Public Relations War on DVTV
The ongoing saga on DeafVideo.TV is a convoluted tale, beginning with AFA’s inception in early March, prompting Barry Sewell to accuse AFA of being an extension of DBC, which has been denied by both organizations.
This led to CherylfromMA and InsaneMisha, two prominent vloggers/commenters and strong supporters of Barry, to gradually over time, question his motives when it came to AFA and DBC. Barry’s comments increasingly turned personal and it was clear to observers that he was deliberately pushing people’s buttons to incite a reaction. CherylfromMA and InsaneMisha’s break from Barry, however, was not apparent until they attended the AFA rally against AG Bell on April 3, 2009, sending shock waves through the vlogosphere.
Afterwards, the lurkers, commenters and vloggers witnessed a vicious, tragic deterioration of Barry’s friendship with the two, particularly with CherylfromMA. One of the most stark examples of this rift is Cheryl’s video comment calling Barry a controller and a destroyer.
Despite this loss of support and friendship, Barry continued his ‘questioning’ of AFA and thier supporters, ultimately leading to more of the Signing Circle supporters to withdraw from him. Not surprisingly, AFA celebrated the defection of CherylfromMA, InsaneMisha and the others, which only led to Barry being further incited against the organization.
At this point, it seemed that AFA was winning the public relations battle on DVTV, due to Barry’s rapid loss of supporters and mass defections to AFA. Things took a twist however, when Cobi, Barry’s son created a vlog mocking AFA by using the Aflac duck commercials. That vlog can be found here.
At first, people thought it was Barry who created the vlog, but when it was revealed that it was actually his son, people were outraged. They could not believe that a fourteen year old would do this, solely on his own, as Cobi and Barry claimed. Many also viewed this as a perfect example of how prejudice comes into existence.
People at first engaged Cobi in a dialogue, particularly Ella Mae Lentz. However, this turned heated, when some of the commenters began telling Cobi that his father needed to grow up, that they found his family disgusting and so on, for allowing him to do this. One commenter even stated to Cobi that controlling parents can lead bright and mature children to kill them.
This led to some other commenters to call for a halt to this, since they felt this was bullying Cobi. The comments targeting Cobi slowly reduced after that, and Barry and Cobi remained steadfast, refusing to apologize or take down the vlog. This in turn, led to Aidan Mack creating a vlog discussing brainwashing, and in that vlog, she accused Barry of brainwashing his female followers. That vlog was then removed by Tayler, and Aidan uploaded the same vlog, only with the accusation against Barry edited out.
Aidan went on to accuse Tayler of censorship, prompting him to make this vlog, pointing out that only .09% of the vlogs, have been removed. Less than a half percent.
As things stand right now, the dispute between Barry and AFA continues with both sides pressuring Tayler to keep Aidan’s brainwashing vlog up, or to remove it. Tayler made another vlog here, discussing the pressuring emails.
Not only that, but Barry’s relentless questioning of AFA and DBC has led to public acknowledgment by Ella Mae Lentz and others that they do consider cochlear implants to be audistic. There’s a private sentiment amongst observers that this has turned into a televised Roman amphitheater, and I share that sentiment. However, I would not be surprised if someday, years from now, historians or anthropologists pieced together this saga into a documentary. On the surface, it might seem merely like a sordid public display of friendships being torn apart and personal vendettas and grievances…
But upon closer examination, one does realize that the current saga provides an unique insight into Deaf culture, deaf identity politics, audism and most of all, into the human psyche.
Be Careful Of What You Wish For
It’s nearly Christmas, and I’m sure many are wishing for many things on Christmas day. When it was discovered that I was deaf as a baby, my parents wished for me to have language. Their wish came true, often to the chagrin of the adults around me.
One day Jack, the audiologist stopped by to make ear molds for us deaf preschoolers, and most of us disliked the feeling of the goop being squirted into our ears. So when we saw him, we immediately scattered. When it came to my turn, I immediately started running, my ribboned pigtails flying behind me, with my little dress whooshing with each move I made.
Janet, who was the teacher, shouted at me every time I looked back at her, “Come back here and sit down! Let Jack make your ear mold!”
I ignored her pleas and kept running. She attempted to corner me and bawl me out, failing each time. Finally on the umpteenth attempt, she grabbed me and sat me down on the chair, “Now you behave and let him do his job!”
