbit breeder and president of the Essex County Rabbit Breeders Association, recently served as a judge at the Middleton Great Scott 4-H Rabbit Club show. Sevigny is an executive committee member of the Associated Blind of Massachusetts.
The Kansas City Star--The United Cerebral Palsy Association, in towns where it operates, trains teen-agers to care for handicapped children and adults through its Monitor Training Program. High school students attend a series of classes on Saturday mornings, hear lectures from doctors, therapists, and social workers, and learn how to remove and put on braces, handle wheel-chair patients, and deal with seizures. A list is kept of all who complete the course, and they are called upon when needed to sit with the retarded or handicapped.
The News, Van Nuys, California, January 1967--A Boston eye specialists has swept away several "myths" on poor light damaging eyesight. Dr. Albert E. Sloane of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary said reading in poor light doesn't harm your eyes and neither does endless television watching. Although poor light may make the eyes feel tired, it does not damage them. Dr. Sloane added.
The New York Times, March 1967--The Office of Economic Opportunity has awarded $1.2-million to the National Council on Aging for a program to locate elderly persons who need public assistance. Hyman Bookbinder, assistant secretary of the O.E.O., announced the grant at the council's 16th annual meeting. The new project, to be called "Project Find," is intended to direct the 5.4 million indigent elderly to available public housing, health, employment and other services It is similar to last year's Medicare Alert to inform elderly persons of the benefits available under the Social Security medical program.
The New York Times, March 1967--In a washroom at the University of Missouri someone has written: "God Is Dead--Nietzsche," to which has been appended, "Nietzsche Is Dead--God."
HEW Release--The resignation of Dr. Ellen Winston, the nation's first U. S. Commissioner of Welfare, was announced March 16 by Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John W. Gardner.
Mrs. Helen B. Anthony, for the past five years the highly successful managing editor of the Washington White Cane Magazine, has retired in order to volunteer her services as representative of the low-income elderly on the Seattle-King County Office of Economic Opportunity Board. Succeeding her as editor will be Mr. James Hicks, 414 Times Square Building, Seattle, Washington 98101.
Fred Wilson, business math teacher at Coral Gables High School in Coral Gables, Florida, is the only blind person teaching sighted students in the state, according to The Miami Herald.
Miss Margaret Pekarek, well remembered as the effective publicity chairman for the Phoenix convention, was the winner in the annual speech contest of the Desert Toastmistress Club. Her winning speech entitled, "Watch Your Language," qualifies her to represent her club at the district contest to be held soon. Good luck, Margaret!
The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., March 11, 1967--Stuart Aaron Abramowitz, a blind Silver Spring, Maryland boy, was bar mitzvahed (confirmed) today in Congregation B'nai Israel. To become bar mitzvahed, Stuart, a student at the Maryland School for the Blind in Baltimore, had to learn Hebrew and then braille Hebrew. He was prepared for the ceremony by Mrs. Haim Margalith of Baitimore, a volunteer field instructor of the Jewish Braille Institute of America.
R. E. (Bob) Whitehead, President of the Kentucky Federation of the Blind, is improving from a lengthy bout with the flu which aggravated his heart condition, according to a recent letter from Mae Budesheim.
"The doctors have told him," she writes, "that he would have to take it easy with very little activity. He particularly asked if he could continue his Federation and church work, and they told him that this type of work would not injure his heart and would be perfectly all right."
Bob Whitehead himself reports in a letter to President Jacobus tenBroek: "I have had a rather rough time, however, I am feeling better and am gaining my strength back. My problem seems to be developing into a lifting problem.
"The good Lillian has done yeoman service and has done a fine job looking after me and taking care of the business. We have great hopes that with some changes we will be able to continue with the business."
HEW Release--Wilbur J. Cohen, Under Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, has predicted that by next fall the number of elderly people dependent upon old-age assistance will decline to less than two million, almost a million less than in the program's peak year, 1950. The proportion of the aged receiving old-age assistance will probably be less than 10 percent compared to over 22 percent in 1950.
"This decline, despite a seven million increase in the number of older people in the population which occurred during the same period, is largely due to the rapid expansion of coverage under Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance," Mr. Cohen said. "But, gratifying as this is, it should not blind us to the urgent needs of the two million aged people who must still rely upon old-age assistance for the necessities of life."
