English Translation
My name is Mike Cashman. I’m Deaf, and I’m the president of the Minnesota Association of Deaf Citizens. Last week, I was in Kansas City for the National Association of the Deaf convention. Lots of different topics were discussed in terms of how to include Deaf people in all aspects of life. Most people there felt that was important. Here’s an illustration of why that is so.
I just read a presentation made by Julian Bond, who is a Black man who is a leader in the NAACP. His speech talked about how important it is to include Black people. In reading that speech, I saw many parallels between what he was talking about and Deaf people’s experiences. One example of that was his emphasis on voting. The more black people vote, the more attention and power they have. And if they don’t turn out to vote, they get less attention. He made a very interesting point. The NAACP was started right around 1899, not officially established until 1909. It’s now 95 years old. MADC was begun in 1885 and incorporated in 1901, so it’s even an older organization than the NAACP. But the point really is that the more a constituency votes, the more attention they get.
The NAACP convention is this week in Philadelphia. And they are upset with the President because he did not take them up on an invitation to come and address their convention. That shows that some of the political attention is not being given to them. That the importance of the black community is not being recognized. And the Deaf community is important just like the black community.
I realized that Julian Bond is really accurate in his perspective. After theNAD convention, I realized that we didn’t have any important political leaders come to address us, and that one of the reasons for that might be that we don’t have enough Deaf people voting. That if more Deaf people voted, if we had a massive influx of registration in the Deaf community, the President and other elected officials might realize how important it is to pay attention to the needs of the Deaf community.
That is certainly an emphasis for the Black community, figuring out how many people they are getting out to vote in different cities. The Deaf community needs a similar strategy. The more Deaf people vote, the more attention they will get. That’s why it’s important you and I and the rest of Minnesota’s Deaf community register and get out to vote. Then the issues that are important to you – education, employment, housing, discrimination, or whatever it is – will get attention. Those in power will realize that because so many Deaf people are voting, they better attend to our needs. If the number of Deaf voters are few, our community will just be ignored.
Julian Bond made parallel points. He said that in the history of the NAACP, only one president really paid attention to the black community, and that was Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ had two important votes during his presidency. The first was the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The second was the Voter Rights Act of 1965. Julian Bond really singled out LBJ for his willingness to get in and pay attention to and work with the Black community in those two important areas of Civil Rights and the right to vote.
So it’s very important that the Deaf community gives a parallel effort for voter registration that is happening in the Black community. Don’t you agree?
See you at the voting booth.