From: Al and Masha Sten-Clanton 
Subject: Re: ACB Washington Connection (fwd)
I think that vendors in the Randolph-Sheppard program should pay the same
costs as do other vendors, whether on governmental or private property.  I
also believe that they should own the businesses and run them free of
blindness agency oversight.  I long have thought that we should phase out
the program in its current form, replacing it with a system of grants,
loans, or a combination of both that get blind folks into any small
business they wish to run.  I don't know if that's at all practical, but I
think we should not be too quick to reject the idea.
You well may be right about present reasons given for wanting to exclude
people with other disabilities from the Randolph-Sheppard program.  Before
the ADA was enacted, other reasons were given--hough never publicly, as
far as I can remember.  My own view is that I would discourage other
groups from trying to get into the program, believing that there are
better ways to promote employment.  Nonetheless, I think it utterly
immoral for us blind folks (for this is not especially an NFB position) to
try to deny to others the same kinds of opportunities we're fighting hard
to keep and increase.  It reminds me of the days when other groups
apparently got in the way when we sought to amend Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act to cover disability discrimination in employment:  they were so
concerned that the law might be weakened in other ways that it didn't
matter what happened to us.  I certainly want to promote my welfare and
ours, but I don't want to follow in the footsteps of these obstacle
groups.  
I first read about Randolph-Sheppard in 1978, when I was very new in this
outfit,  I thought the program was needless favoritism.  I read tenBroek's
comments about it in "Pros and Cons of Preferential Treatment of Blind
Persons" (I think that's the right title).  I read the statue, which I've
mostly forgotten.  I worked with Jim Gashel on a vending case in 1980, and
many times later I lobbied for our positions on behalf of the program.  I
came to think of it as a kind of temporary affirmative action and could
accept and even endorse it as such.  But, when we were telling the
military people that they shouldn't have their fast-food chain franchises,
I really had to pause and consider why we weren't instead trying to get
blind people into some of those franchises.  And, in the July or August,
1986 Monitor, I read a state governor's justification for ceasing to
operate the program in his state (Montana, I think).  I agreed with the
governor.  That's where I stand today.
This is not a comment on vendors, of course.  Ken Jernigan has said what
most of us know:  "They work hard for their money and earn what they get."
But, as somebody who did pay the usual cost of his own business for a
time, I argue that this is more consistent with the equality and
integration we Federationists espouse.  
Al
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