Chessie/B&O News, January 6, 1967--"Walk a mile down any road, then tell us what you see," a blind man once suggested to Charles E. Owen, Jr., a sighted assistant state right-of-way engineer for the Virginia Department of Highways. Since then Owen has recorded tapes for his Smith-McKee Memorial Library describing plane and train trips, picturing visits to historical sites, and offering household hints and educational material to blind and handicapped persons throughout the United States and 45 other countries. He and his wife, Melva, also operate from their Noel, Virginia home the Tarver Memorial Fund, a non-profit corporation which provides recording equipment and supplies to the blind at wholesale cost or less.
Sad news from Frankfort, Kentucky reports the death on January 23rd of Ray Vice, a staunch member of the Kentucky Federation of the Blind, a friend to all who knew him, and a very successful businessman. His wife Pat survives him.
By Richard B. Wilson
Editor's Note: This speech by Professor Richard B. Wilson was delivered before the national convention of the National Rehabilitation Association at its Denver meeting last fall. At the conclusion of the presentation, the audience of some 750 rose in a standing ovation. Wilson is a professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is familiar to Federationists as a collaborator with Professor tenBroek in a number of law journal articles on welfare and rehabilitation, and as a participant in the NFB's famous survey of Nevada blind programs in the early 1950's.
In his book Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin observes that: ". . .men do not like to be protected, it emasculates them. This is what black men know; it is what white men do not want to know."1 But, if men are inclined to resist even the most benign custodialization, they are equally concerned to escape the anxieties provoked by limitless freedom. As Erich Fromm has so well put it: "Helplessness and doubt, powerlessness and insecurity characterize our society and paralyze our lives; in order to live, modern man tries to escape from freedom."2
Here, then, are the dichotomous poles of political reality and also of normative social theory. Men seek security, but discover in its achievement the erosion of liberty; they seek to regain their liberty but only at the expense of security. In order to rationalize the conflict they fabricate political and ethical philosophies which, hopefully, will vindicate the value of both liberty and security, facilitate the maximization of each, and accommodate the one to the other. Viable social theories, however, do not spring full-formed from the prescriptions of oracles: rather, they are the accumulations of experience. The question before us this morning is whether the Vocational Rehabilitation Amendments of 1965 and the "New Life" which they promise to the disadvantaged will contribute, in the event, to that measure of adjustment between liberty and security which is implicit in the word-the word of the statute and of its sponsoring administrators.
If it is true that all political life is precariously suspended between the terminal poles of liberty and security, it is equally true that the common denominator which connects these two poles is the concept of political power. Viewed positively, security can only be achieved if one possesses sufficient power to control, or at least to influence, his immediate environment. Viewed negatively, liberty can only be enjoyed when the power of others is effectively restrained. Or, as R. H. Tawney has so trenchantly explained: "Freedom is always relative to power. The kind of freedom which at any given moment it is most urgent to affirm depends upon the nature of the power which is prevalent and established."3 Thus, the idea of political liberty was built into the American constitutional system at its inception as a response to and as a restraint upon the immense potential power of political government. Thus, also was the notion of economic security only recently woven into the constitutional fabric in response to a malfunctioning laissez-faire economy and an irresponsible oligopoly capitalism. But great principles such as political liberty and economic security too often resemble military tactics; they are usually designed for wars that are over. So, while our protective solicitude for liberty and security remains focused upon such traditional power threats as the Aristocracy, the Robber-Barons, and the Communist Party, a novel and largely unperceived source of power has been developing on the periphery of our vision. I shall call it for want of a better label the Benevolent Bureaucracy: the dimension of human life which it most directly threatens is that of personal freedom.
That the professional bureaucracy which presides over the modern welfare state possesses vast power there can be no doubt. That a substantial measure of that power is necessary for the economic security of our citizens is equally certain. What is not so clear, however, is whether that power has been sufficiently restrained and controlled to protect all the dimensions of human freedom--political, economic, and, particularly, personal.
