Reflexivity

Before I get all dreamy-eyed about the potential for the Deaf community and sign language interpreters to make a significant contribution to global linguistic equality and transnational social justice (see yesterday’s entry), we have some business to clean up.


Nothing written here should be taken as legal advice. I am not a lawyer – not even a legal interpreter. What I write is only my attempt to make sense of this messy situation for myself.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Officer Jay Keithley told a room crammed full of interpreters, “you don’t want to be on the wrong side of the issue.” It was the second information meeting he held during the conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. The room was inadequate for the 100 or so interested interpreters. Squeezing the chairs together, lining the walls, and sitting on all available floor space still left people overflowing into the hallway. Some were repeats, they had attended the first session (two days previous) and returned again, hoping for more clarity concerning liability and the definition of fraudulent behavior.

My motivation to attend was academic curiosity about criminal behavior in telecommunications (I am earning a phd in Communication); I was not prepared for the size of the crowd nor its unmasked anxiety. The sense I received from the palpable concern of interpreters who do work for a VRS company is that there seems to be a significant grey area of calls being made with questionable communicative content.

The Charges: Public Corruption & Fraud (someone got greedy)
The apparently violated law is a general conspiracy law, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (Title 18, United States Code, Section 371), in which the accused “…unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally combined and conspired with others to defraud the Federal Communications Commission and its agent, the National Exchange Carrier Association” (p. 2, Affidavit and Arrest Warrant). The National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) receives regulatory fees from telecommunications companies’ entire customer base, and pays back (technically, “reimburses”) the VRS sub-division or subcontractor or independent provider based on minutes-per-month of (what they call, sic) “online video translation.”
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Federal Communications Commission (together, the FCC-OIG) noticed “a dramatic increase in the reimbursements” over the past four years. The increase in minutes used in January 2005 (1.4 million) to January 2009 (8.1 million) is 578%. (Check my math; this is an incredible percentage.) The difference in dollars is staggering: from $10.8 million (January 2005) to $51.2 million (January 2009) – $40.4 million dollars. Yep, if I had been anywhere near anything this big and illegal I would be quaking in my shoes too. What isn’t known (or at least, what is not shared in the legal documents), is how much of the increase is legitimate due to the Deaf community’s learning curve with the technology:

1. becoming comfortable with using it,
2. expanding the circle of family, friends, and work-related calls, and
3. realizing its capabilities in making general content from the internet accessible.

Personally, I would not be inclined to underestimate how eager the Deaf community is to access the wide world of information available so suddenly and – finally! – easily.

The Crime: generating minutes without providing interpretation – from China!?!
Nested down through two layers of companies and three contracts, a particular VRS provider in Texas, Mascom, “processed a large number of VRS calls from callers who specifically requested that no translation [sic] be done, or to numbers that required no translation [sic]” (p. 6, Affidavit and Arrest Warrant). The internal jargon used by VRS interpreters, as reported in the Affidavit and Arrest Warrant to describe “calls with no apparent legitimate purpose” is ‘run calls’ or callers’ ‘running calls’” (p. 6). Examples given include

• calls to lengthy podcasts that are not interpreted,
• calls to numbers where the caller is “put…on interminable hold,”
• calls when both the caller and the interpreter use what is called a “privacy screen” to block the incoming view (so neither can see the other and interpretation is impossible), and
• VRS interpreters calling themselves.

Interesting, the American Deaf community does not seem to be the main culprit (at least, not in this first big case). Records show that “there are hundreds of hours of billed calls that originate with Chinese IP addresses” (p. 6). (An IP address identifies the specific computer used by the caller making the call.) This particular Affidavit and Arrest Warrant approximates that 75% of the total 605,000 minutes billed by (and apparently paid to) the owner of the Texas company (Mascom), Kim E. Hawkins, were run calls. That’s 453,750 minutes of the 6.7 million minute increase from 2005-2009: a mere drop in the bucket.
The information quoted in this blogpost is specific to the Texas case; a similar case has been discovered in Florida. Are there other run call scams going on out there? That is the reason why (in my opinion) the FCC made a showing at the RID convention: to rattle the cage and shake them loose. Officer Keithley explained how unusual it is for such an informational meeting to occur during an ongoing investigation; most questions of substance he had to duck or avoid because they related too closely to the details of the existing and ongoing investigation.

