IDEAS ON AUTISTIC ADVOCACY FOR 2022 AND BEYOND T[THREAD]
Religious history provides a number of useful metaphors for what I want to say. These metaphors do not require you to accept the religion, they're more like hooks or mnemonic aids, so I'll be using them outside of their original context.
"And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins."
Mark 2:22
The moral of this story: you're going to have a hard time trying to get the Autism Industrial Complex to 'reform'.
Transforming the BACB so that it doesn't do ABA anymore, transforming Autism Speaks and its ilk till they're led by an autistic majority (including nonspeakers), transforming Cambridge and every other bastion of autism research till they take the lead from autistic people...
...won't happen without ruptions, if at all.
Start anew.
Did you know that Martin Luther tried to reform the Catholic Church from within? That's why his movement was called the Reformation. Did he succeed in reforming the Catholic Church? Nope.
I have a typo in the very first tweet in this thread.
"What do you think they [the protesters] want?" Harris Faulkner of Fox News asked Trump. "What do you think they need right now from you?"
Trump's answer, verbatim:
1/
"Protesters for different reasons. You're protesting
also because, you know, they just didn't know. l've
watch... I watched very closely. Why are you here?
They really weren't able to say, but they were there
for a reason, perhaps."
2/cont'd
"But a lot of them really were there because they're
following the crowd. A lot of them were there because what we witnessed was a terrible thing. What we saw was a terrible thing. And we've seen it over the years."
Dit lyk my ek gaan op 'n stadium my familiegeskienis moet begin uitpak hier...
...van die eerste 17e-eeuse Hugenoot af, deur die slavinne wat later grondbesitters geword het, tot die Boererepublieke, konsentrasiekampe, die verbanning van manne na St. Helena, die uittog van Afrikaners na Argentinië,...
...die Duitse sendelinge in die Oos-Kaap, die Skotse Protestante,...
Americans, if you're devastated by the news that RFK has been confirmed as health secretary, if you're afraid that this will result in the death of millions of people, then I have bad news and good news for you from history:
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The bad news is, yes, it is likely that millions will die.
But you can also save millions by learning from the past and being inspired by it.
See, we went through this in South Africa with AIDS-denialist as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2008.
Dear 🇿🇦 South Africans dreaming of a better life in the 🇺🇸 US
I want to share something with you that appeared on my Facebook timeline today.
It was written by a happily married American mother whom I have known online for years via autistic self-advocacy networks.
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Wendy shared it publicly, so I am going to post it verbatim and link to her original post at the end of the thread.
For now, I'm posting it as-is without comment; perhaps I'll add something later.
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“To my non American Friends,
It may be nearly time to have a difficult conversation. I hate to be a burden, which makes this harder, but soon, no really telling how soon, we may need your help.”
“We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war.”
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“We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.”
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“There is no doubt that Netanyahu is preventing a deal. Netanyahu knows that if he goes to elections at this time he won’t be able to form a new government, and he is motivated by cold political considerations.”
To all these UK people who are puzzled about why there's sooo much pneumonia going around in your country, lemme tell you a short story about TB (tuberculosis) in South Africa to help you understand what's going on.
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Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases were a problem we needed to prevent anyway.
But then came a new illness. The new illness had an acute infection stage, after which a person would feel better—kind of like flu.