Announcer:
Welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast presented by the National Federation of the Blind, the transformative membership and advocacy organization of Blind Americans. Live the life you want.
Melissa Riccobono:
Hello and welcome to the Nation's Blind Podcast. I'm Melissa Riccobono, and I am joined today by a gentleman that we haven't heard from in a little while, but he is not a stranger to the podcast. Here is Chris Danielsen. How are you, Chris?
Chris Danielsen:
I'm doing great. It's great to be back on the podcast. I've shifted roles a little bit and primarily working on the Braille Monitor now, of course, but it's fun to have a chance to come back on the podcast, so it's great to be here and great to talk with you, Melissa. How are you?
Melissa Riccobono:
I'm doing well. I'm actually traveling in Wisconsin, so I have been enjoying time with my family and I got a chance this morning to be with my great niece for a little while, so that was very fun. She just turned a year old, so family time is wonderful, but we're not here to talk about family time, although incidentally we do have a family member of mine on the podcast, so that actually worked out really well.
Not only are we joined by Chris Danielsen, but we are also joined by the president of the National Federation of the Blind, Mark Riccobono. I am going to just let him have the floor so that he can begin the discussion and sort of frame what we'd like to share with you today.
President Riccobono:
Well, I appreciate that. In a time like this where there is, I would say a lot of political discourse happening, we have a challenge as the National Federation of the Blind because we are America's civil rights membership organization of blind people, and people expect us to speak out on issues related to programs, services that impact blind people.
Our membership is a very diverse cross section of blind people who come from all perspectives on almost any issue you can think of, and it's difficult in any environment to advocate for something because generally someone else wants to make it about something that it's not. So a lot of times when we speak out as the blind of America on an issue, there's someone else who wants to make it about something else. And for us it's always about blind people. It's where I like to say we're always partisan, we're always partisan for blind people.
We're not particularly interested in whether an issue is conservative issue or liberal issue. For us, it's does the policy being considered, does the issue being considered have a direct impact on blind people? And if so, what should it be? So that's the framing for why we're here today. Talk about that because especially in today's general political environment, I would say a lot of people (chuckles) tend to make any kind of public statement, a political statement, either for or against somebody, and we wanted the opportunity to talk about the work that we do as a diverse organization and how it is always driven by and intended to benefit blind people.
Chris Danielsen:
Yeah, I think that's a really good framing. And it is difficult, right? Because people want to read into any action that any organization takes. It seems like they want to read into it, "Oh, well, you're here or there on the political spectrum," and it's not really about that for us. Now, obviously it may seem like that because we may be responding to a particular thing that a particular political entity has done or failed to do, but the reality is we're just concerned about the policy implications for blind people.
So, let's just dive right into it and let's just talk for example, about how we have responded and why we have responded to the, I guess what I'll call it is the debate about the future of the United States Department of Education.
President Riccobono:
Yeah, that's a great place to start, Chris. And what I would say is, just to put a fine point on what you said, it's not as simple as saying we're not a partisan organization. We don't get into party politics in America. It has to be a conscious choice on our part, and it has to mean that as leaders, as elected leaders in the organized blind movement, we have to listen to what the members of the Federation are saying, talking about, dealing with, and then also make very conscious decisions about not just the policy, but the actions to be taken.
And we can talk a lot about historical examples of that. So I don't want to make it sound like it's easy (laughs) to not get dragged into some things that even as everyday Americans sometimes who happen to be blind, we have opinions about many things.
But as elected leaders of the organized blind movement, we have a very specific responsibility to the organization and to its members to make sure that our actions are always partisan for blind people and don't get dragged into what sometimes becomes political argument for the sake of that. So elimination of the Department of Education is an interesting one because fact of the matter is there are a lot of important programs that impact blind people that are currently housed at the Department of Education.
