Vincent Olsziewski, Chair of the Democratic Party of GA's (DPG) Disability Caucus

The North GA Blue: Getting into Good Trouble podcast covers democratic politics in North GA, the 9th Congressional District, and across the state of Georgia. The podcast is in Q&A/Interview format with various democratic politicos including county chairs, democratic operatives, politicians, and more. It is our mission to deliver crucial information to our listeners in a timely manner as we fight for community values and principles in the 3rd most Conservative district in the state. Our website is: https://www.fcdpga.com/podcasts

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Transcript

Meral Clarke: 0:18

Hello, and welcome back to the North Georgia Blue Podcast produced and distributed by the Fannin County Democratic Party. I'm your host Meral Clark, and we're getting into some good trouble today with our guest Vinnie Olsziewski, Chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia's Disability Caucus. Welcome, Vinnie. We're so happy to have you with us today.

Vinny Olsziewski: 0:40

I'm excited to be here, Meral. Glad to talk to you.

Meral Clarke: 0:42

Fantastic. Vinny has been a party activist and a disability rights advocate his entire adult life been he has been involved in political campaigns at every level since 1980. He has held numerous leadership roles in the democratic party at the local, state and national levels. He has also worked with the party to promote disability issues. To that end, he has chaired the DPG Disability Caucus since 2015. He also served as co chair of the National Association of Democratic Disability Caucuses and as a leader in the DNC Disability Council, Vinny served as the coordinated campaigns director of disability outreach for the January 5 runoff election as well. He has also served as co chair of Wrap Up Georgia, a nonpartisan organization committed to engaging the disability community in the political process. He worked at the Northwest Georgia Center for Independent Living as an independent living coordinator. Currently, Vinny serves as chair of the DPG Credentials Committee, and was a delegate to both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions serving on the platform committee in 2020. Vinny currently resides in Rome, Georgia, and runs his own political consulting business, Campaigns by Vincent, since 2017. He also writes a bi weekly column for the Rome News Tribune. Vinny has a BA in political science from Georgia State University. My goodness, you are a busy fella.

Vinny Olsziewski: 2:20

Yeah, I rarely am bored.

Meral Clarke: 2:22

I can see, because you're so busy. So I wanted to ask you, first of all, what does the caucus do? And tell me about your goals, objectives and what you're working on now?

Vinny Olsziewski: 2:36

Sure, well, the disability caucus like all the Democratic Party of Georgia's caucuses and councils, we work to promote the issues about the particular constituency that we represent - the disability community. We do a number of things, we sort of tried to engage people with disabilities and their allies into the political process and educate them about the Democratic Party and try to get them involved into the party structure and into campaigns. And just sort of generally understanding what the party's stands for and believes in. And then sort of in the other direction, we work with the party, both at the state and local level, and with campaigns at every level, trying to help them a) engage disability voters, but also get people with disabilities involved in campaigns and try to work with them to make campaigns or state or local parties more disability friendly, make them more accessible. One out of five people in Georgia has a disability. And that's a pretty substantial group of people to represent. And, frankly, let's face it, voters. So getting them engaged in the party, and making sure the issues that they care about are represented can only benefit the party as a whole.

Meral Clarke: 4:04

How do you go about doing that, specifically? And the reason I asked is because I have actually more than a few friends who are disabled. And of course, they're all Democrats, because we know the republicans don't do anything for them. So how do you engage specifically, what do you do?

