• Ollibean News Headline ON SURVIVING INCLUSION, Written by: Kerima  Çevik, These groups view inclusion as an educational disaster, as racist educators saw racial integration in its time. Photograph of Gail Etienne age 6, one of the Mcdonogh 3, being driven to school by federal marshals looking very sad. Photo credit: NOLA.com

On Surviving Inclusion

On Surviving Inclusion by Kerima Cevik Three young Black soldiers, bubbling over with the news that the Civil Rights act was just signed into law, and ready to demand a front door entrance and equal treatment everywhere rushed around places where people of color were formerly unseen and unheard. Image is of the first page of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Credit National Archives. I cannot impart on you what this moment in time meant to them. Imagine being told all your life that you were less than others. Imagine approaching your local supermarket

Take ASAN’S Pledge to Include Autistic Voices

Please join us and take The Autistic Self Advocacy Network's pledge to include Autistic voices in organizations, conferences and panels on autism. Would you support an organization that advocated for women or attend conferences about women if they failed to include women ? Of course not. Then, please, take a minute, sign this pledge and share widely. Join: Colin Meloy, Lead Singer, The Decemberists, Linda Walker Fiddle, Executive Director, Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Mike Elk, Labor Reporter, In These Times Magazine, Steve Silberman, Investigative Reporter and Author, Wired Magazine, Cecilia Breinbauer, Executive Director, Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders

  • “Disability Visibility Project .A community partner with StoryCorps” Black images with yellow images of Golden Gate Bridge, a Peach, Cityscape of Chicago, and RV “SF, ATLANTA, CHICAGO ,MOBILE TOUR, Recording Disability History, One Story at a Time, July 2104-2015, DisabilityVisibilityProject.com, @DisVisibility, #DisabilityVisibility, #ADA25"

Disability Visibility Project

Ollibean is very proud to be a media partner of the Disability Visibility Project. Please join us in spreading the word about this important project dedicated to "Recording Disability History, One Story at a Time".

Cry Me a River, Katrina Percy. Justice for LB!

I originally wrote this piece for the blog 107daysofaction.wordpress.com. I asked for permission to reprint it to help raise awareness on this side of the Atlantic about the story. If you'd like to get involved with Justice for LB and 107 Days of Action, please click here. I've recently been made aware of the story of the death of a young autistic man in the UK that's not getting any press that I'm aware of in the U.S. or Canada. I'd like to tell you Connor Sparrowhawk's story. Connor Sparrowhawk, known as "Laughing Boy" or "LB" to his friends and

FDA Advisory Panel Recommends Banning Aversive Shock Therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center

Thursday, April 24, was a day that I'd been waiting for that day for a long time. An FDA advisory panel finally got to thoroughly hear both sides of the story of what goes on at the Judge Rotenberg Center, and to deliberate, based on testimony, whether what happens to the students there needs to be stopped. And they made the right decision. I just hope that they act on it quickly. I found out about the Judge Rotenberg Center by accident two years ago, doing some research for another post on my blog. I came across an article about

  • Action Alert

Take Action to Keep All Students Safe at School! || Stop Hurting Kids

Stop Hurting Kids needs all supporters of the Keeping All Students Safe Act to take action and urge members of the U.S. Senate to co-sponsor this bill.

Who Should Speak For The Disability Community? – Think Inclusive

In a recent post for Think Inclusive, self-advocate Emily Ladau explores the idea of advocate-allies who work with self-advocates towards disability rights. She emphasizes the importance of putting the voices of self-advocates at the forefront of disability advocacy movements: "Don’t get me wrong – allies, or what I refer to as advocate-allies, are incredibly important to advocacy efforts. “Ally” implies being supportive, while “advocate-ally” paints a more accurate picture of people who join in along with self-advocates. And true advocate-allies deserve the utmost respect. But a real advocate-ally is someone who doesn’t overshadow the voices and efforts of the people

  • Image description: Pink square with tiny, interspersed light pink hearts. In the center there is a large white heart withe dark pink text that reads "Love, not fear is living a posAutive life It is refusing to see despair Just because you are faced with the new. Amy Sequenzia on Ollibean.