Glaring up at Janet, the pig-tailed four year old me in a dress exclaimed, “Bullshit!“
So you see… be careful of what you wish for sometimes, because you just might get more than what you bargained for. 
A Piece of the Puzzle
While reading Amy Cohen Efron’s post late last night, I couldn’t help but be struck by the deep irony of what she was saying. She faintly echoed what Ryan Commerson, I believe, was trying to say in his film, Re-Defining Deaf. And Amy faintly echoed what I said a long time ago on DeafDC.com, that the hearing world tended to view us as a caricature, because they see us only as that deaf person.
As the blogger of The Deaf Edge, I’ve become more and more conscious of that fact. Being on such a visible level, it becomes too easy for many to see merely one puzzle piece that we’re presenting to the world, and think that shows the entire picture of who we are. And so they try to hammer the interlocking edges of their puzzle into ours, while we scream in agony, “No! Not that one! This one!” Or they try to rip out a piece of us, because the edges are too colorful, too sharp, too discordant… It doesn’t fit into the puzzle that is thought to be our stage.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
- Shakespeare
But the beauty of this is that ultimately when a piece is created, an interlocking piece is also created. We just have to find these interlocking ones without a script, by our own means, and that’s what makes the stage so great – the improv act on it.
Awkward Moments
If you’re an educated deaf person living in a small Deaf Community, you become well known quickly. And here where I live, in the same place where I grew up, I’m definitely a familiar face and name to many. This can cause some socially awkward moments though. I’m sure many of my fellow v/bloggers, especially those from Deaf families can empathize with me over this…
I was out at a fund raising event the other night, and I saw a group of women come in, and several were familiar faces, but one woman had such striking eyes that it captured my attention from across the room. Later that evening, a colleague of mine sat down with them, and I know I shouldn’t do this, but I’m too shy to randomly chat up complete strangers without some kind of introduction, so I took advantage of the opportunity and headed over there.
As I hoped, my colleague introduced me to the group, but he then also mentioned who my mother was, which was kind of inappropriate in that setting. One of the women said, “I know who you are. Good to see you again.”
Right. And I have no clue who this woman is. I’ve seen her at events before, but we have never talked, ever. It’s easy for people to remember who the deaf person is, especially someone like me and my colleague, because we’re well-educated and can carry on intellectual conversations. But that doesn’t mean just because they know who we are, also means we know who they are!
So I just smiled politely at her, unsure how to get her to introduce herself. Fortunately for me, or so I thought, the woman with the striking eyes then says, “Oh I’ve heard you and your mom’s names before. I’ve heard good things.”
“Which one of us?”I inquired. After all, both of us are well-known and in fact, I used to be known as her daughter. People would say my name and others would go, ‘Huh?’ then they would say, ‘She’s Celeste’s daughter.” An exclamation would usually follow, and I would be welcomed with open arms. *shakes head*
Though due to my activism that’s changed, fortunately. People no longer need to know who my mother is, to know who I am. A new twist appeared, however, by me asking that question, which turned this into an even more awkward situation. The eyes that were so captivating, narrowed just slightly, clearly a bit confused by the question. With a polite smile she said, “Your mom.”
….. *clears throat* ….. Only after that uncomfortable pause, proper introductions were finally made. *shakes head again*
And some of my friends wonder why I’m usually ill at ease at large social gatherings! 
I’m Desperately Seeking Attention Here!
The blogging break isn’t working out – I just gotta say my piece. <sarcasm> After all, I’m an attention whore.</sarcasm>
The DBC controversy has morphed into a debate of what exactly is “Deafhood” is, and the merits of it. I was reading a blog article on AfterEllen.com about sexual identity politics, and I thought this article was so fitting for the deaf identity politics swirling around the blogosphere. Because this is what it really is about. Deaf identity politics.
Why is there such a huge following for Deafhood? Their messages certainly resonates with some of us in the community. Many of us feel threatened by the cultural transformations taking place. The deep irony is that for decades, we’ve been screaming at the hearing world, “We are just like you. We are human beings and we happen to just be Deaf and speak a different language.”
That is a very similar message the gays and lesbians have been telling the straight world. “We’re just like you. We’re human beings and we just happen to love someone of the same gender.”
