Author: a4aontario

Our statement on Toronto’s 30-year plan: City must prioritize supported independent living for autistic & intellectually disabled residents

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On February 24, 2022, one of our members spoke to the accessibility-focused meeting of the City of Toronto’s Our Plan team–the City’s new 30-year plan for urban planning, sustainability and quality of life in the Six. Here is her statement:

I’m Anne Borden King from Autistics for Autistics Ontario, the autistic-led advocacy group. We are not a parent group, we’re a group that’s led by and run completely by autistic people. We’re thankful to the city for recognizing the importance of neurodiversity and inclusion. I’m going to talk today about housing access, since segregated housing approaches really circumscribe the entire lifetimes of many autistic and intellectually disabled people in Toronto.

When inclusion committees talk about accessible housing, they pretty much almost always forget or leave out intellectually disabled people. In fact, the Ontario Auditor General found that 89 percent of housing funds in this sector go towards segregated housing, where developers get funds to build things like houses on remote streets where autistic and intellectually disabled people are grouped, segregated from regular community life.

These residents have no choices about even basic daily decisions. Families place their adult children in these group homes not because they want to, but because they’re told it’s their only choice. These spaces are not regulated or meaningfully inspected–and a lot of abuse happens there, including by the people who work there, since security background checks of staffers are not required by law. Sometimes people who work there end up being jailed for violence against the residents.

This is not safe, accessible housing. This is institutional living and it has no place in Toronto in 2022.

We know there is another way because programs in other cities are doing it, where autistic and intellectually disabled people have their own apartment, choose their own roommate and have their own support workers, as many people with other disabilities can. Programs in Ottawa and in the US, for example, have been shown to work well and benefit intellectually disabled people because they can live in the community instead of being segregated. This also benefits the community!

Toronto’s government can do something. Our City can make its commitment clear: that institutions and group homes are not the answer, and commit to replacing them with supported independent living, with a clear deadline for doing so. It can develop pilot programs based on best practices, where intellectually disabled people can have the choices they deserve. The City can, in its inclusion documents, make it a mandate–instead of segregated units being built, to prioritize supported independent living– for people with intellectual disabilities.

Please consider this and we hope you’ll reach out to Autistics for Autistics to access our inclusion reports and recommendations. Thank you.

 

“This is our lane”: Autistics speak out against antivax rallies in Ottawa, Toronto

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Image by Glacier Medical Associates

Autistics for Autistics unequivocally condemns the antivaccine convoy rallies in Toronto, Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada. The convoys, organized by Canada’s white supremacy movement and largely funded by big money from outside of Canada, are designed to create chaos and spread hate.

We have members who are Black, Indigenous and/or People of Colour who are targets of the racist terrorism that drives the rallies. Our members who live in downtown Ottawa and Toronto are afraid to leave their houses because they could be assaulted and harassed by racist ralliers. No, it’s not a few “bad apples” waving nazi flags—the entire protest is predicated on white supremacist ideology.

The modern antivax movement is fueled by the lie that “vaccines cause autism.” For the past 2 decades, antivaxxers have been arguing it’s better to revive deadly, vaccine-preventable illnesses than to have an autistic child. This ideology leads to the eugenics belief that autistic people should not even be born. It also relates to the antivax view that during pandemics disabled people and elders should be forced into isolation and left to die, rather than being cared for through simple public health measures like vaccines.

Vaccine mandates are the Trojan horse of the truckers’ rallies. Rally leaders are using the rhetoric of “freedom, rights and liberties” to normalize ideologies that dehumanize disabled people and elders—and to advance their agenda of racism and authoritarian ideology.

We condemn the federal and provincial politicians who have been cynically courting votes from the rally-goers. Equally complicit are the politicians and law enforcement officials who have been chillingly silent–refusing to take basic actions such as towing trucks and making arrests.

While we’ve been told we should “see the many sides” of the rallies, be quiet and “stay in our lane,” we disagree. As autistic people, this is our lane.

Vaccines save lives. Vaccines do not cause autism.

