Thread by @ekverstania

Dear #ActuallyAutistic activist friends: I know that many of you have been through a rougher than usual time in the advocacy space these past two months. I have several bits of encouraging news to share that I think will give you hope for your own efforts.

But I am exhausted now, so I will not share anything specific today.

Just know that changes can come.

My good trouble is slowly paying off. My friends are brewing a revolution and we see its effects around us.

Some of our big dreams are possible and realistic.

Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

I don't have faith. 😝 I am certain of nothing.

What I do have, is hope. For me, hope is seeing a logical possibility.

Given a number of things that happened this week, things that were the fruit of many years of good trouble, I want you to have the hope that at least one country in the world will table legislation to ban ABA within the next three years, and others will start the process too.

I want you to have the hope that a Black nonspeaking autistic teenage boy can be formally appointed to serve as an advisor to respected professionals in the mainstream autism industry in 2021.

I want to give you the hope that the former director of a national autism organisation who once wrote an essay defending "gentle ABA" will renounce all ABA by December and start encouraging the national head of an ABA organisation to do the same.

I want you to have the hope that #ActuallyAutistic people, parents and professionals can work together to provide access to AAC in countries throughout the world.

I want you to hope that #StopDropStim can go mainstream.

Good night for now. May you be blessed with the right quantities of melatonin and cortisol at the opportune hours.

Here's a random pic to mark the first update to this thread. Tonight at sunset there is a very special Zoom meeting. It a milestone event because of who organised it and who is going to be there.

Remember this tweet?

https://twitter.com/ekverstania/status/1363268688447737856?s=19

The professionals are from SASLHA, and the name of the nonspeaking autistic boy is...

We

had

the

best

best

best

inaugural

meeting

of

the

SASLHSA Special Interest Group on Autism

last

night

and

Zekwande

and

I

are

sooooooooooooooooooo

happy!

The majority of people in this Special Interest Group are Speech & Language Therapists (or Speech & Language Pathologists, as Americans call them), and academics in that discipline, with a special interest in autism.

I was nominated to the group, and when they asked who else we all throught should be in this group, I nominated Zekwande and his CRP, Nicola Sowah. Another member of the group seconded this nomination, and it was accepted.

So last night we began working on the vision and mission of the group. It's still under construction, but the goals basically boil down to this:

To change this profession (and later also other professions that work with autistic clients) so that they will be BASED ON WHAT AUTISTIC PEOPLE SAY WORKS FOR THEM

and

To work with all the the necessary authorities, powerful people, etc. AGAINST WHAT AUTISTIC PEOPLE SAY IS BAD.

I mean, errrr... this seems like the obbbbbbvious thing that a professional body like this should be doing in respect of autistic clients/patients, right? Only... this obvious thing is not happening in the equivalent professional organisations in any other country that I know of.

So I think that for a bunch of professional (mostly) white women to be voluntarily taking direction from a 14-year-old nonspeaking Black autistic kid is kinda a big deal, actually.