Aspies For Freedom - Offer From Autism Speaks *please read and give it some thought*

garmonbozia Wrote:

Don't trust them. My vote is an emphatic "No!"

In the long run, posting your own videos on YouTube, etc., and maintaining our own online communities (independently, without the involvement of curebies) will make a better impression than crawling up to a group like that.

As for the corporate partnerships... remember what Starbucks did? I haven't bought any coffee from them since I heard about that, and won't until I've heard they've stopped supporting curebies.

That is where the gray area comes in for me. AS is a multi-million dollar organization, so having them publish our stories could be good, but they might misrepresent us by trying to mix our message with the pro-cure group

Korrigan Wrote:

garmonbozia Wrote:

As for the corporate partnerships... remember what Starbucks did? I haven't bought any coffee from them since I heard about that, and won't until I've heard they've stopped supporting curebies.

I was not around then. Should I avoid Starbucks for yet another reason?

How about horrible food and the fact that "Seattle's Best" has better coffee?

honestjohn Wrote:

If the spectrum people, (both kids and adults) that have "made it" past the school-age years - to a happier self-fulfilling part of their loives boycott... then who can blame those who are trying to gain an understadning of the big-picture - the full spectrum of autism from thinking that there are only negatives. This group on this forum is extarordinarily impressive and would show moms and dads and educators and whoever the truth about autism. WHy not speak your truths? It sure couldn't hurt.

I think the issue here is whether or not we can trust them.

garmonbozia Wrote:

Korrigan, it's been a few months since the discussion of Starbucks. I tried to find some recent news on it just before submitting that last post, and didn't find anything. Not sure if they're still doing it.

Come to think of it, Al Cureda has probably realized how much it screwed up with the Abscout / NTspeaks incident, and now they're sucking up and trying to save face before more people find out.

What's your vote?

earthmonkey Wrote:

Exactly. I intend to go back to plan A and write that autiebiography I've been meaning to...it'll be my summer project.

They would not change their goals or actions or the nature of their propaganda. The post at the beginning mentioned how Suzanne Wright talked about gaining acceptance, than went right into an AIDS comparison. For anyone who saw Autism: the Musical, the one parent was ranting about how we need acceptance and better access to services, then in the same breath talked about vaccines and cure, then went right back to acceptance. If our message of being proud of being autistic and the importance of acceptance - of ourselves and children - is merged with Autism Speaks, but they don't alter their goals or actions, then nobody would even notice any inconsistency except for us on this forum and people in the posautive blogging community. It would only serve to improve their image without getting anything practical done.

Yeah, I can see the confusion in that.

Lili Marlene Wrote:

I'd like to point out that I believe it is a common practice for newspapers and magazines to alter the text of people's "Letters to the Editor". They excuse this practice by claiming that this is editing to make over-long letters more brief and readable, but I know that the editing can sometimes alter the meaning of contributions. You do have copyright on everything that you write the moment that you write it, but that fact is in practice irrelevant to the issue of a publisher altering/editing your text.

I would also like to say that there is a long, long tradition of sell-out autistics who sell books and go along to conferences run by The Establishment, and make a living as after-dinner speakers etc etc, all the while rubbing shoulders with curebies and autism experts who can't tell the difference between a psychopath and an autist, all the while lending credibility to the big, powerful organizations and the powerful people. I hope I am never that hard-up for a buck that I even think about going down that road.

In my experience it is a waste of one's time even communicating with most academics and other power-trippers who do not have a clear and consistent pro-neurodiversity attitude. I have never been pleasantly surprised.

So you think it's time to just let them be to their own devices?

Beksy Wrote:

morning_after Wrote:

I more or less think so, too.

But the flip side of this is that if we don't do it, Autism Speaks could make themselves out to look like the victims, and say "we made the offer. They're so disabled and disorganized they couldn't do it"

Yeah, so? We get organized. We form a coalition, or a confederacy, or something. Maybe just a webring (gosh, web rings are so old school, but I digress). I know most of us don't agree about most things, but there seems to be three points on which we all agree:

Many autistics can speak for themselves, and should be able to speak without publishing through Autism Speaks
There is no One Universal Theory of What Must Be Done About Autism
Autism Speaks' focus on "cure" does to auties more harm than good

We harness the opposing voice as much as we can, and we create a megaphone for it. We write letters to main stream media, alternative media, friends, parents, teachers, anyone who will read, and we make them think. We don't let people buy into Autism Speaks' lie that the only autistics who deserve attention, the only ones who count, are silent.

