Dear Friends,
We want to start this newsletter with the report that we got invited
to start 2 bowling leagues for the deaf and we're going to be
focusing on the young CI generation and the late deafened communities
because they both are not represented in the available deaf leagues.
Even though our agency has a strict policy against promoting
recreation agendas, we will be doing it under one of our
affiliations, the National Deaf Union Association. We have 2
locations to do this, one in Norwalk and that's for the young deaf
league and the other in Lake Forest which will have our late deafened
league or vice versa. We are waiting for permission to use the "ODOC"
moniker to be used in "ODOC Bowling Leagues". The 'hardcore ASL deaf'
leagues have been taken up by our friend, Wes Kay, and we desire not
to compete against him. Our plan is to start the league on or around
September 2005. Hearing and ASL students are strongly encouraged to
join our bowling leagues.
It's been a good week for us and we have a big weekend this coming
weekend with a safety presentation at the House Ear Institute camp in
the Ventura Area and our food stand fundraiser. After that we will
be focusing on our Orange County Fair booth which is our largest deaf
awareness education program each year.
OCDAC Communications
-------------< INSIDE NEWS >
Our OC-Fair booth materials continue to roll in. We have nearly
completed the accumulation of materials for our Tustin Street Fair
food stand fundraiser. Our classroom has acquired a book rack and it
needs to be painted in bright colors. We have begun the process of
enhancing our intake procedures which includes gathering statistical
information of our clients for our grantmakers. Our bookstore now
carries different assistive devices including braille TTY's,
signalers, doorbell flashers, and many other helpful things. If you
shop at Albertsons and have a community partners card, please
consider adding your card to our list of supporters. The quarterly
check we received last week from Albertsons was a very impressive
show of community support of our work. Our goal is 25,000 supporters
who shop at Albertsons. The garage sale was a complete success and
we will have it again in 3 weeks at the house across the street from
last weekend's site. Our new American Sign Language classroom flyer
has been uploaded.
-------------< OUTSIDE NEWS >
Take the free online hearing test from Sonus
http://www.sonus.com/realife/index.asp
More than 200,000 deaf children able to "talk"
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-05/30/content_3018523.htm
Deaf advocates fear District 25 cuts will silence community's voice
http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/05/27/news/local/news08.txt
Supplementary exams today
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may312005/state1956382005530.
asp
2 disabled teachers awarded $450k
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/05/30/2_d
isabled_teachers_awarded_450k/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+City%
2FRegion+News
Disabled could directly hire help under budget proposal
http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=3408160
Disabled Teen May Return To School
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20050530/NEWS/505300328/1004/RSS&source=RSS
Australia's Cochlear unveils new hearing aid implant
http://news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050526/hl_afp/healthhearingcochlearaustralia_05052
6080552
Disabilities act violations found
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0523adaviolati
ons23.html
Census Bureau Facts for Features: 15th Anniversary of Americans with
Disabilities Act, July 26, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/usnw/20050526/pl_usnw/census_bureau_facts_for_features__
15th_anniversary_of_americans_with_disabilities_act__july_26__2005204_
xml
Family loses bid to have interpreter in classroom
http://au.news.yahoo.com/050531/21/ujfd.html
HOBART: Fateful night leads to deaf camp, foundation
http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2005/05/29/sports/community_spo
rts/f59fc72dd742e4578625700c00708a13.txt
-------------< DEAF GRAPEVINE >
IT'S WIDELY RUMORED TO BE COMING NEXT WEEK!
-------------< BULLETIN >
ATTENTION DEAF PEOPLE WHO HAVE MYSTERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH THE DISNEY
COMPANY.
We are looking for DEAF People and others who have problems with the
Disney Company:
--apply, and no call back?
--apply, but no interview because deaf/ interpreter issue?
--apply, interview, but no interpreter or captions?
--got job, but then no interpreter for staff meetings?
--you feel punished because after being hired you're excluded from
training's, staff meetings, or other staff events?
(1) NEED YOUR NAME AND (2) ADDRESS (3) and E-mail (4) explanation of
your problem with The Disney Company.
We work with Morse Mehrban who is a rising star in the field of
disability access litigation. Morse needs to know about this no later
than September 4, 2005. Please email [email protected] and
please use 'Disney Problems' in the subject line.
-------------< ADVOCACY NEWS >
From TDI-L eNotes #2 of 2 - Action Alert: 5/27/05
Senate Bill 786 (The National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005)
Would Limit Weather Service Info
Many of the nation's most prominent disability organizations and
advocates, including the National Organization on Disability's
Emergency Preparedness Initiative, the Progressive Center for
Independent Living, Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc., the
Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Persons, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network, and
Emergency Management & Special Needs consulting firm EAD &
Associates, LLC, have united in opposition to Senate Bill 786 (The
National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005) which, if passed, could
have a disproportionate, detrimental impact on the health and safety
of the nation's 54 million people with disabilities.
The bill, introduced by Senator Rick Santorum on April 14, 2005,
would limit the information that the National Weather Service (NWS)
can provide to the public by barring it from providing any service
that competes with private companies.