In the American political tradition we have customarily regulated and limited the exercise of power by constitutionalizing it. This process requires at least the following: (1) that the most fundamental interests of the individual be elevated from the status of privilege to that of substantive right; (2) that extension of public benefits and services to the citizen not be conditioned upon his willingness to abandon in whole or in part these resulting substantive rights; (3) that the process of conferring benefits or imposing restraints upon the individual be elevated from the status of administrative discretion to that of procedural due process of law; (4) that in determining , construing and applying public policy the judgment of the citizen rather than the expertise of the professional shall ultimately prevail; (5) that all persons subject to political authority be protected by equal laws and accorded the equal protection of the laws.
How well does the modern bureaucratic state meet these essential constitutional demands?
In an article which recently appeared in the Yale Law Journal Professor Charles Reich observes that: "The law of social welfare grew up on the theory that welfare is a gratuity furnished by the state and thus may be made subject to whatever conditions the state sees fit to impose."4 Many of these conditions, he suggests, are of doubtful constitutional validity. Beneficiaries of public largesse are frequently required to sacrifice well-established constitutional rights as a condition of eligibility and of continuing assistance. Among the more noteworthy victims of the process have been the right to privacy, the right to physical mobility, freedom of expression, the right to procedural due process of law, and the right to the equal protection of the laws.
Although the right to privacy and to independence in matters of personal, home and family life is not guaranteed by any specific constitutional provision, it has been distilled judicially from the conjoint implications of several provisions. Chief among these is the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The core of this protection is, of course, the search warrant. Based on probable cause, not suspicion, particularly instead of generally describing the person or thing to be searched for, a warrant can be obtained only from a magistrate who is satisfied, in a given case, of the reasonableness of the request. Denying each of these Fourth Amendment requirements are the increasingly frequent "Midnight Raids" conducted by welfare workers searching for an "unauthorized man" in the homes of A.F.D.C. mothers. Usually motivated not by probable cause but by mere suspicion, or based upon no grounds at all, these dragnet bed-checks are conducted entirely without a warrant and refusal by the recipient to admit the inspector results in summary termination of benefits. Thus, continuance of vitally needed resources is conditioned on the beneficiary's abandonment of a fundamental constitutional right.
Nor does the tragedy end here. Welfare workers who refuse to participate in these illegal proceedings may be summarily dismissed. One such case, Parrish v. Alameda County, is presently being appealed to the California Supreme Court.5 Further compromising the right to privacy are a vast inventory of administrative practices designed to impose a particular standard of moral behavior upon the recipients of public largesse. So, Louisiana sought unsuccessfully to terminate public assistance payments to A.F.D.C. mothers who gave birth to illegitimate children and who could not prove that they had "ceased such illicit relations." In California an A.F.D.C. mother who uses part of her grant to support a "man assuming the role of spouse" may be punished criminally for misusing that grant. In many states women who otherwise qualify for A.F.D.C. may be dissuaded from applying by threats of criminal punishment for neglect of their children. In yet other states A.F.D.C. mothers who live in an adulterous relationship with a male may be charged with grand theft of their assistance payments.
This narrative of moral coercion by administrative fiat could be expanded interminably. But even these few examples would seem to justify the conclusion that the manipulation of public benefits to enforce the conventional morality represents an egregious violation of all those constitutional provisions from which the right to privacy has been inferred.
The right to move freely from state to state and to choose one's place of residence, like the right to privacy, has been inferred from several constitutional provisions. Some Federal judges, in dissenting opinions, have viewed freedom of movement as a privilege of national citizenship and hence constitutionally protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment. More representative is the view stated in Edwards v. California that the nation-wide movement of persons constitutes "commerce among the several states" and therefore only Congress, not the individual states, may constitutionally regulate or limit it.6 Under either, or both, of these views, however, the traveler's poverty is an insufficient and illegitimate reason for limiting or denying the right to travel. As Mr. Justice Jackson so clearly stated in the Edwards case, "Indigence in itself is neither a source of rights nor a basis for denying them. The mere state of being without funds is a neutral fact- -constitutionally an irrelevance like race, creed, or color."7
Under the law of welfare, as contrasted with the law of the constitution, indigence becomes not only an excuse for denying the right to travel, but it may also be used as a basis for coercing one to return to the place of his origin. Thus, all states deny a wide range of federally financed services and benefits to recent arrivals, many make it extremely difficult for such persons to become residents, and some require the removal of indigents back to their state of origin. These clearly unconstitutional "removal" statutes are usually enforced by the threatened withdrawal of general assistance payments. While these various welfare restraints on the right of movement have yet to be faced directly by the Supreme Court, there seems little doubt that many of them are, in whole or in part, of doubtful constitutionality.
