Sign up to be a Day of Mourning Vigil Site Coordinator
2023 Anti-Filicide Toolkit available at ASAN >>
In the past five years, over 550 people with disabilities have been murdered by their parents, relatives or caregivers.
On Wednesday, March 1st, the disability community will gather across the nation to remember these disabled victims of filicide – disabled people murdered by their family members or caregivers. You can sign up to be a Day of Mourning Vigil Site Coordinator here.
We see the same pattern repeating over and over again. A parent kills their disabled child. The media portrays these murders as justifiable and inevitable due to the “burden” of having a disabled person in the family. If the parent stands trial, they are given sympathy and comparatively lighter sentences, if they are sentenced at all. The victims are disregarded, blamed for their own murder at the hands of the person they should have been able to trust the most, and ultimately forgotten. And then the cycle repeats.
Also at ASAN:
- ASAN December Update
- Congress has Supported the FDA’s Right to #StopTheShock
- Creating Community: ASAN’s 2022 Annual Report
- Autism Campus Inclusion: Applications for the 2023 Autism Campus Inclusion (ACI) Leadership Academy are now open. This year’s program will be held from July 10th through 19th. This year’s program will be held in person, if it is safe to do so. If we cannot have ACI in person, we will hold it virtually.
Comments to Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
By Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN)
Today, January 18, 2022, Finn Gardiner submitted comments to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) on behalf of the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network and the Autistic People of Color Fund.
Full comments and abridged version can be found here >>
Also on AWN:
A brief history of Spectrum 10k
By David Gray-Hammond at Emergent Divergence
In the summer of 2021, it was announced that a new study would be seeking the DNA of 10,000 Autistic people and their families. They wanted to do this to look at co-occurring conditions amongst Autistic people and improve our wellbeing.
Great right?
Wrong.
Related:
Spectrum 10K Will Never Be Acceptable: Here Is Why
Spectrum 10k researchers have given up on hiding their eugenics agenda
#BoycottSpectrum10K Archives
Collaborative niche construction
By Jorn Bettin at Autistic Collaboration
Psychiatry is slowly catching up with the concept of neurodiversity amongst animals, including humans, taking clues from animal biology/psychology and from the neurodiversity movement. …
Also on AutCollab.org:
Convergent and divergent cultural evolution
Co-creating ecologies of caring and sharing
Cultural evolution towards human scale
Autistic people are not for sale
Nurturing healthy Autistic relationships
On love, in the face of fear
By Ann Memmott at Ann’s Autism Blog
In recent days, the autistic communities have sat in shock or bemusement at an article which was written about some of us. Me included.
It is not clear what the author was trying to achieve.
Also on Ann’s Autism Blog:
Ethics and Autism: Rights and Responsibilities within Applied Behaviour Analysis
The Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) industry claims to be a gold-standard approach to improving the lives of autistic individuals and their families. It uses reinforcement to make a child do, or not do, particular things. I won’t go into detail on what ABA is, here. Any internet search for ‘What is ABA’ may give hundreds of ABA industry descriptions. …
- I am not a fan of creating a “Profound Autism” category. Here’s why.
- Research that dishonours and harms autistic people
Without Restraint: How Skiing Saved My Son’s Life
Guest authors are Robert and Ryan DeLena
As a toddler, Ryan had difficulty controlling his emotions and was placed in a therapeutic school that relied on detrimental methods of behavior modification, such as physical restraint. Over the next four years, he was restrained hundreds of times at school, and we were advised to restrain him at home. …
More at Alliance Against Seclusion & Restraint
- Once upon a time, a tale of seclusion and restraint by guest author, Sandy Eyles
- The Reality of Isolation Rooms in New Jersey’s Public Schools, and Efforts to Ban the Practice by guest author Alyssa Lidman
- I wish I had known then what I know now by guest author, K.H.
- An Educators Perspective: Stop restraining and secluding disabled children in the name of safety by guest author Karen Bures
- Idahoans for Safe Schools urges the State Board of Education to ban the use of seclusion, and corporal punishment by guest author, Charmaine Thaner
- The Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint is looking for volunteers in Canada, by Guy Stephens
- Crisis Prevention Institute and the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint Announce Collaborative Initiatives
A Rights-Based Approach to Communication and Therapy
Autistic Strategies Network
Communication is a human right. Here we share some resources which we’re using in a presentation about this topic for allied health professionals interested in working with autistic people who don’t speak.
Also on Autistic Strategies Network:
- Help us combat chemical restraint in Western Cape schools
- Talking about autism: Rights-centred resources
GRIEVANCE-BASED PARENT ORGANIZATIONS ARE AUTISM’S MAGA MOVEMENT
by Shannon Des Roches Rosa At Thinking Person’s Guide To Autism (TPGA)
If you’re the parent of an autistic child or adult, and you are also horrified by MAGA-style disinformation, please know you should be just as skeptical about getting autism information from people I’m going to call “grievance parents.” These are parents who brand themselves as autism experts, yet promote reactionary ideas about autism and resentment towards autistic advocates, while encouraging followers to become too upset about having autistic children to question autism misinformation. …
Also on TPGA:
- HOW NON-AUTISTICS CAN BE GOOD FRIENDS TO AUTISTIC PEOPLE, by Shannon Des Roches Rosa
- AUTISM AND AGEISM, by Maxfield Sparrow
- THE MAGIC OF NOISE CANCELING EAR PROTECTION, by Autistic Science Person
- TRAUMA CLASHES: STAYING CALM WHEN SOMEONE IS MELTING DOWN, by Maxfield Sparrow
- MY EXPERIENCE OF UNMASKING AS AN AUTISTIC PERSON, by Hassaan
International Badass Activists 