Such companies, including The Weather Channel and AccuWeather, which
is based in Senator Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania, offer
their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web
sites which benefit from repackaging the data that the tax-funded NWS
gives away.
"Aside from the folly of making the public pay for information that
their tax dollars have already helped collect, this proposed bill
will result in the elimination of many established technological
systems that help ensure the timely and complete dissemination of
critical information to individuals with disabilities," says Claude
Stout, Executive Director of Telecommunications of the Deaf, Inc.
The NWS, which is administered by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), provides comprehensive weather
information in compliance with Section 508 of the Federal
Rehabilitation Act, which requires that individuals with
disabilities, who are members of the public seeking information or
services from a Federal department or agency, have access to and use
of information and data that is comparable to that provided to the
public without disabilities.
Placing government-collected and accessibility-protected weather
information into private hands puts at risk these accessibility
protections and seriously compromises the rights and safety of
citizens with disabilities.
"At a time when emergency preparedness planning is a vital exercise
for all Americans, limiting the ways that the NWS can distribute
information is both disturbing and dangerous," says Elizabeth Davis,
Managing Director of EAD & Associates, LLC.
Cheryl Heppner, Executive Director of the Northern Virginia Resource
Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons adds, "People with
disabilities take their safety preparedness seriously, and there is a
large population of people with disabilities who rely on the NWS to
provide general and emergency information in technologically
accessible ways."
"By taking away time-tested redundancies for the corporate and
monetary interests of a few, Senator Santorum is putting money ahead
of the personal safety of a large segment of the American
population," says Hilary Styron, Acting Director of the National
Organization on Disability's Emergency Preparedness Initiative.
Organizations or individuals interested in helping defeat Senator
Santorum's bill are encouraged to call or write to their Senator, as
well as express their opposition directly to Senator Santorum at 202-
224-6324.
Thank you,
Sincerely,
Claude L. Stout
Executive Director
TDI
8630 Fenton St. #604
Silver Spring, MD 20910
TTY: 301-589-3006
FAX: 301-589-3797
[email protected]
www.tdi-online.org
Promoting Equal Access to Telecommunications and Media For People who
are Deaf, Late-Deafened, Hard of Hearing or Deaf-Blind
-------------< ANNOUNCEMENTS >
The Tustin Street fair and chili cookoff is next Sunday, June 5 2005
all day and we will have our mini food stand offering nachos, hot
dogs, and sodas. Last year we did well and our performance at this
event weighs heavily toward our qualification for the Tustin Tiller
Days Festival.
Deafcities.com is an impressive new portal in the making. They will
soon offer many things that are offered through several different
deafness related websites. They are on the way to becoming a one
stop center for the internet deaf communities.
Please visit our iGive store http://www.igive.com/ocdac
Please visit our magazine fundraiser website at
http://mygrouppage2.efundraising.com/RedirectToQsp.aspx?gID=858b7146-
edd6-494f-af79-78f344212431&cID=8xu1C5nt7Xs
-------------< DEAF QUOTES >
"Hearing people don't always pay very good attention to Deaf people's
needs. It's important to show them that, given the chance, Deaf
people can be just as good as hearing people, maybe even better."
says Jimmy McCarthy a sixth-grader who is the first profoundly Deaf
youngster to make it to the annual Scripps Howard National Spelling
Bee.
-------------< COMMUNITY BULLHORN >
Dear Editor:
My name is Christopher and I am writing to inform you of a federal
suit I filed, pro se, in January 2005 against eight (8) private
citizens in their Corporate Landlord capacity. Cross v. JMS Homes,
Inc., et al (No. 05-6005) (Mo. Dist. Ct. W.D. 2005), to-wit, poses
several interesting legal questions regarding the rights of disabled
people in their housing environment.
In 1775, Alexander Hamilton said: "The sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummage for, among old parchments, or musty records. They
are written, as with a sunbeam of human nature, by the hand of the
divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal
power." Seeing the inherent dangers however, Earl Warren wrote in "A
Republic If You Can Keep It" (p. 48) that "The only protection of
every citizen from such deprivation of rights is a strict adherence
to the Bill of Rights by everyone for everyone", ". . . . This should
be self-evident, but the danger in the erosion of rights stems
largely from the fact that so many citizens of the majority, who have
never been deprived of any of these rights, find it difficult to
understand what the deprivation of them
means in the lives of others."
Regrettably however, it wasn't until the case of Olmstead v. L.C. 527
U.S. 581 (1999) that the United States Supreme Court ruled that
people with disabilities must be integrated into society so as to
fulfill the purpose behind the Fair Housing Act and the Americans
with Disabilities Act. To-wit, both serve as a catalyst in
recognizing that disabled people cannot be held to separate standards
in law and societal-governmental indifference's that inherently seek
to pretend that disabled people simply do not exist.
But to what extent do Landlords who house disabled people have the
inherent right to regulate the lives of disabled tenants and
visitors, through internal rules and regulations if such only
effectively seek to impede or obstruct the free flow of speech,
expression and association among disabled people and those who
associate with disabled people under the [false] guise of a Landlord
protecting his/her vested interest?
