(Seattle Weekly)
July 19, 2013
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] It’s 5:45 on a Friday afternoon, and members of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s Washington chapter are gathering cross-legged in a basement hallway on the University of Washington campus.
Normally they would hold their monthly meeting inside the campus’ Disability Center, outside whose door they are now sprawled. But a keycard isn’t working and the maintenance staff has started the weekend, leaving the members to digest the biggest week of their group’s existence on the linoleum floors of Mary Gates Hall.
The previous Friday, Seattle Children’s Hospital had agreed, at the group’s urging, to pull a bus ad that called for “wiping out” autism (along with cancer and diabetes). ASAN’s argument: “Wipe out autism, wipe out us.”
The ad’s removal was a huge victory, but perhaps more important was the press the episode received, as Seattle reporters bombarded the chapter with interview requests, all curious about what could be America’s next big equal-rights campaign: the right to be autistic. After years of strategizing on how to get Seattle to accept autism — the developmental disability that now affects an estimated one in 88 children in the U.S. — the group’s message was going mainstream.
Entire article:
Who Should Define Autism?
http://tinyurl.com/ide0719136
Planet of the Blind 