#AutisticWhileBlack: What Happened To Kennedi High?

In the midst of the national media attention on D.C.'s missing African American girls, one young woman. Kennedi High, 16, Autistic and African American, left her High School in North Baltimore upon school dismissal on March 8, 2017, and disappeared for six days. She was located by the Baltimore Police and returned to her family, but the mysteries of how she disappeared, what befell her while she was gone, and who was responsible remain.

Kennedi has no history of running from home and would never stay out overnight. After talking with Kennedi, her mother is convinced she was the victim of human trafficking. The police initially dismissed the idea but are now investigating.

#BREAKING: #KennediHigh has been LOCATED. She is being reunited w/her family. It's because of all of you. Addt details later. @MissingKids pic.twitter.com/hyP4mOQC7C

— Baltimore Police (@BaltimorePolice) March 13, 2017

Autism organizations, disability rights organizations, parents of autistic youth, autistic activists, in short, every stakeholder in the autism conversation should be following this case and demanding answers.

They aren't.

1. Kennedi described to her mother being passed to different men each day in six different locations. She is quite clear on what happened to her.  Police consider her diagnosis first and therefore have a presumption of her incompetence. They did not take her account of events seriously until her mother repeated Kennedi's statements to the press and remained adamant that she believed her daughter was victimized and harmed.

2. Kennedi supposedly left voluntarily with someone she met on the Internet. Kennedi doesn't own a cell phone.  How did she meet this individual? This is critically important. Was someone allowing her to use their phone? Is someone from her school or community complicit in what happened to her?

 Right now, the therapeutic standard in Maryland for 'treatment' of autistic people from early intervention onward focuses on behavioral compliance applying ABA first and foremost. Years of this resulted in teens who comply with the demands of any authority figure. In short, we are allowing our children to mature into easy prey for predators by acquiescing to their submission to a compliance reward structure that can be perverted and abused to harm them. We are so caught up in extinguishing behaviors in our offspring that we erase their ability to say no or defend themselves. This system of autism behavioral management doesn't teach recognizing and avoiding predators, bullies, and abusive people. This has to change.

3. Particularly for autistic families of color, the demand placed on us to allow our autistic children to be made passive and compliant to all is enforced viscously. If autistic male students are labeled "combative" or "aggressive" by any authority figure who simply doesn't feel like dealing with them they are immediately criminalized and suspended or expelled from public school. It is not unusual for schools to call the police to arrest students for school-related minor infractions. All of these potential risks that their children might be disenfranchised from school activities, aftercare, and community participation pressure parents of autistic students of color to accept extreme compliance in their children as "therapy" and "improvement," and "success" of ABA intervention.

4. Everyone in the autism conversation needs to step up now and follow the investigation of the case of Kennedi High. She deserves to be believed and heard. The lack of comment, interest, and mention of her case in our community is typical of the erasure of autistic people of color that I constantly write about, to no avail. What happened to her needs to be investigated and resolved and those responsible for kidnapping and harming her need to be arrested and punished. I am calling this a kidnapping because she was taught to comply and therefore her ability to object was stripped from her.

Focus on finding solutions to the cyclic victimization of intersectional autistic populations in general and African-American autistics, in particular, is largely absent from the annual month-long awareness and acceptance events of Autism Month. The entire purpose of #AutisticWhileBlack was an attempt to spotlight issues like this one and people from our own community who are victimized yet pass quickly by our newsfeeds, a single soundbite that blips out of sight and out of community thoughts. Meanwhile, bloody online battles are being waged on the merits of blue hair dye, causation, and puzzle piece lapel pins.

Autism month is meant to be for and about the lives and needs of autistic people of all ages and demographics.

Make Kennedi matter. She's alive, and she'll need help recovering from this. Someone has to care. Where are the autism organizations who are supposed to be fighting for her? The fact that I must continually remind our community to not erase our victimized youth is beyond unacceptable.

 #JusticeforKennedi.

