Autistic School Board Member

In The Politics of Autism, I write:  "Support from the general public will be an important political asset for autistic people. Another will be their sheer numbers, since a larger population of identified autistic adults will mean more autistic voters and activists."  Previous posts have discussed autistic officeholders and political candidates in New York, Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.

 Carolyn Jones at EdSource:

As a new school board member, Joshua Brown is prioritizing special education in his rural Northern California district. But his perspective is unusual: He has firsthand experience with the district’s special education program — as a student.

Brown, 19, has autism and is one of only a handful of people known to have autism nationwide to serve in public office. He was sworn in on Nov. 7 to serve on the Shasta Union Elementary School District, a one-school district in the foothills west of Redding that he attended as a child.

“When I was at that school, I had some challenges. It was hard for me,” Brown said, noting that he had difficulty making friends and succeeding in class. “I am absolutely determined that no student should go through what I went through.”

...

“Basically, I view the world differently than other people,” he said.

Brown is one of a small but growing number of people with autism who hold public office. At least three serve on state legislatures, and an unknown number serve on smaller boards. DiverseAbility magazine identified Sarah Hernandez, an assistant professor at a university in Massachusetts, as the country’s first autistic woman elected to public office. In 2019, she was elected to her local school board.

Jessica Benham, elected in 2020 to the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives, told a journalist that it’s important for people with disabilities to advocate for themselves politically, not rely on others to create laws and policies protecting their rights.

“For a long time now, autistic people have been really effective policy advocates, and certainly some folks have held elected office who have not been open about their diagnosis,” Benham said in Spectrum magazine. “But having somebody who is loud and proud, as it were, means that people can’t ignore the way their policies impact people like me.” 

 

ID Cards in Louisiana

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

[M]any police departments have trained officers and other first responders how to spot signs of autism and respond accordingly.[i] Some organizations have also published identification cards that ASD adults can carry in order to defuse potential conflicts. Virginia provides for an autism designation on driver licenses and other state-issued identification cards. Once again, however, the dilemma of difference comes into play. One autistic Virginian worries: “Great, so if I get into an accident, who’s the cop going to believe, the guy with the autistic label or the guy without it?” Clinical psychologist Michael Oberschneider is concerned about the understanding level of first responders: “I think many people still think of Rain Man or, more recently, the Sandy Hook Shooter, when they think of autism even though very few people on the autistic spectrum are savants or are homicidal and dangerous.”[ii]

Louisiana has now acted. In addition to the underlying issue, some self-advocates might object to the puzzle piece.

 From the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles:

Eligible Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles customers can now request to have an “Autism” indicator added to their identification cards. Qualified applicants include any person diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder by a qualified medical or mental health professional. The autism indicator will appear under the customer’s picture on the ID card.

The autism indicator is optional and can be removed from a credential at any time, as requested by the applicant. The “Autism” designation can be displayed on any class identification card, including the TIP, but may not be placed on Class H (Handicap Identification Card) credentials. Applicable fees are required for identification card processing if adding or removing the Autism indicator.

Applicants must provide one of the following documents to the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles in order to have the designation added to an ID card:


• Medical Examiner’s Certification of Autism Spectrum Disorder form completed by the medical or mental health professional
• A statement from a qualified mental health professional licensed in Louisiana or any other state or territory of the United States verifying the applicant’s disability.

An ID card with an Autism indicator cannot include the “Veteran,” “I’m a Cajun” or “100% DAV” indicators. The Autism indicator can only be combined with the “Needs Accommodation” indicator. If the driver’s license indicates “Autism,” but not “Needs Accommodation,” a puzzle piece symbol will appear on the license with the autism designation below the picture. If the driver’s license indicates both “Autism” and “Needs Accommodation,” the autism designation will appear below the picture in addition to “AN” above the picture.

LA Wallet users can display the Autism indicator on their ID Card in the LA Wallet app. If an applicable card is currently linked in LA Wallet, simply unlink it in the menu and add it back to get the updated image

Eric Garcia on Early Diagnosis

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss evaluation, diagnosis, and early intervention.

Eric M. Garcia at MSNBC:

\Focusing too intensely on early biological markers, early testing and early diagnosis is a symptom of America’s focus on what causes autism or puts people at risk for it. Two years ago, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee found that in 2018, 6% of all U.S. research dollars given toward autism research went to screening and diagnosis, 44% went to understanding the biology of the disability and another 19% went toward better understanding the risk factors. Another 13% was devoted to researching “treatments and interventions.”

After all that, only a meager 6% went to services for autistic people, and just 3% went to “lifespan issues” — even though autistic people are adults far longer than they are children and we should all support the idea of autistic people living long, happy lives.

