 [Image description: An aqua blue background with black text that says "Happy International Day of People with Disabilities!"
Below the text is: a blue-attired person tan skinned person with black curly hair in a wheelchair with a speech-generating device; two hands using sign language; a silhouetted blind person with sunglasses and a white cane; the neurodiversity rainbow infinity symbol; a light brown service dog with a red vest and leash; a person using an AAC device; a person in a green sweater and purple head scarf signing; and a person with shoulder length brown hair wearing an oxygen mask.] Happy International Day of People with Disabilities! Today, we're speaking out about the importance of approaching disability from human rights and disability justice lenses. 'Nothing about us without us' and intersectionality are two frameworks we must use to reflect on this day within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting many inequities, not only ableism. Disabled community is diverse with disabled people coming from many different sites of additional privilege and oppression. We form one-fifth of the world's population. Disability crosses borders, genders, races, ethnicities, classes, faiths, sexual orientations, and body sizes. The world of disability is as diverse as the global community. Yet around the world, we face similar issues: inaccessibility, segregation, institutionalization, seclusion, sterilization, exclusion, discrimination, homelessness, police brutality, incarceration, poverty, abuse, and the assumption that our lives are not worth living. Ableism affects us all. 'Nothing about us without us' means 'nothing about us without ALL of us', including disabled people historically and continually forgotten and excluded from disability movements. Working toward collective access and collective liberation means then working towards racial justice, environmental justice, decolonization, feminism, police abolition, anti-capitalism, 2SLGBTQIA+ justice, and anti-oppression in all forms, as they are all part of an intersectional disability justice movement. The International Day of Disabled Persons is a day where we ask again, who is being left behind? Who is most vulnerable to ableism, eugenics, institutionalization, state violence, torture, and abuse? Who do we still have to work to not just support, but to work alongside, whose voices we must elevate rather than silence? How do we create communities of care and mutual aid that do not perpetuate further oppression? As a grassroots autistic-led organization, Autistics United Canada is trying to put these values in practice. We are ever growing and ever learning. We are struggling together to build a just movement for all disabled people.
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 [Image: blue, pink, and white candles in front of a transgender flag. Text reads "Transgender Day of Remembrance 2020"]
Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. We honour and commemorate our trans siblings who have lost their lives to trans-antagonism, hate and violence. In the last year, 350 trans and gender-diverse people were reported murdered, and many more deaths go unreported. Trans women, trans people of colour, trans sex workers continue to be the largest groups of victims. Trans people are up to six times more likely to be autistic. Our community includes trans people; as trans autistics, particularly trans autistics of colour, many of us face additional violence from institutions, police forces, hospitals, schools, caregivers, prisons, and detention centres. We must come together as a community to resist, to survive. We cannot forget our trans autistic ancestors who came before us, who were pathologized like we are for our autistic truths and joys, for their trans truths and joys. We mourn in solidarity with the trans community. --- Ways to learn more and support:
 [Image description: black text outlined by a red box that says "What changes do you want to see in Canada to improve the lives of autistic people? bit.ly/AskingAutisticsCanada"] We are #AskingAutistics for your feedback! This is a survey by and for autistics about the changes you want to see in Canada to improve the lives of autistic people. Your thoughts and experiences will help us advocate on the policies that affect our lives.