That message for both the Deaf community and the gay/lesbian community has been getting through to the majority. More so for the gays and lesbians, really. But it is interesting to me to notice the parallels – the gays and lesbians had the Stonewall Riots, and we had DPN of ‘88. Both of those protests spawned a movement and defined a generation. We celebrated who we were, and flaunted our differences to the majority to underscore how ultimately when it came down to it, we were not that different.
The majority listened, and we all slowly gained acceptance. We still have struggles to overcome, such as having the establishment accept ASL as a legitimate language of instruction in education of deaf children. But the Deaf Community’s language is so widely accepted and supported that hearing parents teach it to their hearing children. Obnoxious encounters with clueless hearing people in public grow less and less. We are being provided with better accomodations and equal access. It’s not perfect, but we’re getting there.
As we progress in our fight, just like the gays and lesbians, our cultural identity isn’t as rigid anymore. The boundaries are more blurred and far more fluid. We’re still Deaf, but we’re not the Deaf of old. We all talk about the golden days, where Deaf clubs and schools thrived. But I find it interesting that when we discuss those golden days, we don’t discuss the fact that oppression was far worse back then and because of that oppression, caused the Deaf Community to flock to the clubs and schools.
Upon thinking about this, I am left feeling quite disturbed and deeply question the Deafhood movement. Are we truly in such a terrible position, that we have to band together again like we did in the “golden” days?
Interrupting My Break…
… To bring you this anthem.
I refuse.
I refuse.
No Shackles On My Mind.
Not yours, not theirs.
No No No No.
I took the shackles
Off my mind a long ago.
I refuse.
I refuse.
If that makes me
Colonalized, then,
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
If that makes me
A Deaf Militant, then,
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
I refuse.
I refuse.
No Shackles On My Mind.
Not yours, not theirs.
No No No No.
You know what I
Really am?
Deaf
Live
Free
Thinker
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
I’m a Deaf Live Free Thinker
Because I refuse, I refuse
To put on your or anyone’s
Shackles On My Mind.
No
Shackles
On
My
Mind…..
Inside Cochlear Implant Online: Ethics?
The Link Between Cochlear Implant Online and C.A.N.
It is not precisely clear what skills C.A.N. is referring to in their FAQ, but when one looks at the Benefits section, the training aspects are outlined. Advocates share their stories, provide resources and so on. This appears to directly fit in what CIO is doing as a cochlear implant resource website. This leads one to easily think that the activities of CIO is solely for being part of the C.A.N. advocacy efforts especially considering the fact that both bloggers, Rachel and Elizabeth are C.A.N. volunteers, and Melissa, which could be arguably called the backbone of CIO, is a C.A.N. volunteer as well. This makes a total of three C.A.N. volunteers involved with CIO.
But could all of this just be a coincidence? That’s difficult to say. Note that Melissa writes, (comment #25), “Therefore, she gets absolutely no compensation from Cochlear for her volunteer work.” But she didn’t state whether CIO was part of their volunteer activities for C.A.N. or not.
Melissa in her comment (#151) writes, “My hope is that Rachel’s generation forward will be able to transcend this bitterness. She put her blog up on DeafRead to show others what is possible today. Whether or not DeafRead reinstates her blog, she’ll still be online just as she was for 7 years before she put her website on DeafRead. Parents will find her, and then they will find only her and so will only hear what she has to say. By booting her from DeafRead, the editors have shot themselves in the foot, for when parents found Rachel’s blog on DeafRead, they found all points of view in one place. Now, instead, they will only find Rachel’s.” [Emphasis added]
There is no way to pinpoint just how active CIO was active before 2006, since like stated previously, the archives only go back to 2006. When one looks through the archives, there is only one entry in the year of 2006.
Then in the year of 2007 there are only four posts. That brings the total of CIO’s entries prior to joining DeafRead in January 2008, to a grand total of five posts. Now, after joining DeafRead, and before being forcibly inactivated by DeafRead, CIO had one hundred three posts on DeafRead in the span of almost five months. That averages to seventeen posts per month.
Just a mere coincidence there?
