Against the Erasure of LaVonnya Gardner

Image of LaVonnya Gardner's AAC board with the written
 and PEC symbol sentence "I use AAC everyday and I Love it"
written on the display panel above the PEC images and wordsin orange, pink, red, green, and light blue squares. Credit
LaVonnya Gardner, Twitter. 

 Black, deafblind autistic activist LaVonnya Gardner died suddenly in late August of last year. She was someone I was proud to call a friend.

Her death was particularly heartbreaking to me and mine. To understand what LaVonnya simply existing meant to me and my son Mustafa, you have to realize a few important details. LaVonnya understood what being blind meant, so we had that common ground because I was once blind for a time and it was assumed I would wear a prosthetic left eye and be blind permanently. LaVonnya understood what it meant to a Black disabled parent to an autistic child in the DMV (the District, Maryland, and Virginia) because she was the mother of an autistic daughter. LaVonnya understood what it meant to be a nonspeaking autistic who used AAC to communicate because she was a nonspeaking autistic adult who used AAC to communicate. LaVonnya knew what it meant to navigate the world as a Black nonspeaking autistic adult, and she had good, practical advice for my autistic nonspeaking son about survival as a Black autistic male in a hostile world.

She built a library of YouTube videos and AAC related social media posts, knowing her own import to nonspeaking autistic Black youth. She, activist Lydia Brown, and others were the founders of The Washington Disabled Students Collective. My hope was that her body of work would live on should she pass away and that she might also leave the legacy of her intellectual property for her daughter and others it might help.

We had an agreement to meet in the Smithsonian gardens with our kids in the Spring. You really don't understand the impact someone has on your life until they are suddenly gone.

I am the Unicorn that you don't see. Yet still beautiful.

— lavonnya gardner (@unicorn3841) July 1, 2016

LaVonnya Gardner.  image of a Black woman with long braided hair
wearing a pink blouse credit LaVonnya Gardner

I realized in February that the Amplify Autistic Voices project, which I had decided to end, had LaVonnya speaking about herself in her own words. I stopped my plans to delete the blog. I could not erase her. After her death, a relative she did not get on with insisted a name she left behind to move away from an abusive past was her name. That person disregarded her final wishes and tried to collect money from LaVonnya's grieving friends and colleagues. Dozens of her instructional and advocacy videos are erased from her YouTube channel, and only two videos on her Beautiful Unicorn channel remain.

LaVonnya helped many parents and autistic children, both independently and in support groups. She had a patience with parents that I sometimes do not have. She was an activist who stepped up as much as her health allowed. She was excited and looked forward to working with my son and spending quality time with him because they were so similar. I cannot begin to express what the loss of her AAC instruction videos means for those who can't call or message her anymore.

If you have any photos, videos, digital content of LaVonnya's please post it on her memorial Facebook page. I don't know anyone else like her, and I doubt I ever will.

LaVonnya Gardner was my son's role model. She was the living proof that nonspeaking deafblind persons could live, love, produce and parent disabled children, live autonomously, and speak up for themselves.

She was a beautiful Unicorn who should not be erased or forgotten. Help me make certain she's remembered.

Justice for the Dietrich, Idaho Assault Victim, Neurodivergent and Black

Mr. and Mrs. McDaniel with four of their 20 adopted children
©Washington Post/Getty Images

I'm going to mention a violent rape. I will try to be as brief as possible but please don't read on if this topic will upset you. 

I learned today that I can be disgusted, angry, and horrified all at once.

The victim, 18, psychiatric disability community member, one of 20 adoptees to the McDaniel family whose parents are white and live in an area with a predominantly white school, was abused by his own football teammates over a period of months and no one in the school administration or coaching staff acted to stop it. the victim was eventually lured into a locker room by three assailants where his teammates beat him and raped him violently with a coat hanger. 

The McDaniels have an additional five children born to them. I'm not certain how they are able to manage the safety of disabled children of color in a family of 25 children. But there is something more urgent here and that is that Judge Randy Stoker handed down a sentence of 3 years probation to defendant John Howard the main perpetrator of the assault, at the behest of Prosecutor Hemmer. The prosecutor explained to the Judge that the assault was not a rape, hate crime, or any category of sexual assault, but in face a case of bullying, and let the rapist off without jail time. Of course, because Howard was allowed to plead to a charge that was not rape or a hate crime, he will not be a registered sex offender and will be free to assault other African American victims. Co-defendant Tanner Ward's charge of forcible penetration with a foreign object was reduced to a lesser charge and he is being tried as a juvenile. The court and prosecutor also decided Wards actions were not a hate crime. 

When is the disability community going to fight for justice for the Black disabled victims of ableist hate crimes? Are they not aggressively pursuing this because these victims are not white? This is a very sore point for me. I'm tired of seeing this happen time and again with victimized disabled youth of color.

Judge Stoker should be removed from the bench. I will be including links to the Change.org petitions calling for his removal at the end of this blog. Moreover, Prosecutor Hemmer, (who orchestrated the plea deals and reduction of charges, used the victim's disability as justification for why the final horrific assault should not be classified as a sexual assault or a hate crime) should be held accountable. David Perry explains this very clearly in his excellent article on the Dietrich assault in Pacific Standard which you can read here.

The victim never had a chance. He is the victim but being both disabled and Black in an all-white town with parents who cannot teach him about racism because they are white and do not experience it means he was unprepared and also emotionally violated by the judicial system, the school where he should have been safe, and the football team coaching staff who encouraged this abuse. According to the Superintendent of the schools' disclosure of the district's investigation, one teammate tried to stop the attack but was threaten with the same treatment if he interfered. No other classmates fought for him. This is what it means to be Black and disabled in America.

The question is, are there people in the wider world who believe that justice is the entitlement and human right of every citizen in every nation on this planet? Are there people who believe hate crimes are hate crimes when the victim is Black and disabled? 

If you are one of these good people,  please help me step up now and make this right. Because this is an abomination. And if this judgment stands, all disabled children could be next because disabled teens are easy targets and we are living in a time of inflated hate. 

If those families with white disabled loved ones believe that because their children aren't Black, they won't  be targeted next, they are in for a very unpleasant surprise. Once people know they can abuse disabled youth without serious repercussions they will escalate and not stop at Black disabled youth. Our children are just the first targets. They are never the last.

