Reprinted from Tiny Grace Notes
Think what you are doing to our mothers.
Perhaps you believe you must use the hurtful, bigoted rhetoric to cause
the panic to raise the money. Perhaps you think you have to make videos
about us without ever really showing us using our actual voices, our
actual use of AAC as it actually is, or people will get the idea we're
not such a terrible burden or tsunami or whatever the the trigger word
of the age seems to be. I don't know what you're thinking, but I know
what you're doing, and I know it isn't good.
This morning I saw a tired, pained mother say she "had to be pro-Autism
Speaks" even though she disagreed with your tactics of this nature,
because you lobby for services for her family, and she had "nowhere else
to turn". I looked into this, but didn't have the heart to tell her
this thing that you already know, that you spent $460K on lobbying last
year, a mere drop out of the millions, millions you raise and carry as
assets (yes, I can read a financial report) and much less than you spend
on your salaries, which are so high you don't easily make it in to
count as a non-profit in the USA any more and have to explain the exact
rules to your stakeholders in well-crafted wordsmithing so they don't
get skittish.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that of that wee amount that goes to
lobbying, not all of it or even most of it seemed from the government
reports to be having anything to do with services for her family. A lot
of it seemed to do with "science" again.... How is it going to help
this woman's family right now for you to figure out how her child could
have been prevented? It isn't, and you know it.
You will be hearing from a lot of us Autistics today in this Autism Speaks, I Want To Say flashblog,
if you listen at all, about what you are doing to us. But I am very
clear on the fact that you do not care what you do to us. Still I
wonder: do you care what you are doing to our mothers? Scaring them and
taking their money and saying you will help them get needed services
when what you are really doing is trying to prevent more of their
families from happening, and making a very handsome living while you are
at it: does this sound decent to you?
This is our mothers you are doing these things to. Our mothers and fathers. Are there no mirrors in your house?
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