VSA Arts: Serious (and Inclusive) Art
Published January 07, 2009 @ 05:49PM PT
On Saturday, I posted the question, how can we aspire to give talented autistic artists a chance at being artists instead of settling for cleaning up at a gallery? Autism Cause member Katie Miller commented with a wonderful answer to that: VSA Arts.
Covering the visual, performing, and literary arts, VSA Arts works both to promote people with disabilities as artists, and to educate all people about the value of the arts. VSA Arts has affiliates in a number of U.S. states and a number of countries world wide. Online, VSA Arts has an artist's registry where artists with disabilities can gain exposure for their work. A search by disability for autism turned up 29 talened artists on the spectrum when I queried it. All you artists on the spectrum reading, perhaps you can add to that number!
From VSA Arts' site:
Vision of an inclusive community
Strength through shared resources
Artistic expression that unites us all
There's nothing but Good in that, in my opinion! Thank you Katie for the pointer!
Bullies Can Go Away
Published January 07, 2009 @ 03:47PM PT
A lawsuit has been filed against officials in the Tukwila School District (Washington) alleging that they failed to protect a former student from bullying by several boys at Showalter Middle School, yesterday's Seattle Times reports. District officials also tried to seek a court order declaring the former student, identified as J.B.M., as a truant when his parents took him out of classes. J.B.M., who has Asperger's Syndrome, is now 20 years old and has Anxiety Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The suit seeks "unspecified monetary damages for discrimination, harassment and retaliation"----while at the middle school, J.B.M.was shoved and pushed,......slapped, punched and kicked"; he was also hit on the head with books, had his books stolen, called "disparaging names," spat on, and liquids were poured on his head.
J.B.M. thrived while attending Cascade View Elementary School in the district but encountered bullying when he moved to Showalter in 1999, the suit says.
The abuse began toward the end of his sixth-grade year and continued through his seventh-grade year, said his father, who identified himself as John at the news conference.
J.B.M. told his parents and school employees he had been harassed and his mother, a special-education instructional assistant at the school, notified school administrators, the suit says.
His mother said at the news conference that her son once told her he wanted to commit suicide.
Charlie has not been bullied at school, or rather, not yet. Due to the level of his needs, Charlie is always accompanied by a teacher or aide when he is outside of his classroom. He is, as I've noted, in a self-contained classroom with three other autistic boys and while we would like to see him in an inclusive setting at some point, this seems to be the right setting at this time. As a mother, frankly, I feel that right now he needs to be among his non-disabled peers in a setting that he feels secure in.
But if Charlie were in an inclusive setting, and had to eat lunch in the cafeteria---a jungle as I remember from my junior high days---I don't know how he would do on his own. A friend whose son has Asperger's once told me how, when her son sat at a table in the cafeteria, everyone would get up and leave; fortunately, one teacher opened his room to students who would like to play chess and checkers and other games, and her son was able to spend his lunch break in there. I'm a teacher and I like teaching my students (now college-aged). I once taught middle and high school students), but watching how they interacted with each other---in the halls, in the cafeteria for sure, even in my Latin classes---revealed that there was plenty of "mean girls" types of things going on (and, too, "mean boys").
A lot of us will, I think, be following the outcome of J.B.S.'s discrimination suit.
Enabling Self-Advocates in Face-to-Face Policy
Published January 07, 2009 @ 11:17AM PT
There's a town hall meeting in my city tonight to discuss state legislative priorities in the new session. Oregon is considering budget cuts and bill proposals which could have significant impact on the quality of life for individuals with developmental disabilities, including me. Of priority concern is amending the state ADA to reflect the national amendment, preventing budget cuts to vision and dental care, supporting bills to help protect people from caregiver abuse, and more affordable, accessible, and safe housing. I'll be typing up a statement to read and attending the meeting to deliver it.
While all that is well and good and even relevant to the topic of this blog, the real point of this post is not about the content of the meeting. It's that I'm able to participate in the meeting at all.
See, I'm totally able to sit behind my keyboard in the comfort of my dark, quiet, familiar home and blah blah into the computer all sorts of advocacy work. But when I have leave my home, go some place new, interact with people face-to-face, things change. I get confused. I dash after shiny things. People talk and I can't keep up or respond. Things can get dangerous. By the time I actually make it to where I'm going (if I make it to where I'm going) I'm often too exhausted to actually do what I traveled there for. Transportation, navigation, new location, attempts by others at conversation--these are just some of the barriers against my participation.
So why am I able to attend the town hall meeting tonight? Because of the support of others who enable people like me be involved in the sorts of policy actions that require in-person contact, the sorts of actions that can't be done from behind a keyboard.