Love, Not Fear

Today is “Love, Not Fear” flashblog. We write about the beauty of being, living, sharing and experience Autism, an Autistic life.

A Mother’s Open Letter To President Obama and Secretary Perez

February 10, 2014 President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,NW Washington, DC 20500 The Honorable Thomas Perez Secretary of Labor U.S. Department of Labor 200 Constitution Ave.,NW Washington, DC 20210 Dear Mr President and Secretary Perez, Thank you for all that you are doing to ensure workers are paid fair wages with your upcoming executive order to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 for government contractors. I implore you to include workers with disabilities, workers currently making sub-minimum wages under the antiquated Fair Labor Standards Act, 14 (c), in this executive order. After the State of the Union address,

  • Image description: White square with salmon text that reads " I am talking about how a privileged majority can oppress a minority simply to keep a status quo that devalues human lives. Amy Sequenzia " Ollibean logo in bottom right corner.

A Message to Suzanne Wright and Autism Speaks

I will soon write about posAutive messages but I had to write this first. I know my rights and I will fight against oppression at the same time that I spread the messages of acceptance and respect.

Life for Lief ~ “See Me As Smart”

“Some people think that kids who are autistic can’t handle getting a transplant. Kids with autism can handle it.” Lief O'Neill

The Scarlet A: Why I Don’t Want My ID to Broadcast My Autism

A few days ago I read the article 'Law Allowing Autism to be Listed on IDs Moves Through Legislature'.

Celebrate Ed Roberts Day 2014 with YO! DISABLED & PROUD

In 2014 YO! Disabled and Proud would like to honor Ed Roberts legacy by posting photos of you and Ed enjoying your independence together.

Judith Snow ~ Relationships & Inclusion

"The research shows that when a child who is not academically gifted is included in a regular school, not only do the academics improve across the school, and I did say that, I didn’t say “in the classroom”, I said “across the school”, not only do the academics improve, but drug use and violence goes down."

  • 2014 Joint Letter to the Sponsors of Autism Speaks

2014 Joint Letter to the Sponsors of Autism Speaks

January 6, 2014 To the Sponsors, Donors, and Supporters of Autism Speaks: We, the undersigned organizations representing the disability community, are writing to urge you to end your support for Autism Speaks. We profoundly appreciate your interest in supporting the autism and broader disability communities. Our work is about empowering and supporting people with all disabilities, including adults and children on the autism spectrum, to be recognized as equal citizens in our society and afforded all of the rights and opportunities that implies. Unfortunately, Autism Speaks’ statements and actions do damage to that work and to the lives of autistic

“Weird & Wonderful”

'Weird and Wonderful", a feature-length documentary, tells the story of the disability rights movement from the late 1960s until today.

Worth A Second Look: Haben Girma’s 2010 Speech on 35th Anniversary of IDEA

"One of the treasures of IDEA is that it provides children with disabilities the luxury of just being students. Unfortunately there are still many school districts where students with disabilities are denied their right to an education." Haben Girma

Real Consequences

Autism Speaks has been hurting autistics for too long. We are fighting back and we are stronger. It is time to say things like they are. This post is because I feel offended by people defending hateful speech.

  • Image description: Photograph of screenshot of C-SPAN a light skinned man with black hair. He is wearing glasses and a dark grey suit, light shirt and maroon tie. Ari Ne'eman Autistic Self Advocacy Network

The Importance of Supports

"If we invested a mere one-tenth of the amount of money that we currently pour into causation into empowering Autistic people to communicate, that young man and hundreds of thousands more like him would be able to communicate their needs to us today. I am not here today to speak for every Autistic person – that’s impossible. What I am here for is to argue for every Autistic person to have the same opportunity to communicate that I have come to enjoy thanks to the support that I have been lucky enough to receive in my life." Ari Ne'eman

  • Image description: photograph of light skinned man with light hair using sign language . He is wearing a black blazer, blue shirt, and dark tie. Captioned white text on a black background reads" we work to further equal opportunity".