So for historical context, of course, there was a time when very important programs for blind people were not housed at the Department of Education because it didn't exist. And our concern is those programs, and in fact, we came to our Washington Seminar in February, our annual time of bringing our members together to do advocacy work in DC. And we knew, well, we already knew that elimination of the Department of Education was going to be a topic in Washington DC.
And so we at a leadership level talked about, well, what is the Federation's position on the Department of Education? Well, organizationally, we don't have a policy. We don't really care how government decides to organize itself. At least so far, the convention's never taken an opinion on that. But we do care about the programs. And so we identified the key programs within the Department of Education and have said to Congress to the administration that those programs need to be protected.
And furthermore, we'd like to have a voice, a say in what the plan is, where those programs land, what they look like, how they could be better, because we always want to have the blind at the table in having a say like that. So I know that one of the areas that we have been vocal about is that one of the first steps was to dramatically reduce the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education.
We don't have a particular opinion about how many offices there should be and how many people there should be employed. But we do know that violations of federal law as it relates to blind people that are enforced by the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education is already dramatically slowed, dramatically underfunded, and to eliminate those offices further will further erode our ability to help blind students for blind students in higher education settings to get their concerns heard when their universities implement an inaccessible learning management system.
And so we've spoken out quite vigorously that we're very concerned about it. Now, maybe there's a better plan out there and we will praise that plan if it gets implemented. But since we don't have any idea what the plan is or where it's going, all we can say as blind people is that we were concerned, very concerned about what happens to the enforcement of our rights.
Melissa Riccobono:
Absolutely. And very similar for Social Security, right? Do you want to talk a little bit about the lawsuit that was just filed?
President Riccobono:
To begin, let me remind us that one of the principle motivating factors for the development of the National Federation of the Blind bringing together blind people from various states was having a voice in the National Social Security program, which was of course developed in the 1930s. And we came together in 1940 and Social Security, making sure that blind people, our interests were represented and that those programs really created opportunity for us, very important part of our organizing.
So we've been giving opinions on what social security and the agency should do since 1940. We also know that a lot of blind people have difficulty with the Social Security rules. The Social Security Administration often gets the rules wrong. There are very specific rules related to blind people, for example, receiving Social Security Disability Income, and a lot of times the wrong rules are provided. So the customer service element is really important.
Also, we've worked closely on making sure to eliminate barriers in social security, whether it is going back a long ways, making sure blind people can get accessible documents, whether it's your statement of your benefits or that sort of thing. And then more recently we've worked to eliminate barriers, especially during the pandemic where the only option for applying for benefits was actually giving a physical, what they call a wet ink signature, and then taking your document and dropping it in the mail.
And during the pandemic, that was a disparity for blind people, other people with disabilities. We worked to get really good changes at Social Security for verification of identity and electronic signatures. And all of these things lead up to now where the current effort is to reduce the customer service function at the Social Security Administration. And we know, we already know this is going to have an impact on blind people because blind people were having trouble before the reductions in staff.
And we know that the closure of offices is a problem for blind people because we face transportation difficulties and disparities already. And so we looked hard at what to do about that, and we decided to join in this case with other organizations who have an interest in this issue, other disability organizations and also organizations that deal primarily with senior citizens because these really are the populations of people who are going to be harmed by these reductions.
And so we joined together and we thought carefully about the right approach, but the changes were so dramatic and so fast, and we were already hearing from blind people who, I mean, we have people who have been waiting for a year or more to hear about their application for Social Security Disability Income. So these are blind people who have been in the workforce, they've paid into the workforce, they're now in a situation for whatever reason, they're clearly eligible for Social Security Disability Income, and they've been waiting a year.
And that is the exact kind of barrier that we're concerned about. In this case, we felt it was necessary to bring a case because swift action is needed. We don't have time for the standard advocacy work. In fact, we don't even have a disability point of contact at the White House at the moment, which we've had in almost every administration going back many decades now.
