Aspies For Freedom

This is outright discouraging to me...

We have a club at our school who, on Tuesday, began a fundraiser that was to sponsor an autism walk that Autism Speaks is putting together (a walk that I would probably boycott if I had the chance) and was going to help fund said walk.  For a small price, people bought sponsorship...things (I forgot what they looked like), signed their name or the name of another sponsoring person on them, and everybody who bought one would be placed on a back wall.  An innocent concept were it not for all this curebie stuff that people are (likely) blindly supporting.

I have had to file complaints towards the club at our school...and I discovered that the person in charge of clubs at our school is a curebie.  He even had the balls to compare autism to polio.  (i.e., there wasn't a cure for polio but there is one now...so thus, by his logic, there is going to be a cure for autism.  *shrug*)  Over the phone, I had to continually preach to him that we aren't looking for a cure, just understanding (or acceptance...I might've used that word instead), and he seemingly kept sending it back to why there should be a cure, or, as he would always refer to it, "research"...apparently not giving a damn that the only reason you research a 'disability' is to find a cure.  I was forced to hang up on him before it got nasty...and believe me, it was going to...

I'm debating whether to file a complain against that person for that crack about polio.  When you compare people with a mental quirk to people with a...for a lack of a better word...crippling illness...you are being INCREDIBLY offensive.

I have another complaint against the club in the works at the moment...it is yet to be known if I can file a disability discrimination complaint at the moment...but I would certainly like to.

Of course, our school seems to be a lot of not caring towards people with disabilities...they don't even have a proper wheelchair entrance right now due to construction turning the only such path into gravel for the last 5 days for no discernable reason.  Little wonder they're allowing stuff like this to be sponsored.

You are very correct in saying that people are most likely blindly giving support to what they perceive as a good cause. My advice would be to make complaints about this and focus on the polio comparision. Go up the chain of authority until the complaints are listened to.

It may also be a good idea to give some literature to everyone involved in the fundraising - there is a leaflet available in our library (http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/index.php?page=library) which may be useful. I have found that people generally react more to the written word or to large groups than to individuals in one-to-one conversation.

The other thing to be careful about is to remain at all times polite (as tempting as it may be to do the contrary at times) - state why genetic research into autism is not a good thing, and why a cure is not needed or desired.

Personally, I have been known to spread posters and leaflets around the place at times, a pile of leaflets left in the right place can be very effective.

Good for you transaspie! :smile:

Actually, the real purpose of the research funded by Autism Speaks is to develop a prenatal test for routine abortion of autistic babies, just like what has happened with Down Syndrome.

Autism Speaks has merged with NAAR, which is openly funding eugenics research.  If you have any pro-life people at your school, I'm sure they would be interested in reading this MSNBC article in which a NAAR-funded autism research scientist looks forward to a prenatal test by 2015:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7013251

Print out some copies and try to get the pro-lifers at your school mad as hell!

here is an intersting quote from the founders you may want to show, that show their true nature about their opnion about autism and austitics.

they promote a war mentaily and not to accept us as is.  this proves how they really feel about us...a tradegy that should be extermintated becuase they don't like it.

if you give them this quote and the context, they may change their mind.

I sent this complaint to the dean in charge of discipline about the club:

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Hi there.  My name is Siobhan Reisdorf and I am filing a complaint on behalf of the Teachers of Tomorrow club.  Over the last three days, the club has been doing a fundraiser that is supporting Autism Speaks, an organization which seeks to find cures for autism.  As an autistic person myself, I find it very offensive that organizations are searching for cures for a condition that does not need to be cured, and a little more discouraging when clubs like this are supporting their causes.

Autism Speaks, in particular, is an organization which is providing funding for particularly harmful treatments.  They merged recently with the National Association for Autism Research...and an Internet article (viewable at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7013251 ) states that they are working on pre-natal tests which could, theoretically, seek to treat autism before a child is even born.  This is more than likely to result in babies being aborted simply because they will have autism.  Should a club really be supporting an organization that are supporting treatments that will cause the needless deaths of many young children?

Autism is not a "disease", contrary to what the media tells you.  We just develop differently from a mental standpoint.  As long as we have clubs like this who are supporting bogus cures, however, autistic adults like myself will never be able to rid ourselves of this stereotype.  In my opinion, asking for a cure for autism is like asking for a cure for homosexuality or a cure for being black...it is immoral on many levels.  Just because we make different choices in our lives than that of the so-called "normal people" of the world does not mean we need to be cured of it.  Being different is not a disease.