Speak out! Protest this verdict. Justice for the Dietrich, Idaho assault victim! Or sit silently now and wait until your loved ones are the newest targets and it is too late to fight.

My son is nonverbal. Had he been victimized in this sustained and escalated fashion, he could not have told us or defended himself. This is why I am so outraged and so horrified that months of sustained harm get a slap on the wrist. The victim of this sustained series of hate crimes will need therapy for the rest of his life. 

We must act to make this right or we have no purpose in advocacy nor can we call ourselves activists against violence to disabled youth. 

---------------------------------
Resources and Calls To Action
(with thanks to some incredible activists for research, updates, and support)

The Terrifying Story of The Dietrich, Idaho Assault Victim
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3616523/Rape-allegation-race-glare-national-media-divide-town.html

How a Prosecutor Decided That an Attack on a Disabled Black Kid Was Just Bullying
David Perry for Pacific Standard:
https://psmag.com/how-a-prosecutor-decided-that-an-attack-on-a-disabled-black-kid-was-just-bullying-51ab84a258a5#.nnt8yqcu4

School Superintendent Investigation Report of Details in the Case Heavily Redacted by School District legal counsel: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3115343-DIETRICH-MOTION-DISCLOSURE.html

John R.K. Howard was not charged with a hate for sex crime"
http://m.boiseweekly.com/boise/prosecutor-says-dietrich-high-assault-not-sex-or-race-crime-teen-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-felony/Content?oid=3948761

Co-defendant Tanner Ward not facing felony charges and case to be tried in juvenile court
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article104466831.html

Attorneys for McDaniel family petitioning court for unredacted documents. Willing to allow them in the public record to expose cover-up and actions of defendants in their civil case against School district:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article104466831.html

Petitions about the McDaniel hate crimes in Dietrich, Idaho to sign and share:

Change.org Petition: IDAHO JUDICIAL COUNCIL: Remove Judge Randy Stoker from the bench for decision in John Howard rape case  https://tinyurl.com/zwc3zf

MoveOn.org Petition to DOJ: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/demand-justice-department-1?source=c.em&r_by=8228761.

For further public action:

Please direct public comment about this unfathomable injustice to:

Office of the Attorney General Lawrence Wasden
700 W. Jefferson Street
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Phone (208) 334-2400
Fax (208) 854-8071

Comments can also be submitted on  the official website here:

http://www.ag.idaho.gov/index.html

What else can you do?
Consider sending an email expressing your concern about the miscarriage of justice in this adjudication of this case. You can do so here:
https://gov.idaho.gov/ourgov/contact.html

Autism Essays: Recalibrating Autism Acceptance

Poster of Mustafa Çevik taupe letters on a black field read: This
Neurodivergent Multiracial Adolescent is aware of his mother's
race is aware of his autism and their ableism Deserves Respect
Your Awareness if paving the road to hell
Presume his competence #Tone it down Taupe ©Mustafa Nuri ÇEVIK
and Kerima ÇEVIK

Fiat justitia ruat caelum.

Sometimes I use profanity when I communicate. This is going to be one of those occasions.

If the three branches of the federal government united tomorrow and declared that henceforth Autism Awareness Month would be named Autism Acceptance Month throughout the nation it wouldn't mean shit to me. Maybe I would have been excited about the meaning of such a possibility four years ago. I'm not now. You see acceptance without representation is not acceptance. What I have seen is an insufficient amount of representation, objectification of intersected populations across the entire autism community, whether medical model or disability rights and a great deal of ableism.

My lack of enthusiasm is rooted in the fact that autism acceptance is now defined differently by every stakeholder presently promoting the concept. Acceptance as it was originally presented by autistic disability rights activists like Paula C. Durbin-Westby, is being drowned out by people who aren't really receiving or disseminating the core message. They are simply trading one word for another without the foundational mind shift necessary to grasp what is meant by acceptance and apply it to their lives. Tolerance is not acceptance. Tolerance is putting up with something even if you don't like or agree with it. Acceptance is lending credence to something or agreeing with it. Right now, many parents, professionals, organizations, allies and famous autistic people with internalized ableism conflate the word acceptance with the word tolerance and that needs to stop. One's tolerance of nonspeaking people doesn't mean one accepts them. This conflated message is wreaking havoc on  the message and purpose of Autism Acceptance Month.

The way autism acceptance has come to be presented is very much the way equal pay for women has come to be presented. The voices heard were white and had large platforms from which to broadcast their message.  On those platforms, all intersected populations of women were used as poster children for the cause, while their voices were ignored or silenced. The equal pay act of 2009 was named after a white woman in a country where my intersected demographic, Black Latina women, earn 54% of what white males earn. Ms. Ledbetter and her peers earn 78%.  Despite the so-called victory of the Ledbetter act, that disparity is not being addressed. Because the conversation of equal pays only matters when the speakers are white, once pay parity between white males and white females is reached, the rest of the women, minority, disabled and trans,  women in poverty and abusive situations in which equal pay could be salvation from disaster, won't matter to society. So it is for the appropriation and skewing of autism acceptance.

In the autism conversation, the demand for acceptance is false if acceptance means the exclusion or objectification of people of every intersected population in any acceptance model. If acceptance means only those who speak, and those who speak insist that those who do not use verbal speech are less than their peers with verbal speech, then that acceptance excludes and is thereby ableist. If an autistic woman is presented as our autistic mentor because she is famous and goes from TED Talks to book sales to conferences telling people that nonspeaking autistic youths  don't merit the resources that autistic youths who use verbal speech do, then that is not acceptance. That is ableism. If famous white autistics insist that they wish to continue carrying the label of Asperger's syndrome because they don't want to be associated with their peers in neurology who will always be visibly divergent, that is not acceptance. That is ableism and to both declare that one demands acceptance while rejecting one's own divergent peers is hypocritically ableist. If someone is presented as a neurodiversity expert who is white, cis, male and knows nothing about the needs or crises of intersected and nonspeaking autistic populations, but is constantly placed above autistic activists of color and neuroqueer activists and presented in the media as our leader and our expert on neurodiversity, then neurodiversity is being skewed to exclude intersected populations that have helped to bring the movement to this moment in history that is benefiting primarily white, famous, mostly male autistics.

