When I became blind in 1965, agencies were still set up based on what
was called "The Medical Model". Professional Workers, usually sighted
social worker types, were appointed to direct the existing programs
and agencies. Blind "Clients" were still dealt with as though they
were patients. Services were provided without consulting the blind
client. But even as this continued to be the Model set in place by
our state government, it was already changing. We moved from the
agency professionals determining what was good for us blind folk, to a
Plan that included input from the client, to a system where the client
was entitled to full disclosure of all services and training
available. The VR counselor was expected to be knowledgeable enough
to be able to give an unbiased overview of all services. The idea
was that we were now "Partners" in developing a service plan. It
might have been a noble idea, but the VRC was still in control of the
various components of which the client had little knowledge. Anyway
the search continues for a better, more equitable way of delivering
services.
But back in those early days in the 60's and 70's the Lions were
deeply involved and committed to "serving the blind". This took the
form of Lions Roundups where Lions would pick up blind people and
bring them to a night of fun and food, taking them home. It was a
once a month event and it was free. The Lions also had the annual
fishing derby. Once again they picked up the blind people, drove them
to Everett, helped them onto boats, set them up with a fishing pole,
baited the hook and even reeled in any fish. Lunch was served to
those fishing, so they did not need to move. And there was the Lions
Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner. Again, the Lions rounded up the blind
and delivered them to the Hall. The dinner was scheduled midway
between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and featured a Turkey feed with
all the trimmings. The blind were seated and Lion's wives scooted
about setting plates of food in front of each participant...with the
turkey already cut into bite size chunks.
All of this, and so much more, was done by loving, caring people. And
despite their love, the message to the blind people was that they
were helpless and in need of charity.
To try explaining to these loving Lions that they were reinforcing
helplessness, was a cruel slap in the face of those proud providers.
It took rebels joinging together, before attitudes began to change.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/18/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Private agencies for the blind were influenced with this idea that they
should be more efficient and that led to a diminishment of services. So, for
example, suddenly, it became more efficient to bring groups of elderly
people into the Helen Keller agency to learn homemaking skills in a group,
rather than individually in their homes. A model apartment was set up in the
Brooklyn headquarters for this purpose. But then people still needed rehab
teachers to come to their homes to help them transfer these new skills to
their own home environments. Fred never questioned what the agency required.
He followed orders as blind people have been trained to do from birth by the
sighted world and the blindness system. I remember when two people from the
Ethical Humanist Society of which I was a member, became consultants for the
New York Lighthouse for the Blind. The two people were the religious leader
and a society member whose profession I don't remember. I have no idea why
they were invited to give advice to this agency for the blind when they had
absolutely no experience with blind people. But back then, the blindness
field had decided that it would be best for blind senior citizens to be
integrated into senior citizens' centers, rather than to attend recreation
programs for blind senior citizens. I think this was in the eighties when
the Lighthouse had developed a wonderful, rich recreation program for
senior citizens. They dismanteled the whole thing and sent people off to
centers where, most probably, if they were congenitally blind and/or totally
blind, they would have been socially marginalized. In the 90's, the big
agency for the blind in Los Angeles, (I forget its name), did something
similar. They had a marvelous recreation program but little by little, they
discontinued their program that picked up clients and brought them to the
agency so the program died. Los Angeles allowed blind people to ride without
charge on their buses, but it is so spread out that it would be close to
impossible for many older blind people to make that trip independently. I
suspect that all of the changes, whatever the reasons given, were caused by
a decision to cut funding. Today, most services exist in name only. People
can delude themselves all they wish about independence, self sufficiency,
advocacy organizations, People with disabilities require services, but
beautiful phrases. Annual conferences of national advocacy organizations or
monthly meetings of their chapters are not substitutes for solid, well
funded services. Those services existed in the 60's and 70's and began to
wither in the 80's. By the 90's, they were changing significantly. Now?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 11:32 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Robots Are Coming for Millions of Blue-Collar
Jobs
Control, power, profit!
What other outcome would we expect when Humans do not figure in the bottom
line?
Capitalism and democracy are not compatible. But we, the working class have
been brainwashed into believing that Capitalism can be "managed". Maybe, if
we dedicate our full attention to drafting controls. But remember,
Capitalists have a very different philosophy.
For them, the People are simply another resource, to be used when needed and
tossed aside when their usefulness is at an end.
This attitude has found its way into the thinking of all levels of
government. During my years in state employment, each time planning began
for the next State Budget, I would receive a notice from the Governor
requesting that I show how I would run my Program on a 10% reduction and a
5% reduction. It was always assumed that there was fat which could be
trimmed off. In Washington State, the Legislature was our Employer. Most
of our legislators at the time, were small businessmen, doctors, lawyers and
a sprinkling of wealthy women who were the wives of corporate bosses.
The overall attitude held by the legislature was that government workers
were a lazy, self serving bunch. This attitude reflected that attitude held
by the Private Sector. Along with the attitude of the legislature, most
blue collar workers were held in the same contempt.
Boeing workers worked at the "Lazy B", and were regarded as incapable of
doing any task that was not spelled out for them.
When the day arrives when Robots can be purchased, programmed and operated
for less outlay than a human worker, the Robot will be embraced. When AI
becomes so refined that it can do the daily work of the mid management
employee, then AI will replace the worker. What happens to those displaced
employees is of no concern of the corporate bosses. For all they are
concerned, they can starve to death. They, the white collar workers, had
believed that they were American Citizens, with certain inalienable Rights,
but it turned out they were seen by the Establishment as just another
resource, as replaceable as burned out light bulbs.
