Enrique Oliu

[Image description: Enrique Oliu standing in a press box, with a baseball diamond in the background; he's wearing a shirt, tie, headphones, and credentials, and smiling; he has dark eyebrows and greying hair]

I always run into skeptical people, but I've never had any problem doing my job.

--Enrique Oliu

Enrique Oliu is the Florida broadcaster covering the World Series for Spanish-language audiences in Tampa Bay. Oliu is blind. Born in Nicaragua in 1962, he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine as a child, and graduated from the University of South Florida. He's been covering baseball professionally since 1989, and now covers all of Tampa Bay's games, as well as spring training camps in Mexico and Venezuela. "I played this sport and a bunch of others. Adapted, but I played. Blind or not blind, I have an opinion and I just state mine. That's what people want."

Florida's "End the Line" campaign

[Image description: Banner shows a photo of a young man's face, with the caption "More than 15,000 people with developmental disabilities wait for community services. endtheline.org"--there's also a graphic, silhouettes of a line of people, various sizes]

Families in the US navigating their resource options figure out pretty quickly that some states are better than others for kids and adults with developmental disabilities. And one of the worst states, by any possible measure, is Florida, where over 15,000 people are on a waitlist--more than 2,500 of them have been waiting for more than five years--for such essential community services as respite hours, training programs, and employment supports. Some other states have waiting lists, but Florida's is especially glacial, and shows no signs of improvement.

Now EndtheLine.org has a website, with family stories, sample letters to the editor and letters to elected officials, and news items to help advocates work for change on this appalling situation. Even if you don't live in Florida and never expect to, it's a site worth visiting as an example of online advocacy. And it's worth knowing what's happening there, anyway--because stuff like this thrives when no one beyond state borders notices or cares. Well, we've noticed, Florida. A lot of folks have noticed.