Music:
Live the life you want, nobody can stop you. Shoot for the sun, and break on through. So you're blind, you’ll be fine, we've got good news.
Voiceover:
The following message is brought to you by Mark Riccobono, President, National Federation of the Blind. Live the life you want.
Music:
You can live the life you want, yes, we know the truth.
Mark Riccobono:
Greetings, fellow Federationists. Today is Thursday, August 28th, 2025, and this is presidential release number 552. Welcome to the September release and Happy Labor Day to everybody across the Federation.
I am recording this, what you might think is a little early for September, and that's because Pam Allen and I, along with Roland Allen, and the Federation's chief of staff, Beth Braun, will be attending the World Blindness Summit and General Assembly of the World Blind Union next week.
I'll talk about that in a moment on this release, but we do have a number of things to share with our Federation chapters before we get to that. September is a busy month around the Federation. We move very quickly from summer into the fall convention season. In fact, we've already had a couple of affiliate conventions already here, in the month of August.
A few things I'd like to call your attention to, and the first is that now after Labor Day, Congress will be coming back from their recess and into session in Washington, DC and so it is a prime time for each and every one of us to talk to our members of Congress, our congressional offices, about our legislative priorities and the issues in front of us.
You will be receiving regular updates, weekly updates, from our advocacy and policy staff, and I urge every chapter to make this a priority, this important opportunity here, for us to create a wave of support for our work as we come into the end of the year, and there will be some important milestones that we want to hit.
For example, the proposed end of the telehealth benefits that we've done advocacy work on before, we've had a resolution on before, that deadline is set to expire on September 30th, so it’s important advocacy work, please pay attention to your emails and make it a regular part of your September schedule to be following up with members of Congress.
Of course, going into October, which is Blind Equality Achievement Month, and so I hope that each and every one of our chapters are planning an exciting, energizing event to build support for the local chapter and to educate people on the National Federation of the Blind.
There's endless possibilities on the things you can do. Please make your plans, but also let us know what your plans are by submitting information about your Blind Equality Achievement Month activities for 2025.
Now, if you're a Federation member who is seeking employment, I want to call your attention to the fact that the National Federation of the Blind 2025 Virtual Career Fair will be taking place on October 28th, 2025, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern Time, via Zoom.
Now, if you're seeking employment, this is a great opportunity. It is free to you, but it's also a great opportunity for our chapters to promote this in the local community, to get blind people to know about the National Federation of the Blind, but also about job opportunities. We know a lot of people are looking for work, so we want to get the word out.
This is free for all blind job seekers, and all you need to do is register for the event, and you will need to do that at nfb.org/employment. That's where you can get all of the information about the career fair, and you will need to register by October 14th to take part in the event, so two weeks in advance.
If you are or know of an employer who is interested in taking advantage of the talent that's out there and hiring some qualified blind people, go to the same URL, nfb.org/employment, to get more information.
Now, one of the things that we're talking about as we go into September is our National Federation of the Blind Coast-to-Coast Movement Challenge, and this is a great thing to consider as we think about Blind Equality Achievement Month, also. I want to encourage all members of the Federation to participate in this challenge, and there's a couple different ways you can do that.
One of them is through our Bay Bridge Run effort, which allows you to walk across the Bay Bridge here in Maryland, or to put together a virtual walk in solidarity of our Bay Bridge efforts, and chapters, members, affiliates can all participate in this, especially in the virtual component. You might, for example, put something together for White Cane Awareness Day.
Great opportunity to be out in the community and also support our movement challenge. You can learn more by visiting nfb.org/movers, nfb.org/movers. There will be an information session on September 16th at 8:00 PM Eastern Time via Zoom, so I encourage you to participate in that little kick-off rally to learn more about our coast to coast efforts, to give you just a few more details about the effort and how you can participate.
I want to thank our National Organization of Parents of Blind Children for again organizing the effort to walk across the Bay Bridge in Maryland, here. Now, don't let that scare you. If you think, "Well, I can't show up in Maryland," or, "That's a long way to walk," you can participate virtually over a period of time as well.
