Aspies For Freedom

so, what has happened here in 2007?

2007 has seen AFF's profile on the internet, and indeed, the real world, skyrocket.

there have been BBC articles on us, and we are becoming quite well known; i have heard the psychology students and even the extra help teachers around the college mention us.

we have seen attacks on us, both in the form of the site being taken down with DDoS'es, and people posting critism about us ( just google Aspies for freedom, i wont post links).

we have hit the 150,000 post mark, and the 6000 member mark.

there have been fights, and fallings out.

Guesswho came under serious flak for his religous and personal beliefs, and there were many cries of "yeratroll" aimed at various members of the boards at points.

several of the auxillary parts of the site, such as the wiki and aspiefriends, have turned into 404's.
never the less, daily more people turn to us rather than to the chaos and immaturity of Wrongplanet, or the bullshit of the curebie sites.

but, another year goes by, and whilst our profile has risen exponentially, we still are yet to be able to fight the media machines or Autism Speaks on a serious level.

So, Forumites i ask you; what can we do next year, to take back the inititive?

Well, since this site espouses certain views, and since both the wiki and the library are 404s, and since there are frequently debates about it, unless I'm missing some obvious site, having a central FAQ/introduction/whatever would be a nice idea, to direct people who are new to the whole autism rights thing to, and likewise, to point people who rehash old arguments at, as well as any media or other curious people.

There might be such a thing here that I'm missing, though, so feel free to point me there.

I think an FAQ would be a good idea, just for the debate that it will inspire on the board.  I think a debate over AFF stances will not only allow us to test our arguements among ourselves, but also demonstrate to our many guests that aspies can in fact make arguements and that we arn't some sort of mindless zombies with "no sense of self" and "repetitive behavior".

a good idea. i think thats something for Gareth to have a look at

Actual offline activism hasn't been high this year and APD seemed much smaller than last years. The former is hard to do; aspie are like cats, but with some more planning and attenion we could help APD.

Yes. If we had more organization surrounding demonstrations (I think the word protest is a strong word for such things as the autism walks - I'd rather reserve the word protest for use to describe actions against unfair and/or damaging laws and campaigns), then I think attendance would be much higher.

It is quite the nervous experience, to go out alone with a sign and some papers in opposition to what people THINK is a good, charitable cause. Especially since I, as many of us I would wager, have had significant experience with being the one who is of unpopular opinion, who is so thoroughly misunderstood as to be demonized, as demonstrated through my elementary and junior high school experiences.

As for Autistic Pride Day, a good thing to do on a small-scale local level: I know at my local library, they have for events such as Black History Month, and something to celebrate women's equality, where they set out books promoting these themes and usually have a sign indicating the event. Individuals can talk to their local libraries about setting something like this up for the week of Autistic Pride Day, and donate positive books to be used in the display, rather than some of the negative stuff that I usually see in circulation.

The FAQ (which is a tremendously good idea BTW Simen) should have a portion dealing with what autism is, and a portion dealing with some of the myths people have about autistic self-advocates (such as that we don't want kids to get services and supports, that we think NT parents are just a bunch of conformist Nazis who hate their kids as opposed to loving but misled (by CAN and such) parents seeking a better future for their kids).

There are a few issues to look at here:

1 - The technical issues with the site (404s etc) - primarily an issue of myself having the time to fix these issues. If anyone is feeling highly trustworthy and has some PHP/MySQL knowledge then i'll ask them to contact me if they wish to help out.

2 - APD - There were as always lots of private events, promoting it more and keeping it alive such that these private events occur more and the idea spreads. APD has never been about huge parades in the street, as this is against our nature. Setting up local events    or as earthmonkey said perhaps talking to libraries about setting up APD displays is a very good idea.

3 - Organising protests (and I will use the term protest or demonstration interchangably, curebie fundraisers are something to protest about!) - This is what the private forum was intended for, the idea being that people can organise much more easily if they can colloborate in an environment focused purely on activism.

On another note, it's nice to hear that we are in fact becoming more well known offline - that of course is where it matters. It doesn't matter what our google pagerank is if nobody knows anything about us in the real world.

Some suggestions for things to focus on in 2008:

- Directly and openly discussing and refuting some of the accusations thrown at us by detractors, rather than just saying "well they're wrong" or mudslinging instead;
- Getting the old pages up and running again;
- Organize a few big projects- perhaps we could start a campaign to have people donate good books to their libraries, and we could have a list of good books to give;
- An FAQ would be great, so we could actually address things like the difference between helpful supports and treatments vs. a total cure, without having to answer that same question again and again;
- Distance ourselves from the "We're not disabled/dumb like those LFA's" argument- we need to display solidarity with other autistics!
- Push really, really hard for action against the JRC.  It's in the news big-time now- this is our chance to get it shut down AND get our name out there once and for all!

Crud, I forgot (EDIT BUTTON PLEASE!!!!):
- Get involved in making Prizmatik and Autlang actually happen, especially Prizmatik.  If it were really up and running, Prizmatik would be the only anti-cure publication on the market.

I think the above are all great ideas.

In particular:-

Faqs.

An introduction for new members thread

Aspiefriends up & running again, as there seems to be a real need for many of our AS colleagues to be able to make friends & meet other members.

Strong protests & educating the general public regarding our aims & objectives.

Plus

I'd like to see a greater move towards involving the wider community in autistic rights issues - perhaps by targeting sympathetic groups, by more organised celebrity letter-writing campaigns, by media-worthy creative projects, etc.

Also, I'd like to attempt to spend the next year trying to organise a network of physical groups to put the ideas discussed online into practice. Having a physical presence in the community makes us a lot more credible.

I was looking for the first, an introductory board, and was mildly surprised to see one didn't exist.  I was going to use the forum/General/General board, but it really didn't seem right to put it there.

I signed up for aspiefriends at one time.  Then it got spammed.  That's probably why it's down.  There are other solutions out there, I think godaddy even has them available for install under their connection thingy they have now.  This is assuming that we are still using godaddy hosting (if we ever were)... I'm new around these parts

Likewise I'd suggest converting to different software altogether, but I've a feeling that's not going to happen...   I would suggest something like what dragonmount.com has; being a Joomla CMS, SMF, Coppermine, with the addition of a MediaWiki, etc.

I agree that it's very important to increase our off-line presence- in fact, I know that on wikipedia there's been a lot of argument about whether or not the AFF article should be deleted, and the main argument for deletion was that AFF wasn't a "real" organization because none of its work was off-line.  Obviously doing more off-line things lends the organization a level of credibility we don't have right now.
So, it looks to me like the things we want to do next year fall into the following three categories:

- Increasing off-line presence, including protests, group meetings, APD celebrations, and more.
- Expanding/improving the website, including the addition of an FAQ and the fixing of the wiki & aspiefriends.
- Getting old ideas up and running, like Prizmatik and Autlang.

I suggest we try not to start too many projects, or we'll be spreading ourselves too thin.
And lastly, I suggest we try to expand our web presence; we already have a DeviantArt club for autistic pride art, we have (or at least had) a Frappr map for autistics, and I know of several LiveJournal groups for autistics.  What other places can we expand to?  We should try to reach out to other existing autistic communities online and be more involved in them.  We can work together with them to spread knowledge about upcoming protests, etc, as far as possible.