The Question of Companies and Their Marketing Ethics
Now, there are some who argue that everyone who read CIO and the DR Team should have known C.A.N. was owned by Cochlear Americas because it’s obvious to them. However, if one looks at the C.A.N. website, in my opinion, it is not immediately apparent that this is owned by Cochlear Americas. The website has a garish background, cheap formatting and numerous typos within the FAQ and elsewhere. While there is a link to Cochlear Americas, there is no statement on C.A.N’s website that they are owned by Cochlear Americas. One has to go to the Cochlear website to see that in fact, Cochlear Americas owns C.A.N. The network happens to be also mentioned in Cochlear Americas’ 2007 annual report.
It goes without saying that C.A.N. being managed by a for-profit company that sells the very product that the network advocates for, Cochlear Americas and the rest of the cochlear implant industry can only stand to benefit from it. It is highly dubious that C.A.N. advocates would present any facts that would cast nothing more than a positive light on CI products.
These actions lead to the question of whether CIO and C.A.N. are engaging in the practice of stealth marketing, which is generally considered to be unethical. From the Advertising and Marketing Bulletin, Stealth marketing, a subset of word-of-mouth marketing (”WOMM”) strategies, is marketing that promotes a product without disclosing any direct connection between the advertiser and the message. [Emphasis added]
Not Only Stealth Marketing but Astroturfing?
And this also leads to the question of whether C.A.N. is engaging in not only stealth marketing, but also what is known as astroturfing. Wikipedia defines astroturfing as: The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt (”outreach”, “awareness”, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing one’s own personal agenda through to highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations, non-profits, or activist organizations.
One would think that C.A.N. should know about the ethics of marketing, when their director, Jeff Graunke, clearly stated on his LinkedIn page – which now apparently is no longer available, but here’s a screenshot of it: 
that clearly states he was a former Regional Sales Manager for Cochlear Americas.
This information is especially disturbing in light of the Federal Trade Commission’s statement, which was published by the Washington Post in 2006, about word of mouth marketing. In the first paragraph of the article, it states: The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships.
How can C.A.N. not know marketing ethics? How can Cochlear Americas and other cochlear implant companies not know this either? How can Melissa, considering her C.A.N. training and her magazine writing/editorial background, not have any problems with this?
In light of all of this information, which I never anticipated to just be several mouse clicks away, I feel quite comfortable in saying that DeafRead was fully justified in removing Cochlear Implant Online from their subscriptions. This appears to go far beyond Cochlear Implant Online and all the way up to Cochlear Americas itself. With each mouse click, I uncover more and more information like this. The connections, links and information seems to be never-ending, and I’ve worked on this for long enough. And I’m pretty sure people who are reading this will take it upon themselves to verify the information, and uncover more information. Who knows what we will find next? I am just left standing here, completely staggered…
Inside Cochlear Implant Online: Disclosure?
Where Is the Full Disclosure?
So, how can the information presented in the previous post be central to this controversy? I’ll tell you what it is: It is reasonable to expect that Melissa and Rachel understand about full disclosure – more so than the average person does. But until CIO’s boot from DeafRead, Melissa and Rachel never disclosed that C.A.N. was owned by Cochlear Americas, which is a for-profit company.
Then there’s the matter of whether Rachel herself benefits in any way from Cochlear Americas, aside from her cochlear implant. While there is no evidence to indicate that Rachel gets compensated for volunteering with C.A.N., it does appear that she indirectly benefits financially from Cochlear Americas itself.
Rachel won a Graeme Clark Scholarship in February 2007 as shown here, which is funded by Cochlear Americas. It is not known how much the scholarship covers her college tuition. While Rachel did disclose that she won this scholarship, she did not make it explicit to the readers that this scholarship was funded by Cochlear Americas.
With CIO, Rachel makes it extremely clear that CIO is solely a cochlear implant resource website. While she does shares about her two C.I. failures in the blog post “Am I Hiding? No…“, she mainly writes about how the CI company handled the failures and how they are researching to improve the product. Rachel then ends the post with this, “The fact is that failure rates for CIs overall are very low. For my brand, Cochlear, it’s about 1%, and there are many people with 15 to 20 – year old Nucleus 22s that are still going strong.“
Would an independent cochlear implant resource website post statistics like the aforementioned one Rachel did?
Then there’s the matter of how extensive are the training and compensation the C.A.N. advocates get and whether they were fully disclosed to the public.