In person, the Bay Bridge run/walk will be on November 9th, Sunday, November 9th, here in Maryland, and virtually, you can participate anytime by completing your movement before November 9th.
You will be able to get information at that nfb.org/movers page, and of course, by participating in the September 16th event. In-person participation for the Bay Bridge run will cost 65 dollars. However, that fee will be waived if you raise 500 dollars to support the National Federation of the Blind.
We also, for our virtual participants, want you to go out and raise money to support the National Federation of the Blind and to support your walk or run. You can do either one. Please consider doing that and participating. It would be great to have at least one representative from every chapter participating in this effort, so that's my challenge to you.
Also, want to let you know that the Federation is participating in the California International Marathon on December 7th. Now, this effort is a little different. We have a core of individuals who are representing us in this marathon as blind ambassadors and helping to create awareness, but also to raise money for the Federation.
Our team in the California Marathon is led by Ken Duke of Utah and Roger Oberholster of California, both blind members of the Federation. They have many, many running accolades under their belt, and as everything we do, they are our blind leaders for this event.
This is really cool because we've also gotten nine other runners who have agreed to raise money for the National Federation of the Blind as part of their participation in the California International Marathon, so we have a team raising money, creating awareness in this marathon and supporting our coast-to-coast challenge, also, and this is a model that we're going to be hoping to use in the future.
Please come to our event on September 16th or visit the website, if for some reason you're hearing this after September 16th, to get involved. Want every chapter involved in our coast-to-coast challenge.
Now, I mentioned that we're going to the World Blind Union. The Federation has been engaged with blind people around the world really since the beginning of our movement. There are lots of examples in our national archives of discussions with blind people from around the world, and convention presentations, in the first couple decades of the Federation.
In the 1960s, the early 1960s, Dr. Jacobus tenBroek endeavored to create the International Federation of the Blind as a way to have a vehicle for collaboration between blind-led movements around the world, and we have been central to that. Our movement, of course, is in the United States, and we've built a powerful base here. As we know, on a daily basis, there is so, so much more to be done here.
We do get benefit by interacting with blind people from around the world. We get perspective and new ideas, and of course, what we have built, not just our movement, our grassroots movement, but our training programs, our methodologies, our training centers, really are admired all over the world. We, as part of our participation in the World Blind Union, we share that perspective, but also, we gain from learning about what's happening around the world.
We've supported opportunities to create synergy between blind movements around the world. The IFB was never really something that got off the ground, especially after Dr. tenBroek died. In the 1980s, there was a renewed effort to combine a number of entities, including the IFB, into what became the World Blind Union, and that organization now, after 40 years, is really the vehicle for collaboration around the world between organizations of the blind like ours here in the United States.
The Federation has been a central part of supporting the world organization, especially here in our region, the North American Caribbean region. We have often been in the leadership of the region. We hosted the World General Assembly in 2016, in Orlando. You can read about that in the Braille Monitor, and many of our leaders were central to that effort being a success.
Earlier this month, I accepted the election of President of the North American Caribbean region, so the Federation is again providing leadership directly to our region and the world organization. I have accepted that commitment for the next four years.
Pam Allen and I will be serving as delegates representing the Federation in Brazil at the World Blindness Summit and the General Assembly of the World Blind Union. The General Assembly meets every four years, and similar to the Federation Convention, the General Assembly is the legislature of the World Blind Union.
It's an important time for our world collaboration, even as there's a lot of talk about the United States isolating from other countries. We learn a lot from engaging with blind leaders around the world, the struggles they have, but also the opportunities that they have created in some spaces where we have not.
For example, there are places where Braille on consumer packaging is the norm, in places where you go. We need that in the United States. The flip side of that is, a lot of the technological innovation comes from the United States, and so these countries look to us to hold a high standard, making sure that these technology companies, the major world technology companies, are truly including non-visual access in a meaningful way into their products.