Unlike the right to privacy and the right of physical mobility, freedom of expression is specifically guaranteed by the First Amendment and it has received increasingly vigorous confirmation by the Federal judiciary. Indirect efforts to restrict or qualify First Amendment rights by means of loyalty oaths, registration and other "exposure" requirements, and various types of loyalty-security programs have either been struck down or their scope of applicability drastically narrowed. This has been so in constitutional law but not in welfare law. Several states continue to require a loyalty oath of applicants for public housing; Ohio exacts a similar disclaimer as a condition of eligibility for unemployment compensation; all recipients of aid under the Poverty Program are likewise subject to a loyalty requirement .
But the constitutional safeguard which has been subjected to the most pervasive and damaging erosion by the welfare state is that of equality under law. This principle, created and confirmed by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, does not demand that all persons be treated identically under the law. It does require that differences in treatment be reasonably related to the accomplishment of some valid public purpose; that legal classifications be reasonable; and that all persons within that class be treated equally.
Consider, for a moment, the case of Nancy Hernandez in light of this simple and well-understood constitutional requirement. Arrested and convicted in Santa Barbara, California, for knowingly being in a room where narcotics were used, Mrs. Hernandez, an A.F.D.C. mother, admitted to cohabiting with and having a child by the narcotic user. The trial judge responded favorably to her request for probation, but only on the condition that she first submit to sexual sterilization. The trial court's language leaves little doubt that its primary concern was to prevent the generation of future A.F.D.C. dependents. There is equally little doubt about the lesson this case teaches. All other classes of offenders are to pay for their crimes in the usual currency of imprisonment or fine. The class of public assistance recipients, on the contrary, may be subject to subtle yet powerful pressure to sacrifice one of life's most precious rights as a substitute penalty. A more horrifying denial of the equal protection of the laws it is impossible to imagine, and all the more so since the appellate court struck down the sterilization order on a technicality rather than on the merits.
Equally violative of the equalitarian demand are those relative's responsibility provisions which so ubiquitously qualify eligibility for a wide range of public assistance and welfare programs. In January of 1964 the California Supreme Court, in Department of Mental Hygiene V. Kirschner,8 held unconstitutional a provision of the California Welfare and Institutions Code requiring that: "The husband, wife, father, mother, or children of a mentally ill person or inebriate shall be liable for his care, support, and maintenance in a state mental institution."9 "It is established in this state," said the court, "that the mere presence of wealth or lack there of in an individual citizen cannot be the basis for valid class discrimination. . .a Statute obviously violates the equal protection clause if it selects one particular class of persons for a species of taxation or exaction and no rational basis supports such classification."10 Blood relationship, of course, does not constitute the requisite rational basis. Since the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reverse the California court on appeal, and since, further, all relative's responsibility provisions are identical in purpose and effect in whatever welfare program they may be found, it would seem clear that the continued enforcement of these requirements by the states is a flat denial of the constitutional rights of recipients and their relatives.
Welfare policies and practices which infringe upon the constitutional ideal of equality have proliferated endlessly. Under the Area Redevelopment and M.D.T. programs individuals may be put under pressure to undergo retraining in occupations not of their own choosing; under the 1962 Amendments to the Social Security Act, A.F.D.C. fathers refusing work relief have been criminally prosecuted for non-support. Indeed, those very pillars of American welfare philosophy, the means test and a system of subsistence-level grants inadequate to meet the cultural expectations of an affluent society, are denials of the constitutional right to equality under law. A welfare system so excessively individualized that it conditions assistance upon a minute examination of every aspect of the individual's life necessarily invites arbitrary and discriminatory administrative decisions and thereby prevents the enforcement of uniform laws.
A fifth and final constitutional principle that has been seriously compromised in the administration of contemporary welfare benefits and services is that of due process of law. In the interest of brevity I shall suggest a general indictment and spare you the specifications. The Constitution requires and Congress has provided a minimal structure of procedural safeguards for those businesses and economic interests which are subject to comprehensive government subsidy, promotion, or regulation. These procedures require, among other things, that rules and regulations be easily available to all who are subject to them, that secret or confidential information be excluded from all adversary proceedings of an administrative nature, that interested parties be represented by counsel, that the administrative officer who initiates action for the termination or refusal of benefits not be the same officer who decides the case, and that all decisions be accompanied by findings and reasons. All these procedural requirements are diluted, partially evaded, or completely eliminated from the administrative dynamics of the Welfare State.
