My 2015 Year in Review

My new year in review: from getting accepted into UMKC's graduate a Disability Studies program, to taking on powerful groups for the betterment of my fellow autistics in Warrensburg, to finishing my BS in Cultural Studies. Later my first pet-sitting job followed by speaking to Camp Encourage's autistic youth, followed by many long days of work, to art classes and nights spent with Tyler. Later starting at UMKC, turning twenty-six, finishing my first graduate semester, and creating many stories, songs, and graphic novels, along with reading several of my Lord of the Rings books and catching up with friends from high school, junior college, and UCM, while connecting with the wonderful Arc of Douglass County/Self-Advocate Coalition in Lawrence. Lastly I look back to getting an offer to come back to my volunteer job from high school at Ten Thousand Villages, endless hours of environmental activism, and one memorable night revisiting the autistic community I started at JCCC. My next year: spend more time with the people I care about, less listening to negativity or giving a shit about someone else's drama, more time working on my writing, art, and environmental crafts, listening more to what my gut tells me, and finish the conclusion to my account of my time spent in Warrensburg, Missouri, and then start on the writing of my account after Warrensburg and the aftermath of the experience, and my stories of dealing with issues in the autistic and disabled community at home and the pleasures and challenges of being here. I also learned to stop doubting and just believe there's a way for things to work out in my love life, for if I stop fostering all this negativity, things will find a way. Clearly, I'm proud of a lot, though it doesn't mean I am free of my own issues in every area of my life. However, I know what I want, and am willing to go far with the people who help me get there. Happy New Year, everybody.

Autistic Thanksgiving (kind of) after Twenty-Six Years of Life

Today is my twenty-sixth Thanksgiving, and, while I am grateful for the great things in my life everyday, I will say that I am also grateful for being able to join my dad and grandparents after work at Buca di Beppo (Italian restaurant), enjoying bread sticks with olive oil and particularly saucy hot pizza, and finishing it off with canoli sticks. Sometimes that interaction-despite knowing the tragic Native American side of the story of this day-allowed me to gleam more of who I am and why I am grateful for what I have and what is in my life. Sometimes (as I know all too well as an autistic activist), you will run into the most narcissistic people; people who revel in what they've been through and reach the conclusion that the world revolves around them, and their sufferings and experiences are more important than anyone else's in their lives (autistic and a woman has been called a double disability, as has being from other marginalized backgrounds). But as I indulged in banter with my family, I thought "People on this earth have gone through everything they did, and are alive after all that." I (have known) some of the happiest people in the world who are not alive after split-second car wrecks, terminal illnesses, and other misfortunes that can happen to anyone (including me). As I thought this, I also realized "Whatever some people have survived, be it true or not, they might not have lasted if they had lived in someone else's shoes." I know I have lived in mine, and nobody can judge better than I would who could have survived this life that has made me happier than ever. I am a small town autistic Buddhist with a passion for environmentalism and Lord of the Rings fandom. As I learned when I moved away from city life and spent the next four years in Warrensburg, Missouri, small towns are extremely barren for autistic individuals, in terms of services, basic understanding, and outlets for cultural expressions. Occassionally you will see "discussion" on autism, but it tends to be shallow, gimmicky, neurotypical-led advertising where the host group accrues great financial benefits while belittling grass roots autistic work. In Buddhist circles meanwhile, I find even there I can feel alone and marginalized as a non-neurotypical individual. This has even led to misunderstandings and the unfortunate burning of bridges with many NT Buddhist friends (though thankfully none at the Pathless Land or JCCC's SGI chapter). While many NT Buddhists are rejected by their conservative Christian parents, I find myself rebuffed by my fellow co-religionists. I find myself grateful that I can do my morning meditation every day with my homemade altar and still refuse to honk angrily at some driver ahead of me inside his SUV. Buddhist culture is not something people automatically grasp or accept in small towns in Missouri either, and it took months before I thought rationally enough to stop concealing my Buddhist practice from my roommate and best friend from junior college. As for small town life, I am reminded everyday that these areas hardly seem to be on the radar of everyday autistic rights activists and well-known individuals. They have grown up in cities, filled their shelves with participation trophies, devoid of post-secondary education in history, government, sociology, and anthropology, and away from the poverty of Warrensburg that enables a culture of "trigger-warnings," allowing student voices equipped with twenty-year old computer knowledge engaged in academic and departmental debates to win by default and become experts in their field of study. For me, I created all evidence of autistic culture in my life from scratch-markers, embroidery floss, pencils, candy wrappers, old CDs, paper and ink-to the point where I suddenly realize what a fellow autistic friend from Central Missouri meant about autistic cultures when she said, "Rural Missouri is where it's at." I thought about the culture of Central Missouri, and realized it is the perfect training ground for autistic rights activists, a hostile climate to provide the growth-giving hardships that soldiers are well beyond knowing. There are no safe zones, no trigger warnings, and the vast majority of your activism better be off-line because this town is too close and full of things going on for people to search the internet until they find your results. Sometimes I fear for the autistic rights movement because I know the young people who it will soon be shaped by are being raised under a coddling culture, which would never have allowed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks to openly defy the white government at all costs. I am grateful that I have still been able to believe in such a cause because I have done it in such a hostile environment before and will undoubtedly do it again many, many times. Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

