Last night, I had a thought: Could a tactic used in the past help in the battle to get more bilingualism for deaf babies? What is this tactic? It is the tactic of targeting a certain community and getting it to support the deaf community. This is done because experience has shown me that the deaf community usually does not get what it wants without the support of hearing people. Hearing people's support is needed to win battles! I used this tactic successfully long ago when I was one of the leaders of Caption Action, the movement to get closed captions on home video long before we had DVDs.
Using This Tactic to Get Closed Captions
Long ago, after the deaf community had unsuccessfully been complaining to Republic Pictures Home Video about not having captions on their videos (and even petitioning) especially the Little Rascals which I was a fan of, I was able to get Republic to caption. I went beyond letters and petitions. I actively sought the support of the Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy fan community. What swung things in our favor was a letter I wrote to the late Spanky McFarland, who passed away shortly after that letter. Spanky McFarland was moved enough by my plea for captions on the Little Rascals videos that he contacted Republic Pictures Home Video. Next thing I knew, I got a personal letter from an executive at Republic Pictures stating that Spanky had written to them and they were going to caption their videos, especially the Little Rascals!
Shortly after word about my victory with Republic got out in the deaf community I began getting letters and e-mails from all over the United States with the same message: Please, Jamie! Can you help us get captions on Star Trek videos? I wasn't even a fan of Star Trek! After getting plea after plea, I gave in and launched a campaign to get Paramount video to closed caption Star Trek. I won that battle too!
How did I do it? I enlisted the support of the hearing Star Trek fan community! I wrote to leaders in the Star Trek fan community, posted messages on bulletin boards discussing Star Trek, and contacted managers of Star Trek discussion lists. After awhile, hearing people in the Star Trek fan community began contacting Paramount on behalf of the deaf community. As the word of lack of captions on Star Trek videos spread, the pressure built on Paramount, and Paramount gave in. I don't remember for sure, but I think I got a letter from an executive at Paramount Home Video informing me they were going to caption Star Trek.
I applied the "fan community" tactic one last time, with Pax Television when they first started. The law allows new networks a certain number of years - I think four - before they are required to begin closed captioning. Law or no law, I wasn't going to tolerate that long a delay! I decided to make Pax Television an example to other new broadcasters. Once again, I enlisted hearing people, such as fans of the "Dr. Quinn" show that had begun airing in repeats on the new Pax. I repeatedly posted complaints on Pax's own message board online. The discussion and arguments about closed captioning on Pax became so heated that Pax had to take down its message board. But it worked! Soon I was told that Pax had decided to start captioning sooner rather than later.
Using This Tactic to Get Support for Bilingualism
How can we apply this tactic successfully to the goal of increasing bilingualism for deaf babies? By enlisting the support of the baby signing community! I believe that the parents of hearing babies who use sign language would be surprised to learn about auditory verbal therapy denying the use of sign language. The developers of baby signing products and classes, too. Even Marlee Matlin's support could be sought - she made a Baby Einstein baby sign languge DVD.
How are we going to get the word out to the baby signing community aka the Caption Action days? Start by contacting the producers of the baby sign products and classes to get their support. Then start tapping into the power of a community called the Mommyblogger community.
In the Mommyblogger community, parents of young babies post blogs about their babies growing up. Often these blogs will mention that the parents are using baby sign language. I read one blog where a mother wrote that even when she was expecting, she was looking forward to using sign language with her baby. We have to seek out those Mommyblogs, and post messages on their blogs saying that it is wonderful that their babies are learning sign language but there are deaf babies who can not learn sign language....
I am betting that the Mommyblogger community and number of hearing parents using baby sign language far outnumbers the number of hearing parents of deaf babies. Hopefully, as the word got out to the baby signing community, maybe some of them would begin contacting AG Bell Academy on the deaf community's behalf to strongly suggest that they permit the use of sign language in addition to auditory verbal therapy. Maybe some of them would even blog about it! Even if AG Bell does not agree to allow sign language while babies are in auditory verbal therapy, by increasing awareness in the mommyblogger community, we can build a "critical mass" of awareness of the "greatest irony" in the hearing world.
Here is another mommyblog, where a mommy writes about her discovery that baby sign language actually works: Sign Me Up - Fussbucket. She even mentions that she researched and learned that baby sign language does not prevent speech development and may even promote it.
Oh, and don't forget all the folks who post cute videos of their hearing babies using sign language on Google Video. Get their support too.
Shall we do it? Shall we work to get the baby signing community to support bilingualism for deaf babies? Based on my past experience, reaching out to a targeted community works much better than protest.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
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9 comments:
Hi Berke
Fantastic strategies! We need that ideas from you. I know there are so many things we all need to work on.
Keep up and please keep reminding us and sharing that with all...
Thanks for sharing
DNC has already started in that area. :) DBC also has hearing moms of signing deaf babies and oralists working on this. This is a coalition headed by educated and experienced deaf and hearing professionals, rapidly expanding and receiving a lot of support.