Earlier diagnosis is not inherently bad, nor is a focus on biology inherently wrong. Those avenues of research can help find solutions to the impairments autistic people face.

But they are only the first step toward building a better world for autistic people. As much as neurotypical people tend to find autistic people’s tendency to be single-mindedly focused on a topic annoying, it is they who seem incredibly focused on the biology of autism and how to detect it early, rather than creating a system that supports autistic people throughout life. And here we are giving them plenty of hints that we have other priorities.

Hair Test as a Possible Diagnostic Aid

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss evaluation, diagnosis, and early intervention.

Evan Bush at NBC:

Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind test for autism that they say can find markers of risk in a single strand of hair, an innovation that might help clinicians identify it in young children before they miss developmental milestones.

The test — which is still in the early stages of development by the startup LinusBio and a ways from federal approval — is a diagnostic aid, meant to assist clinicians in identifying autism but not to be relied on alone. Because hair catalogs a history of exposures to metals and other substances, the technology uses an algorithm to analyze it for patterns of particular metals the researchers say are associated with autism.

This test is the first to analyze this type of exposure history over time. The analysis predicted autism accurately about 81% of the time, according to a peer-reviewed study published last month in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

Also at NBC, psychologist Sarah Gundle, the mother of an autistic person, writes of her ambivalence.  On the one hand, early diagnosis could mean earlier and more effective intervention.  On the other hand, parents may rush to "fix" their kids and treat all their behaviors as pathologies in need of  "cure."

There’s another reason the new test worries me. The traditional means of assessing autism has always been the direct observation of the child. What will we lose in understanding this mysterious condition when the means of diagnosis are boiled down to laboratory analysis? What will happen when doctors replace the process of carefully observing a child, as well as asking parents and teachers probing questions, with reading the results of some tests on a hair follicle? This possibility of a new test is meant to be used as a “diagnostic aid,” not as a stand-alone measure of autism, but I still fear that by introducing it into the diagnostic regime, it will chip away at that psychological probing that leads to a more nuanced view of children themselves.

As always with autism, caution is in order.  For decades, ASD people and their families have read of medical breakthroughs, only to meet with disappointment as more studies come in.

Temple Grandin on Education Reform

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the employment of adults with autism and other developmental disabilities.

Temple Grandin at NYT:

I often get asked what I would do to improve both elementary and high school. The first step would be to put more of an emphasis on hands-on classes such as art, music, sewing, woodworking, cooking, theater, auto mechanics and welding. I would have hated school if the hands-on classes had been removed, as so many have been today. These classes also expose students — especially neurodivergent students — to skills that could become a career. Exposure is key. Too many students are growing up who have never used a tool. They are completely removed from the world of the practical.

Despite my accomplishments, if I were a young person today, I would have difficulty graduating from high school because I could not pass algebra. It was too abstract, with no visual correlations. This is true for many of today’s students who get labeled as bad at math, students who might otherwise pass alternative math courses such as statistics that would also apply to real-life work situations. There is too much emphasis in school on testing and not enough on career outcomes. The fact that I failed the SAT in math prohibited me from getting into veterinary school, but today I am a university professor in animal sciences and I am invited to speak to groups of veterinarians to advise them on their work. The true measure of an education isn’t what grades a student gets today, but where they are 10 years later.

The Antivax Cameo in the J6 Report

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.

The anti-vax movement has a great deal of overlap with MAGA, QAnon, and old-school conspiracy theory.  

So it should not be a surprise that antivaxxers took part in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Marsha Lessard, the leader of a vaccine-skeptic group, Virginia Freedom Keepers, worked to stage an event with Bianca Gracia, the leader of Latinos for Trump on January 6th.390 The women had ties to the Oath Keepers 391 and Proud Boys,392 respectively—two groups central to the violence on January 6. Latinos for Trump reportedly advertised their January 6th event with the same QAnon-inspired banner, “Operation Occupy the Capitol.”393 Another conservative group, Moms for America, worked withAlexander before securing a permit for an event on January 5th.394

• 390. Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Informal Interview of Marsha Lessard, (Dec. 10, 2021); see also Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Capitol Police Production), CTRL0000001834 (Permit Relating to Demonstration Activities on UnitedStates Capitol Grounds for Virginia Freedom Keepers, No. 20-12-25).
• 391. . See Superseding Indictment at ¶ 37, United States v. Rhodes et al., No. 1:22-cr-15 (D.D.C. June 22, 2022) (noting that Stewart Rhodes, President of the Oath Keepers, shipped weapons to Lessard’s home in Virginia before his arrival in DC for January 6th); Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Kellye SoRelle, (Apr. 13, 2022), p. 180.
• 392. See Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,Deposition of Henry Tarrio, (Feb. 4, 2021), p. 117 (testifying that Gracia arranged a White House tour for him in December 2020).
• 393. Latinos for Trump (@Officiallft2021), Twitter, Dec. 27, 2020 7:58 p.m., available at https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1343360740313321474. 
• 394. Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, (Nathan Martin Production), NMartin0318 (December 30, 2020, email from Kimberly Fletcher of Moms for America to Ali Alexander and Nathan Martin re: MFAVIP list for White House); Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate theJanuary 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Resource Group Production),