Meet the Members of the 2013 National Council on Disability

The National Council on Disability works to further equal opportunity, self-sufficiency, independent living, inclusion and full integration of people with disabilities into the civic, social, and economic fabric of American life.

Supporting United States Ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – Why Every Voice Counts!

CALLING ALL SENATORS .It’s time for the U.S. To take their seat at the table In support of global disability rights . RATIFY THE CRPD I have a confession to make: I can only vaguely recall skimming the e-mails that made their way to my inbox in late November and early December last year that called upon the disability community to contact their senators in support of U.S. ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It's not that I didn't realize the importance; I just thought to myself "Oh, I should help.

  • a teenage light skinned boy with freckles, wearing a black jacket, blue and white striped sweater, pink collared shirt is standing in front of large columns and steps that lead to the Lincoln Memorial

All the people saw my intelligence. No test first.

My family saw. I had hopeful times . Tracy invited me home to Vermont to learn . I went to ICI to learn. All the people saw my intelligence . No test first. It was very free. I never had many people understand. To wait. To listen. Not outside home. I did not want to go back to people unknowing. I read more words from typers watching my movie to feel community. Full presentation here

An Open Letter to Suzanne Wright, Co-Founder, Autism Speaks

Over the years, though, we have learned that war is no longer a useful metaphor to invoke and apply in the disability community. People with autism, or for that matter other developmental disabilities, are not victims of the predations of some evil actor, nor are their mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Instead, we appreciate, as stated in the Developmental Disabilities Act, that “disability is a natural part of the human experience.” Unfortunately, your description of children with autism and their families is polarizing and divisive, creating rifts within a community that can ill afford it in these perilous times. Characterizing

  • All disabled people need to know we are together fighting. Not just adults. All kids need to know the big community . Meeting people like me who made the choices of life changed all. Then I am knowing I want this life. It is hard to not have once you see.

This Is Autism by Henry Frost

Best place for all autistic people, all disabled not disabled people, all families to speak together. Speak together for acceptance, inclusion, communication, and rights for all people. I am thinking when you look closely, this is what autism is.

You are not wrong.

Know you are not a burden or trouble for being. You are a person who has every right to be. A family that is saying love but saying you are so hard so wrong for not being as they wanted. The family is wrong. Not You. A school segregating is wrong. Not You.There are many if the disability community that are here for you.

Inclusion, Communication and Civil Rights

"Learning is easy when the teacher knows you can learn. " Henry Frost

ASAN President Ari Ne’eman on the DOE’s New Stance on Bullying Prevention

Comments from Autistic Self-Advocacy Network President Ari Ne’eman, delivered on August 20th, 2013 during a call with with stakeholders from the education and disability communities on the Department of Education’s new guidance on bullying prevention and IDEA. Presenters on the call included OSEP Director Melody Musgrove and White House Associate Director of Public Engagement Claudia Gordon.

Jobless rate for disabled Americans still high 22 years after landmark law

Twenty-two years after passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, the employment rate for people with disabilities is still dismally low, and advocates want to change that. “The ADA … has made a difference in the lives of people with disabilities … but [for employment] the needle hasn’t moved,” says Helena Berger, executive vice president of the American Association of People with Disabilities in Washington.