5 Drawings: In Honor of Autistic History Month

For many autistics around the world, November is Autistic History Month ("because we need to know our history"-in the words of Kate Gladstone, see here), and in honor of this month, I've taken some drawings I've done recently to honor it.

I used this as my Facebook profile picture a few months ago.  It, of course, refers to autistic's tendency to stim (flapping hands, rocking, etc.)



Like the crests used by ancient Scottish clans, this represents the autistic world as one big human family (if not one where people fight with each other and don't talk for months) with five colors commonly associated with autistic rights organizations-gold (for which we have the chemical symbol Au, the first two letters of Autistic), red, taupe, orange, and purple, and five common autistic symbols-the butterfly, a flower, infinity sign, and a heart, along with the slogan of the Disability Rights Movement and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network "Nothing About Us Without Us."  This was also another profile picture.

Another profile picture, my likeness drawn in the four main autistic colors-gold, red, taupe, and orange.





 

This one's pretty self-explanatory.  It got many likes and a share from a mother of an autistic child who I am a Facebook friend of, saying alongwith it, "My son is not a puzzle piece."

 

 

 

In light of the recent attacks in Paris, I saw profile pictures going around of the French flag with a puzzle piece inside.  I liked the idea, but decided to change it to the autistic infinity symbol (as the puzzle piece is very disliked by proud autistics like myself to represent them).

 



 

The University of Central Missouri mascot with the rainbow infinity inside it.  Another profile picture of mine.

 

 

My latest Facebook cover photo, a charm necklace (that exists only in my head) of an autistic Buddhist, Johnson County Community College, UCM, University of Missouri Kansas City student, environmentalist, Tolkien fan.

 

There is also of course the newest picture for The Autist Dharma.  For more of my drawings, you can see my post from last April here.  Stay tuned.  I'll have some digital art work and multimedia pieces to share with you in honor of this month.  Good night.

 

