Remarkable World Commentary Episode #91: Ask Advocate Donna

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In this warm and instructive solo episode of Remarkable World Commentary, Donna returns for her second installment of the month with the May edition of Ask Advocate Donna, opening with one of her favorite mantras, “Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you; listen in such a way that others love to speak to you”, and a word-game segment in which she walks listeners through two advocacy-relevant pairs: polite versus impolite, and proactive versus inactive. She makes the case that the polite route keeps an advocate in others’ minds in a positive way, and that being proactive, leading by example, taking the bull by the horns, comes with heartache and high cost but also brings joy and fulfillment that the inactive route, by definition, never delivers.

She then shares three listener-style advocacy stories, walking each one through her familiar what / how / when / why framework. In the first, a woman named Emma is misled by a cell phone store agent who sells her a phone that suits the store rather than her disability-related needs; Emma fights back by going to head office, threatening to take her case to Facebook and other social media, and enlisting her husband, her children, and their friends in an action plan, while her husband documents the store and the agent with photos. In the second, a mother named Beth confronts a bakery that refused to serve her autistic son Brent despite the written shopping list and cash he had been sent in with, and Beth wins the bakery’s admission of wrongdoing by calmly drawing other customers into her side of the story and refusing to back down for an hour or two. In the third, a first-time babysitter refuses to put a blind three-year-old to bed while willingly tending to his two sighted siblings, ages ten and eight, and the older siblings become advocates in their own right by calling their parents home, leading to a calm sit-down between both sets of parents that resolves the incident, with the babysitter sent home unpaid and later corrected by her own parents. Donna closes by inviting listeners to send their own advocacy stories to her for future episodes.

TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Commentator: Greetings, Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP and MBA invites you to listen to her biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary. Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts, insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners. Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids, especially kids with disabilities. Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach, dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur, law graduate, and podcast commentator. She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge, skills, and expertise in access, technology and information. As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles, she just wants to make things better than possible.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello, I’m Donna J. Jodhan, your host for my solo solo podcast of Ask Donna or Ask Advocate Donna. For the month of May. This is my second solo podcast for this month. Ask advocate Donna, and I’m happy to be here with you and want to start off with one of my favorite quotes. Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you. This is really one of my favorite quotes. I Want to start off with my word game. I want to thank those of you who have commented on my word game and on my Ask Advocate Donna, monthly episodes or monthly podcasts. Thank you very much. And don’t forget to contact me at Donna jordan@gmail.com. That’s bonnajodhan@gmail.com. Okay, so let’s start off with our word game. And most of the time, or a lot of the time, advocates are faced with these two alternatives to be polite or to be impolite. What does this all mean? Well, most of the time I choose the polite alternative. But sometimes I’m awfully tempted to use the impolite alternative, and I will tell you that this does not, most of the time, does not bring you brownie points for light is when you know that something is right or something may not be right, but on the. On the whole, for light could be. When something is not absolutely correct when being spoken by someone else, but you’re too polite to say this to them. Instead, you choose the polite route.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Sometimes when someone says something to you, you can’t help yourself because you know how wrong it is, or incorrect or inappropriate it is. So what you do is you become impolite. And I would say, let’s choose the polite route as opposed to the impolite route, because very often the polite route keeps you in the minds of those around you. The impolite route. Sure, it does the same, but for where is the polite route? Keeps you in the mind of others in a positive manner. The impolite route does not. My next pair of words for your consideration today is proactive versus inactive. And very often in the field of advocacy, we need to consider if we want to be proactive and that means take the bull by the horns and run with it. Become the one who leads by example. An inactive means that you do nothing. You just depend on others to push you along, or you depend on others to develop the solutions or to develop the suggestions. And all you do is just to follow. So proactive means to lead. Inactive means to follow. And in the world of an advocate, we need to decide which best suits us. Becoming a leader has its heartaches, becoming its leader. A leader has its joys and it has its fulfillment. But it doesn’t come easy. It comes at a very high cost because you put yourself out there. So, you know, whenever criticisms are made or whenever the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Inactive means and it’s not always viewed as being negative, but most times I think it is because you’re not taking the initiative, you’re simply sitting back and allowing others to do the work. But it’s our choice. Always proactive or inactive. Okay, now I want to share my stories with you for this month. I have three stories to share with you and the title to the first story. And it all has to do with advocacy. It has to do with a cell phone store that robbed a lady with a disability. Okay, what happened here is that the lady went into the cell phone store in order to purchase a new cell phone. The customer rep or customer agent dealing with her, know darn well that she was a person with a disability. But instead of advising this lady to choose the best cell phone that suited her needs slash requirements, they deliberately took the path to mislead this lady. Okay. So this was lady. Her name was Emma. Emma went into a cell phone store in her neighborhood. She wanted to buy the most recent or most recognized cell phone. The most modern, but the most. Oh, gosh. I’m using losing my words here. But she wanted to buy the latest cell phone, and so she approached the agent at the desk, told them her story, told them what she was looking for, And he took her information, pretended to be nice to her, smiled with her, told her that he would, you know, choose the best cell phone for her.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But what he did, in essence, was chose the best cell phone that the store had to offer, never really paying attention to what Emma wanted. So what did Emma do? Well, Emma went off when she went home, and her husband told her that she. He felt that she had been misled. Emma went straight to the head office of this cell phone store and lost her complaint. At first she was listened to, but then it appeared that the head office was not really going to do anything. So Emma decided to be a bit bold and she went off. Before she did this, she told them that she would be going to Facebook and pleading her case, and she would be going to other social media outlets and reporting the incident. Her husband went back and took photos of the store and of the same agent that was in the store that had dealt with Emma. Okay, so what does this all mean? What is advocacy all about? Advocacy is when one really believes that one has to advocate for something that has not been dealt with appropriately and properly. And this is what Emma did. How to get involved with advocacy. You get involved with advocacy by enlisting the help and support of other people, and Emma enlisted the support of her husband, and later on, she enlisted the support of her children and their friends, and they all put together an action plan for Emma first to go to the head office and then to put this thing on social media.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: When does one get involved in advocacy? One gets involved in advocacy. When again, if there is a need. And why does one get involved in advocacy? It’s all about trying to right a wrong, or bringing what has happened to the notice of a wider circle of readers and listeners? Okay, let’s go to my second story of the day. All right. This is all about a bakery that refused to serve an autistic kid. And this was submitted to us by a very distraught mother. Her name was Beth, and her son’s name was Brent. She had sent Brent with the with a list of what she wanted from the bakery. And with the appropriate cash that was needed to purchase what she wanted. Because Beth had been a regular customer at this bakery. So Brent came into the bakery. They knew who he was because he often, you know, went to the bakery with his mom. But because today he was on his own, they refused, downright refused to serve him, saying that, you know, they didn’t want to serve him because he didn’t know what he was saying or doing. Despite written instructions given to him by his mum. And he had shown it to the cashier and to the attendants for a better word at the bakery counter. But they refused, downright refused. But first, poor Brent did not know what to do. But then, when he realized that no one was going to help him or serve him, he ran back home and told his mum and his mum went with him to the bakery and confronted the cashier and the attendant and asked them why did they not serve his or her son, despite the fact that she had given him written instructions as to what she wanted.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Of course, they did not come out right and say, oh, because your son is autistic. No, they would never do that. So. What did she do? She did something a little bit different. She went off and she started to attract the attention of those in the bakery, telling them what had happened. Some of them listened attentively. Some of them did more than being attentive in that they saw what the bakery had done to Brent, and so she decided to chat with them and decided to tell them her side of the story. It wasn’t easy. It was very painful for Beth, but she decided to persevere. And I think after an hour or two, according to her account to us, she did start to get somewhere with this bakery. And she reasoned with them. She used calm, a calm composure to deal with them, and it worked. So I ask you the question, what is advocacy all about? In this case, advocacy is standing up for your rights when you think you have been wronged. And in this case, Beth honestly felt that Brent, her son, her autistic son, was wronged, took a lot out of her to do it.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: But those around her, those who decided to support her, were very, very true and very, you know, Determined to see justice being done here. The bakery listened. The bakery admitted that they were wrong, which not many people would do, but they did. So this is what advocacy is all about. When you decide to stand up for something you feel has not been, you know, the right thing that has been done. How do you get involved in it? By enlisting the help of others, which is what Beth did with those around her in the bakery. How do you do it again? That’s what you do. You enlist the help of others. So you have your what? You have your how you have your win. And when is when you think something needs to be addressed. Why my advocacy? Again, they’re all similar in reasoning. But why you got involved is because you want something to be right in. Okay. So this is what happened with Beth and her autistic son Brett, and the bakery in their neighborhood. And the third story for this month is this. We have a babysitter who refused to help the little toddler because the toddler was blind. Now, this was the first time that this particular babysitter was coming in to do some babysitting for the parents of this child who was blind, and his two siblings who were sighted, the babysitter put the sighted children to bed. But when it came to the undecided one, okay, the babysitter said or refused to help.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And despite, you know appeals from the two sighted siblings, she refused to help the sibling who was blind. She said she was not being paid to help anyone like this. Now the two sighted siblings were the older ones, one was ten and one was eight. And the babysitter? Sorry. The. Sibling who was blind or the child who was blind was three years old. So you had a ten year old, an eight year old and a three year old? Well, what did these two older ones do? They kept saying to her, you have to help or sister get or brother. Sorry. Get into bed. She kept refusing. So finally the older sibling decided to call their parents and tell their parents what was going on. This is advocacy in its truest form, from a young person, a young so-called advocate who probably, you know, would not think that they were being an advocate, but they just felt that their youngest sibling needed help. So, you know, it had to be given. Parents rushed home and confronted the babysitter, and the babysitter said the same thing. She was not being paid to help someone who she felt could help themselves. So they had a chat, a very interesting chat, and at the end of it all the babysitter left And the parents did not pay the babysitter because they said that they had told the babysitter beforehand that that there was a child with a vision impairment, but the babysitter refused. She left. She was not paid.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: She went home and she told her parents. So now we have a confrontation between the parents of the child who has a vision impairment, and the parents who had a babysitting age child who refused to help a blind person or child that they were supposed to babysit. Well, a few days later, the parents all got together. Along with this, the children of the parents who had the vision impaired child and the parents of the babysitter. Thank goodness this was a reasonable sit down chat and the child of or the babysitter was spoken to by her parents and told that it did not matter what it was, but she should have helped the kid or the child with the vision impairment. It all worked out, thank goodness. So what is advocacy in this case? Advocacy is when everybody got together to hash out an incident that took place. Why was it necessary? Because one set of parents wanted the other set of parents to know that this was not right and why it was not right. How did advocacy take place when they all got together. And when this advocacy take place, it takes place when something needs to be addressed. Okay, those are my stories for this month for the Ask Advocate Donna feature for the month of May. Thank you very much, everyone for tuning in. Please, if you have any stories to share, send them to me at Donna jordan@gmail.com. That’s donnajodhan@gmail.com. Take care everybody, and I will see you next month.

Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at Donna jordan@gmail.com. Until next time.

Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA
Global Leader In Disability Rights, Digital Accessibility, And Inclusive Policy Reform
Turning policy into progress for people with disabilities.