The following excerpted article and associated links come to us from The Inclusion Daily Express. A long time ago and in a valley far far away I wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times in which I ventured the altogether optimistic view that Governor David Paterson would bring interesting and unique skills to the Governor’s office because of his lifelong personal experience with blindness. When I wrote that essay I was imagining that David Paterson had the kind of blind skills that the most successful blind people possess. I have had the good fortune to meet blind folks who are attorneys, professors, financial analysts, entrepreneurs, artists, administrators in government and industry, in short, people who have what it takes to be fabulously successful just like sighted people who have ambition and brains.
Unfortunately when I wrote my Times piece I was guilty of projection. I was imagining that David Paterson was a good listener and frankly I also imagined that he had the kind of technology skills that are de rigueur for successful blind professionals. Talking computers, hand held digital note takers, talking pda devices, digital readers and scanners come to mind–the digital age makes it possible for the blind to keep complete track of information and to access it instantly. Yet Governor Paterson relies on a tape recorder and on sighted assistants who remind him what he needs to know. “What’s the difference?” you might ask? “Isn’t information just information, no matter how the Governor receives it?” Well, no. The ability to use cutting edge technology also represents a serious investment in being part of a community of people with disabilities–which talking pc software do I want? How and when do I upgrade that system? What’s the best way for me to make Microsoft Outlook work on my talking pda? How do I find passages in a digital text instantly while I’m talking to an audience? Answering these questions requires knowing other blind people and in turn knowing something about the arc of blindness success–by this I mean the ways and means to success. And by turns this also suggests a belief in community. I think Gov. Paterson has an insular and outdated “blind world” and while this can’t entirely explain why he’s ineffective as a politician it does explain why he’s a poor manager of his time and why he’s intellectually impervious to the civil rights problems that people with disabilities all too often experience. See below. Meantime I’m eating my hat. And for another take on Paterson from a disability perspective take a look at this terrific post over at “Bad Cripple”: http://badcripple.blogspot.com/2009/09/david-paterson-and-price-of-access.html
S.K.
Governor’s Vetoes Outrage Disability Advocates
(WIVT)
September 18, 2009
ALBANY, NEW YORK– [Excerpt] New Yorkers with disabilities were stunned last night when Governor Paterson vetoed not one, but two critical pieces of civil rights legislation. Both bills were passed overwhelmingly by the state legislature, and would require state law to conform with existing federal requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act.
In response, disability advocates are calling on the state legislature to override the Governor’s vetoes and ensure people with disabilities in New York are treated as fairly in New York State as they are under existing federal law.
“By vetoing these bills, the Governor is denying millions of people with disabilities fundamental civil rights,” said Melanie Shaw, executive director of the New York Association on Independent Living.
“We are appalled that that the Governor would veto two civil rights bills passed by a proportion of the Legislature sufficient to override a veto, bills that simply write existing federal rights into state law for clarification and enforcement.”
“It is unconscionable and highly ironic that a governor with a disability has vetoed these bills. We are very disappointed that, by these actions, he has failed to offer the leadership we hoped he would bring to the governor’s office,” said Christine Zachmeyer, NYAIL board member and chair of the New York State Independent Living Council.
Entire article:
Governor’s Vetoes Outrage Disability Advocates
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/2009/red/0918d.htm
Planet of the Blind 
I, too, had high hopes for him, and I even wasn’t projecting!
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I don’t think Patterson will listen to Obama.
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