Dear everyone, John here:

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The OandM may not be the place to discuss this in depth, but it is an important development in the professional landscape we share.? It may leave you with helpful insights.

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Today five of us Protactile educators informed Western Oregon University that we were not going to take part in our upcoming Protactile Language Interpreting National Education Program training.? You will find the letter below.

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We have already contacted our students to let them know we are here and are all personally committed to supporting them in their Protactile journey.

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We want to stress that everyone involved in this challenging situation needs support, including A.? It wasn’t his fault that he was hired.? It would have been so much better if he had the opportunity to wander into the DeafBlind community when he was ready.? Thank you for extending any support you can.

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I and some others here may be able to field some questions, and anyone can feel free to email me directly at jlc@...

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Letter pasted here:

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January 16, 2024

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Desiree Noah

Executive Director of Human Resources

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Dominique Vargas

Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

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Venu Nair, Esq.

General Counsel

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Copied to: CM Hall and Heather Holmes, Co-Directors, Protactile Language Interpreting National Education Program

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Dear Ms. Noah, Ms. Vargas, and Mr. Nair:

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We, five Protactile educators, wish to give notice of our respectful withdrawal from the upcoming training hosted by Protactile Language Interpreting National Education Program. Despite our hope for a resolution by January 11 to facilitate our work, the date has passed, and it is now January 15.

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For your reference, the enclosed letter articulates concerns raised by four of us, with names hidden to respect individuals' privacy.

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Our decision is driven by our commitment to DeafBlind space, integral to Protactile space, which relies on these imperatives. As a young language and emerging world, Protactile deserves protection and encouragement.

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We will contact all students intending to attend the upcoming training to assure them that our action does not imply abandonment. We deeply appreciate their investment thus far and will exert every effort to support their Protactile education.

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Sincerely,

Five Protactile Educators

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Enclosed Letter:

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January 8, 2024

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Dear Ms. Noah, Ms. Vargas, and Mr. Nair:

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Ms. Hall recently informed the Protactile Language Interpreting National Education Program team that she and Ms. Holmes have passed along written concerns about personnel to you three. Thank you for your careful attention to matters those communications raise. We would like to communicate a decision we have made and to supply some context for our decision.

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We are four members of the team. For our upcoming training from January 17 to 31, we have decided that we cannot work with A., another member of the team. His behavior makes it impossible for us to do our job. We will gladly carry out the training, but without his presence, for it creates an unsafe, hostile work environment.

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Our concerns about A. began soon after he was hired as one of our two new Protactile educators. Late last summer, those concerns came to a head, and we four drafted a letter to request that A. no longer continue on the team. However, our intense discussions about what to do led us to put the letter aside and instead to, in the words of one team member, “give him a serious warning and a second chance.” B. and C. courageously led that process, going through Zoom meetings with A. to share feedback and to seek a resolution. This was, we felt, the right thing to do, in the DeafBlind way. We are disappointed that the process did not produce the result we hoped for, though it was, we believe, through no fault of the process itself.

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So we return here to a letter. It is a different letter, for we are in a different place after months of conversations among ourselves and B. and D. We are now certain that we have given A. every opportunity to play a productive, sustainable, and culturally appropriate role in our work.

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Appended below you will find various notes that we hope will be helpful in understanding the context of our decision. We leave it to you to make a final decision as to A.’s status as a contractor. We are happy to provide more information and context if you would like to inquire further. Thinking ahead to our upcoming scheduled training, though, we do require a safe, functional, and dynamic team and environment, and we regret to report that this is not possible with A.’s continued involvement. We had fallen silent and felt paralyzed around him, but once we moved into another space without him, we began communicating and functioning as a team again. This letter is just one indication of that dynamic, and the team members, all except A., continue to work together often outside of PLI.

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Please let us know as soon as possible, or by January 11, what the status is for our scheduled training, so we can plan accordingly. Please let us know if you would like more information. We are available to meet with you asynchronously via email, but not via Zoom. And if training proceeds later this month, we warmly invite you all to visit us and learn more about the work we love the most in the world to do, teaching Protactile!

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Sincerely,

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C.

E.

F.

G.

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NOTES

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Note I.

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PLI’s “Educator Criteria and Expectations” document states that educators are expected to:

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“Possess a strong knowledge of Protactile language.”