Coming Clean versus Hoping to Not Be Noticed?
To date, I have not worked for a Video Relay Service provider of interpretation services between spoken and signed languages. To a certain extent, my ignorance of the conditions of work and types of calls puts me in a similar ‘outsider’ position as the investigating officers from the FBI and FCC. I can understand their reluctance to specify which types of calls are fraudulent and which are legitimate – because who knows how creative people can be when they are deeply familiar with a system and want to take advantage of it. Still, there seems to me to be a very basic boundary: either your hands are up (interpreting), or your hands are idle. If you’ve been in situations that seem like running calls, then part of what needs to occur is a serious study and definition of what is a reasonable wait time (god only knows how long it can take to navigate automated menus) and what are expected/common conditions in which waiting makes sense (blowing one’s nose, for instance, or going to refill a cup of tea, or taking another call). Some parity needs to be established between the freedoms non-deaf speaking people have for putting each other on hold (in monolingual situations) and the freedom of Deaf signing people to adhere to common norms (in multilingual situations).
The ethics of confidentiality, specifically when/where & with whom the lines are drawn, is another arena opened up for clarification by such overt criminal behavior. The immediate suggestion from Officer Keithley is

“if you see this kind of conduct, report it to your managers, and report to the FCC’s Office of Inspector General at hotline@fcc.gov” or to jay.keithley@fcc.gov himself.

They will protect your anonymity to the extent possible within “law enforcement purposes.” This guarantee is a bit plastic (for instance, you may be identified as a potential witness) but the interpreters who cooperated in the Texas investigation into Mascom are not named in the Affidavit or Arrest Warrant. Their anonymity appears to be protected to the extent that they serve “as a source of information for law enforcement officials” and (presumedly, although this was not stated) are innocent of “knowingly and intentionally” breaking the law. If you were stupid and got caught up in this before you realized how wrong it is, well, its time for another roll of the dice.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Time and Timing: Preparation is Key

The list of ideas and suggestions offered in the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop (described in yesterday’s entry) ranged from the general:

• emphasize the visual
• always use ASL

to the specific:

• use an FM Loop to mark off the area where sign-to-voice interpretation will be provided
• fine people a dollar for speaking instead of signing
• draw a blue line to mark Signing Zones from Speaking Zones

As I watched, two things came together in my head, one being that we all know what needs to be done. The other was an idea inspired by the way MJ Bienvenu made her points about audism by flipping the subject or object of particular sentences from an identity/logic center based on being “hearing” (not Deaf) to its mirror image presented from a Deaf-centric worldview.

I mentioned laziness concerning the ASL Zone on the third day of the conference, and have to confess that the admission did not serve to improve my commitment to only signing. I appreciated the man in the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop who talked about being naturally drawn to hearing-and-speaking, but I cringed a bit at the guy who used the example of carrying a beverage in one hand and a suitcase in another – as if that is the common instance which Deaf people are concerned by. Not. I rehearsed my reasons for not always signing:

• I was in Europe and away from ASL for nearly a year,
• my ideas are often not clear (even to myself, shhh!) until I try to articulate them,
• spoken English is my native language so I can say what I mean more easily than I can sign what I mean,
• my eyes get tired and my brain shuts down,
• etcetera.

No matter how hard I seek to justify them, these are all just excuses for continuing to exercise privilege. Betty Colonomos mentioned the United States being “such a monolingual country.” I agree with her: insisting on spoken English when Deaf people are present is the cultural celebration of English (only). The ease with which we slide into speech, and the raft of rationales we create to protect our own linguistic comfort are indicators of resistance to equality.

But here’s the rub. While many of us knew (or sensed, or learned along the way) that we ought to be signing, the formal marketing of the conference does not make this requirement clear. So what happens is that people arrive with expectations (conscious and latent) that are either contradicted or fulfilled and then they react based on how well the actual interactions “fit” with those expectations (which they may not have even realized were ‘there’ until something triggers them into awareness). Suddenly, disappointment and disapproval become evident, and people are thrust into the position of needing to process the fact that their expectations have somehow/suddenly come into conflict with others’ expectations. Affinity groups form along ideological lines, such as the culturally Deaf and their Allies “versus” the Hearing people whose comfort level in ASL is markedly less than their comfort level in English and their friends. Other identity-based groups usually also solidify around their respective centers, and solo outliers who don’t perceive any place where they belong either observe, reserving their insights for themselves, or choose not to participate at all.
In contrast with what I’ve observed (and participated in) previously, these divisions arose rather gently at the end of this conference. I consider this a tribute to two temporal factors: one immediate and one developmental. As frustrated as Deaf people were with the less-than-ideal communication environment, the atmosphere did not become hostile. As defensive as Hearing people were about being called out for speaking instead of signing, they also did not resort to blaming or other forms of reactionary guilt. I suggest that this particular climate was created by President Moose and the Board’s leadership in establishing their own principled protocol to communicate in ASL. As leaders, they set and held the bar in the Here-and-Now.