I Am Disabled and I Am Proud

‎"Polite society often tells us that we need to take the 'dis' out of disability, but maybe... just maybe, we should spend some time putting it back in. Take the "dis" out of disability and you remove the core of what has shaped my life. Disability puts the "D" in diversity, but in order to make that a real difference we've got to own that spot. It took me 35 years to respect and honor that truth. Others shouldn't have to wait that long..." Lawrence Carter-Long

Creating Equal Opportunities For ALL Students to Participate in School Athletics

Educators should use the appropriate equipment properly to ensure that physical education programing for students with students with disabilities is safe, effective, and inclusive. EQUIPMENT Appropriate equipment can help children and youth with disabilities participate in appropriate physical activity. Athletic equipment might need to be modified for safe use by some children and youth with disabilities. For other students with disabilities, specialized equipment may be needed. Activities involving the use of modified or specialized equipment can replace other less safe activities. Treadmills, for example, are effective in providing predictable walking and running conditions, which can be necessary and appropriate for

How to Ignore the Media and Learn to Love Autism

Here are some suggestions on how to tune out the media's negativity and learn to love autism: 1)  Read Jim Sinclair’s “Don’t Mourn for Us”. 2)   Tell your parents, family and friends that are close (maybe even your boss) about your child's diagnosis, as you are going to need support. 3)   Let go of any preconceived ideas for birthday parties, trips to the supermarket and vacations.  Don’t worry if an event doesn't turn out exactly as planned. Sometimes the unexpected is just as wonderful. 4)   Discover what motivates your child and learn as much as you can about those topics.

Dr. Caroline Musselwhite Shares Strategies to Promote Literacy for ALL

Dr. Caroline Musselwhite addresses the topic of overall good literacy instruction.  She presents information about how to teach students with significant disabilities using fairly common literacy instruction strategies. There are  11 short video posts to help you get started.  She discusses the issues of AAC and suggests strategies that are easy to implement and highly effective.  Keep Calm and Watch On…

Wanting More and Finding Disability Justice

White House Champion of Change recipient Mia Mingus is writer, organizer, and member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collaborative. Disability was always framed as a sad or bad thing, as something unfortunate that happened to me, a tragedy, a flaw. My experience with the medical world was one about “fixing” me and making me more “normal” and less disabled. This of course, echoed my experience of the world at large. I never saw disabled women in the media being desired or living whole complex lives, let alone disabled women of color. The messages always boiled down to: disability is

Having to Prove Competence

But now and then I meet someone who has. They believe they are doing a good thing, a noble thing. They believe they are helping. They believe that the people they are trying to help are living happier lives as a result. They believe this with all their heart. They give words, as though gifts, in grammatically correct sentences, believing people can be trained to say things and do things that will be understood by the majority of the population. They think that if they can force someone to stop moving their hands or legs or twirling bits of string

From “Severe and Low Functioning” to “Kind of a Big Deal”

Some people consider it so abhorrent to entertain the possibility of having a child with autism they are willing to do a sperm screening that allows doctors to selectively choose only sperm that will produce female children to impregnate the mother. Since there are currently four times as many autistic boys than autistic girls the thinking is that only allowing sperm that will result in girl babies at least reduces the risk of autism. Read the article Baby Sex Checks here. There are ever so many areas to address in this article and others have done so here , and here, but

14 Year Old Advocates for His Civil Rights

My name is Christian Ranieri and I am a 9th Grader at Northport High School. You should know that I have a developmental disability called Autism. I have come a long way in life as I could not talk in the beginning but now I am able to express my message to you in words. When I was 5 I cried a lot and would throw myself on the floor when I got frustrated. I am proud to say that now I can speak clearly and to the best of my ability try to deal with my frustration in words.

Don’t Mix Up Empathy and Civil Rights

Many times in the autism community parents of autistic children do not like autistic adults weighing in on situations that have to do with their autistic children. I am an autistic adult and often have parents telling me that I should not judge situations if I have not lived it – the “until-you-walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes” is told to me nearly every week as I post the latest news articles along with my comments on social media.