My son and his intersected divergent peers have the human right to be accepted not tolerated. I shouldn't have to take the entire autism community to task for styling themselves superior to him or his peers.Yet here I am having to do so.

If families whose children have assistive technology and intensive speech services to communicate  now expect their children to become indistinguishable from their peers, that is not acceptance. If it is not understood that the presumption of competence requires the acceptance of all autistics, regardless of degree of disability, but stakeholders are unwilling to accept autistic community members who will remain with a degree of disability that will make them visibly disabled for the rest of their lives, then the message of autism acceptance is failing.

Here are some truths. Some autistic people also have intellectual disability that is severe. They have health concerns that are extremely disabling. If that makes stakeholders uncomfortable then the stakeholders are ableist.

We have to recalibrate the term autism acceptance.  A clear definition of what autism acceptance is must be stated in such a way that once any stakeholder attempts to use this term they will be held to a standard in which bigotry and ableism will not be tolerated. Those styling themselves experts in neurodiversity need to first root out their own internalized ableism, ableism against nonspeaking autistic people, racism and ethnic bias, homophobia and transphobia. Acceptance means accepting everyone autistic. Acceptance does not mean a country club for autistics who have achieved success to the exclusion of those who cannot do so because the world currently favors white, cis, autistics who can pass for allistic.

In a disabled population where 90% of the adults are unemployed, having a tech job fair for those who are verbal doesn't mean shit to me. My son is the child of a software engineer father and a former database administrator and linguist mother. He is allowed free access to a computer with no protection of the operating system from inadvertent tampering on his part. He has owned more than one computer. His sister's operating systems have repeatedly crashed over the years and hard drives have been reformated mainboards rebuilt and replaced, new computers bought. Our son is 13. He has spilled things on his computers, both PCs, and MACs, but he has never crashed an operating system, opened a computer virus or malware. Think about that for a moment. Yet my son would not be considered at any job fair for autistic people because he has no verbal speech and his AAC support is not sufficient to have him communicate his own interests or talent on electronic devices. A vast majority of autistic youth and adults, some who use verbal speech and some who don't, are in my son's position. They are not considered worth the resources when they are worth every resource available. Until our community gets that and works to lift all its members up, we will stagger along every autism month of every year, bleeding as catch phrases and terms are leeched from autistic activist culture and absorbed by the mainstream autism nonprofit industrial complexes for their own use at the rest of the autism community's expense.

We need to reclaim the term autism acceptance. We need to declare that acceptance means the true inclusion of everyone in our community. A community effort must be made to hold a mirror to ableist community members and show them the harm they are doing, demand they mature enough to accept everyone, and give our intersected members the agency in this movement they deserve.
Silently watching this happen without taking steps to make it right is enabling it.

Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.

Post Script:
On the first day of Autism Acceptance Month, Paula Durbin-Westby wrote the following public service message, which needs to be emphasized and propagated throughout the autism community:

 "PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. Remember, if you or your organization uses the words Autism Acceptance, Autism Acceptance Day, or Autism Acceptance Month, even if you also throw in "awareness," You are making a commitment to support NEURODIVERSITY because that's the essence of Autism Acceptance Day/Month, started by pro-neurodiversity, anti-cure Autistics. Please share. I think it is critically important that, as other organizations and people use the term "acceptance," that they use it in its original meaning for those of us who have worked hard to make Autism Acceptance an *alternative* to "I accept my child but I hate their autism..." rhetoric. Because I am struggling to keep my family supported, I can't be online every minute of April. Please think about this when you use it. It's Time to Take Back April! Autism Acceptance Day and Month. Pro-neurodiversity, pro-supports, and services, against "cures," AAD was started to counter April "awareness" stunts that demean us. It has expanded to become a way of viewing Autism in a positive and accepting way. Moving WAY beyond negative "awareness!" NOTE: NO cure-oriented posts will be accepted. This is Autistic Safe Space- nothing anti-autism or anti-Autistic. Thank you in advance! "

The Autism Acceptance Action by Paula Durbin-Westby can be found on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1693850024204283/

Tone It Down Taupe - the counter protest action to Light it up blue, is on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/Tone-it-Down-Taupe-446945788708219/

Autism Acceptance Month's website is here:
http://www.autismacceptancemonth.com/

Autistic While Black: The Erasure of Blacks From Histories of Autism

Autistic Savant Artist Stephen Wiltshire completing a panoramic cityscape
 from memory credit Atlantic BlackStar

In the struggle to have the voices of intersected autistic populations heard, the critical importance of Black autistic savants and the need to include them in autism history cannot be understated. Their existence and the inadvertent documentation of their lives due to savant qualities despite their historic status as an oppressed minority serves as a series of timeline markers in periods of history particularly when African Americans were enslaved; therefore neurodivergence would not have been noted except as a serious detriment to be dealt with through deadly force. In a present day autism conversation rife with structural racism and stereotypical conclusions and analyses drawn from misinterpretation of research on disparities in healthcare, education, and services for the Black autistic population, these indicators that intersected autistics existed long before Kanner and Asperger were tweaking theoretical pathologies  of what autism was should be part of any timeline in autism history. Just look through a few people generally accepted as fitting the criteria for autistic savant by virtue of the observations of characteristics each expressed while others documented their savant abilities.

Thomas Fuller

"Thomas Fuller, an African sold into slavery in 1724 at the age of 14, was sometimes known as the “Virginia Calculator” for his extraordinary ability to solve complex math problems in his head. Rumors circulated that he was a savant,  since he could not read or write, but that was not uncommon among slaves at the time. Some believed that he may have gained his skills with math in his homeland in Africa. His owners, Presley and Elizabeth Cox of Alexandria, Virginia were also illiterate. They never sold him so that all his life he remained in one place'.

"Thomas Fuller was significant in that his abilities were used as proof that enslaved Blacks were equal to whites in intelligence, which fueled some pro-abolitionist discussion."  (Wikipedia)

Thomas Wiggins

Tom Wiggins 1861 credit Wikimedia Commons

"Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins was an African American musical prodigy on the piano. He had numerous original compositions published and had a lengthy and largely successful performing career throughout the United States. " Wikipedia

Tom was blind at birth and descriptions of his behavior onstage and off have experts concluding he was an autistic savant.