Our 2021 Annual Report on Advocacy

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As the pandemic persisted, we continued to do the bulk of our advocacy online. Some highlights from 2021:

  • We continued our groundbreaking Autistic Health Outreach Project, educating Canadian medical students about autistic health access needs.
  • We collaborated with the Centre for Independent Living Toronto to improve vaccine access for autistic/disabled people through the Disability Vaccine Outreach Initiative.
  • We collaborated with Independent Living Canada to work towards ending abusive long-term care and institutional housing.
  • We led the annual Disability Day of Mourning in Ontario, remembering those who were murdered by their parents/caregivers and saying: Never Again.
  • We consulted with governments internationally, nationally and provincially on human rights issues in education, housing, school and health care.
  • We continued to advocate for a ban on Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA).
  • We educated employers on inclusive supports and communication access for autistic people through our Autistic At Work presentation.
  • We proudly supported Land Back, Black Lives Matter, trans rights, immigrant rights, health care rights, housing rights, climate justice and other social justice issues.

Read more about our 2021-2022 projects: A4A 2021 Annual Report

Autistics advocates unite to stop 11 Alive TV’s unethical use of “meltdown videos”

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December 10, 2021. Autistics for Autistics and other disability advocacy groups and individuals were shocked to see that 11Alive, a news station in Atlanta, broadcast intimate footage of disabled children at their most vulnerable and emotional–crying and in agony–without their consent.

11 Alive’s broadcasting of these moments (meltdown videos) goes against established journalistic ethics. Other news stations, as well as YouTube, have committed to stopping “meltdown videos” based on minors’ privacy concerns and the dehumanizing nature of the videos. Yet 11 Alive did not respond when advocates reached out to the station on social media—nor to a petition, which garnered hundreds of signatures within hours.

“For some reason, 11Alive has not responded to the concerns of disabled viewers,” says Anne Borden King, a co-founder of Autistics for Autistics. “Instead of learning from a marginalized community, they have ignored the community. It is shocking.”

It is not too late for 11Alive to do the right thing. 11Alive News Director Jennifer Rigby (on Twitter @jorigby) has the power to take the footage down right now—and to reach out to the autistic community to learn about why it was wrong to broadcast it. Reporter Rebecca Lindstrom (on Twitter @LindstromNews) has a responsibility to the community to respond to our concerns as well.

Below is a letter to Ms. Lindstrom from Ira Eidle. Ira is a Georgia-based archivist and founder of Autistic Archive. Ira participated in ASAN’s Autism Campus Inclusion program in 2020 and formed a neurodiversity student organization before launching the Autistic Archive.

—

To: Rebecca Lindstrom, RLindstrom@11alive.com

Greetings,

I am writing to you as an autistic person who lives in Metro Atlanta. I watched the story about autism insurance laws, particularly Ava’s Law, and have some concerns. I am concerned by the portrayal of autistic people as emotionally disturbed people in need of fixing with Applied Behavior Analysis, which is a method many autistic people are opposed to for its focus on compliance and fixing outward behaviors when autism is not a behavioral issue.

My main concern, however, is the decision to include footage of autistic people having meltdowns as a way of justifying insurance mandates for ABA. Publicly broadcasting autistic people in some of their most vulnerable moments is not only dehumanizing, but is a violation of our privacy. I ask that you do whatever you can to remove the footage from the report. Hundreds of people are asking you to do so [Link to the petition here].

I understand that you were doing your job and perhaps were not expecting this kind of reaction. However, that is what happens when you fail to meaningfully include autistic people in the development of stories about autistic people. We are asking you to do better. You are journalists for a reputable news station for the city of Atlanta, and with that comes the responsibility of journalistic integrity. When you fail to uphold what you are tasked with, you should expect to be held accountable for it.

Even though I am being critical of you and your station for a story you produced, I am also willing to collaborate on a new story that is more accurate and one that involves the input of autistic people about appropriate services that receive less funding from insurance than ABA. I hope you enjoy your holidays and am willing to discuss this further.