Stages of Group Development

In human interaction, there are always many things happening at the same time. This is the reason why the most popular answer of interpreter-trainers to the questions, “What would you do?” or “What does it mean?” is: “It depends.” The “it” could hinge on which interlocutor’s perspective you take, which outcome you hope to achieve, the significance of affect in the specific utterance, how this situation fits within the shared history of interlocutors, whether the interlocutors will interact again in the future or not, and so on. The point is simply that no communication ever occurs in a vacuum – every utterance and act of silence is situated in space (here or there) and time (past, present, future).
Imagine RID as a group (of the type called an organization) constituted by criteria distinguishing who is a member and who is not. Lou Fant explained how the history of the organization shows two clear phases divided by the moment, when membership shifted from cultural insiders and close friends of the Deaf to a larger population requiring acculturation and accommodation. Looked at historically (over the long term), these two phases correspond, roughly, with the first two stages of group development as identified by U.S. and British social science researchers in the 1940s and ’50s. Much later, simple labels were applied as a shorthand way of referring to patterns of behavior and issues evident in each stage:

• forming (when people come together and begin to get organized as a group), and
• storming (when the various interests and ambitions of members emerge).

It was helpful for me to realize that I entered the profession (in 1993) well into the era of the storm. And MJ’s experience – arriving on the scene a decade earlier – probably was one of the first public markers that the first forming stage was really over: under other circumstances (a different space) and another time, her interventions would not have generated so much passion on either ’side.’ As it was, asking for recognition of ASL and, later, for an end to a particular performance took on iconic status as events around which people’s interests became plain (whether they wanted them to be so apparent or not).

A possibility began dancing in my mind as I’ve sought to synthesize ‘all the things going on during the conference week’: specifically, the clash of generations (older-younger), the effects & potentials of communications technology, and what I know about the next stage of group development: norming.
I wonder if we might actually be ready for a paradigm shift . . .

Popularity: 3% [?]