Judith Heumann: Changing the System

Her activism is clearly rooted in a strong sense of justice. Early on she learned that if she wanted to be part of society she was going to have to fight for the right. "I had no choice because, as a disabled person, I was going to either have to get involved with changing the system that limited me or not participate in society," she says. In 2010, Ms. Heumann became the first-ever special adviser for international disability rights at the US State Department. Her job: Promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities internationally and ensure that US

5 Ways to Elicit Language from PrAACtical AAC

PrAACtical Suggestions: 5 Ways to Elicit Language Without Asking a Direct Question SLPs love to talk, of course, but sometimes that works against us. Over-prompting. Jumping in to repeat the last question. Re-phrasing the previous comment. Nature abhors a vacuum and sometimes we just can’t stop ourselves.

Modeling, AAC Style

Modeling AAC Style - This is a strategy that is too powerful to ignore! Here’s why Aided Language Input is at the top of our list of skills that all clinicians should master: 1. It expands our sphere of influence 2. Other communication partners will imitate us. 3. If WE use it, then parents and teachers are more likely to as well.

Judith Snow

Judith Snow, MA is a social innovator and an advocate for Inclusion – communities that welcome the participation of a wide diversity of people. Inclusion is an opportunity for EVERYONE!

Thank You, Ed Roberts

"And we’re going to develop leadership, that has a fundamental difference and that is, it's inclusive . It believes in people, and in our strengths together . And we are going to change our society. " Ed Roberts

Intersection of Law, Education and Civil Rights

As a deaf-blind student with very limited sight and hearing, Haben Girma '13 learned that you must be a self-advocate and come up with creative solutions to the problems you face. If that fails, she says, then the law can be a strong ally.

EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America

The Smithsonian's Web exhibit of the history of people with disabilities in America shown through photos.

National Disability Leadership Alliance (NDLA)

National Disability Leadership Alliance (NDLA) is a national cross-disability coalition that represents the authentic voice of people with disabilities. NDLA is led by 14 national organizations run by people with disabilities with identifiable grassroots constituencies around the country. The NDLA steering committee includes: ADAPT, the American Association of People with Disabilities, the American Council of the Blind, the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the Hearing Loss Association of America, Little People of America, the National Association of the Deaf, the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery, the National Council on Independent Living, the

  • I fear that Hillsborough County School Board is standing on the wrong side of history.

Disabilty and Civil Rights: Standing On the Right Side of History

"If we were to go back to the 1960s and we were to talk to those leaders who were vehemently against desegregation, we would hear the conviction in their voices of them stating why they believe their decisions and what they were doing to those children were just. Just as I believe that some of you and some of the board members that have spoken believe that their decisions are just. But, I fear that the Hillsborough County School Board is standing on the wrong side of history."

Inclusion is a right not a privilege.

Inclusion is not only socially just, but research shows it improves academic outcomes for all students.

  • Teenager with brown skin and dark brown hair smiling and wearing a "got inclusion" t-shirt.

I Am Here To Make A Difference For My People

"I am here to make a difference for my people. I hope that you listen to what I have to say. I want people like you to stop judging me." Tres Whitlock

  • Boy with gray shirt running in grass

Advocacy Groups Call for Autistic Teen’s Killers to Be Charged With Hate Crime

How does it make you feel when you hear a story about a mother killing her child? Does hearing that the child had a disability change how you feel? For some people, it does. It changes how they feel enough so that they'll start speaking as if they support the parent's actions, citing unbearable stress and lack of supports and not being able to take the pain to see of seeing a child with disabilities in pain. We heard the media and public talk about this in Canada when Robert Latimer put his 12-year-old daughter Tracy, who had cerebral palsy,

  • White Rectangle With ASAN logo in left corner, large black text reads "ASAN " underneath smaller black text "Autistic Self Advocacy Network" . A narrow blue line separates the grey text that reads "Nothing About Us Without Us"

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run by and for Autistic people.

America, the CPRD, and the Global Plight of Disabled Children

A new United Nations report, "The State of the World's Children",  finds that children with disabilities are the least likely to receive health care or go to school and are among the most vulnerable to violence, abuse and neglect. With the most recent data available suggesting that 1 in 20 children aged 14 or younger (approximately 93 000 000) has a disability. it's clear that we're in the middle of a child welfare crisis. Not so, according to United States Senators who failed to ratify a United Nations convention designed to ban discrimination on the basis of disability and to

Why did Robert Ethan Saylor die?