Melissa writes on the CIO blog (comment #25) on June 3, 2008, about compensation: Cochlear volunteers have the option of collecting points which we can use towards Cochlear merchandise, such as batteries, earhooks, etc., but then we have to report this as volunteer income to the IRS. The other option is to simply be a volunteer and not get the points. While I have opted to get the points, Rachel has opted out of receiving points. Therefore, she gets absolutely no compensation from Cochlear for her volunteer work.
Robyn from The Ambling Rambler in the #12 comment, then provides more details: I am not paid for speaking at these events. Occasionally the event manager will give me a cheque as a thank you for speaking, which I in turn donate to The Pindrop Foundation to raise money for Cochlear Implants in New Zealand. They might give me a petrol voucher, and I will gladly use that.
Cochlear will pay any out of pocket expenses, for example, if a talk is a long way out of town, they will pay for a hotel room and a meal, and mileage to get there, but that is all. That covers expenses, but it is still in no way profiteering from it.
It is interesting to note that C.A.N. itself does not discuss compensation in the web pages accessible to the public. So the public does not necessarily know the extent of the compensation the advocates receive.
In the matter of the training the advocates receive from C.A.N., Melissa on June 3, 2008 stated on DeafRead’s Official Blog, regarding the job of the volunteer manager. She writes: The volunteers’ relationship to the manager consists of the following: We email our activities to the manager each month, and she sends out a newsletter periodically containing news such as positive stories from a recent bilateral CI recipient. Rarely is direct guidance contained in the newsletters. In fact, the only such guidance that I can specifically remember was telling us not to get into “brand wars” and telling us not to reply directly to medical questions but, instead, to refer these questions to the physicians. Our regional manager has never instructed us on what to post on blogs or listservs. That is not her function. [Emphasis added]
This appears to be incongruent with the statement made by Melissa on the CIO blog, comment #37 where she states: The only support I’ve gotten from Cochlear is online training in presenting accurate information, which also included strongly worded guidance that we were not to push brand choice. [Emphasis added]
However, both of those statements also appear to be incongruent with Rachel’s manager, Brandy Harvey’s job description. Rachel wrote about Brandy in her June 2, 2008 post, and linked to the article about Brandy. In the article, it explains about what Brandy does in her job. “Brandy joined Cochlear Americas as an Awareness Manager in October of 2006. Brandy recruits, develops & trains volunteers to spread awareness about treatment options for hearing loss and the Cochlear and Baha implants. [Emphasis added]
If what Melissa said is true about volunteers barely getting any guidance, then why did she receive online training and why is Brandy being paid to train volunteers? Then one has to consider C.A.N.’s statement about training in their FAQ on their website: “Cochlear values its Advocates and wants to make sure each has the skills they need. Cochlear regularly takes advocates to their head office in Sydney where a couple of days training takes place. Regular information is provided and soon training will be available to advocates in a members only section of this web-site.”
This, at the very least, appears to make Melissa’s statements appear very inconsistent and raises many questions.
Inside Cochlear Implant Online: Who Are They
On June 3, 2008 the DeafRead team announced that they were inactivating Rachel Chaikof’s blog, Cochlear Implant Online [CIO], from the DeafRead aggregator. Immediately since her debut on DeafRead on January 13, 2008, Rachel and her blog has been embroiled in controversy. Some DeafRead viewers felt her blog was merely a thinly veiled advertisement for cochlear implants.
Due to the intense controversy over Rachel’s blog and its subsequent removal from DeafRead, I decided to do some digging. Due to the amount of the information I have discovered, this will be broken up into three blog posts. All of the information I have discovered is on the Internet – mainly from Rachel’s blog itself. The information I am presenting will be undoubtedly controversial, and in all likelihood, I will be labeled anti-CI and possibly a stooge of DeafRead.
So allow me to state this: I believe that cochlear implants are a tool, and it is all about how people use that tool. In regards of DeafRead, while I am friends with some of the DeafRead editors, DeafRead business remains their business, and nobody dictates what I blog. All of those things I believe, do not in any shape or form diminish the facts that I am going to present here.