Belated Veteran's Day Post

Since Veteran's Day is today (or yesterday, but I copied and pasted this from Facebook, fifteen minutes late after my computer lost power), at work we were giving free slices of pie to people to had served in our military. I would go back, getting apple, cherry, peach, and every other kind. At one point, a man said he wanted pecan, and it turned out we were out, but I brought four different kinds of slices and told him to choose whichever kind he wanted, and we kept those up for other veterans, though I kept going back to get more. I realized that giving them the pies wasn't so much a way of thanking them as doing it with so much care and respect. Now I honestly wanted to thank them as my coworkers were doing, but saying, "Thank you for your service," like they did just seemed off to me, and I found myself saying, "Thank you for everything." I realized, a great deal of veterans do not feel like they gave service though I do myself. What I will insist they gave was sacrifice. Service and sacrifice. The difference is subtle, yet profound. I also remembered hearing on the break room TV news sixty-five veterans committing suicide every day, and I know that people who commit suicide, or attempt to go about doing so, are not simply selfish. They believe there is no place for them in this world, which would be better off without them. Yet how can we call someone offer their lives for ourselves (on founded fears or not) selfish? We know that veteran benefits are being cut every day, and the transition to civilian life is complicated and overwhelming. Soldiers are trained to spot enemies, not friends. Soldiers come back having served in our country, sometimes on the basis of ill-founded politicians, and find themselves homeless and starving sometimes, and called lazy and selfish by people wearing yellow ribbons when they ask for the amount of money to buy a soda. The way they served their country is now virtually impossible in civilian life. Some have seen their friends die in combat to save their lives, and wonder why they are still alive. They cannot support their loved ones with the same modes that they have now that many of them are disabled. They know and hate that they have taken x amount of lives, regardless of how many they saved in comparison. The truth is, politicians grow to see soldier's lives as expendable, when they are actually inevitable risks. I hope though, that we will do more than just elect the politicians who will value soldiers lives to never be gambled for unfounded puropses; I hope we create a culture where these politicians will never happen period. This is far more than about any political party, philosophy, religious belief, or ideology. It is about the differences between false performances and genuine ones. Having Veteran's Day parades, tying yellow ribbons, and giving out one hundred free pies is not a enough to show respect. If you vilify a veteran trying their only way to get money, think you cannot extent government funds to help our soldiers readjust, and think you have any notion in mind as to how these people should be a veteran, please do not say you support the troops, because you do not.

Living the Autistic Mythos

Having studied different cultures of the world academically for seven years, I have come to learn how all cultures shape their world view through mythos, or mythology. I had gone to a local community college in my hometown of Kansas City for three years, and after that, I went to school at the University of Central Missouri in the small town of Warrensburg, Missouri, an hour’s drive away from my home, and there I declared and received my degree in Cultural Studies. My current career ambition is writing-novels, poems, histories, philosophy, songs, etc.—but a series of taking several classes just out of pure interest followed by the sudden desire to graduate school with a bachelor’s degree in good time led to me picking a hasty, individualized major, but one that would enrich my world view all the same. During that time, I came to learn about the idea of “mythos.” Myths in this sense do not mean lies or misconceptions. According to Ronald Wright, author of Stolen Continents, myths are “an arrangement of past events, whether real or imagined, in a pattern that resonates with the culture’s deepest values and aspirations…so fraught with meaning that we live and die by them.” These “values and aspirations”—beyond religion, politics, and philosophy--are expressed by different cultures in things as taken for granted as everyday conversation amongst people in each culture. The more I learned about different cultures across the world, the more I began to think of the culture of my own country, and eventually, the culture of the autistic community, at home and abroad—a community and culture that I believe moreover share a common, albeit latent, world view, and the common stories they share reflect this and what it means to be an autistic person. 

                I believe, as other autistic rights activists do, that autism is not something a person suffers from, as much as they suffer from a society that benefits people who learn, live, and process in one way that it does others; that autistic people are not a recent epidemic of vaccines, genetic mutations, mothers over thirty-five, or bacon, but have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, as an evolutionary divergent strand of humanity like dyslexics and people with AD/HD, OCD, etc.; and that society needs to change to accommodate our differences, instead of changing our differences to accommodate it. I also realize that every time I see my fellow autistics out there, I share a special connection to them. I believe these ideas mean something to all of the autistic and autism community, even if some do not know it yet. I have met individuals and families taking part in the walks and Light It Up Blue events of the pro-cure organization Autism Speaks, even though they reject AS’s medical model of autism, while wishing to know that they and their families are not alone. In time, I have learned it is my job to show these individuals and families my own way to understand they are not alone, through building connections, planting seeds, and gaining trust.   

