Restroom? Not yet because...

Full disclosure: RantWoman started this rant because she is all upset about several different restroom-related matters. RantWoman is clear that one of the matters needs more attention than RantWoman and one person, but RantWoman is NOT clear that the matter in question belongs on RantWoman’s blog. RantWoman is meditating about what MIGHT be solvable in email and what needs other fora.

 

In the meantime, RantWoman owes the world or at least … some comments about why our Meeting needs to form an ad-hoc committee on disability concerns. RantWoman does not entirely apologize for dumping out her concerns helter-skelter higgledy piggledy while she is trying to digest the intersection of disability and racism at two national conferences, to season how to approach multiple non-Quaker threads, to digest moments from NPYM Annual Session, and to corral the concerns into lists that can be prioritized.

 

RantWoman also does not entirely apologize if the first draft is in less than perfect Quakerese: RantWoman figures God and the gifts of many Friends can help handle the problem. RantWoman also notes that early morning Bible study at Annual Session was chapters 12, 13,14 of I Corinthians but that the passage about suffering for one’s faith in the worship group leaders’ packet did not exactly nudge RantWoman into full discussion of some headaches. Please hold all of that and the peculiar gifts of Joe Snyder Bible study in the Light.

 

 But back to reasons to create an ad-hoc committee.

1. One reason: To STOP ongoing harm.

 

1. Another reason: to allow Friends whose jobs REQUIRE attention to the ADA to have practice about meeting accessibility and to live by a single standard of truth about practices that enhance accessibility.

 

1. Still another reason: to promote community learning so maybe possibly RantWoman’s reflex not to forget but to forgive once and help people learn does not short circuit too often about generalized gag and scream.

 

1. Yet another version of Promote community learning, bubbling up in relation to “I feel burdened!” To share the burdens with people who have actually demonstrated that they can do what is needed while, er, maybe possibly, other people are still just ducking problems.
    
2. And then there would be chronicle evolution in thinking arising from multiple, er, colorful moments in Meeting for Business.

 

Consider the question of being heard.

RantWoman has previously posted about event planning and need to be able to communicate with event planners about accessibility needs. RantWoman can cite both very positive experiences and two  er three experiences, two attached to one Friend who has on other occasions made RantWoman feel VERY bullied, where things went badly awry. In one case, RantWoman was expected just to go down a list and guess who to call. In the other case, RantWoman was hung up on before she could even articulate her request related to the same hearing in large groups issues issues which Friends have SLOWLY come around about.

 

Because of previously being hung up on, RantWoman did not even try about a different request involving alternate formats for documents.  All of these moments are now deeply rooted in the try to forgive but definitely not forget corners of RantWoman’s psyche. RantWoman is also pretty reactive about “Please do not argue with my experience. Please do not try to tone-police for events RantWoman witnessed that you did not. Please trust RantWoman’s appreciation for long history enough to think that dealing with problems will go MUCH better than pretending they are not here.”

               

RantWoman recently articulated the point that excluding RantWoman from Meeting for Business creates many ongoing harms. One example: membership letters and memorial minutes are very important parts of community life. When RantWoman raised the issue of missing out on Business Meeting presentation of these communications, one weighty Friend suggested that “oh, we can record these.”

 

RantWoman is not going to speculate about whether the rest of Meeting will agree to recording. Past experience has been no. Furthermore, in this case, reversion from live presence and uneven willingness to use the Mic to crappy audio made by people untrained in how to make good recordings is a giant step BACKWARD in accessibility.

 

But RantWoman in the rest of your life, you are adamant about the importance of everyone in the room and on the phone learning how to work with phone-in options for public meetings.

 

Yes, because when the conversation is about transportation, the conversation is also ALWAYS about reducing the barriers to getting to the meeting in person. If a person with a disability has to walk / travel two miles down the gravel shoulder of a bad road just to get a bus to a meeting, being able to dial in is a HUGE increment in accessibility to the content of the meeting. That is NOT the case when RantWoman is being asked to accommodate everyone else’s ableism by making do after the fact with crappy audio on a recording

 

Furthermore RantWoman, you spent MONTHS trying to persuade one Friend that, given the burdens of agreeing on a location and travelling to a location, never mind the burdens of time, congestion, and other concerns about getting to the location, that MAYBE perhaps Friends COULD get some of the needed communications in progress BY CONFERENCE CALL?

 

Yep! RantWoman’s experience is that conference calls can be very effective. RantWoman likes that everyone is on the same footing visually. RantWoman recognizes that sighted people hate conference calls because all the visual cues sighted people rely on are missing. RantWoman also recognizes that conference calls can be hard for people with hearing issues and that people are unevenly enthusiastic about different technologies that can help improve people’s ability to hear. But we cannot get to what will work better if we do not start by talking about things that do not work!

 

In Light and Faithfulness

 

RantWoman