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A. did not join the team possessing that knowledge.?Thankfully, PLI was able to provide training for him to begin learning.?However, he did not complete his training with PLI’s partner, Tactile Communications LLC.?We made various efforts to ensure that he had opportunities to pursue language learning.

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Later, he acknowledged that he had not completed the training. He wrote:

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“G. pointed out that I still have not completed my TC training. It is true. Also, It is a good example of having a white privilege, which I clearly do not have. What has PET done for their BIPOC educator to complete its training after one year? Imagine a community. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that something to ponder.”

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This was an extraordinary statement to make. When A. did not complete his initial training, we pulled in resources to give him opportunities to continue his Protactile education. A team member offered to volunteer his time by arriving earlier before our second session together, but A. canceled on most of that time. We offered him a scholarship through a new TC program, but he didn’t follow up. We used our network to connect him with his local vocational rehabilitation agency, which had the potential to fund his training, and produced letters of support. He was hired on another project, which would have furthered his education, but he abandoned it.

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By contrast, C.—the other new Protactile educator, who was hired at the same time A. had been hired and who is another person of color—completed her PLI-sponsored training, accepted a scholarship from TC, completed that extended training, took team members up on our offers to mentor her, interned at TC, and was hired for successive opportunities that our network provided.

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?TC’s curriculum is designed to support DeafBlind people with diminishing sight privilege or without sight privilege in relearning personal autonomy and to support sight-reliant folks in unpacking their sight privilege so they can participate in the community with humility, sensitivity, and respect.?A.’s failure to cultivate those latter qualities made his presence in the team increasingly untenable for us.

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Note II.

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The same document states that educators are expected to:

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“Possess a strong DeafBlind identity and personal autonomy.”

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At the time of his hiring, A. did not identify as DeafBlind. When he was asked to submit a bio for the PLI Web site, it said that he was, among other identities, “Deaf.” Only upon nudging did he change it to “DeafBlind.”

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A. referred to the DeafBlind community as an outsider would, using words like “you,” “your,” and “them” instead of “we,” “our,” or “us.”?Instead of acknowledging his status as a sight-reliant person with humility, he defended that status and made inappropriate suggestions for how our community should define our identities to better align with his sight-reliant stance.?We had learned that he has had no meaningful contact with the DeafBlind community before he was hired, so it was truly out of order for a newcomer like him to say such things.

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In the Protactile community, we are not interested in inquiring into how much or little vision someone has. As a rule, we regard veracity of medical diagnoses unnecessary, preferring to trust that people will self-identify in good faith and honor what the identity entails. A. has emerged as a situation where we wonder if we are mistaken in our policy of not demanding verification. We were stunned when, without prompting or any questions, A. declared that he had “150 degrees of sight ability.” That’s, well, fully sighted, only thirty degrees shy of the maximum and perfect 180 degrees. We all are on the very opposite end of the spectrum of vision.

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Regarding “personal autonomy,” A. drives a car—another fact that stunned us—so he hasn’t yet needed to relearn personal autonomy like we are required to be Protactile educators. Thus, this expectation, oddly, doesn’t apply to him.?What it should have said, though, is that educators should not interfere with or take away each other’s autonomy.

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A. frequently used his sight privilege to intervene when we went about our business.?He swooped in or stopped us to “help” us or to “inform” us of things we already knew or were in the process of finding out for ourselves.?Such interventions are exactly what we train interpreters in our program not to do. Yet A., one of the educators, constantly engaged in this behavior.

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Note III.

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The same document states that educators are expected to:

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“Be able to maintain and establish co-presence and consistent contact PT-space and refrain from sight-reliance as primary means of communication.”

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A. often watched our conversations from a distance and would surprise us by jumping in to add something, while we hadn’t been aware that he had been eavesdropping. A great bulk of the times he touched us was to intervene, not to build relationships. We would have liked all of our interactions with him to have been conversations in Protactile, not those interventions or surprise jump-ins.

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A team member describes one example:

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“A. turned the light on in the dining room at the PT House without E. and my knowledge and watched our conversation. E. and I were discussing about A.’s anxiety. We were concerned about him being too wet and thought maybe it would be a good idea not to require him to wear a blindfold, as a way to make things easier for him. The next day, A. was distant with me. I did not know why. Later, B. asked me if A. had talked to men. I said no. B. urged A. to talk to me and he came and talked to me. He told me that he saw me talking about him. I was surprised. He knew that in DB space, if you watch, you touch the person so they would be aware they are being listened to. A. did not touch us.”