These views on the autistic people are reflected in my writing, art, music, and have been for the last five years. In the last seven years, I would undertake many great projects in the name of these ideas, such as leading and starting autistic student unions at these colleges, writing blogs, and speaking to and mentoring autistic youth at summer camps and learning disabled schools. During my lifetime, I have also heard about Autistic myths (both good and not so much)—autism and autistic life in films, among celebrities, historical individuals, across the world and throughout history, fighting for their rights, celebrating Autistic pride, going unnoticed in women and girls, existing in adults. Films from Napoleon Dynamite to Sherlock Holmes to Adam; individuals such as Dan Akroyd, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein; books such as Roy Richard Grinker’s Unstrange Minds: Unmapping the World of Autism and Steve Silberman’s Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity; as well as issues of autistic adults from employment to relationships to dating; and events such as Autistic Pride Day, Autism Acceptance Day and Month, as well as Disability Day of Mourning. While I certainly do no approve of everything about each “Autistic Myth” I see, I notice how these sociological and cultural aspects of autism have been a part of growing up and living for my fellow autistic rights activists, and I believe over time, these stories, these memes, these perceptions will develop to suit our current needs and ideas. 

When I think of the autistic community, I see we do in fact have our own deepest values and aspirations. Now, while it is true that many autistics will adamantly argue for their autism to be “cured” and wish that they did not live with it, they do so because they have lived a life full of stigma and discrimination, which makes them blame themselves for their own struggles, reinforced by families, schools, and aggressive lobbying industries such as Autism Speaks. Indeed, when people from any culture have been surrounded by people of another culture, they frequently become disconnected from their own identity, just as an American can do if they go to live abroad. But, when I am surrounded by autistics in groups such as the local Autistic Self-Advocacy Network chapter in my area, I feel consistently like I belong, am comfortable, and can express ideas about myself and people like me, which is what it means to be a full member of a particular culture. When I am around neurotypicals, particularly insensitive, domineering, and close-minded ones, I do not feel so comfortable being openly autistic like I do with ASAN.

                I have once heard a saying, “Other cultures are not failed versions of being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit.” For this reason, when I think of the Autistic culture, I think of autistics (the autistic community)—proud, self-respecting, and authentic people—and, by extension the people who care about them, such as (potentially) their family members, service providers, friends, spouses, and children, as opposed to groups making enormous profits, saying autism is like a tsunami, car wreck, lightning, or cancer, AIDS, and diabetes combined—groups like Autism Speaks. Their message is simply crass and has no meaning to Autistic culture whatsoever.

                What seem to be common across the autistic/autism community are certain themes, which in fact all seem to make me believe in the idea of an autistic mythos. These include themes such as autism in the media (movies, television, etc.), famous autistic people (Temple Grandin, Daryl Hannah, Andy Warhol), scholarship—learning about autism as a difference and how to better accommodate the needs of autistic individuals and families, and public events and recognition—whether events like World Autism Awareness Day and Light It Up Blue or, on a more positive note, Autistic Pride Day. Seeing autism across different cultures, existing in historical figures, and being masked by behaviors, co-morbid conditions, and medications in women and girls demonstrate to me that our differences can blend in or stick out, depending on the culture and time we live in. From looking at autistic characteristics showing up in film, television, fiction, and video game characters, I realize how my autism shapes the way I see and relate to people. The famous autistic people of history and Silberman’s study of autistic individuals throughout time and space demonstrate that we are a timeless people, and not an epidemic, while contemporary notable autistic individuals make it clear that there are inspirational autistics today, and it is unnecessary to look at history to find them. Autistic adults I have met over the course of my lifetime, struggling with school, relationships, and employment show me how absurd it is to simply wait around for a magic cure to our autistic realities, and need to get a hold of the situation while we have the chance, and thus making the need for any autism cure completely obsolete, as autistic rights activists have been saying for decades. And while some events and public recognition of autism are more positive than some, I recognize that we autistics have the power to join together with the support of our friends, relatives, and supporters who make autistic existence what it is. It is because of my life and education I have had on autism that I am willing to go to any lengths to help my autistic kin, and in that respect, I see what Wright means about how myths are something we live and die by.