Tom was also called "The Last Slave In America" because his owners had him declared non compos mentis in order to continue ownership of him after the Civil War.

Born: May 25, 1849, Harris County, Georgia, GA

Died: June 14, 1908, Hoboken, NJ

Eugene Hoskins

It is quite clear that Eugene Hoskins was an autistic savant. Eugene was 24 years old in 1920 when  Hiram Byrd used him as the subject of a a research paper about his calendar savant abilities. Hoskins loved trains and hung out at the train station in Oxford, Mississippi. Byrd's vulgar description of him concluded that he was entirely African no doubt based upon a superficial evaluation of how dark his skin was rather than any proper research of Mr. Hoskins' origins or kin. In the article "Eugene Hoskins Is His Name" subtitled "The long-forgotten story of a black autistic man in Oxford, Miss., who crossed paths with William Faulkner," it was said that Hoskins refused any money for displaying his abilities of helping people learn when their train was scheduled to come or go from the station. He lived with a white family who owned a store near the train station. Byrd's documentation of his existence and symptoms marks a place in autism history that makes it clear that Black autistics were known when researchers were doing work on defining autism. Mr. Hoskins' existence therefore belongs in any history of autism.

Noel Patterson

Noel Patterson was the subject of intense study who lead to breakthroughs in understanding the mechanics of autistic savant syndrome. He was 19 during the period of the study in 1986, part of a documentary on autistic savants called "The Foolish Wise Ones" that aired the same year. He was a musical savant whose ability involved tonal structures and relationships. He could faithfully reproduce any musical composition he heard on the piano and could play said tune on the piano with one hand while picking out correct notes on a guitar with the other. Unlike other musical savants, Patterson, who was in a group home in Britain, was not given the intensive musical training, exclusive of everything else needed to fully develop his talent. Instead his talent was treated not much differently than Blind Tom Wiggins' gift, a curiosity to be displayed for researchers or visitors to the group home. Noel wasted his days spending a limited amount of time on the piano and the guitar.

 Noel Patterson's story is a good example of how Black Autistics are seen by researchers, care providers and others as resources for amassing data who can also serve as scenery for those who write about them or film them. Savant abilities were only of use as lab research data and parlor tricks. No one ever thought to enrich Mr. Patterson's musical skills to the degree that Blind Tom Wiggins' or  Derek Paravicini 's abilities were nurtured and perhaps carve out a career for him. Instead, books were written about him and he was the subject of a documentary, after which, they decided he should spend his days weaving and being made to use wood shop tools.

I wish I could say that this attitude towards Blacks who are not upper middle class or wealthy has changed. I don't see much change. 

Stephen Wiltshire

Wiltshire drawing Madrid credit http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/

Stephen Wiltshire MBE, Hon.FSAI, Hon.FSSAA is a British architectural artist. He is known for his ability to draw from memory a landscape after seeing it just once. His work has gained worldwide popularity. Wikipedia

Born: April 24, 1974 (age 41), London, United Kingdom

Education: City and Guilds of London Art School
Artistic savant Stephen Wiltshire is another good example of how erasure works in the history of race and autism. Oliver Sacks devoted an essay to him in his book "An Anthropologist on Mars." Sad isn't it, that he is mentioned four times in Steve Silberman's NeuroTribes: The Legacy Of Autism And the Future Of Neurodiversity" only as someone Sacks wrote about who helped develop his theories of autism, as an object of Sack's compassion rather than a Black autistic savant who is one of the most famous artists in England. Unlike Noel Patterson, Wiltshire, who was very young when he was featured in the documentary "The Foolish Wise Ones" had the advantage of a school and family who recognized his talent and professional architects who acknowledged it and stressed he be educated and this talent nurtured and developed fully. He is able to support himself and with his sister's help, he travels the world, drawing huge urban landscapes viewed through helicopter flights over the cities themselves.  Stephen Wiltshire was allowed to develop his potential. Savants are so rare that regardless of race, their talents should be supported, developed and encouraged. My disappointment that Mr. Silberman's publishers did not see the need to move this important role model for autistic children of color to the role of a historical figure but rather relegated him to scenery in the narrative of Oliver Sacks' research is deep, moreso because Mr. Silberman did exhaustive research on this book. 

This quick,  tiny list of individuals excludes African American men and women who were inventors, academics, musicians, performing artists and researchers who, while not in the savant range, had documented trait descriptions that point to classic autistic expressions. No mainstream history of autism to date has bothered to discuss these individuals as people rather than scenery for those who documented their existence or used them as money making curiosities or experimental subjects.

Consider that the existence in history of Black autistic savants shows genetic links to autism that might have helped African American families recognize, reconcile, and accept the divergence in their family members more readily.

This took me a single page and roughly  8 minutes to research. Any of the authors who have published histories of autism could have done so as well.

Meaning that erasure of people of color in general, and African Americans in particular from autism histories and autism policy is blatantly alive and well.  Worse, few voices are shouting in protest about it.

Until intersected populations within our community are acknowledged as more than genetic research material, until the very real disparities in health and therapeutic supports, assistive technology supports in educational settings, and race based special education disparities within public schools are addressed,  until nonwhite stakeholders are made true and viable participants in building diversity centric autism policy on a national scale, structural racism will remain the ugly reality seated at the table of the autism community. As long as wealthy, white, cis parents dominate this conversation by excluding intersected community members nothing will change. This deeply embedded structural racism that is silencing everyone who is not white and well off enough to use their privilege to impact public autism policy has been festering a very long time. The policies driven by this small privileged group benefit only a certain class and race of autistic people and their families while harming entire intersected autistic populations and those who care for them.

The injustice in this reality is that much more shameful because so few stakeholders with privilege care as long as they believe their own offspring or their own agendas are not affected.

I have been giving voice to this for four years. The new histories of autism make it clear that voices of dissent like mine are lost in the perceived triumphs of all who benefit from histories presenting autism in ways that have not deviated much from what Dorothy Groomer relates in her account of what she confronted from medical professionals during her search for a diagnosis of her son Stephen's divergence in the documentary Refrigerator Mothers:

Particularly NeuroTribes is a fine if imperfect history. I find, however that no history of autism appears to be worried about including nonwhite people in any capacity that is not objectifying. I look forward to this changing, but I'm not hopeful.