Where is the public outrage over the death of Robert Ethan Saylor , killed in January while being taken into police custody in Frederick for the crimes of petty larceny and, perhaps, disorderly conduct? Saylor, 26, had Down syndrome, a genetic defect tha

I Feel Tired

Some parents understand that autism is a natural part of some children’s lives and they fight the societal attitudes toward autistics. That’s love. Some parents don’t, and they fight, and hurt, their own children. This is not love and is one of the things that make me very tired.

Krip-Hop Nation: Music, Advocacy and Education

"Where were the other people who looked like me as a Black disabled young man? With this continuous question of race and disability along with my love of poetry and music, I started to question the arena of music and performance around the representation of musicians with disabilities, especially disabled musicians of color." - Leroy F. Moore, Jr.

Worth Repeating: Ed Roberts’ 504 Sit-In Victory Rally Speech

Editors' Note: Following is the text of a speech by Ed Roberts, one of WID’s founders, at the 504 sit-in victory rally in San Francisco, April 30, 1977. We have chosen to reprint it to celebrate Ed Roberts Day, which was January 23. Ed’s speech captures his spirit, his vision and his commitment to the disability rights movement that was in its infancy in 1977. The San Francisco sit-in, still the longest such action in a U.S. federal building, was part of a national cross-disability protest to force the Carter administration to sign regulations to enable the enforcement of section

Stephen Kuusisto: Responding to Euthanasia of Deaf Blind Twins in Belgium

The National Association of the Deaf and the American Association of the Deaf-Blind have released a formal statement on the euthanizing of twins in Belgium who preferred death to becoming deaf-blind. Apparently the Belgians would imagine Helen Keller's l

When Autistics Grade Other Autistics

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree…”We know how functioning labels are not helpful, despite being largely used by neurotypicals. But some autistics also grade members of our community and I want to understand why.

Editorial: Disabled Senate rejects U.N. rights treaty

Former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole is wheeled into the Senate on Tuesday.(Photo: CSPAN2 via AP) Dole, a former party leader and a disabled veteran, tried to champion the treaty in the Senate. The opponents persuaded 38 Republican senators to vote n

Douglas Biklen: “Begin by presuming competence”

"Presuming competence is nothing less than a Hippocratic oath for educators. " Douglas Biklen

  • Photo of girl kicking with balloons in background. Text reads: RESOURCES we love. Ollibean logo.

SoulTouchin’ Experiences

Keith Jones & SoulTouchin' Experiences  SoulTouchin' Experiences is a Resource We Love! SoulTouchin' Experiences is an endeavor founded on the belief that in order to build a stronger community, there must be a heart and soul commitment to those who need assistance in order to begin caring for themselves and in turn caring for others. This is achieved through collaborative partnerships and progressive advocacy efforts, aimed at community empowerment along with systemic policy change for persons with and without disabilities on a local and national leve.l Keith P. Jones, started SoulTouchin' Experiences to bring a perspective to the issues

TASH- Disability Advocacy Worldwide

TASH is an international leader in disability advocacy. Founded in 1975, TASH advocates for human rights and inclusion for people with significant disabilities and support needs – those most vulnerable to segregation, abuse, neglect and institutionalization. TASH works to advance inclusive communities through advocacy, research, professional development, policy, and information and resources for parents, families and self-advocates. The inclusive practices TASH validates through research have been shown to improve outcomes for all people. TASH is governed by a board of directors and is supported by a network of members, volunteers, committees and chapter organizations. The TASH membership includes a diverse

The Advocacy Center

The Advocacy Center empowers individuals with disabilities and their families to advocate for themselves and realize their personal goals. Together we build strong, inclusive communities by increasing the ability of community members to support and value all individuals.

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