Earlier in the report:

Rhodes amassed an arsenal of military-grade assault weapons and equipment in the days leading up to January 6th. On December 30th, Rhodes spent approximately $7,000 on two night-vision devices and a weapon sight and shipped them to Marsha Lessard, a rally organizer who lived near Washington, DC and who had previously been in contact with the organizers of the Ellipse rally.193

• 193. Superseding Indictment at ¶ 37, United States v. Rhodes et al., No. 1:22-cr-15 (D.D.C. June 22, 2022), ECF No. 167; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the UnitedStates Capitol, Deposition of Kellye SoRelle, (Apr. 13, 2022), p. 180.

 

 

 

Another Police Incident

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between police and autistic people.  Police officers need training to respond appropriately.  When they do not, things get out of hand. 

Deborah Choe at WOFL-TV in Orlando:

"You just Tased an autistic kid, bro!"

An emotional video is making its way around social media after a neighbor recorded what happened in their Cocoa, Florida neighborhood.

On Dec. 22, Brevard County deputies responded to 4022 Lake Circle after a 911 caller reported seeing a man with a knife. When deputies arrived, they said they found Jarquez Johnson walking around the property, moving his right hand up and down several times.

The case report reads, "One deputy told Johnson several times to drop the knife, as they addressed him at gunpoint. Johnson did not drop the knife nor did he respond to any of the verbal commands."

After several commands, they Tased him, after which he dropped to the ground and was placed in handcuffs. In the video, you can hear the neighbor, Teena Crawford, screaming at deputies for several minutes, "He has autism!"

A knife was never recovered.

Antivax Scavengers

  In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

On Monday, the Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed from cardiac arrest, and the antivaxxers immediately -- and without any evidence -- blamed vaccines. At The Atlantic, Caroline Mimbs Nyce interviews Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate:

Caroline Mimbs Nyce: Can you talk to me a little bit about what you saw after the Hamlin collapse—what the volume of the anti-vax disinformation looked like online?

Imran Ahmed: First of all, it’s worth saying that anti-vaxxers have proven extremely opportunistic—parasites, really, who feed on the algorithmic salience of breaking news and current events to amplify their own narrative.

We have seen consistently that every time a high-profile death has occurred, very quickly, anti-vaxxers have jumped on and said, Yes, that happened because of the vaccine, and here’s the information about it. Right now, they’re trying to promote the anti-vax documentary Died Suddenly.

This is about gaming social-media platforms. They don’t actually care about the narrative content of the idea that a 24-year-old footballer who was vaccinated some time ago suddenly collapsed on the pitch. What they care about is the mathematical amplification that is theirs to enjoy, despite the fact they promote false information all the time, breaking the rules of the platforms. Platforms do not allow the deliberate spread of deadly disinformation. Nevertheless, these people are allowed to continue.

Vaccine Documentary

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Ema Sasic at The Desert Sun:

Before anyone heard about COVID-19 or knew the global devastation it would cause, Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy was looking at another viral outbreak.

From Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2019, 1,274 measles cases were confirmed in 31 states in the United States, the greatest number of reported cases in the country since 1992, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Globally, measles cases reached nearly 1 million and killed an estimated 207,500 people in 2019.

Although measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, record-breaking numbers were occurring. Why? According to the CDC, the U.S. measles outbreaks were all linked to travel-related cases that reached at-risk populations, including those who are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated against measles.

The first measles vaccine was licensed for public use in 1963. Today, two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is recommended for children to protect against the viruses. Between 2000 and 2020, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 31.7 million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

Over the years, however, anti-vaccination activists have grown. Much of it dates back to 1998, when a fraudulent research paper was published, asserting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism without robust scientific evidence. Although there have been numerous studies since then refuting the posited link between MMR vaccination and autism, vaccination rates dropped, with many still concerned about the risk of autism after vaccination

Yet Another Police Encounter Goes South

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between police and autistic people.  Police officers need training to respond appropriately.  When they do not, things get out of hand. 

:Melissa Hipolit at WTVR-TV:

 Shelia Jackson wanted her son who has autism to feel comfortable around police officers...
She signed him up for the after-school tennis program at Virginia Commonwealth University, where officers from the Richmond Police Department volunteer through the Richmond Police Athletic League.

