Tag: ASAN

Disability/Culture

It’s been a while since I’ve written. In many respects, my blog silence has been a good blog silence. There have been ebbs and flows — negative along with the positive. But I love my job, the students, and the people I work with. I’m mostly trying to figure out how to keep blogging while balancing everything else.

Summer’s ended, and I hope to write here with more regularity again. I’ve also begun re-organizing things on my blog, so there might be some blips with hyperlinks and such for the time being. To start things off, I wanted to post a short video documentary about disability culture, created by The Olimpias. In February, the University of Michigan hosted a three-day symposium on disability culture. It was a really lovely event, directed by Petra Kuppers. The Olimpias, which is the disability performance group that Petra also directs, recently released a 22-minute, open-access, fully subtitled documentary on disability culture and the UM event.

Both Mark Romoser and I are in the documentary. Mark starts off the Aut culture segment around 12 minutes in. The aut culture bits last about five minutes (hooray).

I stim, therefore I am [Loud Hands Blogaround]

I’ve become obsessed with my kindergarten graduation. Initially, the video was painful to watch: I am stimming, I am ticcing, I am moving — in ways that visibly differ from my peers.

But lately, I am resisting passing. When I teach, I talk through and about my stims. I fire my rubber bands across the room, trip over classroom furniture, flap and wrench my fingers, rock back and forth as my elbows grate against the whiteboard. This is me, I say. My body is narrating.

When I first read about The Loud Hands Project, I flashbacked to kindergarten and flashforwarded to my future as a teacher. I imagine a world where my hands roam free, where stimming is simply a part of being — and I created the video below as part of that imagining. I hesitate to call this video a poem (because a poet I ain’t). So, I’ll simply call it a stimfest. A captioned stimfest.

From the Loud Hands website:

The Loud Hands Project is a transmedia publishing and creative effort by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, spearheaded by Julia Bascom. Currently, we are raising money towards the creation of our first and foundational anthology (Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking) and accompanying website.

Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking features submissions by Autistic authors speaking about neurodiversity, Autistic pride and culture, disability rights and resistance, and resilience (known collectively by the community as having loud hands)

I’m excited about this project, to say the least, and encourage you to read through the project’s website [preferably while hand-flapping]! Stim hard, people. Let your bodies be lively.

Protesting Autism Speaks, 10/9 @ Ohio State

Tomorrow (Sunday, October 9) is Autism Speaks’ annual Walk for Autism in Columbus. And tomorrow our local chapter of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network will unite in protest against Autism Speaks and their lack of community support, their high rates of executive pay, their lack of autistic representation, and their unethical advertising practices.

I’m so grateful for the outpouring of support that our ASAN chapter has received from people across, quite literally, the world. But as we approach tomorrow’s protest, I’d like to ask that as many people as possible (wherever you live) could help us inundate our local press affiliates with emails and phone calls.

Here is the contact information for Columbus-area media affiliates:

What you might say if you call or write (feel free to edit):

Hi! My name is _____ . (If you live in Ohio, you might say so. If you’re active in or support ASAN or another disability-related org, you might mention this as well. If you are Autistic or are related to or work with someone on the spectrum, you might mention this as well.)

I’m calling/writing because I have a story you might be interested in. Autistic advocates and their supporters are protesting the Autism Speaks walk in Columbus on the Ohio State campus on Sunday, October 9, from 8:30am until noon. They’re protesting Autism Speaks’ lack of family support. Only 2% of money raised by Autism Speaks goes to families. Given the severe budget cuts facing us today, this is outrageous. Autism Speaks is taking money from Ohio families in desperate need of support and services.

Autism Speaks doesn’t speak for us!

==

PROTEST DAY & TIME: Sunday, October 9 from 8:30am until noon (Facebook event page)

PROTEST LOCATION: Corner of Fred Taylor and Borror Drive, by the 4H Center, Ohio State campus (campus map)