It was a well-chosen theme for the 24th national conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, although one requires knowledge of the organization’s history in order to be able to fully appreciate the dual challenge of embracing change and honoring tradition. Depending upon point-of-view and experiences, any given change can be viewed negatively or positively, and tradition can be variously described. President Cheryl Moose (pictured, watching (”listening”) during the DEAF FRIENDLY workshop) interpreted the motto for us in her speech at the Opening Ceremony, using an ASL sign for “embrace” that indicates taking a thing from outside of yourself and tucking it into the front pocket of your heart. The ASL sign that she preferred for “honor” is the sign usually glossed as CHERISH. The thing is, if you are relatively new to the field or have only attended a few conferences or less, then you have no way to assess what is traditional or what constitutes change.
The history lessons came at the end of the conference, during a workshop by MJ Bienvenu (The Heart of RID), the Closing Ceremony (RID – The Musical), and a strategy session on making the organization – and particularly the next conference – more DEAF-FRIENDLY. These three events exposed longterm (historical) dynamics, which (especially if taken together) drew out current group tensions. Beyond the quantitative indicators of growth, there are qualitative indicators of change – and resistance to change! – showing which tensions are shaping group development now. If one can get some intellectual distance, our own topics of conversation and modes of interacting provide us with the means to measure how much we have grown (individually and collectively) in dealing with them.
Stuck in the Past?
Maria Ruiz-Williams and Amie Seiberlich presented a “musically inspired ASL storytelling” (see Sherry Hicks) performance of Lou Fant’s Silver Threads: a personal look at the first 25 years of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. I do not know if it was by plan or coincidence that MJ Bienvenu’s history from 1983-1991 fit so closely with Fant’s timeframe (1964-1989), but the selections presented by Ruiz-Williams and Seiberlich in their interpretation provide a contextualization that could serve as organizational background in which to understand how and why MJ was so shocked by the organization’s resistance (in 1983) to her initiative requesting official recognition of ASL. She was not born radical, she was made to appear radical by the intransigence of people reluctant to share power.
The change to celebrate is that MJ was personally invited by the President of RID, key board members, and Deaf advisors to deconstruct any lingering audism evident in the organization. MJ delivered with surgical precision, using RID’s official webpages to hold up a mirror to the deep audist roots still evident to anyone who knows how to recognize them. An equivalent would be if, for instance, the Interpreting Directorate at the European Parliament invited advocates for linguistic equality from the new languages to publicly critique inadequacies in the delivery of interpreting services for the institution as a whole. Another change evident this year at RID is the standing ovation MJ received for the information and her courage, returning to Philadelphia (the scene of a media-sensationalized event in the early ’90s concerning interpreted music), and persisting in her educational efforts to engage a large population of very slow learners.
What has not changed is the resistance to being an ASL-based organization. This is a kind of “tradition” that we could probably do without, if us hearing people could come to recognize the many ways we play into the linguistic hegemony of spoken English. What I wonder, though, is the extent to which hearing (non-deaf) resistance to immersion in visual communication is coupled – dynamically – with a kind of Deaf kneejerk reaction against even the hint of music? I agree it was too much to have the Opening Reception and the Closing Ceremony both rely on interpreted song, but – especially for the Closing Ceremony – the point was the history, the music was incidental. I wonder two things about the displays of anger and disappointment that I witnessed among some audience members during the RID Musical performance that were repeated during the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop. “No one stopped it,” one person said, “but they should have.” First, it seems important to ask, how much is this resistance simply generational? Is the older Deaf activist core passing on a prejudice? I realize that Sean Forbes’ capital-D Deaf cred may be questioned, but I would be stunned if anyone doubts Rosa Lee’s. I am not aware of any young Deaf people who were upset by either performance at RID (which doesn’t mean that they weren’t, but I did not witness it). The second hypothesis involves a variation of struggle between the culturally Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing (which, audiologically, includes both capital-D, culturally Deaf, like children of Deaf parents who learned ASL as their native language, and the audiologically deaf, for whatever reason and from non-deaf as well as deaf origins).
At any rate, the new potentials of communications technology open up so many possibilities that it does seem like it would not beyond conception to generate forms of entertainment that are visually-based and reflective of traditional internal Deaf cultural aesthetics.
RID Conferences as A Professional Development Experience:
Janis Cole and Lewis Merkin facilitated the DEAF-FRIENDLY workshop, which I participated in with a mix of pride and dismay. I’m old enough, and been around long enough, to be able to recognize my younger self in some of the new interpreters. Of the more than sixty people who stayed, I recognized somewhat less than a third, a comforting familiarity (we’re still in this together), but because the numbers were skewed to newer/younger members the discussion went that way, too. The beautifully-orchestrated beginning to a short de-briefing of the conference experience transformed quickly into a venue for diagnosis and performance for a specific demographic: white hearing women. As I watched one after another raise their hand to be called upon, I resolved to keep my butt in my chair no matter how inspired I was to say something.
What happened then – because I *did* sit on my idea! – was being perhaps too eager to share it in my own small group. They really wanted to define DEAF-FRIENDLY, but I wanted to jump to envisioning implementation. The experience was frustrating, but I did feel as if I understood what was happening. We were given a list of questions to choose among and discuss, someone immediately asked about defining DEAF-FRIENDLY but I jumped in, asking, “Can I jump to another topic? I have an idea about setting up the next conference….” I shared it, they watched me (we were all signing), and when I finished another member in the group asked, “Why do you think it is that we always talk about students’ learning when the topic is about being DEAF-FRIENDLY?” At the time, I could perceive absolutely no relationship between what she said and what I had said. This did not seem to be a turn in a conversation, not listening, but waiting for the next gap in which to speak.
Hmmm. I observed how the rest of the discussion went in our small group. The next speaker went into a lengthy discussion of how “we always talk about using ASL, making it policy, over and over…” He admitted, being hearing, to having a natural tendency to follow verbal speech, and then shared a litany of personal experiences. I was reminded of a comment Betty Colonomos made at the beginning of the Business Meeting when we were discussing the Standing Rules: that people have no voice out there in the world, but we have one here and people need to use it. So everyone got their chance to speak but we did not actually converse. Why is that? I think (in this case) it had to do with time and timing. Because this event came at the end of the conference, people really needed to debrief. The immediate felt need was to process this experience in relation to the past. People with more practice reflecting on these kinds of dynamics were able to bring their awareness more into the present, but the move to imagining the future was premature. The ground was not prepared either prior to or during the conference, and we did not have enough time in this venue to wade through the individual processing until everyone was at a sufficiently-sated stage of self-disclosure and internal satisfaction to shift, collectively, to action planning.
In the end, I think what we generated as a group in this workshop was a venue for hearing interpreters to vent. One of the first Deaf speakers said, forthrightly, that she felt that most of us “cannot walk and sign at the same time.” Another Deaf person commented on the lack of tolerance most hearing people have (at least in this context) “for missing a little bit once in awhile.” That observation reminded me of my experience with other languages in Europe, which I described in a blogpost at the time as “cotton ’round the brain.” In a discussion following that blog entry, I tried to describe how awareness of perceptible stimuli simply shifts depending on the language one knows – or does not know. The main message I gleaned from the way the DEAF-FRIENDLY discussion unfolded in our small group is that it seems we assume being DEAF-FRIENDLY means being non-deaf/hearing unfriendly: as if the two are

a) extreme opposites and

b) in competition with each other.

I do not believe this needs to be the case.

Popularity: 8% [?]