So we felt that a lawsuit was needed, and fortunately, we're already seeing, and it's not just because of our work, there's a lot of activity around social security around the country, but I think our lawsuit helps. We're seeing now Social Security Administration saying they're walking back some of those cuts and we're going to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that really happens.
Chris Danielsen:
Yeah, I think that's really important. And again, it's because of the impact that social security has on blind people and social security has always been frustrating, at least in my experience. But we don't need it to become even more frustrating and even less responsive. And another issue where we've weighed in and we talked about it at Washington Seminar and we are engaging about it, is library services.
And again, to me, that issue is not about the structure of the government because we talked at Washington Seminar about the Institute for Museum and Library Services, but that as an agency as such hasn't always existed. It was created in 1996, but there is federal involvement in the provision of library services to blind people and to others as a matter of fact, and I still in my current role, see the reports about news items that may affect blind people.
And we're seeing in the wake of the effort to close the Institute for the Museum and Library Services, we're seeing reports of libraries that are having to cut back staff and are having to shut down particular programs. And they're not all libraries for the blind, but some of them are. So again, this is an issue where we needed to weigh in because whatever the structure is behind it, we have to have the library services. And I believe in that case, what we did was we reached out to the appropriators and basically said, how are you planning to make sure that the funds are appropriated so that library services continue?
President Riccobono:
So one of the things, and I think this came up in some of the Facebook comments with listeners, and I think we're going to get to some of those, is a concern that, well, maybe the Federation's not telling the whole story. So let's make sure that everybody who's listening really understands that the National Library Service for the Blind, which is actually part of the Library of Congress, so it's under the jurisdiction of Congress, is the library entity that helps to produce Braille audiobooks in an accessible format. It's not a library in that it doesn't lend books to anybody.
The National Library Service provides those materials at no charge to state libraries, or they're often called regional libraries. And so in Maryland, we have the Maryland Library for the Blind and Physically Disabled. Those entities exist in states to the extent that the state has through its government processes, developed a library for the blind. There are states, take Wyoming for example, which does not have a library for the blind and has contracted out its library services to the Utah Library for the Blind.
So Utah, thankfully provides library services to blind people in Wyoming. In many of these states, blind people have advocated for state funding for the library, which is wonderful. In a lot of states, there's a lot of competing interests for library services.
And so in some places, Minnesota, I believe is one where the library for the blind, the system there, they have a hundred percent of the funding for the Minnesota Library for the Blind comes from the federal dollars that flow from IMLS. And so in some states, the impact might only be partial, maybe not at all, because the state's really fully funding the library for the blind.
But in a state like Minnesota, it's a hundred percent. And the issue becomes, it's not like a blind person has the option to just go down to the local library and get their Braille books and get accessible formats because most public libraries don't offer that. We'd love it if every library did. So we're in a difficult position. We may or may not have an opinion about IMLS, how it operates, but those dollars and the elimination of those dollars without a plan are going to have real impact on blind people's ability to get information, books, resources, thinking about if you're a blind student in one of these states and you need books from the library for the blind for your schooling, an immediate shutdown is going to have really dramatic impacts.
So you're right, Chris, in that case, we wrote directly to the appropriations committees. Of course, they're responsible for that anyway, the Federation, we don't care in one sense, if those dollars go directly to the states as some sort of block grant program or whether they flow through an agency. But right now, those states and those libraries are left not knowing what's going to happen. And that means blind people don't know where they're going to get their books.
Chris Danielsen:
Exactly. And it's important to remember that really is the case, because some listeners might be thinking, well, "Yeah, but the NLS has BARD and you can download the Braille and audiobooks," and that is true. And in that case, you are getting them directly from NLS. But the fact is that depending on the technology that you have available to you and the ability that you have with it, or just the other factors, BARD may not be a resource. And not everything is on BARD.
I mean, some libraries, some state agencies that deal with blindness and sometimes they are libraries, are also doing things like helping to provide school materials, as you said, that aren't necessarily going to be up on the BARD site as I understand it. So there's lots of pieces to this, and because we're an organization that advances the lives of all blind people, we can't have blind people left behind.
