Please sign the petition to support AFF's Minority Status endeavors and protect our rights:

http://www.petitiononline.com/AFFDec/petition.html

Also, when protesting, bring a print-out of the signatures to add weight and get people to sign.

Frog, have you seen the petition today, you need to provide a full name, they have suspended it.

I just saw it.  This is really annoying because I have written them several times now with my full name and asked them to supply a different ad on the signatures page.  I do understand if they cannot do that, as the ads are chosen by google, but I think that they should at least issue a response and not just disable the petition.   :mad:   I am still trying to fix this--I wrote them again this morning.

Maybe they dont work at the weekend.
Hopefully it will be sorted out soon.

It looks like it's back up and running, but they still have not responded to my emails about the offensive advertising.  I have a contact number and I will call them later about it.

I don't have a clue what this means.

I think that it needs to be reworded as "Declaration of Rights of People with Autism Spectrum Disorders," not as "Declaration of People with Autism Spectrum Disorders as a Minoriity Group" for the following reasons:

* To be declared as a minority group in the United Nations, it is based on ethnicity, language, and culture. Being autistic does not even fit that criteria. (post about Navajo Americans and Hispanic Americans as example)
* It is nearly impossible to enforce it (rights of the child declaration and Iran as example)
* Most important thing, do your homework on how the United Nations actually work.

I support the declaration of the rights of people with autism spectrum disorders, NOT to declare people with autism spectrum disorders as a minority group, because being autistic is not an ethnic group at all. My nationality (and citizenship) is American (United States), my ethnicities are German, Irish, Scottish, English, and Swedish (European descent).

In four days, my country is going to have a new president and Obama wanted the American people involve with government. Do you know what the most common question about autism being asked to Obama? If not, here it is: It deals with social services to lead independent lives.

Make autistic lives better by working on local reforms. It would work a lot better than trying to convince an international governmental angeny to pass a declaration that will not get enforced. Trust me, I learned about the United Nations during my political science classes.

A good start would be proper social services for all in the US. Horror, socialism, we can't have that.

The autistic culture exists!

i signed it anyway as it doesnt matter on the wording much its still getting the point accross

Being autisic is not an ethnic group, it does not have a form of an "official" language (Deaf people have official languages, and yes, there is ns more than one form of sign language, which French sign language being considered the Latin of sign languages), but it does have a culture. I was referring that it must have all three to be a minority group in the UN.

I support local reforms and by working locally, one can make the changes needed a lot more than trying to do it internaitionally with hardly any results.

Small point: social services and socialism are not related to each other, and both are generally very open to abuse, the latter being more or less inherently abuse-prone

Ditto - I emphasise the word culture here

I just wish to point something out - who invented the word "neurotypical" and "aspie"?  That's a form of shared language.  And sometimes there are different dialects of languages, yet they are still official, and we autistics have our own way of speaking.

Guess what: The words "Aspie" and "neurodiversity" are not even in the dictionary (Oxford for the British English users; Merriam-Webster for the American English users). "Neurotypical" is in the Oxford dictionary, but not Merriam-Webster. In case you are wondering, I looked up the words in both dictionary websites as well as my hard copy of Merriam-Webster, and only found "neurotypical" in the Oxford dictionary website.

Here in the United States, the term autistic is used by both autistics and non-autistics. The rest are not even used at all.