Ollibean Think Tank

Ollibean Think Tank2012-06-27T10:32:21+00:00
  • 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

Labels

I am autistic. I choose to use this because of community. Not to tell you what I am or what I am not. This is my choice.

I Am

How do you talk to someone who uses AAC?

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

  • .There’s none exempt from this disability community, and as a matter of fact we’re the cool community, because we accept everybody.” Keith Jones

Disability Activist Keith Jones on Community

"So let us remember that when we teach, when we educate, we make policy, we make decisions that we do it with a conscience and that we remember that we are leaving fingerprints on forever." Keith Jones

A Poem About Pain

Other people have written better articulated articles about the same things I write in this poem. It is hard for me to elaborate beyond the words in the poem. It could have easily been me in some cases, it can happen to any of us.

Autistic Man, Jesse Saperstein Free Falls to End Bullying

Best-selling author, autism advocate and motivational speaker Jesse A. Saperstein is spreading an Anti-Bullying movement across America with his “Free-Falling to End Bullying in 2012” YouTube video hoping to put an end to torment in and out of the classroom.

Bureaucrats

You look at me
But you don’t see me
You talk about me but not to me
You think you know all about me
But you deny my humanity
You think I don’t have wishes
You believe I don’t have plans
You

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.

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