I am a member of Aspies for Freedom (http://www.aspiesforfreedom.org) and there is a lot more information there regarding why we don't need cures for autism.  Personally, I don't think we need cures...we need acceptance.  We need understanding of our autism from people who aren't autistic.  Unfortunately, there are too many people who are turning a blind eye to those concerns.

There are numerous examples of people who died because of treatments designed to "cure" autism.  Children have died due to chelation treatments designed to remove metals from the body.  There is a place called the Judge Rotenberg Center which uses Applied Behavioral Analysis...such treatments have resulted in using shock therapy on autistic children and have also led to deaths.  Are these the sort of things you want your clubs supporting?

I would politely ask that the school and its clubs end all support for organizations looking for cures such as Autism Speaks.  Although the fundraiser will have ended by the time you read this, I would ask that no one related to Tacoma Community College support such a cause ever again.  Further action will be taken should this not occur.

Thank you for your time,
Siobhan M. Reisdorf
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In response, I recieved:

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...Since it is labeled a 504 Complaint, I hope to hear from you as to what you suggest Tacoma Community College do in response.    We are committed to being responsive and to assisting all our students to learn better ways to handle their concerns over circumstances that are present in other people’s lives.   Thank you for your email and I hope to help satisfy all expectations for TCC to do the right thing.
--

My idea?

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I suppose the only thing I really want the school to do as a result of this is to promise to end all involvement that the school and its organizations (ed. note - I meant to type "clubs" here) have against organizations like Autism Speaks.  It would be the most appropriate course of action for a situation like this.
--

So...in reality I probably am not accomplishing a whole lot.  I am dealing with a school that supports clubs who support curebie organizations who are run by EVIL people...and my best suggestion is to ask that they not do it again or something.  Feels kind of underwhelming, come to think of it...particularly since all my suggestion was doing was re-stating an idea I initially mentioned in my first message.

what a shame...did you read my post above yours?  that just shows that their intents are not nice...just digusting.  they want to fight all of us to make sure we are gone.  their real purpose is to make sure we go away so they don't have to deal with us anymore...ethinc cleansing.

show that message around school and see how many people want to support autism speaks after seeing that message of hatred twoards people...autistics are not suffering helpless things, we are human beings, just like them, and we deserve the same rights.  show them that they don't care about our human rights, and then we may get a response.  show the quotes to a civil rights group.

Yeah, I did read that...but it was after I sent my message.

I apologize if I didn't go after them harshly enough...I mean, I've essentially let them off easy.  Admittedly, I did have to ask someone else to assist me because I didn't know how to "punish" them on my own accord...but still...it kind of bothers me that all I'm doing is asking them not to do it again...again.

It was very strong of you to stand up to them like that. Well done.

If they now will not support such organisations in the future then you've removed one more source of support - that's a good thing to do.

now i get what the wrongs are saying.  when they talk abou autism speaking, then fighting against it, trying to defeat it, they refer autism as this ugly monster that takes children away and now they have to fight it to defeat and supposely get their children back.  they say they organize so they can hear the so called monster speak about what it does to their familes, saying it's nothing but suffering and despair for the familes, and that it's time to listen to what it does so they can fight it.

it's become so clear.  they belive in the changeling myth just like can.

if anyone i knew starting supporting them, i would make sure it stops, becuase autism speaks only seeks to get rid of every last one of us, saying we are a burden to socitey no matter what (austim sterotype).

What kind of uneducated sicko compares Asperger's Syndrome to Polio? I can't blame you for wanting to get nasty, I probaly would have. At least we should be glad we're not suffering from the "crippiling illness" of blind nievete that allows someone like the person you were speaking to, advocate strongly for a cause for considered genocide.

It's far worse than them talking about "autism speaking", because they claim that they are the only voice for people on the autistic spectrum.  They basically say that nobody on the spectrum is capable of speaking for themselves and that we need them to get our voice out.

As if that weren't bad enough, the crap they're saying on our behalf just goes way past the line.

First off, I have the ability to speak, I don't need someone else to speak for me.  Secondly, I don't like the idea of this prenatal cure idea, and I don't need some organization of normal people telling the world that I as someone with AS want to be cured.

Where do I find this leaflet? When I take the above link I get a main portal. When I click "library" on the bar, I get a page-cannot-be-found error.