So we can't just say, "Well, the NLS is chugging along and it's run by the Library of Congress and BARD is still up, so we're not going to worry about it." We're not in a position where we can say that.
President Riccobono:
But as an organization, of course, we should think about, well, what kind of access do we want blind people to have, and what do we want to advocate for? Is the system we have through NLS the best one we could have? Do we want something different? And what are the trade-offs for that? And I think the beauty of the National Library Service System, and of course as blind people as the organized blind movement, we have significantly shaped it over the last fifty plus years, including the fact that when there are hearings about appropriations for the National Library Service, we testify.
And sometimes we bring many people to those hearings, and often the committee staff say, "Oh, we never see citizens come in interested in this particular appropriation." But the point being, we don't have to settle for what we have today. We should always be thinking about is there a better system that benefits blind people?
And for that matter, we're for saving America money too. We don't want to be a burden, but we also believe that we contribute to America in a better way when we have equal access. And knowing that we don't have equal access, something like the National Library Service is an amazing way to bring that to scale, and it's actually more efficient for the country overall. So really just wanted to make the point. We can always change our mind about what the system should be, and that's what we should do as an organization.
Melissa Riccobono:
That's a really good point. I was just going to say really quickly that BARD, you don't usually get your BARD account unless your state library can verify that you are a member, and they often have to be the ones to reset your password if you forget it, and all sorts of things. So even if NLS is chugging along, people that want a new account or people that need help with their account might have a lot of problems even with BARD chugging along.
So that's definitely a problem. And I guess the other thing is you were talking about people thinking that maybe we're not telling the whole story. I just want to point out that newsline, NFB-NEWSLINE® is a way to get lots of different sources for news, different perspectives, different editorials.
We have access to over 500 publications on NFB-NEWSLINE®. So that's a really, really great resource at any time to read local, national, international news and then figure out the whole story as much as you can piece it together and do that research and not just rely on one source or social media to get news stories. So I think that's really important.
Chris Danielsen:
It is really important. And I think another thing that is important, and this goes back to President Riccobono's point, is that we do listen to our members. And so as we inform ourselves, all of us about what is going on, we do and should exchange ideas about, well, is this the best system and what do we want ultimately in this environment of change?
It can seem like there are not, but maybe there are opportunities to increase efficiency and to make sure that services are delivered in a better way to us. But we're the ones who need to be engaged and talking about that because as we always say, we are the nation's blind. We are the people that have the lived experience and the expertise to design these things.
So really being engaged is not an option. And we can express concern that things are not being done or that we don't know how they're being done and what the plan for them is. But we can also say, here's an opportunity to build an even better system and a system that uses our nation's resources wisely, but also benefits blind people and gets more of us into the mainstream of society.
Melissa Riccobono:
It reminds me a lot of the Help America Vote Act that happened because the 2000 election had difficulties, and we knew that election reform ballot reform were going to be on the table. And so we as the nation's blind jumped in and said, when you're talking about this, don't forget about the blind. We need a secret ballot just like everybody else.
We deserve that right as citizens. And so I think that just over and over, this has really been what has helped us to make things better for blind people over all the years that we've been here, really taking advantages of those opportunities.
Chris Danielsen:
You're right about that, of course, Melissa, but we don't even have to just look to the past because we know right now that there is going to be a discussion of taxes and tax reform on the table. And so we are trying once again, to get the Accessible Technology Affordability Act folded into that discussion and say, hey, while we're talking about how the tax system can work better for everyone, let's talk about making it easier for blind people to afford our own technology so that we have more opportunity. So we're always looking for those synergies, and we're hoping to see that legislation folded into a tax package because we know that's on the table.
