What Happened in Tampa? Observations on Informational Picketing

What Happened in Tampa? Observations on Informational Picketing

The Braille Monitor

May 2003

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What Happened in Tampa?

Observations on Informational Picketing

by C. Edwin

Vaughan, Ph.D.

Ed

Vaughan

From the Editor: Ed

Vaughan is Professor Emeritus of the University of Missouri, and Dean of the

Russel Center for International Management and Professor of Sociology at Menlo

College in Atherton, California. He attended the informational picket outside

the meeting of the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the Blind

and Visually Impaired in December of 2002. A large part of the February 2003

issue of the Braille Monitor was devoted to reports of both the meeting

and the informational picket. Dr. Vaughan brings a sociologist's perspective

to what took place. This is what he says:

For the past thirty-five

years I have worked as a sociologist--two years at the University of Minnesota,

thirty-one years at the University of Missouri, and most recently two years

at Menlo College in Atherton, California. About twenty years ago I became interested

in the National Federation of the Blind as a social movement. After attending

an annual convention, I became a member and have been as active as my time has

permitted.

As

a sociologist I have been interested in the social and cultural arrangements

created for blind people in the United States and several other countries (see

Social and Cultural Perspectives on Blindness, Charles C. Thomas, 1998).

Several of my research projects and the resulting publications have focused

on the organizational sources of the social conflict which has developed between

the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and some agencies and special organizations

which have provided educational and rehabilitation services to blind people.

I

attended the informational picketing sponsored by the NFB at the December 13

and 14, 2002, summit meeting sponsored by the National Accreditation Council

for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Impaired (NAC) at the Crowne Plaza

Hotel in Tampa, Florida. About thirty-five people actually attended this nationwide

meeting.

It

was not the first time I had participated in such a gathering. In the 1980's

and '90's I was present as a participant-observer on three occasions when the

NFB arranged informational picketing to correspond with NAC board meetings.

I do not claim to be objective. I do not think anyone is in matters involving

intense differences over values and social arrangements affecting the lives

of individuals. However, I can assert that I bring a consistent sociological

perspective to the issues I have observed. I have also observed other kinds

of picketing, including picketing for human rights issues, civil rights legislation,

and antiwar demonstrations.

I

have no basis upon which to comment on Mr. Steven Obremski's personal experiences

or psychological condition when he traveled in the elevators of the Crowne Plaza

Hotel. He describes his frightening experience in his letter to Marc Maurer,

published in the February 2003 edition of the Braille Monitor. I would

like to address and comment with considerable conviction on the profound differences

between my observations and his characterization of some aspects of the informational

picketing.

In

his letter Mr. Obremski, past president of NAC, refers to the "criminal

behavior" which he observed in Tampa on the part of NFB members. He wrote,

"This behavior is criminal in nature and has no place in the interactions

between NAC and NFB. I cannot help but hold you responsible for this because

you have created an atmosphere of mindless hatred that encourages people to

act in an antisocial way" (Braille Monitor, February, 2003, p.94).

I

have never observed "mindless" or "antisocial" behavior

at any of the organizational pickets I have attended, including the recent one

in Tampa. In fact, my observations are just the opposite. These NFB pickets

have been very well organized by leaders who possess both exceptional ability

and impeccable integrity. These leaders include James Gashel, Peggy Elliott,

Diane McGeorge, Carla McQuillan, and others. These leaders have studied NAC

throughout its organizational history and probably know much more about NAC

than does Mr. Obremski or the new officers or board members. Over the course

of the past twenty-five years or so NFB leaders have updated developments concerning

NAC with more than thirty articles published in the Braille Monitor.

My own most comprehensive article about the history of NAC is "Why Accreditation

Failed Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Impaired," published in

the January/March 1997 issue of the Journal of Rehabilitation.

Members

of the blindness community in general, professionals in the field, and the volunteer

informational picketers have been continually updated about the unfolding history

of NAC through publications and public presentations. New Federation members

are educated about the importance of the issues involved in the Federation's

opposition to NAC. My personal observations have led me to conclude that the

informational picketing reflects a consistent, well-articulated critique of

NAC. Based on my own experience, clarity of purpose has always been present

in the informational picketing.

Good

humor and conviviality, not hatred or antisocial behavior, are what I have observed.

Evidence of the good humor was reflected in the comments of the Santa Claus

who appeared in the midst of the first informational briefing held in Tampa

on the evening of December 13. The songs and characterizations of NAC were quite

funny--at least to Federationists who know a great deal about NAC. I certainly

acknowledge that some NAC leaders feel threatened by the humor and solidarity

of the NFB participants, particularly when they expressed the level of anxiety

demonstrated by Mr. Obremski in his own description of his elevator incident

in the Crowne Plaza.

Mr.

Obremski also observed that he learned from others attending the so-called summit

that some NFB members said they attended only because they had been "told

to" or because the NFB had paid their expenses. First, I would like to

address the allegation that NFB members had their expenses paid by the NFB.

As my bank statements and credit cards attest, I paid my own way from California

to Tampa. None of my expenses--hotels, food, taxis, airfare, etc.--were picked

up by my employer or the NFB. It was money out of my own pocket. Gary Wunder,

president of the NFB of Missouri, told me that the Missouri affiliate contributed

$400 to each of four volunteers who attended the Tampa informational picket.