You can take the online survey here: bit.ly/AskingAutisticsCanada It will usually take at least 15 minutes to fill out. You can also give feedback in two other ways: 1. Downloading and filling out the survey in Microsoft Word or PDF format from our website: https://www.autisticsunitedca.org/AskingAutisticsCanada.html 2. Using your preferred communication method (e.g. video call, audio call, text chat, email) during an interview. Please contact us at info@AutisticsUnitedCA.org to set up an interview or to send your completed Word format surveys.  [Image description: red text in yellow box reads "Autistics United Canada Community Survey" Red background with yellow stars.] Autistic United Canada is hoping to hear from you! As we're in a process of restructuring, we wanted to reach out to our wider community and get your feedback. We want to see what sort of events or resources you want to see. We are committed to inclusion and accessibility, and want to know if there are ways we could make being involved easier for you. We are a grassroots, volunteer-run organization. We will not have the person-power to do everything suggested, but we hope to get a sense of the types of opportunities our community most wants to see. Click here to take the survey! Autistics United Canada is hosting two community roundtables in British Columbia and Nova Scotia! We want to hear from you about your priorities, hopes, and dreams for autistic-led advocacy and support in these two provinces. There will be a presentation from Autistics United Canada organizers about who we are as a group and what we have been up to, followed by a community discussion of what people would like to see from their provincial chapter. Join to get involved and have your ideas heard! This community roundtable is open to autistic people and allies, but we will be centering autistic voices, particularly those of autistic BIPOC, LGBTQ+ autistics, autistic women, low-income autistic people, and other multiply marginalized autistic people. The two events will be held via Zoom videoconferencing, with phone-in options available. We are currently booking ASL interpretation and CART (live captioning). See below for details to register!  [Image description: Red text in a yellow circle on a red background with stars. Text reads: "BC Community Roundtable Nov 7, 2020 | 2-4 pm via Zoom" In the bottom right, the Autistics United Canada logo of 8 interlocking infinity symbols in a rainbow of colours] Date: Saturday, November 7, 2020 Time: 2 to 4 pm Pacific Time ***Please RSVP using this form by Nov. 4 forms.gle/EPDhU4GtBdjJ3gxD6*** The event will be held via videoconferencing with Zoom, with phone-in options. You will receive an invitation link by email within 24 hours of the event. This event is special as we are hoping to expand to establish a province-wide chapter, while retaining our existing local hubs in Vancouver and Comox Valley. The discussion will inform the direction we will take in expanding to a BC-wide chapter! Accessibility: 1. We are currently booking CART (live captioning for the event). 2. We are currently booking ASL interpretation for the event. 3. Please let us know your accessibility requests by Nov. 4, so we can best accommodate you. 4. You can choose whether to speak, type, or sign to communicate with us. Turning on your video and/or audio is optional. If you have any questions or accessibility requests, feel free to email us at VancouverAutistics@gmail.com. If you cannot attend this community roundtable but are interested in future ones, please let us know by emailing us at VancouverAutistics@gmail.com Facebook event: www.facebook.com/events/415433482806046  [Image description: Red text in a yellow circle on a red background with stars. Text reads:
"NS Community Roundtable Nov 21, 2020 | 6-8 pm via Zoom" In the bottom right, the Autistics United Canada logo of 8 interlocking infinity symbols in a rainbow of colours] Date: Saturday, November 21, 2020 Time: 6 to 8 PM Atlantic Time ***Please register using this form by Nov 17: forms.gle/Xso1vJ4enW1R7kbBA*** The event will be held via videoconferencing with Zoom, with phone-in options. You will receive an invitation link by email within 24 hours of the event. Accessibility: 1. We are currently booking CART (live captioning for the event). 2. We have two ASL interpreters requested but not yet confirmed or the event. 3. Please let us know your accessibility requests by Nov 17, so we can best accommodate you. 4. You can choose whether to speak, type, or sign to communicate with us. Turning on your video and/or audio is optional. If you have any questions or accessibility requests, feel free to email us at NovaScotiaAutistics@gmail.com or message us on Facebook @AUNovaScotia! If you cannot attend this community roundtable but are interested in future ones, please let us know by emailing us at NovaScotiaAutistics@gmail.com Facebook event: www.facebook.com/events/353841439162281 Autistics United Canada organizers have asked a fellow organizer to step down from their role after a number of their actions negatively impacted the safety of other AUC members, particularly multiply marginalized members. Over the past few months, Autistics United Canada organizers have been in conversation with this person, calling them in with the help of a friend of theirs and fellow organizers. At this time, we still welcome this person as a continued general member.