Back to the Beginning: Autistic Homecoming

Yeah, obviously I haven't posted in a long time.  I have been working five days a week, going to night classes every Monday, and still getting back into life at Kansas City after four years in Warrensburg.  Heads up, my plan is to keep posting on The Autist Dharma, finish all my posts for Ben's Blog, ending with the conclusion of my time at Warrensburg (stayed tuned), which will be about eighteen more posts, and whose name I am planning on changing to The Autistic Mule, then continue the story of coming home and going to UMKC up until now, which will be about twelve posts, and I will call The Autistic Roo.  But for now I might just say something about this day, which I will sum up with this one recent Facebook post, which goes:

Well, today was quite an eventful day, where I went back to my old alma matter before the University of Central Missouri, Johnson County Community College, where my revolutionary activity in the autistic community began with starting the now thriving autistic community, the JCCC ASD Club. It began three or four weeks ago when my long-time friend and advisor, Sean Swindler, to JCCC ASDC invited me to the last meeting on the 10th at Laser Tag (which I was not able to attend because of my work schedule) and today's at JCCC's Down Under Food Court, which I asked off for in advance and was able to attend, to "see what I started." After driving down to JCCC hoping I got the time right (3:30 like it was when I was in charge of the group) I went down to the food court seeing a cluster of tables full of students and then from behind recognized Sean. After catching up, he said he hoped I would come as much as I could and I said I would, and I learned our last trip of the year (2015) would be a bus trip to Oak Park Mall, which made me decide to cancel my trip I had planned there afterwards. Then Sean asked me if he could introduce me as the founder of this group, which I said he could. Honestly, all the tales of thriving self-advocates and report of the events at JOCO left me quite unprepared emotionally for what I was about to see. I tried in my mind to get a head count of all the students, but kept losing my place, but I could see very clearly it was at least fourteen students, not including volunteers from KU Med and Karen Miller from the JCCC Accessibility Services who said she remembers seeing me when I gave my address to the JCCC Student Senate five years ago, which caused ASDC to become official and recognized throughout campus, and long-time autistic and multi-abled research partners who I knew during my time as president. And as I sat down, I saw a friend of mine and ASDC member from the time of our birth there after all these years, who I hadn't seen since then. We went around introducing ourselves, saying our names, what we were studying, and our favorite books, and I heard majors ranging from computer science to business and getting course requirements out of the way, and books from the Harry Potter series to Psychology texts, and I mentioned my favorite book as The Geography of Lograire by Trappist monk Thomas Merton, which I am currently reading, and my graduate Disability Studies and UMKC. Once we finished introducing ourselves, Sean introduced as the founder of the group, and unexpectedly, the whole host of autistic students and nursing student peer mentors started clapping, and two students came up to me and introduced themselves. I thought "I'm just here here as any other member like I intended this group to be." My final thoughts to the JCCC autistics as I left was, "My job here is done. It is your time to lead this community." We broke up into groups and pitched local outings, giving details such as the time, date, location, transportation and people needed, money, supplies to bring, and then we told it to the whole group to help us meet outside the group, which I was not familiar with. Afterwards we split into three groups, one staying downstairs to play board games, another going to the upper floors to play video game with each other, and, the one i joined, going to the upper food court, where I got Pizza Huts buffalo wings like I used to enjoy every day while at JOCO, and caught up with one of our researchers who I knew in the beginning, and saw Jennifer Smith from the Autism Society of the Heartland, picking up her daughter, saying, "You've been busy I've noticed." And I said, "All on my own time." before she asked me to share in a part on a local program Autism Mom's segment on autistic adult's lives, who she was referred to by a woman I know and mother of a close friend of mine in the autistic community, and agreed to share the details with me over Facebook messaging. I got downstairs and happened to notice one of the local members, from her name tag, was named Alyssa, adding to my swirl of memories, and then another member approached me and I answered questions of his about how I started the group. After we all started to leave, Sean and I talked, where I pointed out what I had done, and what's more told me I would, after having completed a year at the Disability Studies program, would be qualified for a position at the LEAD Center in Kansas City, which provides quite a handsome monthly stipend. After that I mentioned how even though we didn't get this group version quite formalized at UCM, the fomenting of activity we started meant more people in and connected to the autistic community were putting themselves out there, and with the help of one mentionable local autistic in my area, who is now coming to UCM, the likelihood of the group is very inevitable, and it, with Warrensburg's size, could change the whole town itself, and Sean said ASDC would be happy to help with that and the recently formalized Kansas City chapter of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. I know what people will tell me, but truly I will say this thing is to big to belong to one person, and I am proud as a testament to what it says about the autistic community. Moreover, my various brothers and sisters in the autistic and pan-disabled community who have given me their love and support has meant everything to me, as much as the world itself, so naturally, obviously, I am so full of emotion from this day. Thank you.