Such funds were raised through the many projects of the local chapters of state

affiliates. As for the attendees, they were selected from a larger pool of applicants

who would have liked to participate. I can also assure Mr. Obremski that the

$400 covered only a portion of the actual expenses of these relatively young

NFB members, none of whom is earning comfortable salaries (such as those paid

to NAC or other agencies at the so-called summit). I wonder if Mr. Obremski

would care to tell Monitor readers how many of the agency personnel and

other professionals who attended the summit paid their own expenses? I would

wager that all of them, despite their relatively comfortable salaries, had their

complete expenses paid by their agencies or by NAC.

Now

let's look at another of Mr. Obremski's mischaracterizations: that Federationists

attended the meetings because they were "told to do so." In all of

my years associated with the NFB, I have never encountered mindless people who,

like sheep, do simply as they are told. I have encountered a great many concerned

people who share a common purpose--enthusiastic support for the social movement

of which they are a part. To characterize them as did Mr. Obremski--himself

reflecting mindless hatred and mindless obedience--is uninformed and ludicrous.

Many

sociologists have observed that social movements always have a well-defined

enemy. The regressive tendencies and regressive agencies in the field of blindness,

which are frequently accredited by NAC, could not have provided the NFB with

a more attractive enemy over the past thirty years. It is a measure of the organizational

strength of the NFB that it has the ability consistently to organize these informational

pickets. NAC is not the only organization that has been exposed to NFB picketing.

Individual sheltered workshops and even some state-funded agencies have been

picketed over a variety of specific issues. I also know from conversations with

Mr. James Gashel and others that the NFB very much regretted the expense, time,

and effort required to conduct this latest informational picket. The leadership

had hoped that NAC would continue to be dormant and then expire.

I

must also comment on the December 16 letter of Mr. Don Wells to Marc Maurer,

published in the February 2003 Braille Monitor. He referred to the picketers

as "inane" and characterized the event as a "circus" (Braille

Monitor, February 2003, p.97). Mr. Wells is the consultant who was employed

by NAC to facilitate its summit meeting in Tampa. Based on the comments in his

letter and the taped transcripts, I can only describe Mr. Wells as a very small

act in a backwoods carnival. Mr. Wells said that he read some of the history

of NAC before he came to the summit yet called himself an outsider. He based

his comments about the NFB on observing the picketers and talking to a few Federationists.

If I were to characterize Mr. Wells in the way he did Federationists, I would

have to say that he appears to be an archetypal hired hand--a person who uses

his position or credentials to obtain extra money. Such hired hands say and

do what their employers expect. If the word "inane" means empty, void,

and silly, perhaps we should apply it to him.

Finally,

concerning the question of who knows what about NAC, based on the transcript

of the summit meeting, many NAC supporters know little about its history. In

1984 NAC reached its high point in the number of agencies accredited--106. Since

then this number has steadily declined. On February 21, 1991, National Industries

for the Blind officially announced that its funding of NAC would cease in June

of 1991, and the American Foundation for the Blind made the same decision shortly

thereafter. On April 7, 1991, the NAC board met to consider its financial crisis.

The board then voted, twelve to one, to disband NAC. The board then realized

that a vote of the entire NAC membership was required before the organization

could be dissolved. Subsequently, on May 5, 1991, with ten members present and

ninety-one proxy votes, NAC voted, fifty-three to forty-eight, to continue its

accreditation efforts. These events are described in Kathleen Megivern's 1991

report to the Association for the Education and Rehabilitation for the Blind

and Visually Impaired (AER). In 1991 she was the executive director of AER.

Following

these events, the president and vice president of NAC resigned, and NAC has

continued to decline steadily ever since. It currently accredits forty-five

agencies (Peggy Elliott, "NAC in Isolation," Braille Monitor,

February 2003, p.65). [In fact, during the membership meeting on December 14,

this number was revised downward to forty-two.] NAC has only two staff members.

If

the development of a broadly supported and effective accreditation program for

agencies serving the blind depends on NAC, the prospects appear bleak. Why do

a small, beleaguered group of agency professionals continue to struggle to support

this organization when it is clearly not providing leadership? In his 1994 Annual

Report to NAC, then president Richard Welsh mentioned that "there is less

blood flowing through the arteries and veins" of NAC (The Standard Bearer,"

No. 56, 1994). He then observed that NAC belongs to its "volunteers."

He wrote: "As long as enough volunteers and agencies see a value in the

process, it will continue to exist and to be of service to schools, agencies,

and programs that serve the people with visual impairments." By every measurable

standard--budget, number of employees, and number of accredited agencies--NAC

has continued to decline. Why does it not step aside and permit an accrediting

process to emerge that might be of use to all concerned? Why does it persist?

Some

few beleaguered administrators and professionals involved with NAC apparently

continue to believe that its particular name and organization are indispensable.

In addition, two individuals receive fairly good salaries. Accrediting teams

get to visit other places and to list these visits as professional contributions.

Board members get to make occasional trips to warm places such as Tampa. They

can trumpet their exalted positions to their relatively uninformed boards of

directors or supervisors.

We can hope that leaders

like Carl Augusto will continue to speak out about the appropriate place of

NAC in the blindness field. Many people will applaud the leadership when it

finally disbands and permits its remaining resources to be used as seed money

for a fresh new approach to providing legitimacy to agencies and schools serving

blind people.

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