Vinny Olsziewski: 4:21

We do a couple things. I mean, I will talk to candidates, I make myself available to candidates and to local parties and the state party and work with them directly to try to give them pointers help them be more accessible. Because a lot of times it's not that, say a county party or a campaign doesn't want to be accessible. It's just too often like in training, you know, in training campaign staffs or party leaders, it's just not on their radar. It's not that they don't want to do it. It's just not even something that they think about or they know how to do so just sort of making them aware and I found that when you point things out to them and make them well, it's like, oh, okay, yes. Yeah, help me do that. And because there's so many things that are so easy to do to make things accessible. I mean, there's more complicated things too. But just the little things can be done to make, you know, a campaign or a county party far more accessible. And then on sort of the other side, in terms of gauging with the disability community, again, it's a big state. And even people who don't have disabilities, it's hard to get people physically to events. Sure. And of course, people with disabilities have extra barriers to that, whether it be transportation or other such things. So we really do 95% of our work virtually. And we put a lot of emphasis on our Facebook page, which anybody out there who has not liked, please do is facebook.com, forward slash d, p, G, disability. And on there, you're going to find information, obviously, about disability issues about general party events about obviously things that caucus is doing. There's going to be a variety of information on there, just general kind of human interest stuff. I think we're like, this is something the other day about smartphone accessibility apps. You know, there's just a lot of useful information for people there. So, again, if you haven't liked that page, please do and, you know, I think it's a great source of information.

Meral Clarke: 6:27

Absolutely. So do you have to be disabled to join the disability caucus? Who is eligible? And how can they join if they're interested?

Vinny Olsziewski: 6:36

Anybody who cares about disability issues is welcome to join me. Basically, the only membership requirements is that you support the values of Democratic Party and that you care about disability issues. That's it. Okay. And that applies to all the parties, caucuses and councils. Well, it's, it's the African American caucus, or the LGBT caucus, or whatever, sure, most of them have their constituents and then call allies. But if you think about people with disabilities, obviously there are people with disabilities, but then you have their family members, their loved ones who have caregivers, there's so many people that sort of touched the disability community that you sort of add those people on top of getting to almost half of the population has some direct connection to the disability community.

Meral Clarke: 7:21

Mm, six, or maybe even three degrees of separation. Yeah, at least that's been my experience. So what are the issues that the caucus concentrates on? And do you work directly with Democratic candidates and officials to get those issues and your platform passed, so disabled persons have more accessibility?

Vinny Olsziewski: 7:44

Sure, then we sort of do all of the above. I talk to candidates, obviously, I am a professional campaign consultant. So clearly, any campaign that I am employed by sort of as we're talking on, make them understand that in addition to doing basic campaign work, which I think I'm good at, that I tell them, that's an issue that's important to me, and that I am happy, and it is something I want to do with them to help make their campaigns more accessible. And I've never found a campaign that wasn't, frankly, excited to have someone bring those sorts of things to their attention. And then if a candidate reaches out to me, I am happy to work with them and give them pointers and provide them resources and connect them with people to do that. The same with, for example, the Fannin County party reached out and said, hey, are there other things we could do? I'm happy to sit down and talk to their leadership and give them resources and do that. It's just that they don't necessarily know what's there or, or even what to be doing.

Meral Clarke: 8:45

Yes, it's so true. And I'm assuming and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that metro Atlanta is more tuned into disability issues, then other perhaps more rural areas of the state. So tell me if that's true, first of all, and if so, tell me how you reach out to other democratic groups to raise your visibility and promote your cause.

Vinny Olsziewski: 9:11

I would say the metro area county parties just by sheer size, they're more likely to have someone asked for an accommodation and then they're sort of forced to learn more about it. I've had you know, some of the smaller county parties reach and ask for ideas and things. So I think it's more the individuals in the leadership so much than is the size of the county party or the campaign that makes sense for your county chair just happens to know somebody with a disability or someone with a disability reaches out to them wanting to get involved and suddenly gets on their radar and it doesn't matter whether you're in and Dade County up in the northwest corner, or you're down in Effingham County, or or you're in you know, Fulton County.

Meral Clarke: 9:56

Right, right. So what are some of the biggest hurdles that you've encountered in trying to promote your message and gain more access for your members.

Vinny Olsziewski: 10:07

I would say it's ignorance, but not like malevolent ignorance, it's lack of knowledge. And just again, bring it to people's attention again, in a way, although God knows so many bad things that come out of this pandemic, yes. But with every cloud, there's a couple of tiny silver linings. Okay. And I think having to do so much stuff virtually for the past year plus, right, I think we've seen that, wow, people with disabilities have actually been able to engage more because they haven't had transportation barriers to get to a lot of events because everything's been over a year and a half ago, had any of us heard of Zoom?