Here, then, is the evidence of our failure effectively to constitutionalize the powers of the modern social service state: benefits and services continue to be viewed as privileges rather than as rights; eligibility for and enjoyment of them is often conditioned upon the sacrifice of other basic rights; inadequate procedural restraints on administrative discretion and a thicket of arbitrary and unreasonable classifications frustrate the equal protection of the laws and the protection of equal law.
But if we are to believe the highest wisdom of contemporary social science, it is clear that political institutions consist of more than structures, functions, and procedures. The static institutional skeleton springs to life and takes on direction and purpose only when human beings assume their roles as professional administrators. The attitudes, values, and prejudices which they bring to the enterprise will define the ultimate character of the institution and will determine the fate and the future of citizens who are subject to its control, influence, and resources. If, as democratic theory imperatively demands, that fate and that future are to be self-determined by each citizen then the bureaucratic role, like the institutional structure, must be constitutionalized. Its power must be defined, limited and controlled so that the judgment of the citizen, not the expertise of the professional, will ultimately determine the thrust of policy. How well, and to what degree does the modern welfare state recognize this imperative?
Lord Russell recently remarked that: "In every organization there are two purposes: one, the ostensible purpose for which the organization exists; the other, the increase in the power of its officials. This second purpose is very likely to make a stronger appeal to the officials concerned than the general public purpose they are expected to serve."11 A most dramatic illustration of this insight is to be found in recent work of the Commission on Standards and Accreditation of Services for the Blind. Intended to erect a comprehensive and ultimately a compulsory structure of principles, practices, and policies to govern the entire domain of blind services, these standards are permeated with the same concern for professional self-interest and guildism that so unfortunately characterize the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, or the National Education Association. Thus, COMSTAC standards for the training of agency personnel place excessive, if not exclusive, emphasis upon advanced professional degrees in special education, social work, psychological counseling, and the like. There is simply no recognition that the problems of the blind, and indeed of all disadvantaged groups, are as much occasioned by social prejudice and a malfunctioning economy as they are by personal handicap, that training in the law, humanities, and social sciences may better equip professional workers to cope with problems of this general character, and that, finally, there is a growing dissatisfaction in academic circles with the vocationalization of professional graduate education. The situation created by COMSTAC's standards for professional training bears a striking resemblance to the relationship which has long existed between the teaching profession and the colleges of education.
Or, consider the standards for Vocational Services. Although they specify in great detail the jurisdiction, procedures and power of the various specialists who counsel, rehabilitate, train, and presumably place the blind in the job market, there is not one word about the rights of the clients themselves. Presumably they have none. Indeed, it became clear at the National Conference on Standards held last November in New York that blind clients were not free to seek and accept some services while rejecting others. The agency must, of course, make every effort to persuade the client that its plan for his life is more feasible than his own. Failing this, however, the total range of agency benefits and services are presumably to be denied him.
Or, again, consider the Standards on Agency Function and Structure. Here also is paternalism institutionalized. The agency's governing or advisory board is to represent a variety of community interests--except the organized blind themselves! Nor is there any requirement that the Board continuously consult with the blind, organized or otherwise. There is no mention of the need to recruit and train for agency leadership those persons who know most intimately the needs, problems, and aspirations of the blind-namely, the blind themselves. Such exclusionary policies are fatally inconsistent with the revolution in expectations, self-determination, and policy participation which has swept the Negro into the directive center of the civil rights struggle and the poor into positions of leadership in the War on Poverty. Those responsible for shaping general welfare and rehabilitation programs will ignore this revolution at their peril.