In my case, I have predicated that when internal rules and
regulations serve no substantial purpose other than to steal public
tax revenue and personal money by extorting disabled people and those
that associate with disabled people under the [false] guise of a
Landlord protecting their "reasonable interest." Then the line has
been crossed, as a matter of law, in what Landlords may and may not
do when creating and enforcing their rules and regulations. And we,
as a governed society, have a duty to protect this class of people
from being preyed upon not only in way of their disabilities but also
in the indifference's existing that only perpetuate the social death
factors disabled people are routinely forced to endure. Yet, when
faced with such things as the 2001 report from the National Council
on Disability that points out the abundant deficiencies of the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in protecting the
rights of disabled people; noting that complaints involving
discrimination based on disability are the least likely to be
substantiated by HUD. It is clear that forty years after the passage
of the Fair Housing Act; the congressional intent of such has yet to
be enforced to the extent that Congress desired and disabled people
deserve.
In the Defendant's Motion to Dismiss my suit, they counter-predicated
that their rules and regulations are customary to what exists across
the United States and as such shows a well-established management
system of enforcement that is commonly used by the majority of
Landlords. The Court however, did not agree and five days later
issued its' order for the Defendant's and me to begin preparing for
trial.
At issue in my suit are several issues, as a matter of law, such as
that the provisional language used in their internal rules and
regulations only creates a standard of conduct that guarantees
disabled people [will] violate policy and therein gives the
Defendants the claimed legal right to impose excessively severe
penalties as a result. To-wit, not only includes eviction of tenancy
but also "substantial" charges and/or fines regardless if the alleged
violations derived from another's disabilities, were false,
misleading, filed in bad faith or malicious intents, engaged in
discriminatory or retaliatory conduct, or were simply so
insignificant as to be a waste of time to address. Moreover, that
the Defendant's may impose personal and financial responsibility upon
a non-disabled tenant who associates with a disabled person for
any/all violations that rise by his/her disabled visitor. Thereby
forcing the non-disabled tenant to live in a state of fear no less
than a disabled tenant is also forced to endure and in this,
effectively engage in secondary discrimination by denying visits from
a disabled person simply and only because he/she is disabled and the
risks of being severely punished because of his/her disabilities.
In review of the rules and regulations in question, I have alleged
that nowhere do the Defendants afford any form of reasonable
accommodations and equitable due process that permits an accused to
have proper notice of the alleged violation and the ability to
adequately defend against the allegations in a fair and impartial
proceeding. Rather, accused person(s) are held to a determination of
guilt simply at the will of management and based solely upon a verbal
claim that a violation has risen. Neglecting of course, to take into
account structural factors such as the decaying age of the building,
the poorly constructed walls, doors and floors as well as the over-
amplified acoustical sounds occurring in the hallways and the close
proximity of the residential units. As well as the fact that because
these Landlords are a centerpiece referral source by government,
quasi-government and non-government entities to send disabled people
to, to obtain housing. There is a large populace of tenants that are
disabled and therein in need of reasonable accommodations so as to
have the equal opportunity to fulfill the Olmstead decision.
Additionally, I have also alleged that these Landlords claim a legal
right to play Judge, Jury and Executioner in way of accusing another
of criminal activity without having to actually call the police for
investigative handling and due process requirements that mandate a
crime be proven to exist beyond a reasonable doubt. And that these
Landlords afford themselves the legal right to act arbitrarily not
only in the actual enforcement of their penalties but also in the
financial dollar amount to be imposed. Since nowhere in their rules
and regulations do these Landlords actually cite a specific dollar
amount to be charged and/or fined, other than such shall be
substantial and as such, they claim a legal right to impose whatever
dollar amount they wish even if such is a different amount, in the
same violations occurring by two different people.
What perplexes me beyond my ability to comprehend however, is that
despite the worthy cause existing here and the overt strength of my
case. So-called "advocacy" groups turn blind eyes and in this, only
serve to perpetuate the societal indifference's and social death
factors that disabled people are forced to endure. Moreover, these
so-called "advocacy" groups also condone by way of turning blind
eyes, theft of public and personal revenue through acts of extorting
disabled people and those who associate with disabled people. And so
I am left to wonder exactly who is the greater abuser of disability
rights?
Christopher Cross
[email protected]
-------------< DEAF FRIENDLY JOB OPPORTUNITIES >
2 deaf or hard of hearing mortgage consultants needed for a
Riverside, California mortgage company.
8 drivers needed for an Anaheim, California delivery service company.
2 laborers needed for an Anaheim, California marble processing
company.
All candidates interested in any of the job opportunities are
required to apply for our job placement services. Our intake form is
at Http://www.deafadvocacy.com/intake.htm
-------------< EPILOG >
If you wish to contribute to this newsletter, feel free to send in
news, stories, and opinions relating to the disability community.
Your support for this effort to move the disability community forward
will be greatly appreciated. We will continue to aggressively
pursue justice, fairness, and equality for the disability community
as it has been doing since November 1996. We have chosen that
EDUCATION is the best way accomplish this objective.
Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center is a community based organization
that puts people with disabilities first in their advocacy for equal
opportunities in safety, health, and productive living.
Feel free to forward this email message to any one and any of your
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and wide and encourage them to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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