But, on Nov. 3, Jackson showed up at the tennis courts to find her son on the ground in handcuffs.

"We ended up going to VCU emergency room. They diagnosed him with a TBI concussion," Jackson said.

Jackson said the staff at the tennis program said her son was getting frustrated on his serves, and they told him to practice off to the side. But she is unclear on what happened next.

Her son said one of the police officers raised her voice at him, and he started to walk away from her.

"He knows to try to self-regulate and walk away from a situation, she may have thought he was being defiant," Jackson said.

After that, Jackson said her son said the officer grabbed him.

"When I got here my son was handcuffed on the ground right behind where that fence is opened," Jackson said. "There was an officer holding his head, there was an officer on his left leg, someone on his right leg, there was an officer on his right side kneeling holding his shoulders down and then there was another officer standing up."

Jackson said Richmond Police told her that her son headbutted an officer while they detained him, and they were worried he was going to run.

But she is still not sure why he was handcuffed, and what exactly happened that caused him to get a concussion.

"That is not how he should be dealt with, not only my son, anyone," Jackson said. "Where is the training? Are you just going to the training and you're not taking it in?"

Authentic Casting

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss depictions of ASD in popular culture. 

Tim Gray at Variety:

The best picture Oscar for “CODA” was historic for many reasons — including the fact that it honored a film with authentic casting of Deaf people, after the disabled have been historically ignored or misrepresented in Hollywood.

So can we expect a flood of movies about the disabled? Maybe. The 2022 Oscar contenders show that so far it’s a trickle, not a flood. “Causeway,” “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” all feature authentic casting, with disabled characters played by disabled actors. (What a concept!)

...

“Cha Cha” writer-director-star Cooper Raiff says it never occurred to him to audition non-autistic actors for the central role of Lola, who is on the autism spectrum, as is the actress who plays her, Vanessa Burghardt.

Raiff tells Variety, “In a movie, I’m always trying to make a scene more real and authentic. And the first step is to cast someone who will play the role best. So to cast a neurotypical actor would be a waste of time. They would do research but wouldn’t have the heart.”
...

Burghardt says before “Cha Cha,” her agents usually didn’t reveal her autism: “There is a bias and I wouldn’t have gotten those auditions in the first place.”

Manslaughter and Suspected Suicide

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

Previous posts have discussed parents who have killed or tried to kill their ASD children.  One victim was named Jude Mirra.  His killer -- his mother -- is now dead, too.

Shweta Sharma at The Independent:

A pharma millionaire who was convicted of manslaughter of her eight-year-old autistic son in 2014 was found dead in her home, hours after the Supreme Court revoked her bail.

Gigi Jordan, 62, was discovered dead around 12.30am on Friday at her apartment in Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn. The police are investigating the death as suspected suicide.

Jordan was convicted of manslaughtering her son Jude Mirra in February 2010 in a room of Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan. She gave her autistic son a deadly cocktail of painkillers, speeling pills, and tranquilisers mixed with juice and alcohol before she attempted to take her own life.

Her prosecutors argued that she killed him because he was emotionally disturbed and Jordan testified that he had been traumatised after being sexually abused by his biological father, Emil Tzekov, her second husband.

She was sentenced to 18 years in jail in 2015. However, her conviction for manslaughter charges was overturned in 2020 due to a procedural misstep.

Justin Trudeau on Antivaxxers

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

The antivax movement is part of a broader system of right-wing conspiracy theory.

Rachel Aiello at CTV:

So the tinfoil hats comment, you don't regret?

"When someone believes that your government is trying to inject a vaccine in you to control your mind and track you, and there's a microchip in it, that's almost the definition of a government conspiracy theory that you wear a tinfoil hat to protect your brain from brainwaves. It's a frame that when people fall into conspiracy theories, we need to call them out on that," was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's response.

This was one of the highlights from Chief News Anchor and Senior Editor of CTV National News Omar Sachedina's year-end interview with Trudeau, which aired Saturday evening.

Sachedina was referring to the prime minister stating amid the "Freedom Convoy" protests that if those in "tinfoil hats" choose to reject science, they have to live with the consequences of their choice.

Asked if Trudeau felt he did everything he could to lower the temperature at the time, the prime minister revealed that he was unrepentant for his comments towards anti-vaxxers.

"I don't, and I won't apologize for calling out people who were harming their fellow Canadians," he said.

...

He pointed to examples of families sitting around the bedside of a loved one who was dying from COVID-19 "saying: 'oh my God, I wish you'd just taken the vaccine, I wish you hadn't listened to all those YouTube channels.'"

"Like this is real. There were real tragedies and there were people trying to gin that up and to expand the divisions, and the fear, and sense of conspiracy that were out there," Trudeau said.