Meral Clarke: 10:52

Well, I had, but I work in business. But you're right, Zoom has become a household name.

Vinny Olsziewski: 10:57

And Zoom to its credit has improved it actually, it didn't use to, but I think maybe six months ago or thereabouts, it added to its platform, a free live auto captioning feature that literally can be turned on in about three clicks.

Meral Clarke: 11:15

Fantastic that I did not know. It's so important.

Vinny Olsziewski: 11:19

Yeah, it is. And no, live auto captioning is perfect. But I mean, I've tried some paid systems. And you know, none of them are perfect, but the Zoom one is as good as anything I've seen, it's free. And it's literally it's like three clicks to turn it on. Fabulous. And again, that automatically opens the Zoom up to people that couldn't necessarily have benefited from before. Also, I think campaigns have learned how much volunteer work can be done virtually. Well, we knew there could be some people that barely knew about Virtual Phone, banks and things. But I think campaigns really learned in the last cycle, how much volunteer work, and frankly, paid staff work can be done remotely. I think that's opened a lot of doors for people with disabilities. Again, I'm visually impaired, I don't drive and I live in northwest Georgia, most of my clients are in metro Atlanta, and I do probably 90% of my job virtually Wow, of course, I do occasionally have to go to an event somewhere. And I had to figure out how to make that happen. But I'm able to do my job. Basically, I just live on my computer pretty much but and I think campaigns and the party has sort of been forced to learn how much can be done remotely. And that has I think, opened up a lot of doors for people

Meral Clarke: 12:40

It has. Actually as an aside, I was saddened to hear that Google is penalizing their employees who choose not to go into the office and work remotely. What are your thoughts on that? Because I was extremely disturbed to read that. What are your thoughts?

Vinny Olsziewski: 12:57

I have not seen that story. I would need to see maybe more of the details is like were there exceptions for people that maybe had disabilities and for whom we're working remotely made more sense? Or if there was medical issues? I mean, I'd have to get more into the weeds to give a real firm opinion. Sure. But I would think from a business standpoint, I think we're going to see at least some businesses clearly not all, but I think we're going to see, frankly, a fair number of businesses who saw how much work could be done remotely, and that it could actually be monitored and productive. Because I know that's something that concern that businesses can we really make sure employees are actually working and getting their work done. And I know some had some kind of draconian ways to doing that. Some are a little more a little more understanding, but I don't think we're gonna see 100% migration back to the office, even when that's possible, I think we're going to see some companies realize, hey, people can work from home, right? We can spend less money on office space and all the accoutrements that go with having an office. And I think it's going to open up the doors for people with disabilities, but single moms and dads and people that may have to worry about childcare issues and those sorts of things, or people that don't have transportation, for whatever reason, you know, it'll open up the workforce. I think for employees, I think they've already seen that. I think you'll see more companies embrace that.

Meral Clarke: 14:22

Mm hmm. That's an excellent point. So do you know if the Republicans at the GOP have anything similar in their party to what we're doing as democrats?

Vinny Olsziewski: 14:32

I don't think in general, they have sort of a caucus structure like the democratic party does, right. I do not know of a particular entity within the Republican Party, and I wish there was I'd love to communicate with them because I'm sure while there are probably any number of issues on which we disagree, there's probably a few where we could find some common ground and come together and work with legislators on both sides of the aisle to get legislation done. One of the saddest things, I think of the hyper partisanship that we've seen, yes. Last decade or so, you know, there was a time when Disability Rights wasn't a partisan issue. And I give credit where credit is due it was George HW Bush, who signed the ADA into law, right? The American Disabilities Act that you're referring to 31 years ago, and he wholeheartedly supported it as his administration did, as did. I believe he was majority leader at the time, Bob Dole, certainly a partisan, but still was a staunch supporter of disability rights. And, and I think, unfortunately, we've seen that change over the years that it's become partisan, there's been legislation that Republicans maybe 30 years ago would have been in support of at least maybe negotiate on and find that common ground that just unfortunately, you know, compromise has become a bad word in Washington, and frankly, even right in the state houses anymore.