Resources:
The Story of Kennedi High, #AutisticWhileBlack
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/03/17/mom-believes-daughter-was-trafficked-while-she-was-missing/

http://wtop.com/maryland/2017/03/baltimore-police-seek-help-in-finding-missing-teen/

http://www.theroot.com/baltimore-police-requests-publics-help-in-search-for-mi-1793210175

Catastrophic Encounters with Police: The Case of Tario Anderson And the Way Forward for Neli Latson

Tario Anderson, 34 Black, nonspeaking autistic, was walking down his street to visit family on the evening of Christmas day. He was placed in the glare of police spotlights, yelled at, at which point having done nothing wrong, he placed his hands in his pockets and continued walking. When police spotlighted and threatened to tase him, Tario ran. Neighbors tried shouting and warning police that Tario was autistic but they wouldn’t listen. His mother came running and repeatedly asked them to stop, even demanding they arrest her instead, shouting if anyone was at fault, she was. They used a taser on him, multiple officers fell on him while he was face down writhing from the taser shocks. Video shows Tario crying out in pain and calling for his mother. The Greenville police later announced that they now realized Mr. Anderson could not understand the commands given to him by police and all charges (interfering with police investigation and resisting arrest) would be dropped. The family is suing. In 22 years this could be my son, walking in his own neighborhood, unable to respond to police. So this is extremely, nightmarishly, personal. Even the gentle way his mother reached up to soothe the wound on his cheek during a news interview made me so upset at what happened to him. Mr. Anderson is 6 feet 6 inches and 350 lbs of calm, gentle, giant human being. He did not deserve this treatment. He may not recover from the trauma of it.

Despite my maternal horror at what happened to Mr. Anderson, this case is unusual in that the police recognized a wrong had been done, explained that it is not within the scope of law enforcement to diagnose or simply accept that any person has a condition that might impede their ability to understand and respond to police commands. They released Mr. Anderson as soon as this was understood and apologized. The critical thing here was that the police, once they realized their error, acted to make things right. 

In essence the case of Reginald Latson and the case of Tario Anderson should have ended the same way. But the presumption that when someone speaks to you they are properly processing what you say, and when they fail to follow commands they are doing so in defiance shows an ignorance of the auditory processing disorders, scripting, echolalia, and other concerns that not visible or understandable to people who have no personal or professional familiarity with neurodivergent people. Invisible aspects of disability tend to lead people who have no knowledge of neurodivergence in general and autism combined with intellectual challenges in particular to draw the false conclusions that have devastated Mr. Latson’s life. The relief I have that Mr. Anderson is free from prosecution is tempered with the heartbreak of knowing that this should be what is happening right now to Neli Latson. Instead, he is going to tried again for something that was clearly a function of his solitary confinement and a mental health crisis of such gravity that he was suicidal. The Stafford county prosecutor pursued a case that is always treated as a minor infraction and managed within the corrections system. Prosecutor Eric Olsen was hell bent on punishing an individual based upon his own personal racial profiling and ableism. Quoting Ms. Marcus' Washington Post article:  "Latson’s intellectual disability, Olsen has argued in court, is “an aspect of convenience. When his advocates want him to be (unprintable slur for intellectually disabled), he is.” " 

I am asking that the next thing we do for Neli Latson is to appeal to Virginia’s attorney general to drop the charges against him and allow him to be transferred out of the corrections system and into the DD system where he can begin to heal from the harm done him. Mr. Latson only differs from Mr. Anderson in that his ability to speak masks invisible disability. There is only one person in the entire state of Virginia who continually insists Mr. Latson be prosecuted. That man’s prosecutorial bias calls into question the entire case history to date. Mr. Latson should not have to be placed in a position where he pleads guilty to something that was beyond his ability to control and leaves him at the mercy of a prosecutor who has made his enmity, racial bias, and ableism plain in open court. 

While I am very upset by the entire Christmas day catastrophic encounter,  harm and arrest of Tario Anderson, I have to commend the Greenville, S.C. police department for releasing him and acting to drop charges against him as soon as they had verification of Mr. Anderson's diagnosis.  If only Virginia showed the same understanding of Mr. Latson’s disabilities and realized being able to manage verbal speech doesn’t equal understanding what is said by others well or accurately, particularly in situations of high stress.

The Greenville S.C. police department showed the forthrightness to do rapid damage control when this catastrophic encounter with police happened and wrong had been done to an autistic Black man. Time for Virginia to follow suit and make things right for Mr. Latson.

#FreeNeli

I Can't Breathe

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.” 

― Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 @National Archives Documents

I can't get that quote out of my head. It is clanging in there like a brick dropped in a steel drum. Here I am, marinating in the pain of human rights lost and the clear and present danger to people of my race in the United States, the country that tries to dictate right and wrong to the world. This pain is deep, and old. Nightmares of the harms done to me and mine haunted my dreams last night. The illusion of justice we convinced ourselves we had was a veneer that has been dissolved away.  Events are proceeding as if there is no need to hide the fact we've lived with for over 100 years: justice is not for those Americans who are Black and poor. The right to be safely taken into custody and tried by a jury of one's peers if one is suspected of committing a crime is not for people of color. It is as if institutionalized shooting is the new way of lynching. Being shot to death can happen to seven year old Aiyana Stanley Jones, sleeping on a couch in what passed for her home.  It can be done out of malice to Ronald Madison, 40 and autistic. Anyone can be the next potential victim.  It could happen to Oprah Winfrey as she learned when her fame and $2.9 billion net worth failed to keep her from being treated like the rest of us when entering a store to buy a purse. You can't buy your way out of this legacy with money, or education, athleticism, or winning the office of the President of the United States.  Each day for the rest of our lives, we will be reminded that we are Black, and if we don't agree that Black is less,  if we don't look away when the dominant culture dictates that the Black body be the beast of burden of society then we will be made to stand by helplessly while our people are shot. The murders are here to tear at our hearts and remind us that we have no voice in this society. July 2, 1964 makes no difference today. The Civil Rights Act is so much paper and photo op. This effort, for which so many continue to die, is failing. All men are created equal as long as those men are not Black and poor.

What do I say to my boy today? We are already harassed when we try and take walks and try to go out and see our world together. A gray haired Black woman walking unsteadily down a sidewalk with a large, hispanic looking male leaning on her for support. Will they shoot us today? Will he look threatening? What if he's having a meltdown? What do I tell him if they hurt him? That 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice?' Because I have been waiting for it to bend in that direction since 1965. It just is not bending.

The Scottsboro Boys, with attorney Samuel Leibowitz,
under guard by the state militia, 1932. Image is of 9 Black teens in
 a cage with two white Alabama militia men and their attorney,
 who was white. 

I must again change how we interact with the world. Because our world differs from the world of the autism families who continue to dominate the autism conversation. Our world  is now less safe.

What the grand jury ruling in the Eric Garner murder means is body cameras on police will not change an outcome that is only a surprise to people who aren't black or brown. A camera on a body is only as good as the person wearing it. It can easily be shut off, or disregarded as evidence in grand jury hearings and trials. There is no route to accountability if accountability is simply a modern rerun of the way things were done in Alabama, when the Scottsboro boys were rounded up and tried for a crime that never happened because white boys were caught hoboing on a train, and wanted to get out of trouble. That happened 80 years ago. Has anything in the justice system changed? Not really. Even seeing injustice with our own eyes is not enough. Our eyes, the gaslighting voice of authority says, deceive us. Only things we can't comprehend matter. The weight of our words as witnesses are light. We are dismissed. Only power and privilege matter. So what do I do now? Where do I go from here? It isn't just a question I'm asking myself as an activist who has hit the insurmountable wall of institutionalized racism this entire year. It is a question I am asking as the mother of a nonspeaking autistic son in an American horror story of police in public schools, the resurgence of hate groups and those groups being given national media coverage to spew hate on us. People with power who see my son, with his budding mustache and older look, larger than his peers and neurdivergent, as a threat where he is not one. They see him and are afraid. The worst atrocities in our lifetime have been the byproducts of fear. Unnecessary fear based on ignorance, the hate that fear generates, and the devastating consequences to our people. Atrocities, forgiven under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.

I am rethinking my entire way of living and wondering, terrified,  what I can do to keep him from being another Neli Latson, in solitary confinement for the new crime of wanting to end his life because of the horrible circumstances that brought him from going to the library to the iron grip of a system that doesn't care that he has no understanding of what he did wrong. The law says if he does not understand what he did, he is not fit to be tried. But if you find yourself in Neli's situation, you'd better not be Black in Virginia.