President Riccobono:
So I want to bring us back to this idea of our organization being steered by blind people. And I think what happens in today's environment is some people, they dip into Facebook and they figure if they comment on a post that the Federation has put there, that they're giving their feedback. And of course, that's not really engaging with the organized blind movement. And this is why a lot of things that we do as an organization come up through our local chapters and our affiliate conventions happen through discussions at our national convention.
And a lot of these ideas are shaped over time. So I know there was a comment about our statement of concern about the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, which said, "Well, what's wrong with education being managed by the states?" Our statement doesn't say anything about that. In fact, organizationally we don't have an opinion. If it's going to be managed by the states, we're still going to require the same level of oversight and protection for blind students in those schools.
In the same way, we're also very critical of the Department of Education and have been for a long time on certain issues. The Department of Education has responsibility for overseeing the Randolph Shepherd Act, which protects and creates business opportunities for blind people. Our organization, our Association of Blind Merchants as part of the National Federation of the Blind, has been exceedingly frustrated with the Department of Education for, I don't know, maybe decades now. And I would say rather weak enforcement of certain aspects of the protections that we believe exist in the Randolph Shepherd Act.
And there's some great staff at the Department of Ed, but the department structure as a whole has not viewed the Randolph Shepherd priority as one of its primary concerns, even though there's great competent staff at Department of Ed working on that program. So maybe it'd be better at Department of Labor, maybe it'd be better in another agency where it's not a sideshow, but they really view it as an opportunity to create business opportunities for blind people to contribute their time, talent, and taxes to the efforts of America.
Melissa Riccobono:
Absolutely. Well, we've been talking a lot. Why don't we take a quick break for an ad and then we'll come back on the flip side.
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Melissa Riccobono:
Alright, we are back. Are we ready for social media questions or do we have other things that we want to talk about before we get there? Chris and President Riccobono?
Chris Danielsen:
I'm certainly happy to hear from people that have commented on social media.
President Riccobono:
Let's do it.
Melissa Riccobono:
Alright, great. So we asked our followers on social media what concerns they had for the organized blind movement. And so here are a few responses and President Riccobono certainly feel free to comment on these and give your views. Veronica from California said, "I have lots of concerns, don't know quite how to answer this question. And even if I did, I don't feel like I would be heard." What would your response be to, and I'm sure Veronica's probably not alone.
President Riccobono:
Well, I'm always disappointed when someone says that they don't feel like they're going to be heard, and I'm not sure of a particular strategy for dealing with that except to show that we're open to those conversations. Now, for me, I'm an elected leader elected by many blind people across the country, and I represent all of those blind people. So I try and I believe on behalf of our national board, all of our leaders try to be open to listening to the concerns of blind people and to trying to do something about those concerns.
There probably are concerns that we can't effectively address. There might be things that I would be interested in doing, but our organizational policy might say we can't, which means we have to take some steps to get political support to do that. The other thing I would offer is if someone is seeking a safe space to have a conversation, let's work on setting up that safe space.
But it's easy to not have a conversation by assuming that the people in power aren't going to do anything about it. I believe that our leadership has a track record. I'll just speak for myself that I have a track record of being open to all sorts of difficult conversations over the last almost eleven years that I've served in this office.
And whether that's personally taking someone's phone call or engaging with them in another way or in some other forum, I don't think I've ever ducked the question and it's not so much answering the questions. That's also an opportunity to hear the concerns, as leaders in the organized blind movement we need to hear people's concerns so that that can shape what we do.
I don't know if Veronica's a member, but any member in the Federation has the opportunity to share concerns. It's welcomed, invited, and in fact, important that it informs what we do.
Now sometimes I know it's challenging because we might not be able to address the specific matter as quickly as we might like, but I would want Veronica and anybody else to know that at least from the perspective of the national board, we want to hear those concerns.
We want to engage with them, we want to do what we can to create an environment where people feel like they can raise concerns. Now, I know that in an environment like Facebook, not the best place to raise concerns because there's always someone else somewhere who's ready to pounce on it as a keyboard warrior.