-------------------------------
The Eight minute Black Autistic Savant Research exercise sample of resources
(intended to make the point that this could have been done easily by anyone researching the topic):
Atlanta BlackStar 
http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/04/15/6-black-savants-will-amaze/

Google
search topic: Black Autistic Savants
Wikipedia Thomas Fuller (Mental Calculator)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Fuller_(mental_calculator)
The Ballad of Blind Tom
www.blindtom.org
The Wise Foolish Ones documentary
https://youtu.be/KCBdZ7rI9jI
Eugene Hoskins Was His Name 
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/02/eugene_hoskins_the_black_autistic_man_who_crossed_paths_with_william_faulkner.html

An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679756973/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_c2EOwb1S0TGBG

At The Intersection of Appropriation and Erasure In Activism

Alicia Garza  stands with the words Black Lives Matter
taped over her mouth to represent the erased voices
of female  and female identifying black victims, in
 solidarity with #SayHerName Protesting credit X-Spore. net

In "A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza" on The Feminist Wire, Ms. Garza discusses herself, Patrice Cullors, and Opal Tometi uniting to create the ' 'Black Lives Matter' hashtag, building the infrastructure to transition it from social media to the streets, then organizing and executing  the first #BlackLivesMatter ride. But what this  essay is really about is something that all of us who are intersected members of any activist community have been subjected to. It is about theft. In this case, the theft of Black Queer Women’s work. It happened in two steps: appropriation and erasure.
Ms. Garza's description of how other groups, activists, and corporate entities appropriated their work and then erased the existence of these three powerful activists from the movement they established and took to the streets is painful to read. Quoting Ms. Garza:

 "Suddenly we began to come across varied adaptations of our work–all lives matter, brown lives matter, migrant lives matter, women’s lives matter, and on and on. While imitation is said to be the

Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi (center) and Alicia Garza (right),
black, queer, founders of #BlackLivesMatter
 credit Madame Noire

highest form of flattery, I was surprised when an organization called to ask if they could use “Black Lives Matter” in one of their campaigns. We agreed to it, with the caveat that a) as a team, we preferred that we not use the meme to celebrate the imprisonment of any individual and b) that it was important to us they acknowledged the genesis of  #BlackLivesMatter.  I was surprised when they did exactly the opposite and then justified their actions by saying they hadn’t used the “exact” slogan and, therefore, they deemed it okay to take our work, use it as their own, fail to credit where it came from, and then use it to applaud incarceration."

"I was surprised when a community institution wrote asking us to provide materials and action steps for an art show they were curating, entitled “Our Lives Matter.”  When questioned about who was involved and why they felt the need to change the very specific call and demand around Black lives to “our lives,” I was told the artists decided it needed to be more inclusive of all people of color. I was even more surprised when, in the promotion of their event, one of the artists conducted an interview that completely erased the origins of their work–rooted in the labor and love of queer Black women."

 I've seen this progression of appropriation and erasure happen repeatedly in the disability rights activism community as well. The sad thing is when people and organizations are called out on their behavior,  they often silence or ignore demands they right their divisive and destructive actions.

The late Stella Young: disability rights activist and comedian
Photograph: SmartArtists PR

The newest example of the attempted posthumous appropriation of what a disability rights activist represented, thereby erasing her body of work as an activist by objectifying her was the public bungle of TEDx Sydney after the death of the great activist and comedian Stella Young. Her TEDx talk "I am not your inspiration porn, thank you very much" makes it clear that disabled people should not be objectified,  used as scenery to inspire others or create awareness . Googling Stella Young results in numerous interviews and presentations  that make it clear probing and embarrassing personal questions to disabled people are not acceptable but this clearly didn't get through to TEDx, who launched #StellasChallenge, a disability awareness campaign that made it clear when the late Ms. Young spoke, TEDx wasn't listening. The outrage from Stella's friends, peers, and fellow activists brought TEDx to its senses, but the organization, in trying to push this flawed awareness campaign, might have succeeded in erasing a great activist's life work when the intent was to honor her. At least TEDx listened to everyone in the end and are making an effort to correct their mistakes.

Autism advocacy is awash with this behavior. Here are two examples I am using because I feel that autism rights organizations have failed to do what the rest of the disability community did to save the good work of the late Stella Young. It is time to for us to put a stop to this.

 Co-opting The Neurodiveristy Movement by Appropriation and Erasure 

Let me tell you about an activist I've known since her student activist days at Georgetown, and then illustrate what I mean.

I asked Lydia Brown to self identify for me. My intent was to learn their preferred identifiers and to refer to them respectfully. So let me let them tell you who they are:

" I am queer, genderqueer, east asian transracial adoptee, and disabled, and I also have a Christian upbringing, class privilege, elite educational privilege, and citizenship status. Because it's important to acknowledge and name both my oppressed and privileged identities/experiences." 

Lydia Brown reading a section of Frederick Douglass' speech
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July at the annual
 communal reading on Boston Common in solidarity
with #BlackLivesMatter #DisabilitySolidarity
Photo credit Pamela J. Coveney

Lydia accomplished great things while still in high school and brought that drive to create transformative change to college. While continuing their studies and activism, they also began a blog, Autistic Hoya.  All of this hard work brought awards, accolades, and got them invitations to speak as a topic expert  at university campuses and conferences throughout the country.

 So in 2013, Lydia was invited to speak at William and Mary as part of the college's Neurodiversity Initiative.  The events that followed their presentation led to one of Lydia's  most powerful and overlooked essays, which discusses the co-opting of the neurodiversity movement by the same people and organizations who, whether with malice aforethought or unwittingly, perpetuate structural ableism by marginalizing the movement and those activists and allies in it.  The essay illustrates eloquently the type of appropriation and erasure rampant in autism advocacy by a stakeholder community that continues to denigrate, infantalize, and objectify autistic adults.

