I think it is good to have a petition to let the president know about being recognize in ASL. Don't forget that AGBell organizations had been working very hard to keep ASL or any sign language away or shut off from the Deaf and Hard Of Hearing (HOH) mainstream schools. We need ASL for many reasons in public places including elementary, high school and mainstream colleges. Without ASL, we would have struggled with trying to understand in the classrooms and public places where we are having difficult time to understand what the doctors, lawyers, judges, and churches. No one should take ASL away from us or prevented us from learning to sign if we could not understand what they said. It has been going on for many years like about 2 centuries or more. The hearing people especially the authorities like AGBell organizations really want to take away from us when there is CI and hearing aid. We don't want ignorance so that is the reason why we need petition for ASL alive to be recognize.
It is what happen to Native tribes who were forced to speak English and was forbidden to speak their own languages. We as Natives get recognized as a tribes on the reservations but not our tribal languages. We are struggling trying to get our native languages back the way we use to speak. For me, as Deaf native, I want ASL so that I can communicate with all of you and not being deprived saying that we can understand lipreading and listen if we have hearing aids or CIs. They are wrong and don't get it. The hearing people forget that we can not hear sounds very well, even if we can only hear environmental sounds which was not that clear with the aids.