Do's and Don't's of Disability Respect

For the last four years I’ve gotten to experience the perception of autistic and disabled people in a collegiate community with educators, staff, social facilities, and people my own age. One day when I look back, I’ll remember everything, the good and the bad; the things that would flatter my university and the things that won’t. Disability is certainly talked about a lot in our society no doubt, mostly (varying from case to case) by able-bodied, seeing, hearing, neurotypicals. Disabled people talk are merely just speaking on behalf of able-led groups in things for themselves. Much of everyday student’s commitments to disability rights simply reminds me of the movement of offset rights in the West.  By paying a certain amount of money, the credit for a tree that has already been planted is given to you. Like the indulgences of the Catholic Church, ableds are thinking they can by their way out of ownership by hashtagging pictures, electing pageant winners, and going to two-hour seminars, and take it from there. People applaud themselves by giving disabled people temporary niches in the Special Olympics and then go back to their lives of refusing to accept us on our own merit. Large posters go around telling us to “Ban the R-word,” yet they never seem to take claim of the words and phrases they belittle disabled people with on a regular basis. I once talked to an autistic woman who was publicly called the R-word. I understood her feelings were not to be pacified, but respected for their ability to show her the injustice, after exchanging thoughts, we both agreed: the R-word is the corsets women wore in the 1700’s. They are not the oppression. They are simply a symbol of the oppression. Without undoing the world that produced this word, we can never make meaningful change at all. But by living in the world of disabled people for twenty-five years, I’ve found a lot of the source of our trouble beyond bureaucratic frustrations, beyond medical confusion. They are not glamorous. They will not get one laid or paid, but they will make you true friends even if we must leave the false, and we will also see who they are. Without commitment, they can never be adapted, but with genuine effort we will see what we are fighting for. It will not change the world overnight, but it could save lives you do not see, until the time perhaps you wish to feel indispensable. A like, a share, a hundred thousand dollars to promote this post will not replace following these things. They must not be hobbies, but habits, and I know it is a long post to read, but it will still be on this blog tomorrow, so don’t worry about coming back. I have a “Do’s and Don’t’s List for Disability Respect” of ten basic rules, where I have tried to use a positive to balance the negatives, that may not cover every potential thing, but may help you reframe them.  This list goes:

-Do not: give yourself or seek recognition, praise, or self-promotion for treating a disabled person with basic human respect you are just supposed to show non-disabled people. Don’t take the low-road and imply that we are less worthy of respect because of our differences. Accepting it when you have done more than your part to make another person’s world better is slightly different, but it should not a) be done for personal gain, or b) to allow you to talk over or ask something in return from us that we did not agree to.

-Do not: base your respect for disabled people on “passing for normal.” Rather than seeing a world of diverse abilities based on them all having to appear as part of the dominant one, learn about how disabled people should be allowed to express and communicate their way of being rather than hide who they are.

-Do not: EVER support or take part in the practices of excluding, limiting, censoring, manipulating, or subordinating the voices of disabled people on any mainstream discussion that in any way affects their image amongst the public or affairs related to their own lives.

