Once upon a time or more than one time or even dozens of times, RantWoman realized that in-person meetings were not going well for her, and in fact not going well differently after vision loss than before vision loss.
Nothing like quakerdom where meetings are a sacrament to collide with things that do not work.
No Visual feedback: RantWoman can't read anything written all over other people's faces.
People making decisions by nodding and grunting.
People sending things like minutes and statements to be discussed by email after RantWoman had already gotten on a bus to go to meetings.
Blaming RantWoman for all the problems. (RantWoman thanks one Friend for acknowledging that some pieces were tough for everyone, not just RantWoman.)
RantWoman, optimistic that illustrating the problem in other contexts than Meeting offered Friends MULTIPLE invitations to come to different meetings where most people were blind. FINALLY, after literally YEARS of such invitations, RantWoman enticed two members of the community to come to different blind person events.
Both came back with extremely topical observations.
One Friend completely blew their own insight out of the water, though.
How?
"Yes, I see... AND I DON'T SEE (pun NOT intended) how this has anything to do with Meeting for Business.
RantWoman's excessively plain English to Quakerese badly short circuited into stunned silence.
Now RantWoman can manage to say, "Friend, have you considered that YOU NOT SEEING .. and therefore not being willing to try might be part of the problem????
Zoom has changed the dynamics of many meetings.
It's HIGH time to revisit the RantWoman in meetings issue and RantWoman means to take initiative AHEAD of one upcoming event.
Enter the world of Twitter and sort of kind of hidden disability in the realms of brain injury, stroke.
Speaking of brain injury, RantWoman has not tweeted back that, well, it's obvious to RantWoman that the two people Rep. Boebert was tweeting about knew better what they meant to say than a certain former White House occupant and flagrant disseminator of word salad.
Luckily, Divine Mercy has spared RantWoman any need ever to be in meetings with Ex President and Groper in Chief Word Salad Master. (For anyone interested, #DisabilityTwitter has pretty piquant things to say about Ex President Word Salad Master on multiple grounds. That is a topic for another day.)
RantWoman has however been in many meetings with people who may or may not announce that they have brain injury. One person says people read her as drunk sometimes. Another makes different mistakes in English than other native speakers of his mother tongue. Bells are ringing in RantWoman's head about not one but TWO additional situations.
Here we come to more conceptual minefields lurking in community conversations.
Once upon a time, RantWoman, still not forgetting lapses in a recent survey about disability wishes to bring up the term "reasonable accommodations."
"Reasonable accommodations" is language highly relevant in many situations where people need to speak both of their own disability and of adjustments about process, practices, facilities to allow people to fully participate. Cue the question "What reasonable accommodations are helpful...?"
"Reasonable accommodations" is language from the Americans with Disability Act. In many situations it yields more practical and actionable steps than lots of mushy rhetoric about "disability justice."
There is a problem. Probably more than one problem: even if people need the same accommodations at work where maybe they are swirling in trendy DEI JEDI, choose your favorite acronym for "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" and at school and at faith communities where people aspire to live by a "single standard of truth," faith communities cleverly got themselves exempted from the ADA.
But WAIT. The Americans with Disabilities Act is not the only legislation relevant to the conversation. Many states, including WA have their own further non-discrimination civil rights statutes. One important aspect of the WA non-discrimination statute, RCW 49.60 is that, unlike the ADA, religious organizations are also defined as public accommodations, where anti-discrimination efforts are on point.
RantWoman is clear to hammer on this point in terms of continuing revelation, not allowing misapprehensions to persist. (The actual legal venue to hash this out would be the WA Civil Rights Commission. RantWoman, for a number of reasons is clear that the Civil Rights commission would be less helpful than asking Friends to start where we are.)
In RantWoman's corner of the Quaker universe, this mental gap extends even further. A Care and Accountability Committee FOR A PERSON WITH A DISABILITY asserted that their task had nothing to do with disability.
And then a whole survey got done and although RantWoman was permitted input into the survey, RantWoman was also RELEASED FROM MEMBERSHIP before the survey was implemented.
And although disability or matters of physical accessibility still crept into some community conversations, RantWoman still has a sense of worshipping silence!
And Quarterly Meeting Ministry and Counsel decided OVER AND OVER that somehow RantWoman was out of their purview. One Friend basically said "we don't want to take up the issue..." Not WANT TO is not the point! Probably no one WANTS to take up mid-life vision loss or ... or...When Quarterly Meeting finallygot around to creating a committee on disabilities, they decided it should be a committee ONLY about matters of disability AT Quarterly Meeting.
RantWoman is muddling all of this as she registers to attend NPYM annual session virtually. RantWoman was able to register fine, partly because she is technologically versatile. But on the way RantWoman hit so many emotional minefields, she decided she HAS OPINIONS and asked for a member of Ministry and Counsel to please reach out.
In the meantime, RantWoman will go back to the joys and pains of wordsmithing under Roberts Rules of Order with a bunch of very motivated blind people who are all clear a certain national organization needs not only to invite itself to a party but to demand that the organization throwing the party invite a bunch of other people too.
Yes, RantWoman used the word "party' seasoned by snark: the party is about creating a credential requested by one category of medical provider who know they have a problem. RantWoman is clear that organizations inviting themselves to the party is a much better idea than just demanding a full stop.
And when RantWoman unwinds from that, there is also fretting about Putin shelling anothe city with a nuclear power plant and live stream about whatever Action is breaking out. RantWoman is PRAYING for sense to take over but so far...
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