We are also trying to take accountability for our responsibility in this as a group and are taking steps to prevent similar incidents in the future. This includes building capacity among organizers by:
All of this is part of our efforts to make Autistics United Canada a safer space for our current and future members, particularly autistic BIPOC, women, and non-binary folks. We further recognize that a balance needs to be made between avoiding cutting people off from community (harmers and harmed), and at the same time ensuring that people doing harm in positions of power are removed from those positions of power. If anyone would like clarification on this post or would like to share resources - please reach out to us by emailing us at info@autisticsunitedca.org or messaging us on our social media. Thank you for your understanding and support as we struggle together to create safer and more just spaces inside and outside of AUC.  [Image description: red text on white background that says "International Day of Protest Against ABA #ProtestABADay #SayNoToABA @Protest ABA". White text in a red circle that says "Aug 31"]
August 31, 2020 will mark the third annual International Day of Protest Against ABA. This event takes place on August 31 to mark the anniversary of the Cardgate scandal. This scandal involved "Cards Against Humanity"-style cards based around ABA. The cards were created by an ABA therapist very active on social media, and made light of abuses such as physical restraint and skin shocks. After years of advocacy by disabled advocates like Lydia X.Z. Brown, Jennifer Msumba, Emily Titon, Shain Neumeier, Cal Montgomery, Ari Ne'eman, Sam Crane, Julia Bascom, and Anita Cameron against the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) and its use of electric shock torture, the FDA has finally banned the electric shock devices used by the JRC. Unfortunately, the FDA decided to stay the ban last month when the JRC appealed. We have also seen more studies come out against ABA, including: --one from the US Department of Defence demonstrating that ABA doesn't work; --one from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal outlining the ethical problems with ABA; --and one from the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry calling out the many conflicts of interest in autism early intervention research. We have also seen an article from education expert Alfie Kohn criticizing ABA for being harmful to those subjected to it. As with previous years, this will be primarily an online event, but in future years we hope to have some physical events. We invite autistic people and allies to share or retweet writings, videos, and art by ABA survivors, neurotypical and autistic parents of autistic children, and former ABA therapists, using the tag #ProtestABADay. Want to submit a piece of writing, art, or other media about ABA to be shared on our @ProtestABA Facebook page? Send it to info@autisticsunitedca.org! We will be prioritizing and amplifying voices from ABA survivors in particular, but all submissions are welcome for consideration. #ProtestABADay #SayNoToABA #MoreWaysThanABA #YesAllABA For 20 years, governments in Canada have promised to close residential institutions for disabled children and replace them with appropriate services so that children could continue to live with their families, form healthy attachments and attend inclusive school settings. Following a documentary expose in 2013, the government of Nova Scotia renewed its commitment to closing such institutions.