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Note IV.

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The same document states that educators are expected to:

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“Possess interpersonal and relational ‘soft’ skills with other educators and students….? Have a clear understanding of how to give (and receive)?friendly and supportive feedback with grace?for learning and growth (and not criticize or diminish student effort) in a conversational, in-the-moment way.”

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A team member states:

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“I do not feel safe with A. because if he and I disagree on something, he becames aggressive. It causes me to be silent. I do not feel safe with A. because he does not respect PT and DB space. He uses his sight all of the time. That makes me feel passive and lose my autonomy.”

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During email discussions, A. accused us of being “racists” without explaining why.?The team includes two other members of color, so this was directed at them as well as the team’s white members.?He often weaponized important social-justice concepts in ways contrary to the true teachings of thinkers and activists who developed those concepts.?

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We have been baffled by his holding to a perspective of our team as ignorant, lacking tools and skills, and “too slow” to do exactly what he expected us to do under the banner of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.?His expectations and interpretations were ungrounded, did not reflect realities we are immersed in, and did not incorporate the DeafBlind community’s own wisdom, histories, and approaches to these topics.

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We observed that most of the things he accused us of were what he himself was doing. For example, he dismissed a female team member’s gentle call-in as an example of “whitesplaining,” he was in reality doing the very thing that term is derived from, mansplaining. He dismissed a male team member’s thoughtful, nuanced comments as an example of “male toxicity.” His dismissive response was, ironically, a clear example of male toxicity. His projections reached a nadir when, after we had fallen into a horrified silence, he sent us an inaccessible PDF on “how to create a safe space.”

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It should be noted, too, that although we have terms for his actions—vidism, distantism, indignation appropriation, and so on—we never called him by any of those. Instead, we patiently absorbed his abuse and tried to gently mentor him.

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Note V.

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Why did PLI ignore its own “Educator Criteria and Expectations” document and hire A., someone who did not identify as DeafBlind, had no history with the DeafBlind community, was still driving a car and in no way functioned as a DeafBlind person, and was profoundly unprepared to learn from DeafBlind elders?

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Note VI.

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One source of dissonance around A. is that he is supposed to be a Protactile educator yet does not speak Protactile. As a team member explains, “A. does not have PT language. He does a combination of TASL and ASL. He does not speak PT at all.” Some of us have experienced difficulty in persisting in speaking in Protactile to him because he does not speak Protactile in return.

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Imagine our shock when we learned that A. was offering Protactile training and coaching services on his Web site.

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While it is a free country, and anyone can set up such an enterprise, there is a strong consensus in the community against new learners who decide to immediately turn around and sell trinkets or to teach the language. In fact, we teach our interpreting students not to do this, and yet A. provided a prime example of the taboo. As Protactile educators, we are tasked with helping our students gain cultural competency, including knowing when it’s appropriate or not appropriate to provide Protactile trainings for financial gain.

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A team member reports that during a Zoom meeting that included B. and A., B. had asked A. if he has been offering online Protactile trainings. “A. started to get worked up,” the team member says, “and asked B. who told her. B. said that it had been just people. A. was not happy and wanted to know who and then said that people who told B. should have talked to A., not B. He claimed it wasn’t true that he is providing PT training and that if he does, he will bring in PT trainer with him to train people.”

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Implicit in A.’s “Who told you?” demand is a troubling assumption, or even an expectation, that B. and other DeafBlind people would, should, remain unaware of his activities.

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Note VII.

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A team member states:

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“When harm was affecting the team, I wanted to talk to A. D. talked to A. first and A. agreed to have a a meeting with me and B. D. offered to message A., B. and me, but I wanted to contact A. I emailed A. and B. and to our surprise, A. flatly refused. He was hostile. D. had to talk to A. A. accused me of ignoring his text since August. I was baffled and checked my phone and it showed that I was the last person texting him. In August we agreed to meet on videophone but A. had canceled the meeting (he always canceled on me). I sent a screenshot to D. to prove that I was the last person texting A. A. later changed his story and said that the team ignored his email via our listserv. I went to googlegroups online--we did not ignore him at all. I felt gaslighted.”

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MOD NOTE:

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FYI: This is being distributed widely and should not have been. I believe in transparency; however, this is an instance where I think it went too far. Notification of cancellation of a program for personal reasons is all should have been said.

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