Or, finally, consider the dominant thrust of the COMSTAC standards when viewed collectively. Explicitly and implicitly, the connecting thread which binds them together and gives them ideational unity is that of benevolent custodialization . Such custodialization is an inevitable consequence of excessive preoccupation with the objectives and goals of professional expertise and training. Counseling, medical and mental therapy, attitudinal adjustment, retraining, the operation of sheltered shops, etc. have become--if I read these standards correctly--ultimate ends in themselves. But they are professional goals, not the goals of that vast majority of the blind who seek independence and fully remunerative employment. What emerges from these standards, if I may again borrow Lord Russell's language, is not a general public concern to strengthen and to facilitate the independently determined purposes of blind clients, but rather, a private concern to pursue the professional purposes of the "officers."
If these standards governing services for the blind are an accurate reflection of the prevailing general atmosphere in welfare and rehabilitation work, and I am afraid that they are, then the question posed at the outset of this section of my remarks must be given a negative answer. That is, we have failed to constitutionalize, to make responsible, the bureaucratic role, just as we have failed to constitutionalize the legal structure and the administrative process of the social service state.
If it is generally true that unconstitutionalized power has jeopardized, for the mass of our disadvantaged citizens, the rights to privacy, equality, procedural due process, freedom of movement and expression, and the right to personal independence, then the final question to be asked is whether the 1965 Rehabilitation Amendments have sought to remedy these fatal defects, or whether they have confirmed and extended them.
To ask the question is to answer it. Vocational rehabilitation, however vital it may be to its clients and professional practitioners, occupies a rather narrow segment of the welfare spectrum. The 1965 Amendments, moreover, were not designed to revolutionize even this modest portion of the whole. It would thus be quite unrealistic to expect those Amendments to shake the foundations or breach the restricting superstructure of the welfare edifice. And, indeed, they do not. Rather, they conform to and reinforce the existing framework, both in terms of what they do and what they do not do. A few examples will serve to illustrate the sins of commission.
Although the new federal regulations liberalize the means test by adding reader services for the blind and interpreter services for the deaf to these services previously exempted from this restrictive eligibility qualification, nevertheless the states may, and probably will, continue to apply the test to a broad range of other rehabilitation services and benefits. Thus to permit the perpetuation of this Elizabethan concept guarantees that the applicant's rights to equality, privacy, and procedural due process will continue to be compromised.
The 1965 Amendments place heavy, if not dominant, emphasis upon the proliferation, expansion, equipment, and modification of sheltered shops to serve as primary vocational training resources. This is done, moreover, without regard to the serious questions which have been raised about the suitability of sheltered shops, either as places of terminal employment or as effective vocational training establishments. The non-competitive shop, often paying fantastically sub-standard wages under the protection of an FLSA exemption certificate, its work force denied the advantages of unionization and the services of the NLRB, has all too frequently become, for its inmates, a dead-end backwash in the stream of economic life. It is highly doubtful whether these shops can create a realistic and competitively-oriented training environment at the same time as they continue to function as marginal reservoirs for fulltime, inadequate and noncompetitive employment. It seems clear that they cannot do so unless and until working conditions and rewards are raised to a generally competitive level by legislatively requiring them to conform to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and other protective laws. The 1935 Amendments, however, make no such effort to provide shop workers with the equal protection of the laws.
Finally, there is, in the 1965 Amendments, a sharp but narrow focus on services for the disabled: extension and improvement grants for innovation of services and for service training are extended and expanded by increased injections of federal funds; new project grants to expand rehabilitation services are instituted; new and extended services are to be utilized to determine the rehabilitation potential of severely handicapped persons; services provided by rehabilitation centers are to be strengthened and increased with much emphasis placed upon medical diagnosis and therapy. These services may be, depending upon the case, necessary adjuncts to the ultimate purpose of placing the disabled person in the job market. But, if they become professional objectives largely unrelated to the employment purpose they are designed to serve, then they represent only a misdirection of funds and energy. It is disturbing to note in these Amendments such a fixation with means and so little attention to ends.
These sins of commission, however numerous they may be, are relatively insignificant when measured against the sins of omission. American rehabilitation policy and programs are inextricably entangled in the broader structures of the Welfare State. The character of rehabilitation, its virtues and defects are largely determined by the assumptions and principles which tie the whole structure together. The critical inventory of constitutional protections which, as I have attempted to demonstrate, are so conspicuously absent in the law of the Welfare State are, not surprisingly, also missing in the law of rehabilitation. Needless to say, the 1965 Amendments did not supply them. For my concluding remarks, then, let me specify briefly these sins of omission.