Working Class Americans need to come to a place in our thinking where we no
longer believe that the wealthy Establishment folks think the same as we do.
We're in two different worlds. Our thinking is not alike. They are not
bad people, anymore than we are greedy, lazy ignoramuses. The fact is that
we have a different bottom line. The bad news is that we all cannot have
the life style of the corporate executive. But the good news is that there
is enough wealth and resources to allow us all to live comfortable, healthy,
productive lives. It's merely a matter of redistribution of our collective
wealth.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/17/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Published on
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
byCreators.com
Robots Are Coming for Millions of Blue-Collar Jobs CEOs urgently need
euphemisms to soften the image of their constant hunt for ways to kill
jobs and funnel more money to themselves and top investors.
byJim Hightower
Ford F150 trucks go through robots on the assembly line at the Ford
Dearborn Truck Plant on September 27, 2018 in Dearborn, Michigan.
(Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) Ford F150 trucks go through
robots on the assembly line at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant on
September 27, 2018 in Dearborn, Michigan. (Photo by Bill
Pugliano/Getty Images)
Some people find hunting for sport to be abhorrent, so hunters have
come up with euphemisms to make what they do sound gentler on the ears
of the nonhunting public. For example, animals aren't killed; they're
"harvested."
And dead prey is not gutted but "processed."
Corporate America has taken note of this verbal ploy and is now
adopting it, for CEOs urgently need euphemisms to soften the image of
their constant hunt for ways to kill jobs and funnel more money to
themselves and top investors.
Their urgency is that they're now pushing a huge new surge in job
cuts-this time targeting college-educated, white-collar professionals!
Their weapon is the same sort of neutron bomb they've used to dispatch
millions of blue-collar workers: robots.
But that term has a very bad reputation, so robots have been relabeled
with a nondescript acronym: RPA, "robotic process automation." These
are not your grandfather's old bots merely doing repetitive mechanical
tasks.
Sophisticated automatons armed with artificial intelligence have
quietly moved up the corporate ladder to take over cognitive work that
had been the niche of such highly paid humans as financial analysts,
lawyers, engineers, managers and doctors.
McKinsey, the world's biggest corporate strategy consultancy,
calculated in
2019 that the emerging revolution of thinking robotics would displace
37 million U.S. workers by 2030. Now, seeing the current corporate
stampede to impose RPAs on U.S. workplaces, McKinsey analysts have
upped their projection to 45 million job losses by 2030.
This is more than just an incremental extension of a long, slow
automation process. It's a transformative Big Bang, presently ripping
through America's workforce at warp speed with no public or political
attention, and most of the vulnerable employees have no idea of what's
coming.
Corporate executives, boards and investors do know, however, for
they've been rushing furtively in the past year or so to implement RPA
initiatives.
The New York Times reports that a survey of executives last year found
that nearly 80% of them have already put some forms of RPA in place,
with an additional 16% planning to do so within three years. Yes,
that's 96% of corporate employers. Sales of the new-age automation
software are booming, turning little-known providers like UiPath and
Automation Anywhere into multibillion-dollar behemoths intent on
radically shrinking the job market here and elsewhere. McKinsey, the
world's biggest corporate strategy consultancy, calculated in 2019
that the emerging revolution of thinking robotics would displace 37
million U.S. workers by 2030. Now, seeing the current corporate
stampede to impose RPAs on U.S. workplaces, McKinsey analysts have upped
their projection to 45 million job losses by 2030.
Returning to the hunting analogy, professional jobs requiring
human-level judgement have been presumed to be beyond the range of robotic
firepower.
But, as one economist who studies labor now notes, with the mass
deployment of RPA technology, "that type of work is much more in the kill
path."
The corporate vocabulary does not include the phrase "job cuts."
Rather, such unpleasantness is blandly referred to as "employment
adjustment."
Moreover, terminations are hailed as universally beneficial-they're
said to "streamline" operations and "liberate" the workforce from tedious
tasks.
Now, though, corporate wordsmiths are going to need a new thesaurus of
euphemisms to try glossing over the masses of job cuts coming for
those in the higher echelons of the corporate structure. Don't look
now, but an unanticipated result of the ongoing pandemic is that it
has given cover for CEOs to speed up the adoption of highly advanced
RPAs to replace employees once assumed to be immune from displacement.
As one analyst told a New York Times reporter, "With R.P.A., you can
build a bot that costs $10,000 a year and take out two to four humans."
Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, many top executives feared a public
backlash if they pushed automation too far too fast. But, ironically,
the economic collapse caused by the pandemic has so discombobulated
the workplace and diverted public attention that corporate bosses have
been emboldened to rush ahead, declaring, "I don't really care. I'm
just going to do what's right for my business." While the nationwide
shutdown of offices and furloughing of employees has caused misery for
millions, one purveyor of RPA systems approvingly notes that it has
"'massively raised awareness' among executives about the variety of
work that no longer requires human involvement," The New York Times
says. He cheerfully declares, "We think any business process can be
automated," and his firm advises corporate bosses that half to
two-thirds of all the tasks being done at their companies can be done
by machines.
Conventional corporate wisdom blithely preaches that all new
technologies create more jobs than they kill, but even those
Pollyannaish preachers are now conceding that this robotic automation
of white-collar jobs is being imposed so suddenly, widely and
stealthily that losses will crush any gains.
"We haven't hit the exponential point of this stuff yet," warns an
alarmed analyst. "And when we do, it's going to be dramatic."
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker,
and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish
Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the
Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political
Subversion" (1998).
Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on
behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families,
environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
C 2021 Creators Syndicate