Meral Clarke: 16:00

I'm greatly saddened by this development. And it started a while back, but it was certainly accelerated under the former guy that was leading their party. So there's no doubt in my mind, it shouldn't be a partisan issue, much like climate change. You know, everyone, everyone, all Americans are affected by these issues. So I completely agree with you. Tell us about some of the work you're doing on the national level, as well, since you've been involved for such a long time with democratic politics. Tell us about some of the national issues that the party is tackling right now.

Vinny Olsziewski: 16:37

The party has certainly taken strides over the past 10 20 30 years to be more inclusive on so many levels, to make the Democratic Party reflect the people it represents and we certainly have ways to go on making our party look like America. But I think we've come a long way. And then you look at senators like Tammy Duckworth, yes, yeah, one of my sort of political idols appear from Georgia, is former senator, former secretaries, Georgia Secretary State, Max Cleland, who I have known for a long time and have the most possible admiration for, for what he's done for his country and for people with disabilities. Yeah, I mean, I think the party has really gone out of its way. I mean, again, I had the privilege of being one of Georgia's four representatives on the DNC platform committee this year, last year, which was truly an honor, I was

Meral Clarke: 17:34

Yes, congratulations.

Vinny Olsziewski: 17:36

Thank you. I was proud enough to be able to serve as a delegate again, and to be asked to serve on the platform committee, which is pretty highly sought position. And you know, as that wasn't in the little room where five people were writing it, but I did get to look it over, and I did have my input on it. And in every area of the platform, the party made a point of seeing that the disability perspective on whatever, whether was climate change, or voting rights or criminal justice reform, or the economy, whatever, health care, whatever issue, each of the particular planks, the disability perspective was taken into consideration when writing it was the most disability friendly platform the party's ever had. And that's my opinion, but it's also talking to other advocates. I know around the country, that they all had kind of the same opinion that Yeah, the party's really starting to get it and is moving in the right direction.

Meral Clarke: 18:34

I'm very pleased to hear that having, as I stated previously, more than a few friends who are disabled, I will definitely pass that on. So drilling back down to state politics. Does your caucus endorse individual candidates?

Vinny Olsziewski: 18:49

No, in some states party caucuses are kind of separate from the party, like more likely the young democrats are in Georgia. In Georgia, all the caucuses and councils are fully underneath the party structure. Right. So as such, the party can't endorse in primaries, and so we can't and of course, once we have our nominee, well begin. I mean, they're the party's nominee. all bets are off. At that point. We're not allowed to say these democrats are better than those Democrats. Of course, of course. And that applies to kind of all the caucuses and councils. I mean, we always support whole the whole slate of tickets. Now, that's not to say that there might be candidates that maybe seek our help and seek us out more than others, or that maybe we promote a little more, that there was as a candidate with a disability that was say running for governor, would we probably promote that candidate a little more than another and think that we would, I'm going to say this now. And I'll probably say it four more times before we're done. We do monthly Zoom calls, okay. We actually used to do conference calls and serve as the Zoom boom, actually migrate to Zoom and I've actually gets worse, I think I think it's worked out better. And again, we have the captioning function. And so that's something we're gonna keep doing even after we go back to the normal life. But we meet once a month, the third Wednesday of every month at seven o'clock. And we always try to have guest speakers, either one or two, and they could be community leaders. As we get into campaign season, we tried to get candidates. And so if there's any candidate out there listening, or anybody who works for a candidate, or has heard of the candidate, or knows the candidate that would like to speak to the caucus, please reach out to me, we will get you scheduled. any candidate that wants to talk to the caucus, we will make sure gets a slot and maybe a couple months down the road, because our schedule as we get near the primaries, and the general they tend to fill up. But I mean, we've scheduled extra calls at times, we had that many candidates to speak to us. So again, if there's any candidates out there, or any campaigns that want to talk to us, please reach out, we will get you on our calendar.

Meral Clarke: 20:58

Fantastic. And how would they get in touch with you other than the Facebook page?