Yet this week, ground was broken for a residential institution in Sydney River, Cape Breton which would house autistic children as young as 2 years of age, away from their families 24 hours a day. The Province appropriated $1.2 million towards the segregated home for disabled children. The Nova Scotia Government has broken its promise to the families of Nova Scotia. In its Roadmap for Choice, released in 2013, the Government set a ten-year timeframe for closing residential institutions and clearing waitlists for supportive housing and community living. If the Government claims to be committed to closing all residential institutions by 2023, then why is it building new ones? Disability rights advocates and families have been fighting for decades to close residential institutions, and in April 2019, the Disability Rights Coalition of Nova Scotia sent an open letter to Premier Stephen MacNeil demanding that all such institutions be closed. This is being echoed by even more families in this time of COVID-19, because disabled Nova Scotians living in congregate care facilities are in danger of catching COVID-19 or are unable to visit with their parents and family members due to the threat of COVID-19. Shamefully, 80% of federal funding for autistic and intellectually disabled people’s housing is still being allocated for segregated institutions. What families need is support for children to live with their families and independent living (apartments, in the community) for disabled adults. Building new residential institutions like this breaks the government’s promise to end the era of segregated residential institutions. A recent decision by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Board of Inquiry ruled that the institutionalization of disabled people is harmful and discriminatory. The construction of a new group home for autistic and intellectually disabled children is a colossal step backward. The fact that children as young as two years old will be living there is particularly obscene. It doesn’t matter how many measures they take to address sensory overload, and it doesn’t matter how many Superman or Bob the Builder decorations they include. An institution by any other name is still an institution. It is not home for these children, and they need to be home. Families want to keep their children at home, but all too often they are not given adequate supports to do so, so they turn to institutions like this. These institutions lead to a lifetime of segregation and isolation for the residents. Disabled children should remain with their families and have access to appropriate support services at home, and not live in residential institutions. If the Government of Nova Scotia believes in honouring its promises and protecting the human rights of disabled children, it will halt construction of this project right now. It will make sure that future funding decisions that affect disabled Nova Scotians involve the full input of disability groups such as Autistics United Nova Scotia, Autistics for Autistics Atlantic Provinces, People First Nova Scotia and the Disability Rights Coalition of Nova Scotia-- and be based on the solid research about where disabled children should be living: at home and in their communities! Our provincial government should immediately cease all funding for residential institutions for disabled people and re-direct said funds towards meaningful supports to keep children living at home and attending public schools with their non-disabled peers, and community-based living options for adults. Nothing About Us Without Us! We have a petition that we strongly urge you to sign, either as an individual or as an organization. Use the buttons below to sign on. Content: suicide, homophobia, torture, abuse
LGBTQ+ activist Sarah Hegazi has died at age 30. We received a request to share an eulogy from the Hamilton Autistic Comfort Zone, who were in community with Sarah, honouring her life and activism. We join LGBTQ+ activists around the world in mourning Sarah as autistics, LGBTQ+ autistics, and LGBTQ+ autistics of colour. Rest in power, rest in pride, Sarah. We raise the flag for you. --- Sarah Hegazi was a lesbian socialist, communist and activist who was living in exile in Canada (Toronto) after being granted asylum when she was released from jail in Egypt. She, with many other Egyptians, had been arrested, assaulted and jailed for raising a rainbow flag at a concert by Mashrou' Leila, a band led by an openly gay singer who has since been banned from performing in the country. Sarah came all the way from Toronto to be part of the first autistic-led gathering we had in Hamilton as autistic people, on April 23 2019. It was Sarah who came up with our name, the Autistic Comfort Zone. She gave us permission to use it. At our first gathering, she spoke briefly about being in Canada as an exile, and hoping to find comfort here. We know that was very difficult to find, and still is. The vision we talked about was to create gathering spaces for us, by us, that could simply be spaces where we could just be autistic with each other, freely and safely, and support each other as peers, to center Black, Indigenous and People of Colour autistics and to organize in radical solidarity across political lines. We wanted to show that we could create this ourselves, in Hamilton (where there is still not a single autistic-specific support service for adults, in one of the largest cities in Canada) and we wanted to see that happen in Toronto too. We want, and we need, "a mighty kindness" (Rumi). Sarah was a mighty kindness. She was a brilliant, fierce and deeply honest human who spoke and wrote openly about revolution, and supported Egyptian, Sudanese