There's a lot to consider when we talk about world blind movement efforts. I want to assure everybody that my commitment continues to be to this movement and our work, and my goal with our leadership in the world organization is to share our authentic wisdom and also find opportunities where we can learn from, benefit from, and bring the wisdom of blind people and their movements from around the world to our effort here in the United States.
I look forward to reporting on our work at the World Blind Union. I'm sure Pam and I will put together an article for the Braille Monitor, and we'll see what opportunities we can create in the next four years of the world organization.
I do have a couple of Federation family notes here to share with you on this release from Georgia. We have learned of the passing of Marvin Byrd, a long-time member of the National Federation of the Blind of Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Chapter.
Marvin passed away on Thursday, July 31st, after a long illness. We also have learned of the passing of Elizabeth Holmes from Georgia. She passed away in the month of August. She was a long-time member, also very active with the blinded veterans, and she will be missed by our Fountain City chapter in Georgia.
From Iowa, our president, Helen Mejia, says that it is with a heavy heart and much sadness that I need to inform you of the passing of our oldest member, Nyla Celia Crain, who was 97 years old. Although it was not completely unexpected, it is a great blow to the blind of Iowa who have come to appreciate and adore Nyla's spirit and energy, and passion for the Federation.
She did not come to know the Federation until she was 91 years old, when she was starting to deal with vision loss, and unlike so many people of that age, she took it on as a challenge and was eager to figure out what to do about it.
She found, fortunately, the National Federation of the Blind, and used that as her inspiration to be independent and continued to live a full life. I'm told that that includes learning the Unified English Braille code at age 93, so she will be sorely missed in our Iowa affiliate.
From South Carolina, we've learned of the passing of Barbara Baxter, who passed away on July 31st. Barbara was a member of our Sumter chapter, and from Arizona, we've learned of the passing of Dale Hamm, who most recently lived in Tempe, Arizona, but in the past was also very active in our Alabama affiliate.
I urge you to keep all of these people in your thoughts and prayers as we move into the month of September. I do have one joyous piece of news for this release, and that comes from California, where our affiliate president, Tim Elder, reports that Jamie Crane recently gave birth to Elio Anthony Crane.
Now, Tim didn't provide me with the dates or the stats on Elio's birth, but he did say that this joyous news was in furtherance of the Silicon Valley chapter's membership development initiative. He said he was just kidding, but we do want to extend great joy and congratulations to Jamie and to all of the family on this wonderful news.
I'm told everybody is doing well. If you've been to our national convention, undoubtedly you've come across the joyous sounds of Jamie and her kiddos traversing the convention and being actively involved, and we'll look forward to welcoming Elio to the convention in the future, but for now, we welcome Elio as the newest member of the National Federation of the Blind.
Finally, speaking of welcoming, I would like to welcome Shane Ostermeyer of Idaho and Mark and Carrie Renwick of Florida as the newest members of our Dream Makers Circle. Our Dream Makers Circle is a way to make a commitment to support the National Federation of the Blind by putting us in your will, or some other end-of-life gifts, so thank you very much to all of you who are members of our Dream Makers Circle and who have made that commitment.
That brings me to the end of this release. There's clearly a lot going on in the Federation, especially as we go into the fall convention season, so thank you for your efforts to build our organization, and please get involved in the national items that I've talked about here on this release.
So to close this release, we do have some of the customary endings and they go like this. Why do birds fly south in September? Well, because it is faster than walking, of course. Why did Humpty-Dumpty have a great fall? Well, it was to make up for the miserable summer.
In honor of Talk like a Pirate Day, which is the favorite holiday of our greater Baltimore chapter president, why don't pirates shower before they walk the plank? Because they'll just wash up on shore.
Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.
Voiceover:
The preceding message was brought to you by Mark Riccobono, President, National Federation of the Blind, 410-659-9314, [email protected]. Follow President Riccobono on Mastodon. Just search for @President at nfb.social. Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.