Melissa Riccobono:
Absolutely. Very good point. Another California person, Jamie from California said, "I feel the movement doesn't have the teeth it used to. I worry that we've tried too hard to dispel the perception that we are militant when the actions that earned us the description in history, serve the movement and the people in it very well. And now we are not as unified." Any thoughts about that?
Chris Danielsen:
Well, I mean, my thought would be taking aggressive action and being unified certainly do go together, but we also should recognize that we should be militant when we have to, and we should use other tools when we have the opportunity to. We can't be militant all the time because a lot of times today, we're the ones that set the table. We have created the reputation that we're not just knocking on the door from the outside.
People do come to us and sometimes we're having conversations behind the scenes that might make it more difficult for us to mobilize people to get out on the streets. I guess it depends on what you mean by militant. I believe we are as unified as ever. The problem is that because we have social media and other things, some people take the public kind of discussion discourse, personal opinions as meaning that blind people as a whole are less unified than they used to be.
And I think that's a function of the current tools, not that the times are different. The times are different in that blind people have, we've achieved a lot as a movement, and there's not an urgency for us to be militant. Now that may suggest that we should look for those opportunities like getting out on the streets in San Francisco to protest Uber and Lyft, but I think we have more tools than we once did. We have more credibility than we once did.
To some extent, that means we don't have to use the more aggressive tools all the time. But to Jamie's point, maybe we should be using them more often than we do, and that is a great discussion for us to be having. The other thing I would add to that though is that because of the success we've had in the National Federation of the Blind, our members demand us to be involved in more and more areas of life.
And that doesn't mean that we have more people, more resources to do all of those things. So part of the problem is we do have to make hard choices. And if you look at the last couple of months, the things that we've commented on are very strategic and very pointed to the primary things that impact blind people.
I'm sure there are many other things some members would love us to take action on, but we only have so much time and resource, but this is a great conversation. Where should we be more aggressive? And this is something we should decide as a community, and then we need to mobilize people to be aggressive.
Melissa Riccobono:
Yeah, really good point. And actually this feeds really nicely into just exactly our next comment because Matt from Minnesota said, "I worry that younger generations of blind people will not see the need to join the organized blind movement. This is partially due to the fact that in some ways it is easier to be blind today than ever in history.
So younger people may not see the need to join or the benefit of having an organized blind movement, and the important work we do. As a result, we could slip backwards on progress or no longer be large enough to be an impactful force on affairs for the blind." And I mean, that's really interesting. I've had that type of experience myself with BELL Academy students where I was denied a ride when we were going from a grocery store because of my guide dog. And the young man said, "I didn't think that happened anymore." And I had to say, yes, it does. And that's a really good point and kind of feeds into what you were saying. Anymore comments about that?
President Riccobono:
Yeah, just that we've been very successful and I think we need to figure out new ways to help blind people know if we rest and let someone else do it for us, they're not going to do it for us as well as we would do it for ourselves. That's what we had before the National Federation of the Blind, where non blind people, all well-intentioned, were setting the priorities for programs for blind people.
And I think history, if you study it and politics and public policy, if you follow it, you'll find that things do ebb and flow. And if we don't have active engagement, it's very easy to lose ground. I think the only way to really help people understand that is to create opportunities to educate them on where we've been, what we've done, and how fragile the systems that we have are. It's very, very, very easy to tear something down, much harder to build it up.
So social security is a good example. A lot of times younger people say, "Oh, well, the Federation philosophy, why do we need Social Security Disability? I mean, we want to participate fully in society." Well, we do. And if when someone who's a successful banker suddenly goes blind, if their employer was going to pay them and pay for their adjustment to blindness training so they could integrate back into the workforce and welcome them back in, I agree, no need for Social Security Disability Income, right?
