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Julia Bascom is an American autism rights activist. She is the current executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and replaced Ari Ne'eman as president of ASAN in early 2017. [1]
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Julia Bascom is an American autism rights activist. She is the current executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and replaced Ari Ne'eman as president of ASAN in early 2017. [1]
Bascom previously worked on the New Hampshire State Developmental Disabilities Council. [2] She also serves on the boards of Advance CLASS, Inc. and the Centene National Advisory Council on Disability. [3] She was the Deputy Executive Director of ASAN, and replaced Ari Ne'eman as president of ASAN in 2017.
Bascom was one of the experts consulted to create an autistic character, Julia, for the children's show Sesame Street . [4]
As an autistic person herself [5] and an advocate, Bascom stresses the importance of letting autistic people speak for themselves on issues that relate to their health, rights and well-being. [6] She states that it is important to recognize that autistic people are different and that there "is nothing wrong with us". [7] On April 2, 2018, Bascom addressed the "state of women and girls with autism" at the United Nations. [8]
Bascom organized and founded the Loud Hands project. Loud Hands was designed to be a "transmedia project", that is, one that uses "multiple forms of content--written words, videos, visual art, the internet, and more". [9] The project was launched in December 2011 as crowdfunding campaign to create an anthology of essays written by autistic people. [5] The resulting anthology, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking, was described as "groundbreaking" in Steve Silberman's NeuroTribes . [10] The project has put together over 20 years of culture, history and writing by and about autistic people. [11]
Diagnoses of autism have become more frequent since the 1980s, which has led to various controversies about both the cause of autism and the nature of the diagnoses themselves. Whether autism has mainly a genetic or developmental cause, and the degree of coincidence between autism and intellectual disability, are all matters of current scientific controversy as well as inquiry. There is also more sociopolitical debate as to whether autism should be considered a disability on its own.
The autism rights movement, also known as the autistic acceptance movement, is a social movement allied with disability rights that emphasizes a neurodiversity paradigm, viewing autism as a disability with variations in the human brain rather than as a disease to be cured. The movement advocates for several goals, including greater acceptance of autistic traits and behaviors; reforms of services - i.e. services that focus on improving quality of life and well-being instead of suppression and masking of autistic traits that are adaptive or not harmful or imitations of social behaviors of neurotypical (non-autistic) peers ; the creation of social networks and events that allow autistic people to socialize on their own terms; and the recognition of the autistic community as a minority group.
Jim Sinclair is an autism-rights movement activist who, with fellow autistics Kathy Lissner Grant and Donna Williams, formed Autism Network International (ANI) in 1992. Sinclair became the original coordinator of ANI.
Autistic Pride Day is a pride celebration for autistic people held on 18 June each year. Autistic pride recognises the importance of pride for autistic people and its role in bringing about positive changes in the broader society.
Autism Network International (ANI) is an advocacy organization run by and for autistic people. ANI's principles involve the anti-cure perspective, the perspective that there should not be a goal to "cure" people of autism.
The Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting behavior analysis. The organization has over 9,000 members. The group organizes conferences and publishes journals on the topic of applied behavior analysis (ABA). ABAI has issued detailed, specific position papers intended to guide practitioners of ABA. The ABAI publishes six scholarly journals including The Psychological Record and their primary organ, Perspectives on Behavior Science, formerly The Behavior Analyst. They also publish an informational journal, Education and Treatment of Children, describing practical treatment of children with behavioral problems.
The term self-advocacy, which means speaking up for oneself and one's interests, is used as a name for civil rights movements and mutual aid networks for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The term arose in the broader civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and is part of the disability rights movement. Today there are self-advocacy organizations across the world.
Societal and cultural aspects of autism or sociology of autism come into play with recognition of autism, approaches to its support services and therapies, and how autism affects the definition of personhood. The autistic community is divided primarily into two camps; the autism rights movement and the Pathology paradigm. The pathology paradigm advocates for supporting research into therapies, treatments, and/or a cure to help minimize or remove autistic traits, seeing treatment as vital to help individuals with autism, while the neurodiversity movement believes autism should be seen as a different way of being and advocates against a cure and interventions that focus on normalization, seeing it as trying to exterminate autistic people and their individuality. Both are controversial in autism communities and advocacy which has led to significant infighting between these two camps. While the dominant paradigm is the pathology paradigm and is followed largely by autism research and scientific communities, the neurodiversity movement is highly popular among most autistic people, within autism advocacy, autism rights organizations, and related neurodiversity approaches have been rapidly growing and applied in the autism research field in the last few years.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy organization run by and for individuals on the autism spectrum. ASAN advocates for the inclusion of autistic people in decisions that affect them, including: legislation, depiction in the media, and disability services.