and Syrian peoples' struggles against those regimes. She was "super Communist, super gay and feminist". She believed in smashing patriarchy and capitalism and that "strikes and staying in the streets are what is necessary to force change" (https://springmag.ca/interview-lessons-from-egypts-counter-revolution-for-sudan). Through our grief, is the resolve of breaking through our isolation to reach out and sustain ourselves through community and through action we take ourselves. One way we found this, briefly, was by coming together as autistic people. We also need to be affirmed in the many spaces we access which have little to no awareness of autistic lives and experiences, as BIPOC, LGBTQQIA2S people, and as survivors of systemic and interpersonal violence. We have a long, slow way to go together. We will never organize another autistic space without thinking about Sarah, remembering her openness and about her neurodiversity, her gay pride and her political beliefs. We will never see another pride flag without thinking about the exuberant joy she took in raising that flag, what was stolen from her for expressing that publicly, and how state violence and police brutality is incompatible with human life and freedom. May a million more rise to stand in the place you have left, Sarah Hegazi. Rest in power, rest in pride. #RaiseTheFlagForSarah — The Hamilton Autistic Comfort Zone --- Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line Text: 647 694 4275 Live chat: https://www.youthline.ca/# Trans Lifeline Phone hotline: 1 877 330 6366 Toronto-specific LGBTQQIA2S resources Hamilton-specific LGBTQQIA2S resources Content: police brutality, murder, racism, ableism
Autistics United Canada condemns the murders of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Eishia Husdon, Breonna Taylor, Jason Collins, D’Andre Campbell, Chantel Moore, and many more at the hands of the police. As communities in the USA, Canada, and around the world surge to protest police violence and brutality towards Black and Indigenous people, we add our voices as racialized and white autistic people. Disability justice requires solidarity and collective liberation. Disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, Black, Indigenous, and otherwise racialized communities are disproportionately targeted by police violence in a system that is upheld by white supremacy and ableism. Canada has a long, brutal history of state violence against Black and Indigenous people: the RCMP were originally used to force Indigenous people off their ancestral lands, keep Indigenous children in residential schools, and enforce slavery of Black and Indigenous people. To uphold our fight against ableism, we must also combat the systemic racism and police state that harm countless people in our communities. This is not just a case of a few bad apples. If one police officer wrongfully kills someone, and the rest of the police do not hold that officer accountable, then the whole justice system is broken. And it is. It is important to note that 42% of people who were killed by Canadian police since 2000 were in mental distress. This is a problem when police are called on neurodivergent people, particularly neurodivergent BIPOC, in crisis. Disabled BIPOC deserve to live and receive support when we are in mental distress. Police are not mental health professionals. We need to end the practice of calling the police for people who need healthcare and support, simply because there are no non-police mobile crisis response teams. Defund the police and fund culturally competent, trauma-informed, BIPOC-led mental health support! Defunding police is a start--but ultimately ending state violence requires abolition of police and carceral spaces. There are viable alternative solutions to police. As Black Lives Matter Toronto organizer Syrus Marcus Ware says, "We can build communities rooted in social justice that actually keep us safe. We can keep each other safe. We can create community crisis response teams, transformative justice circles, supportive housing for all who need it, a universal basic income, decriminalizing drugs..." To do this, we must center the voices of people that are usually targeted by police, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, people experiencing homelessness and poverty, sex workers, and drug users. Black and Indigenous people are speaking up now--we stand by them in solidarity. To our Black and Indigenous community members: we care for you. Your lives matter. We know that many people are looking for ways to actively support Black and Indigenous people in their struggle for liberation. We have included a list of resources below, including ways you can support from home. As disabled people, we recognize multiple ways of helping and caring for one another, whether it be checking in with Black and Indigenous friends and neighbours, providing child care, cooking meals, going to protests, providing jail support, fundraising, emailing, phone calling, challenging racist remarks from family and friends, teaching children about anti-racism, translating documents, or sharing resources and information online. Regis Korchinski-Paquet. George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Eishia Husdon. Breonna Taylor. Jason Collins. D’Andre Campbell. Chantel Moore. And many more. We honour their names; we fight for a world where our Black and Indigenous community members can live freely without fear. “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist." - Angela Davis #DisabledPeopleForBlackLives #DisabledPeopleForIndigenousLives #BlackLivesMatter #DefundThePolice #AbolitionNow Learn, support, and take action! Check out our resource list here. |