In an epistle to All dated 14 May 97 23:36, Andy Baracco writes:
 AB> Don't fool yourself for one minute.
 AB> The national leadership keeps close
 AB> track on what happens in state and
 AB> local affiliates. I live in California.
Don't be so sure of that. The national leadership has no real way 
of keeping track of what happens at local chapter meetings except 
insofar as rank-and-file NFB members or chapter, state and 
national officers who are chapter members deem it important to 
inform national leaders of what's going on at that level. Even 
state leaders must depend upon local chapter officers to keep them 
informed of matters which may concern them except insofar as local 
chapter members tell said state leaders about chapter activities 
independently of the information supplied by chapter presidents 
and other officers. Besides, there's no way the national 
leadership could keep close track of everything going on 
throughout the whole NFB -- it would be a mountain of minutiae and 
NFB leaders at all levels have to deal with a good bit of that 
anyway (grin).
 AB> In 1978, we had the equivilant of what
 AB> happened in Hungary in 1956, and
 AB> Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Now *there*'s a loaded sentence if I ever read one. I will not 
recount the events of that time in California here nor will I 
debate the merits of various interpretations of those events. 
Suffice it to say that things came to the attention of the 
national leadership when disputes arose between the then state NFB 
president and the affiliate's Board of Directors. Both entities 
informed the national leadership of those disputes so it was 
obviously made aware of them. That's a long way from the constant 
monitoring implied by your message.
Mike Freeman; Internet: mikef@pacifier.com; Amateur Radio Callsign: K7UIJ
President, National Federation of the Blind of Washington
/* PGP2.6.2 Public Key available via my ".plan" file */
... 0x20 -- the final frontier.
--- PCRR QWK 1.60
--- FLAME v1.1
---------------