autistic community battles for inclusive rhetoric ignore growing income inequality

  Community inclusion and/or equal access to realistic job opportunities shouldn't be equal access to economic failures and (criminalized) poverty.  Poverty is criminalized in many ways.  A few ways are loitering and trespassing law enforcement, blocking public sidewalks with one's worldly possessions and (enforced) bans on camping on public lands/parks that are located in or near (rich) neighborhoods where the majority of the population earns above the median income for the local jurisdiction.


  Public lands/parks in poor 

(defined as the population of the neighborhood within a larger local jurisdiction earns below the annual median income)

 neighborhoods become 'dumping grounds' for criminal commercial trash haulers (environmental racism in law enforcement) and homeless people who avoid shelters with less law enforcement unless the temperature drops below freezing.

  Equal access and community inclusion should lift all peoples', disabled or not, economic 'boats.'

Self-advocacy 'memes' of 'all have their own issues,' 'all autistics are both high and low functioning situationally' and 'neurelitism'

(latter meme circulated on web sites hosted on domains of

 markfoster.net , rockermouse.com and http://fight.neurelitism.com/)

 are flawed ways to organize 'autistic community.'   All 3 memes effectively ration existing public funds (taxes), not demand more, money to help mostly autistics ('severely disabled' autistics with 'intense needs' formerly referred to as 'low functioning') pay the costs (of independent living services) allowing individual community inclusion to perform what the ADA defines as "Major Life Activities."


  "Grading people' is, apparently, acceptable if people are 'severely disabled,' have 'intense needs' formerly called 'low functioning,' are tangibly helped by being found eligible for publicly and privately (nonprofit funded and delivered) independent living services.  

The meme of "Grading People" is by Drew Goldsmith the DeeDeeMom youtube channel owner

https://www.youtube.com/user/DeedeeMom 

and son of Morton Ann Gernsbacher a communication scientist (GernsbacherLab.org) at a college in WI.


  The discussion of 'grading people' in the autistic community was repeated here

 http://www.autreat.com/aut10presentations.html#Grading


In case the content is taken down here is a copy-paste of the description of the presentation when I accessed the link in late January 2017. 


The Ethical, Scientific, and Societal Implications of Grading Autistic People .

Amanda Baggs
Drew Morton Goldsmith
Morton Ann Gernsbacher

This workshop will critically evaluate the common tendency to grade autistic people” as low versus high functioning. One of the presenters (Goldsmith) will present the ethical history of grading people, including the use of terms popular at the turn the 20th century: low-, medium-, and high-grade normals, morons, imbeciles, and idiots. Another presenter (Gernsbacher) will review the contemporary scientific evidence, or lack thereof, for distinctions between so-called "low-functioning autistics" and "high-functioning autistics." And the third presenter will discuss the sociological basis of labeling autistic people as low- or high-functioning. Together, we hope to challenge clinicians', parents', non-autistic people's and autistic people's all-too-common tendency to grade autistic people.

Amanda Baggs is a 29-year-old autistic person who has been referred to by others as both low and high functioning (usually low) but rejects both labels.

Drew Morton Goldsmith is a 13-year-old autistic person who has also been referred to by others as both low and high functioning but rejects both labels.

Morton Ann Gernsbacher is a 54-year-old non-autistic person who rejects referring to other people as low or high functioning.



  Autistics who are 'graded' 'not severely disabled' or their needs are 'graded' 'not intense,' formerly called 'high functioning' by denials of eligibility to receive publicly and privately funded and delivered independent living services are shamed out of seeking said services by the promulgation of the 'presumed competence,' 'neurelitism' and 'grading people' memes.   

  Also contributing to the shaming out of seeking services is the 'autistic community building' meme even if the 'community' for one or more autistics is a homeless shelter or jail/prison or other institutional living setting. 

   Equal access to realistic opportunities, in communities that a person with a disability chooses to live in, should not be equal access to economic failure and (criminalized) poverty.  Equal access should lift the 'economic boats' of all people whether they live with disabilities or not.