This organization, only five weeks old, has an excellent beginning
You are welcome to contact DBC. We need more people to help hearing parents of deaf babies to realize that signing doesn't hinder the babies to learn speech if they choose to do so..... Start a project about forming testimonials or support from parents of hearing/deaf babies learning signs.
Thank you for wonderful tips!!
While I see nothing wrong with the peaceful demonstration that occurred in VA a few weeks ago, I think your idea is brilliant.
This is a similiar approach we need to capitalize on for many issues in the Deaf community. I've found many hearing people, if not all, outside the field of deafness to be the best allies with fresh blood.
Katherine
Jamie,
By all means, yes, please do use your talents to promote Baby signing for deaf babies by contacting groups that will help parents of deaf babies to realize that research have proven about babies progress to increase much more cognitive thinking if babies learn signs starting at the age of 6 months.
The sooner we achieve the goal to have deaf babies to learn signs that will enhance their ability to learn how to learn all knowledge of inputs from parents, including speech, the less chance of biased organizations to have misconceptions and misinformations that intends to devalue American Sign Language and its merits.
John F. Egbert
Hi Jamie,
Yes, I have already thought about this and have been in dialogue with one of the baby signer moms who demonstrated her signs in the baby video. I will share my post about this later. This wonderful mom supports the protest and is against the idea of AVT that bans signs.
Excellent tactic and I hope you are doing your part to support DBC efforts by doing what you did with captions. Now, looking at the bigger picture--long term results--of those Deaf babies grown up, what would we like to see? Confident, healthy, ASL fluent as well as fluent in written English, highly literate Deaf people who embrace their identity and natural language as well as their histories and cultures, right?
What you did with captions are not going to help with that. You are promoting individualism and dependence on hearing people rather than self determination and interdependence.
You do not give Deaf people credit. Insteas you glorify in YOUR own deeds and hearing peoples. Wonderful that they supported maybe mostly out of benevolence.
I propose that Deaf people claim full credit for mobilizing everybody incl hearing people and leading the fight.
Ella,
I am not denying what deaf people did. Deaf people did write letters and sign petitions in the captioning fight. I said that in my blog post.
What I am saying is that we can not succeed without the support of hearing people. We need the support and more importantly, awareness, of hearing parents of hearing babies using sign language even more than we need the support of hearing parents of deaf babies. It comes down to numbers.
Sorry if it sounds like I am "glorifying" things, but I am simply telling the truth as an example of how it can be done. If you like, I can go into my attic and find this old notebook that has the letters I received long ago from the home video company executives, and scan them and post them in an update to this blog post.
Furthermore, I learned in the Caption Action days that as long as it was only deaf people complaining or making demands, the home video companies could ignore us. That changed when hearing people became involved too. Then the companies realized they could not continue to ignore us.
I didn't mention it in this blog post, but another of my strategies was to get coverage in the mainstream hearing media. I even paid out of my own pocket, to put a press release on a newswire! It got picked up by Variety.
I also did something similar when we were trying to get the Television Decoder Circuitry Act passed. I contacted a reporter for Education Week, and got him to do an article. I don't know if that made any difference in getting the act passed, but the extra publicity didn't hurt.
Jamie,
Oh most definitely in a political or social change fight, we ll need as much support as possible. Rest assured the third initial in DBC is "Coalition" and that group is intelligent enough to know what that means and has already been strategizing various ways to achieve their first goal as quickly as possible and peacefully. What I'm thrilled with about DBC is their TEAMWORK with Deaf PEOPLE at the lead. Again, two things I am concerned about in your comment:
1) What exactly did you do to mobilize and empower the Deaf community? Did you personally and in ASL reach out to as many Deaf people and share your ideas and listen to theirs and work in a team?
2) No mention that any significant social change related to Deaf people and our language and education HAS TO come from within Deaf people themselves first not from hearing people. I've experiences various actions where hearing people (allies) took the lead because we Deaf people didn't believe leading it would be as effective. Many of them succeed ON PAPER. Spiritually and morally, Deaf people lost. We just became more and more convinced we are not good enough nor smart enough to lead with the strategizing. And what's more the hearing people end up getting most of the credit and sometimes feel guilty that Deaf people didn't really become as empowered as could be.
Hearing allies signing or not signing have commented to me that they could not push for some changes as much because it is APPROPRIATE for Deaf people to demand them as a unified front first and take the lead in framing the issue.
Its time for every of us enlightenedDeaf person to start believing WE can lead, empower others, demand for ourselves and other Deaf people especially children, that WE are the biggest stakeholders and that there are many many people out there Deaf AND hearing ready to support us. We need to stay in the lead and control the discourse and not let it be watered down or modified "because hearing know better or have more power or are offended".
Again I think your tactic is great. I'm waiting to see that you trust Deaf people enough to support the tactic of appearing physically and promoting our truth with T shirts, flyers and other ways. Joining us and encouraging various ways to reach the same goal as quickly as possible is empowering for us all including yourself.
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