Vinny Olsziewski: 21:03

The best way would be my email and the entire universe has my phone number and email so I'm not afraid. I am not afraid to give it up publicly.

Meral Clarke: 21:11

You are a brave brave soul.

Vinny Olsziewski: 21:14

Believe me. I think my phone numbers on bathroom walls so it's not hard to find my phone. You can reach me it's I'm gonna spell it. It's V is in Victor. O L. S is in SAM z as in zebra. i e w. s is in Sam ki@gmail.com. Oh, that's easy enough. Yeah, just volsziewski@gmail.com. And reach out and we will get you on the calendar. We are booked for our August call, which is actually on next Wednesday, the 18th at seven o'clock. The Zoom link is on our Facebook page. We also try to Facebook Live them. Our two speakers for August, our state representative William Bodie, who is running for labor commissioner, right. And we also have a race man who is running for the Atlanta school board. Fantastic. Actually, we have to open officer positions for the caucus, which will be electing secretary and treasurer. And again, to be eligible to rent for those offices. All you need to be is registered to vote in the state of Georgia support disability rights and be willing to sign a form saying you support the values of Democratic Party. So if there's anybody that might want to be interested, nomination will be taken on that call. And you come on.

Meral Clarke: 22:36

Oh, yeah, please, people step up. It's just so important. So do you have to be a member to attend meetings or participate in the events? And is there a cost?

Vinny Olsziewski: 22:45

No, you do not need to be a member. Again, part of the purpose of the caucus is to disseminate information to educate the whole community. So whether you care about disability rights, or just happen to see we're having a speaker that you'd like to hear, like if you just want to learn more about representative voting, his campaign or any particular speaker having any given month, I always advertise it as any democrat or disability advocate, but it's really anybody in the community. Sure, we really only have two rules. We ask that anybody on the call be respectful of anybody who's speaking, we welcome varying opinions and our conversations are not meant to be a monologue is meant to be a dialogue meant to be interactive, and we welcome varying opinions. All we ask is, of course, be respectful of other people, just as you'd want them to be respectful for you, but anybody is welcome. Again. Who knows, maybe you'll decide you want to become a permanent member? Maybe you just want to hear the speaker that month. Either one. Okay. Okay, great. And you'd asked about cost before, there is no cost. And this goes for any of the caucuses, there's no cost to join any of the parties, caucuses or councils. The party, though is doing something really exciting. We will find about about a month ago. It has been that because we're fully part of the state party, we can't really fundraise or haven't been able to party has decided. And this is something that I know, I'm excited that I'm sure my fellow chairs are too. But party is going to give each counseling caucus, a small budget to do some programming where we've had no funding, really. And they're also setting up for each of us, our own separate ActBlue pages so that we can actually do a little bit of fundraising, that's wonderful, so that we can actually do a little more programming. I wish I had that link to share today. They haven't sent us those links but i hope to have them soon. And if anybody knows me, you know, I'm kind of active on social media and you probably get tired of seeing my posts. Oh, no, never. But once that link is available, it will be shared widely. We had no need for a treasurer in the past, because we didn't have money but now that we're going to have some funds. That's actually why we're electing a treasurer.

Meral Clarke: 24:49

I am beyond thrilled to hear that. And just to add some accolades for the Democratic Party of Georgia, in which we have many, many mutual friends, obviously They're doing a lot for rural caucuses as well. You know, Pete Fuller with the Jackson County Democratic Party is the new rural DPG rural caucus chair. And we are just thrilled to see all of the initiatives that our state party is doing for all the different groups across Georgia. So thank you for bringing that up. And I'm curious, have we had any disabled candidates running in the state in recent memory? Max Cleland was quite a while back. So in the past, say 12 to 15 years, have we had any candidates with a disability that you've encouraged to run? Or that we've seen running on the local level?