Integrate Disability Day of Mourning vigils with Moral Fusion movement

 Since #Ddom2012 (original vigils were held on March 30, 2012 and moved to March 1 as of 2013) vigils separated mourning from the role of public services that could prevent future murders to focus on uplifting the morals of how 'we' as a civilized society treat the most vulnerable members to incrementally make a moral case for services funding. A person with a disability who needs personalized caregiving is demonstrating one's vulnerability and (current but changeable) lower functional abilities and skills in self-care. 


 Integrate #Ddom2017 and beyond with NC moral mondays and GA truthful tuesdays in all state, local and federal legislative sessions to practice the inside as well as outside organizing
strategy.  Per Rev. Dr. William Barber, a leader in NC moral mondays protests since 2013, the moral fusion organizing strategy relies on people not directly affected supporting people directly affected by a policy people trying to change.  Could it be model for self-advocate and ally cooperation in disability rights organizing?  Or to resolve a dispute between #whiteprogressivesTM working with #blacklivesmatter at #NN15 as one example of when the dispute occurred?


 Rather than fight repeated battles over 'who speaks for whom' to insist that people with disabilities lead advocacy 'conversations' and public discourse, summed up in the slogan 'nothing about us without us,' the moral fusion movement organizing strategy values collaboration between people directly affected and not directly affected in developing public discourse as equal partners.  




 Don't know anything about moral mondays and truthful tuesdays movements for civil rights or the NAACP chapters that organized them?  Or 'who is Rev. Dr. William Barber?'  Here's some 'homework' to read and a video to watch.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/02/10/why-tens-of-thousands-of-people-were-rallying-in-raleigh



http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/23/rev-william-barbers-new-book-reminds-us-why-we-must-vote



http://www.thenation.com/article/how-build-powerful-peoples-movement/



http://m.democracynow.org/stories/15001



http://prospect.org/article/man-behind-moral-mondays



http://www.amazon.com/Forward-Together-Moral-Message-Nation/dp/0827244940



http://www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change/events/rev-dr-william-barber-ii-presents-fusion-politics-and-third-reconstruct



http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SoiGvfil78s

above link dead as of Jan  28, 2017








      http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MWd1lOb6Vok

Self-Advocacy is collective self not individual self

Self-advocacy, in a context of disability rights activism, is more about identifying with and advocating for a community of others with whom one person identifies.  Self-advocacy is less about one person advocating for themselves in a constant battle to be perceived by others as assertive not aggressive.

The community of others with whom one person identifies is a collective self or group of individual 'selves.'  The group of individual selves could also be thought of as a protected class under civil rights laws.  In the case of disability the civil rights protected class would be disability and the primary civil rights law would be the ADA signed into law on July 26, 1990.  Other protected classes are defined by, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and include race/national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression to list a few identity politics communities that could also be thought of as protected classes.  


One person, or self, advocating only for oneself for some type of reasonable accommodation in a workplace or to be offered housing to rent without discrimination on some basis, disability or source of income, is much less powerful than many selves advocating for the same goal.  "Safety in numbers" as the saying goes.  


The following list serve thread from 2010 and the pasted message best shows one view of how to define self-advocacy, for the autistic part of the disability rights movement, where advocacy should be done for a community of many 'selves' rather than one 'self' because it's impossible for others to represent anyone but themselves for the purpose of legislative advocacy.


https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.support.autism/99cCofiO4oQ/8us1CGJMl4MJ






4/2/10
The Autist formerly known as

Try telling that to Autism Speaks or Grasp then, who act with much less
honourable motives than ASAN.
Individual representation is always a legislative fiction, no one person in 
any large community can accurately represent the beliefs and aspirations of 
every single constituent, not in the least because those are likely to be 
paradoxical an contradictory. One therfore advocates a community rather than 
individuals.
In that advocacy however it should in no wise substitute for the right of 
the individual to represent him/herself and any advocacy that tends toward 
the acknowlegement of that fact is better than advocacy that rides roughshod 
over it making many assumptions. I am aftraid the alternatives do just that, 
therefore in a less than ideal, and less than being capable of ideal world I 
support the flawed humans of ASAN in preference to any alternative that 
currently exists.

-- 
şT

L'autisme c'est moi

"Space folds, and folded space bends, and bent folded space contracts and
expands unevenly in every way unconcievable except to someone who does not
believe in the laws of mathematics"