"Co-Opting the Movement: Autism Speaks, John Elder Robison, and Complicity in Oppression"
is a groundbreaking essay that should be required reading for anyone trying to understand what is wrong with autism advocacy as it exists in general and what is wrong with Autism Speaks in particular. In Lydia's own words:

"An individual autistic person with close ties to organization that promotes an appalling vision of a marginalized group that is certainly not in alignment with even the most basic aspects of the neurodiversity movement has not only lent his voice to that organization but has been named as the public face and leader of a program supposedly committed to the empowerment of autistic people, and all this in the name of neurodiversity. This is incomprehensible. “
"A few weeks ago, in conversation with a stranger, I was asked if it wouldn't be possible to compromise by collaborating with Autism Speaks on issues where our work might overlap. This is not possible. It will never be possible for me to work with Autism Speaks for as long as their philosophies, mission, and rhetoric remain the same as they are now. Our most basic goals are fundamentally and radically different. For you to ask me to cooperate with my oppressor is deeply insulting. I refuse to submit to complacency with the dominant narrative of autism as advanced by Autism Speaks, and I refuse to make myself complicit in my own oppression.”
"And even if Autism Speaks has absolutely no direct involvement whatsoever with Mr. Robison's activities at William and Mary, he has already been positioned as a leader in the neurodiversity movement, and this rhetorical positioning already serves to co-opt the movement with Mr. Robison's work, which is decidedly outside the neurodiversity movement and has been repeatedly criticized from within it.”

 The college's use of the word neurodiversity was a ruse to redefine it and as such assist in steering autism stakeholders away from interest in the civil rights of their autistic loved ones while misleading neurodivergent students entering the campus. Appropriate. Erase.

 I don't know what Mr. Robison did in his one year tenure as Neurodiversity Scholar In Residence . But what is critically important in this episode is to understand what role privilege plays in the appropriation of the groundwork others have laid and what their erasure from the landscape of their own activism means. Witness it and know it for what it is. In this particular case, Mr. Robison was the privileged person who benefitted from the erasure of a  neurodiversity movement that he criticized and dismissed in the past, erasing the importance of all the activists  who aren't public figures or white, cisgender, wealthy, published authors, whose passion, intelligence, professionalism and persistence brought civil rights in the autism community to where it is today.

Appropriation and Erasure by Autism Speaks

Autism Speaks continues to promote a corporate culture which incorporates silencing of autistic activists by structural appropriation and erasure. When their own rhetoric, which was extremely offensive, began to be offensive to a growing number of parents, their response was to appropriate the language of disability rights advocacy and twist it to erase its impact and effectiveness. When autistic activists shouted "acceptance not awareness" Autism Speaks derailed the term acceptance by inserting a condition for its members. "We accept our autistic children, but we don't accept autism." You cannot separate the divergent brain of a person from that individual. Nor was this what was meant by the term "acceptance." But the appropriation of this term by medical model organizations has erased both its intent and its effectiveness and by doing so, is threatening erasure of the life's work of the autistic activists and allies who fought for acceptance against Autism Speaks and its predecessors for more years that Autism Speaks has been in existence.

Autistic Activist Kassiane Sibley is in a four year fight
against the appropriation of her work by Autism Speaks.
Photo Credit Jon Ems

Not satisfied with that, Autism Speaks wanted to take the concept of self advocacy and skew it so that self advocacy became a term they could control by acquiring autistics to fit their redefined version of self advocacy. That would be self advocacy that agreed that autism was what was wrong with them and that autism somehow made them less that others . This was because for ten years, autistic self advocates had been the most vocal opponents of their ableist fundraising campaigns and offensive rhetoric. So in 2011, Autism Speaks published an online toolkit that featured a 10 page section on self advocacy. As Liz Ditz explained to readers in her essay, "When National Charities Offend Those They Are Supposed To Serve", Autism Speaks appropriated a quote from autistic author,  educator, and  activist Kassiane Sibley's 2004 essay 
"Help Me Help Myself: Teaching and Learning Self-Advocacy", which was published as a chapter in Ask and Tell: Self-Advocacy and Disclosure for People on the Autism Spectrum, published by the Autism Asperger Publishing Company (AAPC). Kassiane discovered the theft in February of 2011 and has fought a four year battle to have the quote completely removed from the online toolkit. Autism Speaks appropriated her intellectual property without proper consent and flatly lied about this. Unlike TEDX Sidney, they did not acknowledge the wrong they did for years. Not only has Autism Speaks never issued a public apology for appropriating Ms. Sibley's work, they also tried to repost a version of their toolkit with Kassiane's intellectual property white texted back in it. So the document and the internet will have to be continually monitored to insure they don't try using it again in any form.

In seeking answers as to why Autism Speaks, with huge funding and resources at its disposal, would feel the need to besmirch the name of a known anti Autism Speaks activist and veteran of the neurodiversity movement, appropriate her work without permission, and refuse to apologize and take it down, I can only quote Alyssa at Yes, that too;

"And can we maybe think about the fact that this is an organization run by mostly white middle to upper class parents of autistic kids doing this to a poor, multiply disabled, Autistic woman of color? Did they maybe purposefully choose someone they'd expect to be unable to fight much?"

I have had people contact me requesting I submit articles on autism for publication. When I was naive enough to believe my intellectual property was secure, I would submit work and then reel in shock while editors proceeded to re-write and return a final draft in such a state that I was unable to identify what I wrote in the first place. I've ended up retracting such articles despite knowing some would have gained my writing a national audience. A woman who worked for another organization later admitted that she was told to contact me under the pretext of interviewing me to try and force an admission that I was either autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, in order to discredit my body of work in disability rights. I am not certain which was worse, the idea that any public entity would assume something written by an autistic topic expert is of less import that something written by someone who gave birth to an autistic person, or that somehow "outing" me as autistic would discredit me. This is the kind of ableism autistic people fight to overcome.  Things I've written have been used as templates for other articles by parents with "better optics" and white demographics without citing me as a source. Someone posted publicly that my resources on anything wouldn't help her because of my demographics; which she later clarified to say that because I was a Black autism parent, any information I might have was beneath her as she was white.

Faded black and white image of author on a white field with the hashtag
Stop Erasing Us ©Kerima Cevik

Over time, I had accepted that this would be repeatedly done to me and tried to seek ways to work around it. My work around plans have thus far been successful.  I find however that I have no tolerance for it being done to other activists and allies, particularly those who are the past, current, and future voices for both their marginalized populations and the greater autism civil rights community. We don't have such an abundance of activists that we can afford to allow their erasure and the appropriation of their body of work. We should not be allowing this to happen. When we see it we should speak up about the wrongness of it and support any action needed to rectify it. Too many have not and this enables the abuse to continue.