Take care,

Ira Eidle

Canada’s Autistic-led organization oppose the National Autism Strategy: Here’s why

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For more than two years, Canada’s national autistic-led advocacy groups have actively opposed the proposed National Autism Strategy, which has been pushed by CASDA, a lobby group representing Autism $peaks and several large “autism” providers. When we reached out to the federal agencies and politicians involved, they ghosted us and ignored our concerns. This treatment of autistic people, who are the end-users of autism services, is shameful.

Canada’s government has participated in decades of corrupt and abusive policy decisions that have harmed autistic and intellectually disabled people. Their embrace of CASDA’s National Autism Strategy is yet another terrible chapter in this legacy of stigmatization and neglect.

Who we are

Canada has two national autistic self-advocacy groups: Autistics United Canada and Autistics for Autistics.

  • Our groups are led by autistic people, representing the views of autistics. Together, AUC and A4A represent thousands of autistic people in regions across Canada.
  • We have consulted with the United Nations, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and many other groups on autism policy.
  • We also present to employers, medical schools and service agencies on human rights, inclusion and neurodiversity.

Current Canadian autism policy: Designed for failure

Using the same playbook as the  WE scandal, Canada’s leadership currently allocates hundreds of million$ for “autism” programs with:

  • No competitive bidding process/RFPs
  • No vetting of the agencies receiving the funds
  • No study to determine whether the service is needed
  • No independent standards and practices to measure efficacy or outcomes

Current Canadian autism policy: Throwing money down a hole

  • The AIDE project, a sole-source contract for $10 million that the government granted to Pacific Autism Family Network (PAFN) and the Miriam Foundation in 2019  to make a website that is nothing more than a provider list and links to some online articles on autism that could be found via Google.
  • Another $10 million was given to the PAFN to use for mini-grants to itself, to the Miriam Foundation and 4 other non-profits to set up “information hubs” in existing autism service centres–and no other information about what the $10 million hubs are has ever been made available to the public.
  • These are just two examples of countless other boondoggles.

The “National Autism Strategy”: The same failed policy under a new name

CASDA, a partner of the charity Autism $peaks, is the lead lobbyist for the National Autism Strategy. Some conflicts of interest:

  • The Vice Chair of the Executive Board for CASDA is also the President of Autism Speaks Canada.
  • Autism Speaks is a Capital Lead Partner at PAFN and a Collaborator of CASDA.
  • CASDA’s national autism “needs study” was very small and only 2.4 percent of the participants in the survey were even autistic.
  • The consortium of Autism Speaks, PAFN & CASDA seek to monopolize federal autism funding. They represents their business interests only.
  • Autism $peaks, which has promoted antivaccine views for years and still actively supports eugenics, is viewed as a HATE GROUP by most autistic people.

Will the government respond to arm’s-length study?

The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences is completing an arm’s-length study as well (out early 2022).

However, some autistic advocates are concerned the government will use the study to claim that autistics were consulted, while just continuing to do what the CASDA lobby wants.

Our vision of policy reform: Fairness, Inclusion, Equality

Nothing about us without us

  • All policymaking about disability should include disabled groups and individuals
  • The leadership of non-speaking people must be central of any autism policymaking
  • Our views and ideas must be actively incorporated into policy

Autistic people have the right to be included in all disability legislation.

  • Autistic people are not included in the Accessible Canada Act. Our groups were actively excluded from consultation on the Accessible Canada Act
  • The Government needs to honour the access rights of autistic Canadians as it does people with other disabilities.

Autistic and intellectually disabled people have the right to live independently

  • 90 percent of federal housing dollars in the autism sector today go towards segregated, institutional housing.
  • While some other disabled people have the right to choose their own housing and PSWs, these rights are not protected in law for autistic people.
  • Poverty and underhousing are a human rights issue for autistic Canadians.

Say yes to the neurodiversity movement

  • Autistic people are the experts on autism.

  • Charities, MPs and parent groups do not speak for us.

  • We do not want pity: we DO deserve rights and protections.

Every day, we are educating to make the world a safer place for autistic people. Many parents and families are listening to us: Policymakers should too!

The National Autism Strategy is a marketing ploy to build the brand of the organizations represented by CASDA. The Government of Canada needs to meet with autistic-led advocacy groups to find a new way forward. Not a “strategy”. Equality.