See when I say justice for Michael Brown, what I am saying is that a man should not be shot repeatedly for jaywalking, in the same country where, as a person said on social media, a white male with bright orange hair walks into a theatre, throws tear gas and fires an assault rife, kills 12, wounds 70 victims and is taken alive. When I say justice for Eric Garner, I mean a man who died before our eyes crushed in an illegal chokehold for selling untaxed cigarettes should not have died in a country where Cliven Bundy, a rancher who owes more than $1 million to the federal government for late grazing and trespassing fees, which he has been accruing since the 1990's and refusing to pay, can simply not pay, and armed white people can plant themselves on federal land and scream "State's rights!". Cliven Bundy, the bigot, who later said awful things about my people, is free, his cattle grazing on federal land, and will never be arrested for anything.

I am not anti police and will challenge anyone to tries to slap that label on me. Having been fortunate enough to know outstanding law enforcement officers, seeing those who abuse that power makes me angry. This abuse of power denigrates all police officers who do their jobs and perform in an outstanding manner each day of their careers. Each time, in an attempt to protect police officers in general, someone abusing power is allowed to get away with it a huge canyon divide opens between law enforcement and our community. No amount of talk can repair what doing the right thing can.

There is a hashtag sign people are carrying in the streets, an echo of Eric Garner's dying words. It is a summary of my trying to collect myself, my disgust at organizations that should have done more before now and did not, the rampant racism within disability rights organizations that has me reeling this year,  my own attempts to cease hugging my neurodivergent son and husband in shock wondering when this nightmare will end.


The hashtag sign says simply I can't breathe.

Guest Blogger in Poems for Social Justice

Content: Description of court proceedings and racism.

Sit with me

BY: LYDIA BROWN

If you still believe in a post-racial society or colorblind justice,

come to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia inside the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse

in the shadow of the U.S. Department of Justice's façade,

a ten minute stroll from the FBI Headquarters,

less than two miles away from the White House and Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Traipse down the ever-broken escalator

(or wait for the overcrowded elevators in the niche in the back wall)

and sit in the back of courtroom C-10,

so you can watch the ten hour parade of Black men in chains,

interrupted by the occasional brown body wearing handcuffs and shackles to match,

with a handful of Black and brown women shuffling between them,

their names mangled on the apathetic tongues of clerk and judge and prosecutor alike

and misspelled on the docket and in the jail file,

and sometimes misgendered as male or female

with reckless disregard and bureaucratic precision.

(It won't be fixed even if the case goes all the way to trial.)

And if you stay or come back another day,

you can watch the parade again

from the safety of the back row,

beside the tired-faced Marshals,

as many times as you like.

(If you're white, don't worry,

they won't mistake you for a defendant,

but a stern official having a particularly bad day

might ask for your cell phone

outside the courtroom doors.)

And if you're lucky or especially patient,

you might catch a glimpse of someone white coming before the court.

But he — or she — or ze — will never be in chains,

and walks through the rows of spectator seating

well-assured of a swift return home

after an impartial hearing before a sympathetic judge.

It will only be a brief interruption from the regularly scheduled proceedings, though,

so don't leave for a bathroom break

or you might miss the next butchered name

called from the docket sheet.

Sit with me.

Come to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia inside the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse

in the shadow of the U.S. Department of Justice's façade,

a ten minute stroll from the FBI Headquarters,

less than two miles away from the White House and Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court of the United States,

and sit with me a few hours in courtroom C-10 on the lower level

to witness another day's administration of justice

in the post-racial United States.

----------------------------------------

Lydia Brown is an Autistic and multiply-disabled disability rights activist, scholar, and writer. She is a Project Assistant for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Lydia currently serves as Undersecretary for Disability Affairs at Georgetown University’s student government executive branch, where she is also working to establish, develop, and sustain a Disability Cultural Center on campus. Most recently, she was honored as a Champion of Change by the White House for the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Lydia is an alumna of the 2013 American Association of People with Disabilities summer internship program, and was previously the 2012 Patricia Morrissey Disability Policy Fellow at the Institute for Educational Leadership. Lydia blogs at Autistic Hoya (www.autistichoya.com).


Lydia Brown, “Sit with me” from Autistic Hoya. Copyright © 2013 by Lydia Brown. Reprinted with the permission of the author.