-Do not: express, sympathize with, or help to underwrite any eugenic discussion that involves eliminating, preventing, controlling, or limiting the births of those who will be born or grow to have disabilities. Their lives are far more important than their abilities to accommodate to your lifestyle or appear conducive to short-term economic effects. Instead, figure out reasonable alternatives to organizations that support eugenics.

-Do not: base your support for disabled education, services, and employment on projections of their sheer economic potential. Instead, learn about the gifts disabled people have to improve various parts of your life which are often things that able-bodied neurotypical people struggle with or overlook doing.

-Do not: EVER compare disabled people’s desires for supports and accommodation with there being a sizeable movement of people who want special treatment, having things handed to them, or to take advantage of others. Our society is a LONG way from that. Wake me when a disabled person will not be moved down a waiting list for kidney transplants or shot by police at the first sight that might suggest danger. I have yet to mention a complete lack of diversity-ensuring measures on college campuses nationwide, guaranteed fair trials for child custody, meaningful access to higher education, and even clean drinking water here in the United States of America. By the time I got through a thorough list, all my neurotypical friends would be fast asleep.

-Do not: treat disabled respect as a mere matter of human social evolution. Stone-age tribes in Papua New Guinea and rural Mexico have centuries old traditions of disabled inclusion, integration, and roles offered to them. Celtic tribes practicing human sacrifice had homes set aside for severely disabled. Native American nomads invented the first forms of sign language, and Japan has a two-hundred year old tradition of blind spirit mediums. Rather, learn about the think tanks, ill-constructed classifications, and lack of complete study on and speaking of disability in your own society. Please avoid saying or implying, even literally or figuratively, that society is “figuring things out,” or is just going to realize its mistakes as if they are hard to figure out with high-profile openly disabled people such as Temple Grandin, Daryl Hannah, Heather Kuzmich, Muhammad Ali, Bob Dole, Stephen King, Angelina Jolie, John Denver, Daniel Tammot, Alexus Wineman, Lance Rice, Mike Newman, and so many others that you will be guaranteed to all be buying contraception by the time I’m finished.  Simply do not sugarcoat the truth about disabled injustice. It’s there. We’ve lived it. We can’t unsee it. We’re basically politicized since day one. Don’t avoid talking about it as if we can’t hear it. Instead, just be mindful of our feelings when these issues are discussed. That’s all. Nothing theatrical or Shakespearish. Just plain honest, non-idle dialogue.

-Do not: tourist-travel disabled people’s lives to make yourself or other people feel better about your’s or their own life. People (seemingly) mean well by this venture, but it causes anxiety for me because it may actually devalue disabled people’s lives. By showing other’s that they are lucky not to live with our condition, societies have very little accountability placed on them to protect disabled lives from law enforcement, health professionals, teachers, spouses, and even parents, the very people who are entrusted to protect them. Instead, learn about how disabled people can adapt comfortably and enjoyably to their own lives without the need to be corrected or fixed.

-Do NOT: promote the idea of the well-adjusted disabled person as 1) the model citizen, 2) the champion of adversity, or 3) someone’s whose place is to debase or belittle struggling disabled people or those least understood or independent

-DO: learn about the connections and cycle of bullying and discrimination. Take a pledge to learn the right thing from the right people, never do the wrong, and encourage others in your circle to change. Let people know that disabled respect is important to you, and you do not take kindly to discrimination and dehumanization. Start with yourself, wherever you are, and make a pledge to live in a world with respect for disabled people’s diversity, differences, feelings, and beliefs. If you agree to be mindful neurotypicals and able-bodieds of your thoughts, words, and actions, then I agree to be mindful of your merit in the world. If not, I cannot help you. I cannot bail you out of your misrepresentation, whatever the cost. Learn and unlearn at your own risk, and be warned, we will expect people to follow through on their promises to us once they have been made, and we will know when they have been broken. Stop trying to walk in our shoes and instead walk beside them. The time to start is now.