To quote Jack Kelly, a character from "Newsies":

Quote:

There's a lot of people out there, and they ain't just gonna go away. They got voices now and they're goin' to be listened to... That's the power of the press, Joe. So thanks for teaching me about it.

Alone, one or two voices can be silenced. Hundreds or thousands of voices saying the same thing, or at least agreeing, are much harder to ignore.

It's a good idea, I don't disagree with that.

I used to do a street ministry. Sometimes, I wonder if something like this needs people who get together, and do something similar for this cause.

To be honest, websites can be easily avoided. People out on the street are not always so easy to avoid.

But in order to do that, we would need a good training class.

Gareth Wrote:

Seems a horrendously traumatic way to teach it.

Ok, so I understand it is horrendous.

Forgive me, but I'm still new here. What example happens that makes it horrendous? Is it electro-shock therapy?

Ethel Wrote:

Since there's a push towards getting some positive action going:

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...?tid=11677

http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...?tid=11630

Thank you.

I will look at those another time.

I just wanted to say thank you to everybody for your input. I will try and make sure that the guy that originally posted the post I used for an OP knows how you all feel (he had trouble registering here).

If you still want to vote, though, or say something, do feel free.

I just mainly wanted to say thank you for taking the time out to respond.

no. but names hardly ring bells (j/k)

Sounds familiar.

ok, I told Nicolas I would post this here for him, since he cannot register for some reason, and he said it was ok

I have been following the thread every day, and it is really almost shocking to see the deep mistrust of Autism Speaks. Not that I don't understand it, but it was eye-opening to see how deep those feelings run for some people. It is down in the bones!

Please send my personal thanks to the members of the discussion thread for all the feedback. It was very enlightening. I have resolved to do the interviews, regardless of whether Autism Speaks is involved or not. Some of the posts I saw that voted Yes were deeply moving. I think even the people voting No were in favor of the videos' existence for the most part. I will continue to weigh the pros and cons of sumitting them to Autism Speaks for use, and if I do open the door to them, I will be extremely cautious in how that it handled. Also, I will be making them available to as many groups like AFF as want to promote them. So, by all means, please don't let them wind up ONLY on AutSpks site!

It just still seems to be intrinsically more important to get a positve message across to the new parents who are scared and looking to understand what's about to happen to their lives than it is to tear down what Autism Speaks has built. I'd rather use what thye've built for a better purpose. I undertsand the politics involved, but I'm concerned about the people than about the politics.

And I hope that this Embrace Autism movement does happen. I hope that this side DOES get organized and out there letting the world know the truth. It is useless for us all to be on message boards with each other telling ourselves what we already know. The word has to get out there to the next Alison Singer, before one of them actually does drive their car off a bridge. That's who needs to be reached here. That's who needs to get the message. That's whose mind and heart have to be swayed by giving them a better understanding of what autism really is and what is possible when they start to practice acceptance.

I just worry that while we're all busy boycotting that group to make a point, thousands of new parents will be turning to it for advice and only hearing a message of fear because we're too concerned with making a point than reaching these parents.

He sent it to me and said it was ok to post.

andrew_w Wrote:

I think it makes sense that people on a site dedicated to autism acceptance would not want to work with a curebie organization like Autism Speaks.

I can see reasons for and against - one one hand, it would be good to have positive information out there for parents with newly diagnosed children, but on the other hand, we don't want AutSp to claim that the positives are a rare "best-case scenario" and occur "despite" autism, or claim to be supporting autism acceptance when they are still working for a "cure" (now, if they actually did change their ways, that would be a different story, but that would be rather unlikely).

Maybe we should work on improving this site's static content (wiki, etc.) instead?

The ]n the question becomes one of getting the site recognized.

matthe Wrote:

ahem...
i guess i missed the meat of this one, so ill make this breif. and ill try to be as nice as possible.

i dont trust autism speaks. they have been saying some really nasty stuff about us for a long time. we have asked them a thousand times to change their ways. they have ignored our pleas. they want to wipe our kind off the face of the earth, and they say this out loud. they do not speak for us but against us. i will never cooperate with an orginization that promises to eliminate people like me from existance.

Thank you for trying to be nice. When I first posted this, I did not understand that the people here were at the center of threats by AS.

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