But I would say nine and a half out of ten times, well, I would say that never happens. And most of the time, people who go blind who have been in successful jobs, they have to struggle to get access to quality training to get back into the workforce. If we don't have that safety net there for them, where's the alternative?
So it's easy to speak ideally, but we have to teach the generation coming up about how the real world works, and we should always strive for the ideal and push toward that, but also recognize we have to live in the world today. That's where, as bad as the rehabilitation services have been in many places for blind people, we don't want to get rid of rehabilitation services. We want to make them better because that is the primary mechanism that blind people can use to get adjustment to blindness training and then be successful contributors to the American society.
Chris Danielsen:
It's so interesting because you were talking a little bit earlier about how things ebb and flow, and also about, depending on where you are in our country, things are not the same. That library services, for example, are different for you if you're in Wyoming than if you're in Maryland say. So it's always important when we're talking about whether people should be part of our movement and having that conversation, it's really important to remember that progress isn't always linear.
Things are not always working like they should be all across the board, even if they are working well in some places. And somebody was saying to me recently, there was a time when they thought maybe there would be a moment when the Federation wouldn't be needed any longer, but they've come to realize that it will always be needed because if we don't look out for our interest, other people are not going to, or at least they're not going to as effectively as we will ourselves. So I just think that's a really pivotal point, and it's a really important point to make.
Melissa Riccobono:
And I would say too, that's why we need our movement at all levels, right? Because if library services aren't great in Minnesota, of course we on a national level will speak about that and we'll help our Federationists in Minnesota and other blind people in Minnesota to make that better. But we also need that state affiliate to do work on the ground.
We also need local chapters to get people to hearings or to write letters. And so that's really the beauty of the movement is that it really is all levels and we need all the levels to make it work as well as it can. Well, I think this has been an incredible podcast, lots of wonderful information shared. And I guess before we go, President Riccobono or Chris, do either of you have anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners?
President Riccobono:
What I would say is that we live in a time where our country is pretty much equally divided. And because that's the environment, it's very difficult for the Federation not to get sucked into the current political discourse of the time. We should remember, history will show that we've always been partisan for blind people.
We've criticized almost every administration, I can't think of one actually that we haven't. We've taken action and pushback against political leaders, commentary, folks that make commentary, social media stars, all of the above from all walks of life for using blind people as their tropes, as they're examples of what not to do.
And we criticize all of those, whether you're from one party or the next, because it's not helpful to blind people. And at the end of the day, we shouldn't get lost in the day-to-day political arguments. We should stay focused on what are the policy implications for blind people and how do we shape them?
That feels increasingly difficult. But what gives me a lot of hope is that we have an organization where we have real everyday blind people living in local communities who all come together and we find a way, despite all the noise, we find a way to sit down and have the conversation about what's good for blind people and trying to bring the focus to what can we do to advance blind people. I think that gives us an opportunity to get out of the standard echo chambers we might be in as individuals.
I think the Federation offers us a really amazing environment to speak to people from backgrounds that we might not otherwise come across. You go to our National Convention and there are people with backgrounds that you may not have ever experienced, but for the Federation, and I think if we can lean into that, not get caught up in what's happening in the day-to-day news environment, and remember that we are all coming together to advance blind people in society despite our own personal views.
I think we'll be able to have some really amazing, sometimes difficult conversations. But at the end of the day, if we can still link arms and walk in the same direction, blind people are going to be better off for it.
Chris Danielsen:
Well, I got nothing after that (Chris and Melissa laugh). I mean, I can't really think of a more inspiring, motivational way to end the podcast. That, and I feel like the president should have the last word anyway, but I definitely think that that's where we need to be. That's what we need to focus on. And so there you go.
Melissa Riccobono:
Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much for listening to the Nation's Blind Podcast. As always, if you have things that you'd like to share with us, please be in touch via social media or email or our phone number. We always love to hear from you. And remember, you can live the life you want.
Chris Danielsen:
Blindness is not what holds you back.
Announcer:
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