To understand the controversy a bit better, I believe that we need to look at the backgrounds of Melissa, Rachel, the history/purpose of CIO and the purpose of the Cochlear Awareness Network [C.A.N.] first. All of the information about their background is pertinent to the controversy itself and will become clear later on.
Who’s Who
Melissa is the mother of Rachel, the blogger of CIO. We do not know very much about Melissa herself, but we do know that Melissa is a volunteer for C.A.N., per her comment #25 here on June 3, 2008. Then I found this tidbit – Rachel writes on March 3, 2008, “So, at one point, I saw a cochlear implant organization magazine on the kitchen table and picked it up. my mom was a writer and an editor for the magazine. [Emphasis added]
Rachel is the blogger of CIO, and was one of the first at such a young age to receive a cochlear implant (a Nucleus brand). In high school At her university, she was is an editor of her school newspaper. Currently, she is majoring in Photography at a private arts university in Georgia, and aspires to be a photojournalist one day. Rachel is also the winner of the Graeme Clark scholarship (February 2007), and is a volunteer for C.A.N. as of December 2007.
History and Purpose of Cochlear Implant Online
The exact date of CIO’s inception is unknown but on June 2, 2008, Rachel states CIO has been around since 2001. Since Rachel was not of age in 2001, it is reasonable to assume that her mother, Melissa was involved in establishing CIO. However, the CIO archives do not go back to 2001, but only back to 2006. So it is extremely difficult to ascertain how active CIO was prior to 2006.
As for the purpose of CIO, Rachel writes, “This website is not the place for me talk about my personal life. This website is merely a cochlear implant resource.“
Purpose of Cochlear Awareness Network
Onwards to C.A.N., which is a major component of this controversy. What exactly is C.A.N.? They explain on their website’s FAQ: The Cochlear Awareness Network is a group of volunteers each of whom have lived deaf but have had their hearing returned through technology. They have chosen to be members of the Network to tell their stories, proqactively [sic] raising awareness for the wonderful changes in their lives.
Basically Advocates tell their own story. They do this by making presentations to community and interest groups or clubs or one-on-one to potential receipients. [sic] They may also seek publication of their personal story in local newspapers. They may also help out at trade shows and talk to people referred by their local Cochear [sic] Implant Clinic.
They continue on to explain the benefits of being a C.A.N. volunteer, or rather as they call it, advocate:
* Sharing your story helps others know there are solutions to many kinds of deafness
* Provides a resource for others
* Professionals hear your story and tell their patients
* Corrects wrong information in the market place
* Helps people make a decision about a Cochlear Implant or Baha procedure.
Call to Arms – Lying To Ourselves?
Deaf Education. That word carries so much meaning and controversy. A ideological war has been waged over Deaf Education for the past two hundred years. Now, I am seeing people call for arms for deaf children and babies to be given the right to access American Sign Language so that they may receive the opportunity to a good education.
By no means am I opposed to that. I am heartened to see the increasing exchange of knowledge and a growing maturity on our part. We are starting to come into our own and ensure our right to American Sign Language.
What puzzles me however, is that despite the call to arms for American Sign Language in Deaf Education, there is an eerie silence regarding North Carolina School of the Deaf. Initially there wasn’t enough information for me to throw in my support one way or another. But now, I feel that there is enough information for myself and others in the Deaf Community to support the students, parents and staff of NCSD.
Yet, I see no wide outcry of support for NCSD. I see no organizations of and for the Deaf coming in to help the students, staff and parents of NCSD. This leaves me with some difficult questions in my mind. Why is there such a loud silence? Is it because people know picketing at NCSD won’t work and they rather just picket, and nothing more?
A call to arms to me, means doing everything possible under the sun. Documenting what happens, damned the ire of others. Being not anonymous. Dealing with personal confrontations professionally and documenting it afterwards. Organizing with like-minded individuals who share your concerns and pooling together the documents. Speaking with the government about what’s going on and showing them the evidence. Helping others learn those tools. Giving support to others who need it.
It’s not glamorous. It’s not easy. It’s not something that will land you on the front page of the newspapers immediately. It’s not gonna get you on national news because there’s almost no opportunity for you to make yourself a martyr.
But the fight at NCSD and similar places goes at the core of what matters in Deaf Education. That is where the trenches are at. That is where the battles are won, and ultimately, the war. Where are we? Why are the trenches empty?