Vinny Olsziewski: 25:41

On the very local level? I honestly don't know, there may well, not. I would be shocked if there's not somebody on a city council or a county commission somewhere in the state, right. But I'm sort of like the state legislative level or the statewide or congressional level, none that has identified as having a disability because again, not all disabilities are visible. Exactly. There are many invisible disabilities. And sometimes people aren't willing to come forward and be open about those because they could be afraid it could hurt them. There's still a real problem with with stigma, especially people who have mental health issues.

Meral Clarke: 26:18

That dovetails into my next question, what does the caucus do to address these mental health issues and what qualifies as a disability?

Vinny Olsziewski: 26:28

And for a technical terms, it would be defined as the way it's defined in the Americans with Disabilities Act. In terms of how the caucus is going to view it, first of all, this goes for the party in general, for whatever sort of group you might affiliated with the party believes in self identification. For example, if you're running as a delegate, they have certain affirmative action targets. To meet them. When you're filling out your delegate form. It asks you to identify and has a variety of categories, and there is nobody that goes back and checks to see is that person really Asian American? Or are they really LGBTQ or? Right? It's how you self identify, and we take people at their word, but the technical definition would be outlined by what's in the ADA, and it can get kind of technical, but if someone tells me they have a disability, I'm not going to question. Of course not. I might ask a little bit but not push, or sometimes they might volunteer information. But you know, there's so many different types of disabilities. Many visible many not if someone is comfortable identifying that they have one, you know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna question

Meral Clarke: 27:39

No, of course not. It's not something we do. Democrats anyway. Yeah. And it brings to mind Simone Biles and her courage in standing up for her own mental health and really highlighting mental health issues during the Olympics. What are your thoughts on that? I applaud her courage in doing so because there is still a stigma attached to disabilities and mental health, as you pointed out mental health issues. So what are your thoughts on that? I think we need more folks to stand up. And I think the younger generation is certainly more adept with that than, say, the baby boomers.

Vinny Olsziewski: 28:16

I think you're right, I think with her with with anybody that's willing to sort of use their platform, whether they be an athlete or an entertainer or a politician, or anybody that has that national platform and is willing to use that to promote disability rights or human rights of any, you know, whether LGBTQ rights or whatever, but somebody is willing to put themselves out there because let's face it, we all know nowadays, the social media quagmire. And the cesspool that can be Twitter. Yes. And I do my best to not be on Twitter. But I have seen some press stories about some of the ugly issues faced on Twitter because of her comments.

Meral Clarke: 28:58

It's not just on Twitter. It's really across all social media platforms, sadly, and everyone is an expert now, right? Because they researched it on the internet. They feel like they can speak to the issue, even though they can't. So it is a good reminder to remember to listen to the experts. What else do we need to know about the disability caucus that you'd like to highlight?

Vinny Olsziewski: 29:22

I guess this is sort of goes out to candidates and county parties. We're here to help you. There's so many easy things that you can do to make a campaign or party more accessible. If you indulge me, let me highlight just a couple of really simple ones. Captioning. Yes, I mentioned before the Zoom now has that thing but you know, if you're posting a video on social media or wherever, get it captioned. I think Facebook does it free I believe YouTube does it free and there are services that do too. But again, it puts your message in front of people that wouldn't otherwise be able to hear it right Not to mention, if you're scrolling through the newsfeed how many people pass a video and maybe don't listen to it, but they see some a couple words, they might actually stop and look at it,right?

Meral Clarke: 30:09

It's so true. And it's something we need to work on with the podcast and on the local level as well. So thank you for pointing that out.

Vinny Olsziewski: 30:17

Making your meetings literally physically accessible. Yes, having a county party meeting in the third floor, walk up with no elevator isn't particularly accessible. And again, I don't think that and I knew a party was the second floor walk because I knew a party that actually did that and ultimately moved it because it was pointed out to them. It wasn't accessible, and nobody thinks about it. Right? Unless they're, I really don't accuse people of being malicious. It's just not in their thought process. But yeah, so is the meeting physically accessible, if you're posting graphics, people with low or no vision, often use screen readers, there are apps and devices that will literally read text to them, wow. But they can't read pictures. But there's a very simple thing called alt text, Alt, Al t text al to where you can embed in the graphic, either a description of what the graphic is, or what it says. And it's very easy to do all your major email programs, like the bulk emails that you send, you know, MailChimp or NGP, or anything, I've never used Constant Contact. But my understanding is they haven't it's, you know, it's built into their software that you can very easily input that in that information. Facebook has the ability, if you're posting a graphic on Facebook to do it, it's a very simple thing that will then allow someone with low or no vision as they're reading, you know, their screen readers reading the text. And maybe it's a graphic about an event you're having that has the event details, like the location and the time. But if they can't read the PNG file, they can't see it. But you can put that in the alt text, and then the screen it will read it and they'll get that information.