While it's important to have and support organizations that consist entirely of self advocates, it's also important to recognize the value of organizations that provide direct support to self advocates, like Self Advocates As Leaders, the group I'm working with to attend the town hall meeting. Commonly "accommodations" are considered physical things like wheel chair ramps or large print. But accommodations can also come in the form of a person. Not a "proxy" who will speak for me or about me (never that, never!). But a person who will enable me to speak for myself. Self advocates and others can work together to remove barriers to participation in community actions. That is the beauty of both appropriate accommodations and the natural interdependence of human beings.
Simon Baron-Cohen on the Prospect of a Prenatal Test for Autism
Published January 07, 2009 @ 04:07AM PT
Our list of top 10 controversies has continued to generate discussion and in this post I bring up controversy #3, "Support vs. cure":
The idea of "cure" is tied to the medical model of disability which holds that a person with a disability is "sick" and needs to be "cured;" some internal flaw has "caused" the disability. This is the perspective still taken by popular culture and many autism organizations.
In today's BBC News "leading autism expert" professor Simon Baron-Cohen talks about "curing autism"---and some of the ethical issues raised by this notion---along with another controversial, or perhaps simply inflammatory, topic, the possibility of a prenatal test for autism. Noting that "males, maths and autism" are linked---as he writes, males are "so attracted to studying maths" and individuals on the autism spectrum are more likely to be male---Baron-Cohen asks, what if, in "preventing" the number of children diagnosed with autism, we also "reduced" the number of "great mathematicians"? He writes:
....if [a prenatal] test [for autism] led to some kind of prenatal treatment, such as the use of drugs to block the effect of testosterone which is already medically possible, would this be desirable?
If reducing the testosterone in a foetus helped that baby's future social development, we would all be delighted.
But what if such a treatment reduced that baby's future ability to attend to details, and to understand systematic information like maths?
Caution is needed before scientists embrace prenatal testing so that we do not inadvertently repeat the history of eugenics or inadvertently 'cure' not just autism but the associated talents that are not in need of treatment.
I'd say that more than a little caution is needed, not to mention some hard thinking about what we consider a talent that is "not in need of treatment." Must such a talent only include being "good at mathematics"?
Autistic Voices in Transition, Part II
Published January 06, 2009 @ 09:10PM PT
In last week's transition team meeting, the organizations TASH and The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (see ASAN's press release), along with four others, presented their top policy priorities for the coming year.
The three main topic areas as priority identified by ASAN were:
1) Support and empower autistic adults,
2) End school abuse and ensure a free and appropriate public education for every student, and
3) Balance the research agenda in support of quality of life.
The four main topic areas as priority identified by TASH were:
1) Equal educational opportunities for people with significant disabilities,
2) Protect human rights, end aversive interventions,
3) Increase employment for individuals with significant disabilities, and
4) Support community living for individuals with significant disabilities.
From the self-advocactes who are reading this post, how well do these major priority areas reflect your own priorities? What social and disability or human rights issues would you like to see considered in national policy in the coming year? What would you like brought to the attention of national disability policy leaders?
For the full text of the specific recommendations in each of these topic areas see ASAN, PDF and TASH, PDF.
Get Out the Vote
Published January 06, 2009 @ 07:46PM PT
It's time to vote for the top 10 ideas for change in America. This one is making real and needed change in the lives of persons with disabilities:
Fully Fund Medicaid Waivers for the Developmentally Disabled
The idea calls for the Medicaid Waiver Program to be fully funded as part of the next Economic Stimulus Package; read more here.
Now go vote........
No Couch Potatoes Here
Published January 06, 2009 @ 01:38PM PT
Does exercise really make you healthier? a recent Scientific American article asks, in examining five claims about the benefits of weightlifting and aerobics. Exercise [is] beneficial for kids with developmental disabilities---I can affirm that. Charlie currently has Adapted Physical Education first thing in the morning (they're playing tennis now) and takes walks throughout his school day (and he and Jim got in a fast bike ride Sunday afternoon, as the weather was in the 40s).
So as the new year kicks off with talk all over about "economic crisis," and knowing our school district has been implementing some cost-cutting measures (like freezing hiring in some areas), I'm planning to follow one of the top 10 actions you can take to make a difference in public education noted by Clay Burrell at Change.org's Public Education blog:
Participatory Democracy #1: Get involved in your local school board politics
(Keeping in mind that I live in New Jersey, and some of our previous experiences with school districts in a town in the next county or two over have involved, well, politics as usual, Jersey-style.)
Now off for my daily trek with Charlie.
