Please allow me to get a little personal and then make a
point about the current state of affairs in the United States.
Last October our son Brian, a professional photographer and
teacher of photography, lost most of his eyesight in an accident. He’s fully
blind in one eye and has only 20% vision in the other eye. That makes him
legally blind. As you might think this was a terribly upsetting event not only
for him but for Betsey and myself as his parents. Since he’s not married, it fell
to us to be his caregivers.
Fortunately, Betsey never lost her Tiger Mom tenacity from
our boys’ formative years. The same determination that got Brian speech therapy
and Dan back at the correct school after being hoodwinked into transferring to
another elementary school now was summoned up to deal with an even greater
threat to Brian’s future.
While nursing him through two eye surgeries in a span of a
few weeks she went to work preparing for what a visually impaired future would
look like for him. Through California’s Department of Rehabilitation (yes, we
have one of those here in the Golden State) she was able to locate a program called
Orientation Center for the Blind (OCB), a three-month intensive course in living
life without sight. Everything from how to ambulate using a white cane to how
to cook, clean, do your laundry, all the basic household tasks we in the
sighted community take for granted. As well it looks to the future; teaching Braille,
computer skills, and how to use the newer assistive technology coming on the
market now.
Betsey was gung-ho on the program. I was worried it was a
modern version of a Dickensian workhouse. Brian, as was certainly his right,
was worried about the amount of time he had to devote to this and, to be quite
frank, whether it would make any difference. The OCB facility is located in
Albany California, just across the Bay from Brian’s home in San Francisco and
about a 45-minute drive from our home in Sonoma. While it is a live in program it
does follow a five day a week schedule, but students are more than welcome to
live on campus or go home on the weekend.
Betsey and Brian arranged to visit the facility and get a
look at what all the program would entail. In short, it was a full immersion
into the world of sightless life, preparing people just like Brian for what lay
ahead. Their basic working principle is to turn blind people into contributing
members of society. Very much a “teach them to fish” philosophy. And the people
who worked there, from the teachers and administrators to the janitors and
service employees all seemed to have bought in fully to the idea of the OCB as a
warm, inclusive, and most importantly respectful facility. By the way, a large percentage of the staff there are visually impaired to one degree or another. There is a definite sense of "if I can do it, you can do it".
In short, much to my relief, it was not a Dickensian
workhouse. In my perverse way I dubbed it Blind Boy Boot Camp.
Amazingly, a space was available for their next three-month session,
and it was all Brian’s if he wanted it.
He wanted it.
That was three months ago. At the end of June, he graduated
from the program with not only reimagined skills to navigate the world, but new
skills such as reading and writing Braille. He also came away with a desire to teach
other blind people, especially to teach the new adaptive technologies being
developed for the visually impaired.
But most importantly he came away from the program more
confident in his ability to move forward in his life. He went from being
worried about the future to being confident he could tackle anything that came
his way. He also came away with a new set of friends, people who were in the
same situation, a band of brothers and sisters if you will who all had the same
fears and hopes.
As lovely parting gifts each student received a pair of Meta
Glasses, an up-to-date iPhone (filled with apps useful to the blind community),
a microwave with Braille buttons and a camera built in to assist with cooking
instructions, a Keurig coffee maker and a toaster oven both also with Braille, and
several other assistive products.
The cost for this three-month live in, all meals included,
room and board program and all the goodies mentioned above?
Nothing.
The State of California looks at this as an investment in one
segment of the people who live in California. To be crass, Sacramento would
rather you be a working, tax paying citizen than someone merely taking money
out of the system while sitting in a room not contributing anything to society.
It makes no distinction between those who lost their sight through an accident
or disease or even violence (all three categories were represented in Brian’s
class). The state says “ok, this shitty thing happened to you, let’s work
together to get you back on your feet”.
I don’t know if anyone has run numbers on it, but it doesn’t
take a world class economist to figure out that it’s better for the state to
have a 37-year-old man putting money into the system than taking money out.
Better for both the state and the man.
But the state has got to be willing to spend the money on
such a program. More to the point, it’s the state’s, aka ourselves as members
of the state, responsibility. As citizens we pay into a system that provides a fallback
position, an insurance policy for when the worst occurs. Whether it’s an
accident that blinds us or a fire that blazes through our city.
In case you haven’t figured it out those payments are called
taxes.
And yes, it is your responsibility to pay more into the
system if you have earned more. Because the more you earn, the more you take
advantage of the things that were built by the state, I guarantee you. You didn’t
build the roads the trucks used that brought your goods to market, you didn’t
even pay to use them. You didn’t build the internet that allowed you to
communicate with your customers. You didn’t put together the police force that
protects you or the fire department that comes running in the middle of the
night to save your property or your life. The collective “we” pays for those
things.
That’s a good thing. Those public services benefit everyone
and thus we should all pay into the system that creates and upkeeps them. When
it comes to supplying them or manning them there should be only one rule: how
many and how much do you need?
But the inflammatory rhetoric emanating from Washington DC
is that the problem is a government “out of control” that needs to be downsized
and DOGEd into the most minimal of minimals. That is flat out a lie. It’s a lie
told by billionaires who want to pay less and take more. They want to take over
the jobs currently in the control of the people. They want private roads you
pay them to drive on. They want private police forces you pay them to keep you
safe. They want to privatize every function of government for their own
selfish, greedy profit.
If it were up to them a program like the OCB would be shut
down and replaced with a for profit business that would have told Brian (and us)
“oh sure, we’ll help you, but first here’s our bill for $100,000. Can’t afford
that? Go find a tin cup, some pencils and a street corner to hang out on”.
Is that really the kind of world you want to live in? Because
it sure as shit is the world Trump and his followers want to live in.
I don’t say this as a member of the underclass. I’m not in
the 1%, but I think it’s safe to say I’m in the 10%. I’m retired, living on
investments and the occasional bit of tour guide work. I don’t worry about
where my next meal is coming from or if I’ll have a roof to sleep under. And I
don’t mind paying taxes if the money is going to programs that genuinely help
the rest of my fellow human beings. As far as I’m concerned, tax money should
be spent firstly on education, public infrastructure, and basic human needs
like food, health care, and shelter. Then everyone else can get in line and
make their case.
Because I don’t want to live in a world where compassion is
spit on and human decency is viewed as somehow weak, I’ll be out there in the
streets protesting those who champion that somber view. I will be fighting for those
who can’t afford to fight, who can’t show their face for fear of a masked badgeless
stormtrooper, who haven’t the ability to stand or the capacity to understand.
And I’ll be fighting for those who can no longer see the
world. I’ll be their eyes, his eyes, shining a light into the darkness, seeking
a better world for all of us.
Shapiro Out.