If the ultimate objective of vocational rehabilitation is independence, economic and otherwise, for the disabled person, then a carefully drawn, specific, and exhaustive Bill of Rights must be incorporated into rehabilitation law. The client's right to privacy, to select and refuse services according to his own values and judgments, to the entire range of services and benefits without the demeaning qualification of a means test, to full procedural protections, including the right to legal counsel, in his dealings with rehabilitation agencies, to be free of unreasonable classifications--these are but a few of the basic liberties which remain to be vindicated. If these rights are considered indispensable to the independence of ordinary citizens, they are all the more so for the disabled.
If full integration of the disabled into the social and economic life of the community is a further basic objective of vocational rehabilitation, then at least three additional amendments must be made to the law of welfare. First, public funds and energies must be employed to encourage and to assist the self-organization of disabled persons. The disabled, like the poor and the racial minorities, are the interest groups most directly affected by support programs designated to aid them. Like all other interest groups, they have a need for and a right to participate effectively in the formulation and administration of those programs. A second, and related demand, involves the recruitment and utilization of the disabled in the administration of rehabilitation and other welfare programs. Such persons can contribute the insight understanding so necessary to vitalize and expand the professional worker's orientation. Third, and of transcendant importance, rehabilitation energy and resources must be redirected toward the social and economic causes of dependency. The disabled have much in common with the racial minorities in that both groups are excluded from the main-streams of opportunity by public prejudice and stereotypic attitudes toward their competence. Thus, far greater efforts are needed in the area of job placement and public education, including a Fair Employment Practices Act to forbid discrimination against the disabled in the job market. At the very least, federal funds should be withheld from any state whose laws arbitrarily deny public employment to various categories of disabled persons. The ubiquity of such laws, of course, is well known to you.
Finally, if it is a basic purpose of rehabilitation to supply those services which will effectively facilitate full economic independence, then the issue of income maintenance demands immediate attention. Although not all the disabled are poor, the majority of them are. Adequate economic security at public expense is thus the first prerequisite to rehabilitation. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that even when available under the means test the level of public assistance, rehabilitation maintenance, and other conditioned welfare grants is totally inadequate for economic security or emotional independence. Only a guaranteed annual wage, a negative income tax, or some other form of unqualified income maintenance providing for a middle class standard of living can meet the first and most elementary need of those seeking rehabilitation and competitive employment. Among all the differentiated and individualized services provided and financed by the rehabilitation program, income maintenance is logically, emotionally and economically the most significant, largely determining the effectiveness of all the others.
Yet, while increasing amounts of federal money are appropriated to raise the level of these other services, nothing is done to expand and elevate the level of maintenance payments. This seems tragically self-defeating.
The 1965 Amendments, it is said, promise a New Life to America's disabled citizens. If the ultimate objectives of rehabilitation are the full independence and complete integration of the disabled into the community, then the life of the disabled must be made substantially equivalent to that of the ordinary citizen. That is to say, the powers to which he is subjected must be constitutionalized, the goals which he pursues must be of his own choosing, and the opportunities open to him must be unencumbered by arbitrary restrictions and prejudices. Thus defined, the New Life cannot be achieved by tinkering with old rehabilitation programs and policies. These are intimate parts of a total welfare structure which oppressively compromises political liberty, economic security, and, above all, personal freedom. The essential conditions which define a New Life for the disabled are identical to those which define the customary life of the able. And chief among these is liberty, created by equal laws, not custody imposed by arbitrary laws: Libertas, not Custodia legis.
FOOTNOTES
1. James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes On a Native Son (1961), p. 115.
2. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (1940), pp. 256-257.
3. R. H. Tawney, Equality ( 1931) , p. 246.
4. Charles A. Reich, "Individual Rights and Social Welfare; The Emerging Legal Issues," 74 Yale L. J. 1245-1257 (June, 1965).
5. Parrish v. The Civil Service Commission of Alameda County, 51 Cal. Rptr. 589 (1966).
6. Edwards v. California , 314 U.S. 160 (1941).
7. 314 U.S. 160, 184-185.
8. 60 Cal. 2d 716, 388 P. 2d 720 (1964).
9. California Welfare and Institutions Code, sec. 6650.
10. 60 Cal. 2d 716, 719; 388 P. 2d 720, 723.
11. Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956), pp. 202-210.