Allies, colleagues, and others who want the true founders of #BlackLivesMatter to be acknowledged have gone back to the roots of the movement to fight against the appropriation and erasure of these tremendous Black Queer Women. They have taken to social media and are countering with truth, art, spoken word, everything they can each time an appropriative event happens. I believe we need to look to the same place that three mighty women grieving over Trayvon Martin and having no idea the avalanche of deaths to follow went to have their voices heard and we must also act to begin to end the erasure of our activist and ally work. Maybe we should also begin with a hashtag.

#StopErasingUs


Further Reading References and Resources:
A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza
http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/
#SayHerName
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/5/20/say_her_name_families_seek_justice
The Posthumous Objectification of Stella Young
Stella's talk against inspiration pornography: https://youtu.be/8K9Gg164Bsw 
Disability Community's response to #StellasChallenge:
https://storify.com/SFdirewolf/no-more-awareness-stellaschallenge
On the take aways from TEDX Sydney's bungle:
 http://theconversation.com/doing-justice-to-disability-the-upside-of-tedxs-stella-bungle-42324
The Corrupting of the term Neurodiversity
http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2013/neurodiversity-advocate-robison-to-teach,-consult-at-wm123.php
Autistic Hoya On Co-opting the Movement
 http://www.autistichoya.com/2013/11/coopting-the-movement.html
http://www.autistichoya.com/2013/04/erasure-and-silencing-by-omicron-pi.html
Kassiane Sibley at Neurodivergent K on Appropriation and Erasure by Autism Speaks
http://timetolisten.blogspot.com/2011/02/autism-speaks-shut-up-and-listen.html
The Theft Of An Intersected Activist's Work By Autism Speaks
http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/2014/01/autism-speaks-are-work-stealing-white.html
http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2012/01/when-national-organizations-offend-those-they-are-supposed-to-serve.html

Justice For Kayleb Moon Robinson #AliveWhileBlack and Autistic

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Something frightening is happening to autistic Black young men and boys in Virginia. So frightening that I have decided to suspend autism month related activities as a result.

11 year old Autistic Student Kayleb Moon Robinson
Credit: Charlie Archambault for the Center for Public Integrity 

Clearly the case of Reginald Latson was not just a random case. Now, Virginia has convicted an 11 year old autistic boy of a felony for a school infraction. The police officer arresting him piled on extra charges like assaulting a police officer because he "resisted". So now an 11 year old special needs student has a felony conviction.

 Linkhome Middle School staff and administration should be the subject of an Office of Civil Rights complaint for the clear ableism and discrimination of Kayleb based upon the combination of his race and disability, traumatizing him, and causing this catastrophe by sending a police officer to handcuff and arrest him for kicking a waste basket. His IEP should have called for a crisis plan and positive behavioral supports. Upsets and meltdowns in school DO NOT require police intervention. 

The aggressive way Virginia prosecutes and criminalizes black autistic  students needs national attention. Everyone may know the case of Neli Latson but do you know the case of Brian Thompson?

NBC 4's Legendary Pat Collins don's his own outfit to interview
Brian Thompson, who went on to graduate from High School credit NBCWashington

In September of 2011, Brian Thompson, an autistic student at Colonial Forge High School, ran down the sidelines at a school football game wearing a banana costume. He was handcuffed, arrested, and suspended from school. The entire student body protested, some wearing “free Banana Man” T-shirts to class in protest. School officials confiscated the shirts. The injustice of this affair was so blatant that the outcry resulted in his reinstatement in school. Brian does not realize how close he came to being Neli Latson.

Virginia’s attempt to correct human rights violations against disabled people who should not be in its prison system must begin with a serious audit of its school practices when it comes to black autistic male students. Something is terribly wrong with the entire State’s institutional understanding of what autism is, and how to educate and manage autistic children of color.

Virginia and other States have to stop destroying children’s lives in the name of discipline. This is pattern propagating throughout the country. I am waiting for all autism organizations to pause in our “raising awareness” and take a position here. This is the war we should be fighting to save our children's lives. Clearly "raising awareness" has failed in Virginia. Autism and Disability Rights Organizations. NAACP and Civil Rights Organizations. Do Not Remain Silent!

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

#JusticeForKayleb. #AliveWhileBlack and #Autistic. 

What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

Update: After I published this article I was told that the event will be held open as long as possible to allow me to try and raise the money needed to make this happen. I have mixed emotions about this turn of events. kç


Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

This year I wanted to facilitate an Intersected Black Caucus. I called in favors. I reached out to two wonderful disabled voices in our community who were powerful. I shamelessly begged for sponsors and grants. I worked hard. It wasn't hard enough. I failed my co presenters. I failed to meet a deadline that came too soon. So many things happened at once that overwhelmed me and I just was unable to meet that stupid deadline. I asked the deadline be extended. I was told it was, but then I was told I failed to meet the original deadline. Donors and sponsors dragged their feet, not unusual, but in this case deadly. I have had my cry about what could have happened this year. Now I have to get back to trying to focus on doing some critical offline life things by the end of this week. I said to myself that life sometimes doesn't work in our favor. It wasn't meant to be.

But then I realized there was never any real intent for this thing to happen. Everything worked against such a thing happening. I remembered that people like me, and topics like disabled people being shot dead, or the impact of riots in Ferguson on disabled people, don't make good optics at conferences. Smiling, optimistic, happy disabled minorities discussing how they conquered this or achieved that is what works. Those folk are also in the demographic that makes paying for the privilege of having a voice heard possible. See the more connected you are, the more things happen to allow things like conference presentations to happen. Not my friends. My colleagues. Not those voices who need to be heard but won't be. I wanted a grown, Black  disabled man to speak for my disabled son. To voice the world as he lives it as a Black mother's son. To rap that, to sing that, to speak that life. Because my son right now cannot type well enough to speak about it. I cannot speak for him. Only someone who lives what he lives can do so. But my colleagues and I find ourselves in the unusual position of having to pay the black tax within our own activist community.