Meral Clarke: 31:58

That is good to know. Does that work with transcription as well transcribing, say this podcast, I know zoom, a transcription, right? We're going to look into that, yes,

Vinny Olsziewski: 32:08

Another thing. If you caption it on Zoom, you can actually get a copy of the written transcript. Great, great. But another thing is, and I encourage this for not every little four person zoom, it would be expensive. And I understand that. But if you're having a medium or large event, be it virtual or real, a sign language interpreter. And yes, there's a cost involved in that. And it's not cheap. I'm not gonna lie. But especially if someone asks, but I think even if it's a bigger event, even if someone doesn't actually request it, I think the fact that you do it, because there might be people that might want to to be a part that have been long. Now I can't go to that meeting, because I won't be able to hear it. So they don't bother getting involved. But they see that Oh, wait, they're offering interpreters. Oh, okay, I can go to that. Or at least what a lot of organizations do is say, if you need an accommodation, reach out. And then you know, so if someone say needs a sign language interpreter or some other accommodation to participate in the event, they reach out to the organizer. And then the organizer can try to set that up, right? People who's building community know that if you need a sign language interpreter or some other special accommodation, you don't call 10 minutes before the thing starts and expect to have it.

Meral Clarke: 33:20

Right. And this is so helpful. You have been so helpful and in raising awareness for me and for all of our listeners, Vinnie. So thank you. So before we go, and this is something I ask all of my guests: Tell us a fun fact about yourself something that doesn't relate necessarily to your disability or your work with the democratic party or with the disability caucus. Tell us something fun about yourself that our listeners may not know and be interested in.

Vinny Olsziewski: 33:51

Well, it's kind of it does relate a little bit to my activity with the party. But when I was a delegate in 2016, purely by coincidence is obviously this not something I could have planned. It was the first time I'd ever been a delegate now something I was really excited about. And the convention happened to start on my birthday. So I spent my birthday in 2016. It was the night before the convention was canceled open. So there was this big welcoming reception at the Philadelphia Museum of of art, the big building, you know, Rocky climbs up the stairs, right? He's at the top. Yeah, in the museum. It wasn't close to the public, but they had all the galleries open and like all kinds of restaurants from Philadelphia had hors d'oeuvres out, and we're serving kind of their favorite cocktails. And this was basically how I spent my birthday. It's a birthday, I'll never reproduce. It was just such a memorable experience. That's wonderful. And that was there with too much varying brains to also be delegates and with whom I was howling around the whole week. And so we had a great day in Philadelphia sightseeing that day and had a wonderful meal. And now into this reception. It was just all of them. problem maybe you some birthday when I was five or six that I probably couldn't remember at this point, but it's a birthday I'll never forget. It was just purely coincidence but oh wonder DNC three and party have invited 2000 my closest friends celebrate my birthday, you know.

Meral Clarke: 35:14

I love it. Well, thank you Vinny. Thank you for joining us today and sharing more about your crucial work to make our democracy accessible to everyone. I'm Meral Clarke and on behalf of our team, I'd like to thank everyone for listening to the North Georgia Blue Podcast. We hope you'll listen in next time when our special guest will be Patti Durand, Democratic candidate for the Georgia Public Service Commission. To learn more about the Fannin County democrats and the work we're doing please visit us online at Fannin County Georgia Democrats dot com and consider sharing the North Georgia Blue Podcast with your friends and family. Join us again next week as we get into some more good trouble.