On your Mark. Set! Lobby! And Lobby with your whole self!

Reminder: Quaker Lobby Day is coming up!
Check out
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2013/01/quaker-lobby-day.html
for approximate agenda and signup information.

If simple directions are all you need, please stop here and go sign up. Do not worry yet about what to say. Just sign up and God or our excellent legislative advocate and policy analyst will provide in plenty of time before you meet your legislator.

If you think there is the slightest chance that another trip around more corners of the RantWoman spiritual amusement park will inspire or motivate more enthusiastic participation on your way to Olympia, read on.

Has RantWoman signed up?

Ummmmm ...

RantWoman's first embarrassing confession: RantWoman is equivocating about signing up. This is embarrassing because RantWoman is Recording Clerk for the Friends Committee for WA Public Policy. Recording Clerk gets recorded in the world of WA Quakerdom meets Secretary of State forms as "Secretary." RantWoman, thus is an officer of the organization. Fear not. They seem to be doing really well about handling RantWoman's occasionally peculiar gifts, at least so far. RantWoman also is proud to point out this makes three organizations RantWoman knows of where the secretary, the person doing minutes is blind, not counting obvious groups like local chapters of blindness organizations.

On one hand, RantWoman thinks she as Recording Clerk darn well OUGHT to sign up for Quaker Lobby Day. On the other hand, RantWoman's zeal for changing the world is so all encompassing, RantWoman's sense of the world needing more changing than Quakers are called to try to get done all by ourselves, that RantWoman's inbox is groaning with invitations to different Lobby days. RantWoman thinks probably ONE RantWoman visitation is all her legislators should be expected to appreciate and RantWoman is having trouble choosing among different options.

RantWoman's second confession: RantWoman is considering invoking her "just be a blind person" rule. Under this rule, RantWoman permits herself to lose all perspective.RantWoman abandons any superficial pretension of broadmindedness, and interacts with all issues, everything from the state budget to global climate change from the perspective of a blind person. Fortunately, RantWoman is lucky enough to have the experience of some vision so at least she has a concept rooted in physical reality of what perspective is.

"Just be a blind person" has some points to recommend it.
First, blind people in this state can pack a wallop when we really need to. A few years ago, the WA Talking Book and Braille library, WTBBL, became the responsibility of the WA Secretary of State, as part of the state library system. The WA Secretary of State headquarters are in Olympia and some people thought the library should move from a location in downtown Seattle very attractive on the real estate market to something more modest in Olympia.

One major problem with this idea: a large percentage of patrons live in Seattle. Even worse, supporters in Seattle provide over 400,000 hours of volunteer labor every year to help keep the library open. There was no way moving the library to Olympia could match that commitment. Blind people lurched into gear. We sent out alerts by email, in braille, on tape, by phone. Chapters of the two national blind consumer organizations, organizations who at times can barely coexist on the same planet experienced serious spells of actual collaboration and cooperation and WTBBL stayed in Seattle. RantWoman can think of several issues about which she WISHES blind people in WA were that unified this session. RantWoman  does not expect FCWPP to solve that but is meditating about what she herself might do in that direction.

The second reason just to be a blind person is to fight fiscal austerity. After multiple sessions of revenue shortfalls, budget slashing, paralysis and sneezing gasping allergy to raising revenues, state budget cutters are again threatening to cut a number of programs related to education, vocational rehabilitation services, and RantWoman thinks transportation where the state of WA gets several times the dollar amount contributed by WA taxpayers from the federal government.
In the case of vocational rehabilitation services WA is one of the states where services to blind people are provided by a stand-alone agency rather than folded into a much larger human services department. The stand-alone agency with minimal bureaucracy is thought to be one reason WA consistently outperforms other states in terms of employment outcomes, blind people employed and paying taxes rather than depending on social welfare support. WA can also get money back for investment in rehabilitation services any time a person works themselves off social security or social security disability. The word "stupid" is not particularly good Quakerese but RantWoman finds it very applicable to legislative efforts to slash away at things working comparatively well

The third reason just to be a blind person is, drum roll please, a brand new, freshly elected totally blind legislator, Rep Cyrus Habib, D, 48th district. Rep Habib's colleagues also immediately elected him Vice Chairman of the House Technology and Economic Development Committee.
RantWoman knows that a number of Friends live in a legislative district where the newly elected junior representative is totally blind and has been so since childhood. RantWoman has read of Rep. Habib's career and is very impressed. Scratch that. RantWoman is a little bit intimidated. Rep. Habib sounds like wonder blind person. He is a Rhodes scholar. He listens to his screen reader even faster than RantWoman. He does teamwork really well and even knows to thank his staff for keeping him on time! Plus he did A LOT of doorbelling himself!
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/01/braille-literacy-iranian-american.html

RantWoman is thinking about New Representative's career and education. Based on his own comments, he also is a big fan of WTBBL. Based on Rep Habib's age as well as comments, RantWoman thinks he and his family almost certainly benefitted from the Children and Families program at the Department of Services for the Blind. This program was founded by a now deceased member of RantWoman's Meeting, Weighty Blind Friend.

This program's very existence nearly made RantWoman cry with thoughts of "if only the Rant Parents living in other states had had..."  RantWoman soberly realizes that despite what has happened in middle age, the RantFamily conditions might mean in our youth we would barely have qualified for services, but the RantParents were at times so overwhelmed and overwrought that a helpful presence from a state agency would have been a godsend. RantWoman especially points this out because of the specialized services over a lifetime issue.

In case readers have not noticed, RantWoman is speaking of this progam in the past tense; the Children and Families program has not survived last year's budget slicing. Nor did a program that provided services for the likes of Weighty Blind Friend after she retired or for older people who lose vision late in life just as part of all the ways aging can clobber vision.
RantWoman's immediate point: Rep. habib's mother was a lawyer. Both of RantWoman's parents had college degrees and did different kidns of teaching and other work. Specialized services really mattered or would have mattered if available and RantWoman is not even beginning to think about families with fewer advantages going in!

RantWoman STILL hopes to get signed up for a lobby day, but if "just be a blind person takes over, RantWoman is hot about:

--If you get to meet Rep. habib, congratulate him!

--Meet our constitutional obligations under the McReary decision to adequately fund education. Raise taxes if we have to.

--Create a transportation package that includes funding for sidewalks and walkability, bikeways. More importantly this package should provide local jurisdictions with  taxing authority of some kind so that based on a simple majority vote, jurisdictions can hold elections and approve ways to tax themselves to meet their transit needs.Do this not only because it makes sense in terms of a livable built environment but also because it takes concrete steps to address pressures leading to global climate change.

--Fund health insurance and adequate services for low-income people.

--Make gun manufacturers liable for harm traceable to their products and make them discipline dealers through whose hands weapons tied to crimes can be traced...

RantWoman can probably keep going, but RantWoman needs to get out there and motivate some more of the people who share at least some of her concerns. RantWoman sincerely encourages everyone to talk of our interests, to SHARE, to network and to fill our hearts with workshops related to legislation at our Quaker gatherings!