I am not a political creature. I don't navigate whatever this world of nonprofits and good donor optics  wants and needs well. I only know we needed to be heard. We won't be. And at this point I am debating whether that conference has anything to offer me or my son. I have disabled colleagues who aren't Black. I'm helping them try and raise the money they need to have their voices heard. Maybe people out there in internet land will help. Maybe the optics are more pleasant than Black disabled male highly educated speakers are.

What I have learned from this is money talks, and social justice walks. Your voice only matters if you have the cash to make it heard. Going forward, I will remember this lesson. I cannot make myself white or spend money I need for my son's care on the dream of presenting his case to everyone. I can only insure I apologize to those people who expressed an interest in attending such a caucus. I can find a way to make this thing work some other way outside the conference event environment. Because that is what being Black means when you don't have a disposable income to pay for the privilege of having a voice. You don't give up. You just find a space where that doesn't matter and you speak up there. Like this space. Blogging is still free.

What I am asking everyone who reads this to do is to at least help the other disabled activists presenting at TASH this December. I have no voice for my son. At least let them speak for those they represent. My son is sick tonight I don't feel like looking up the link but there is a fundraiser out there for the disabled disability rights activists trying to get their voices heard. Help them. My son's dream, a dream I volunteered too much time to, the dream of the Black disabled young man, is deferred. Don't silence other voices trying to speak. Don't forsake them to the altar of better donations and pleasant optics.

Invisible Autistic Filicide Victims

"We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but  about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers." 

 - Martin Luther King Jr. Eulogy for the Martyred Children (1963)

Melissa Stoddard, biracial, autistic, age 11,
tortured and murdered by her stepmother and father
photo credit. Herald Tribune

Tuesday December 17th marked the one year anniversary of the murder of Melissa Stoddard. While the press continues to follow the attempted murder of Isabelle Stapleton by focusing on her mother Kelli, Melissa, who died horribly after sustained torture by her father and stepmother, is forgotten. She is part of The Autism Wars memorial timeline for intersected autistic and disabled victims of murder.

Randle Barrow, who was found murdered on December 14th of this year, was only 3 years younger than Melissa. They both shared the same label of autism. They both smiled from photographs taken in happier days. Randle's mother apparently drowned him, disposed of his body in a river, and then took her own life. In Randle's  case, family members called the Alabama Department of  Human Resources (DHR) to report concern for Randle's safety. DHR failed to act to protect him. Randle's school, which has the disturbing name of The Riley Behavioral and Educational Center for Autism, called DHR to report that Randle's mom "was struggling physically

Randle Carlton Barrow, autistic, age 8, murdered
by his mother Delicia who then took her own life.

and had slurred speech"  on the Tuesday preceding the murder. DHR failed to act to protect Randle. None of this seems to matter to anyone. No one seems to care that Randle Barrow is the latest victim of murder - suicide. Murder apologists continue to respond in posted comments about the difficulties in parenting autistic children rather than reacting to the horrific nature of this pattern of filicide - suicide that seems to be accepted as an okay thing to do?!? Children and disabled adult victims are treated as collateral damage for exhausted parents, and parent commentators see this gruesome ending as some inevitable choice. What the hell!?!

Filicide - suicide is extremely rare in general global society. It is becoming increasingly common in our community. Worse, each small article about an autistic person of color*, being murdered appears to be not worth a footnote or comment by autism advocacy organizations, autism bloggers even activists. Kelli Stapleton, white, high profile, mother of Isabelle, whose community actively gave financial and emotional support for her efforts to get whatever therapy she thought Izzy needed, attempted filicide -suicide. The media considers every new development in Kelli's trial news worthy. Social media considers what is happening to Kelli Stapleton worth continuous articles, a status, a share or a mention in a plethora of blogs.

Alex Spourdalakis with his mother Dorothy, who murdered
him with the help of his godmother

Alex Spourdalakis' very public abuse and murder were discussed to such a degree that Alex's case was brought to the DOJ with a demand it be tried as a hate crime. Exactly what should have been done for Melissa Stoddard's case.  When someone beat Ashley Hamilton such that her face was unrecognizable, she only made news until she left the hospital. After that a handful of dedicated activists, like Emily Titon and Amy Sequenzia, tried to follow her case and see where she was placed and what her needs and level of safety were. Ashley Hamilton lives in poverty. She is now a ward of the state of Georgia. But no one cares about Ashley. Because Ashley is poor and nonspeaking, and her 15 seconds of victim photographs have a longer shelf life than concern for her eventual autonomy and safety.

Beyond the horrific nature of the murders, attempted murders, and assaults themselves is the greater question of what societal culture is producing parents and care givers who are increasingly coming to the conclusion that murdering their autistic loved ones will be at best forgiven and understood by other parents. It is an increasingly frightening situation, one that has me avoiding the news at times just to evade the nauseous feeling I get when hearing parents making comments that erase the filicide victim and eulogize the murdering parent having never met either party. Meanwhile I am surrounded by parents in their 80s who have lovingly cared for autistic children, now in their 50s, with no help or support all their lives. Saying not having help or respite or supports is an excuse for murder is just not acceptable and speaks to the way we socialize our society to ingest ableism and vomit it all over tragic events like these. I should never have to reach out to a parent and say "read the news again and imagine this child was not disabled.". If you can't see the injustice of filicide because of the disability of the victim, then it is time to do a serious ethics audit on yourself.

A board member of Autism Speaks recently declared that I only attack. He said I take offense at everything real or imagined. My son is visibly nonwhite, clearly nonspeaking , and those differences intersect with his disability to put him at extremely high risk for being the victim of a crime.  Tell me, if you were me would it offend you that every child who shares the same intersected heritage as your disabled son and is the victim of violent crime is erased and ignored not only in general but by the greater community of autism activists and advocates while they cry for justice and a voice for all? I am offended. Injustice is offensive. And everyone who can do something tangible to bring attention to these murders should be inclusive of all the victims regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation and gender identity.  It disappoints me to have to continually repeat this. It distances me from collaborative activism.

 Fight for all of us. Our intersected loved ones matter too.

In Memory of Melissa Stoddard, 

and all those victims who quietly wait for the respect, remembrance, and justice 

in death they did not have in life. 

_______________________________________________
* People of Color is used to mean everyone identifying as nonwhite. Some use the term to imply African American, or Black But on this blog it is always used as a term inclusive of all nonwhite people.