Autism Speaks Inc. is a non-profit autism awareness organization and the largest autism research organization in the United States. It sponsors autism research and conducts awareness and outreach activities aimed at families, governments, and the public. It was founded in February 2005 by Bob Wright and his wife Suzanne, a year after their grandson Christian was diagnosed with autism. The same year as its founding, the organization merged with Autism Coalition for Research and Education. It then merged with the National Alliance for Autism Research in 2006 and Cure Autism Now in 2007.
Ari Daniel Ne'eman is an American disability rights activist and researcher who co-founded the Autistic Self Advocacy Network in 2006. On December 16, 2009, President Barack Obama announced that Ne'eman would be appointed to the National Council on Disability. After an anonymous hold was lifted, Ne'eman was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate to serve on the Council on June 22, 2010. He chaired the council's Policy & Program Evaluation Committee making him the first autistic person to serve on the council. In 2015, Ne'eman left the National Council on Disability at the end of his second term. He currently serves as a consultant to the American Civil Liberties Union. As of 2019, he also is a Ph.D. candidate in Health Policy at Harvard University.
Communication Shutdown is a global fundraiser on behalf of autism-related organizations in more than 40 countries. Beginning in 2010, the day is commemorated by individuals voluntarily refraining from using social media such as Facebook or Twitter for one day on 1 November.
Too Sane for This World is a documentary series that was directed by William Davenport. The first film, Too Sane for This World, was released on September 1, 2011, and features an introduction by Dr. Temple Grandin. The second documentary, Citizen Autistic, was released on April 1, 2013.
Lydia X. Z. Brown is an American autistic disability rights activist, writer, attorney, and public speaker who was honored by the White House in 2013. They are the chairperson of the American Bar Association Civil Rights & Social Justice Disability Rights Committee. They are also Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. In 2022, they unsuccessfully ran for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 7A, losing to state delegate Kathy Szeliga and delegate-elect Ryan Nawrocki.
The history of autism and autism advocacy are the subjects of the book In a Different Key: The Story of Autism written by John Donvan and Caren Zucker. The book discusses such issues as the Refrigerator mother theory and the possibility of an autism epidemic. Donald Triplett, perhaps the first person diagnosed with autism, and psychiatrist Leo Kanner are also covered, as is the ongoing debate concerning the neurodiversity movement, especially with respect to autistic people with more apparent support needs.
Julia is a fictional character on the PBS/HBO children's educational television series Sesame Street. She is an Anything Muppet, known for being the first Sesame Street character diagnosed with autism. Julia is a friendly four-year-old girl who enjoys bonding with her supportive family and her friends on Sesame Street. She first appeared in 2015 in an online autism awareness initiative from Sesame Workshop, entitled Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children. Julia later made her first appearance on television series in the 4,715th episode, which originally aired on April 2, 2017.
Citizen Autistic is a 2013 documentary film directed by William Davenport exploring the advocacy work of autism rights activists. Citizen Autistic features interviews with autistic activists including Ari Ne'eman, co-founder and former president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and Zoe Gross, creator of the Disability Day of Mourning annual vigils held in honor of filicide victims with disabilities. The documentary covers topics important to neurodiversity such as the debate over whether researchers should seek a cure for autism and controversies surrounding the nonprofit organization Autism Speaks and the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential institution known for using electric skin shock aversive treatment as a form of behavioral modification.
Morénike Giwa Onaiwu is an American educator, author, and autism and HIV advocate. Alongside E. Ashkenazy and Lydia Brown, Onaiwu is an editor of All the Weight of Our Dreams, an anthology of art and writing entirely by autistic people of color published by the Autism Women's Network in June 2017.
Jonathan "Jon" Shestack is a film producer. He has produced well-known movies such as Air Force One. Additionally, he was one of the founders of Cure Autism Now, an autism organization that merged with Autism Speaks in 2006. His father is Jerome J. Shestack, a well-known lawyer from Philadelphia.
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