🌈♿️ Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People

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A blue humanoid with rainbow highlights holds a floating sphere in cupped hands.
“Sphere of Humanity: A Traverse Gift of Energetic Connectedness” by Heike Blakley is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Stimpunks is created by and for neurodivergent and disabled people. We provide mutual aid, learning opportunities, human-centered research, and living wages for our community. We presume competence, and we believe in self-determination.

We, Stimpunks

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Table of Contents

👏🧷⏰ Stimpunks in a Minute

Stimpunks Foundation challenges the typical approach to helping people who are neurodivergent or disabled. We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community. Stimpunks knows that neurodivergent and disabled people have human needs. We offer a humane approach to help our community thrive.

Through Stimpunks Foundation, we:

  1. Offer financial and mutual aid;
  2. Hire our community members as consultants;
  3. Provide a learning space designed for our community; and
  4. Support our community’s open research efforts.
Vector drawing of power wheelchair with rainbow umbrella

One in four U.S. adults have a disability. However, our community receives only 2% of US grant funding, and only 19% of us are employed. We can’t just let that be the truth. We have to challenge the norm and change the narrative around people who are neurodivergent or disabled.

Stimpunks Foundation seeks to do just that with our four pillars.

⛑📚 Our Pillars 🗂🧰

Mutual Aid

Real help against the onslaught. Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society.

Learning Space

The place where we belong does not exist. We will build it. Anti-ableist space for passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability.

Open Research

Digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. Improving science by restoring the humanities.

Services

Stay relevant in a constantly changing world. Dismantle ableism in your spaces. Enable dignity through access.

Black and white umbrella with a handle shaped like a capital letter U

Stimpunks Foundation sponsors and employs neurodivergent and disabled creators and amplifies their work to our clients and throughout society. We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.

We complement mutual aid to creators with learning spaces for creators. Stimpunks Foundation serves neurodivergent and disabled people unserved by public and private schools. Via equity, access, empathy, and inclusivity, we build community learning space respectful of all types of bodyminds.

We pursue passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability. We create paths to equity and access for our learners. We create Cavendish space of peer respite and collaborative niche construction where we can find relief from an intense world designed against us.

Our research initiative focuses on the sweet spot of digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. We want to improve the scientific experience for the disabled and the neurodivergent by restoring the humanities. We want to bring voice into empirical constructs and translate voice into academic comprehension.

A woman in a blue dress gazes out of a window out a window. Waves of yellow and pink expand from her gaze out into the world.
“Monotropism” by Betsy Selvam is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
A blue humanoid wearing a yellow Star Trek uniform sits alone on a bench accompanied by their belongings. A space scene with a path into they sky is in the background
“Time traveling” by Heike Blakley is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

We also help businesses and organizations increase their knowledge and practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) by analyzing company practices and coaching leaders to dismantle ableism in their spaces. According to the Harvard Business Review, “There are more than one billion people worldwide – around 15% of the population – living with a disability. As workers, they can ease talent shortages and add to the organizational diversity that drives better decision-making and innovation.” Neurodiversity-friendly forms of collaboration hold the potential to transform pathologically competitive and toxic teams and cultures into highly collaborative teams and larger cultural units that work together easier and with more success.

Our additional services include digital and physical accessibility audits, sensitivity reads, and other offerings that focus on increasing DEI in the workplace. Client services are how we live our mission to employ neurodivergent and disabled people as well as how we raise capital for grantmaking.

A blue humanoid sits cross-legged holding an Earth-like sphere
“God is a woman” by Heike Blakley is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Here’s a mind map of our pillars and philosophy.
Stimpunks-Pillars-7Download
Here’s a mind map of the themes on our website.
Stimpunks-Themes-6Download
Respect due to learning with an arsenal of permanent pillars 
Piercing through the surface of artificial services

Life Commits by Swamburger and Scarlet Monk of Mugs and Pockets

Our four pillars rest on the four pillars of the ADA.

  • Equal Opportunity
  • Independent Living
  • Full Participation
  • Economic Self-Sufficiency

In 1990, the ADA, which today remains the cornerstone of disability civil rights law in the United States, established four goals for disabled Americans: equal opportunity, independent living, full participation, and economic self-sufficiency.

Economic Justice Is Disability Justice

Our four pillars embed a Disability Economic Justice Policy Framework.

Rather than tinkering at the edges, we believe the time is now for a high-level, values-based disability economic justice framework to inform and guide the development and implementation of policy making with a disability lens—across issue areas and traditional silos, in recognition that every issue is a disability issue—to realize the vision of economic security for all disabled people in the United States.

How to Embed a Disability Economic Justice Policy Framework in Domestic Policy Making
Every Disabled Person:

The Disability Economic Justice Policy Framework is intended to be used by all and shared widely as a guide for policy development. Its applicability includes federal policy making in Congress, the White House, and across federal agencies; at the state and local levels; as well as at policy and advocacy organizations that shape policy making. Whether you are an advocate, policymaker, funder, practitioner, or researcher, the goal is to find yourself within the framework and use the values it articulates to bring a disability policy lens to your work.

Every Disabled Person:

  • can live free from disability-based discrimination, as well as discrimination based on multiply marginalized and intersecting identities such as race, gender (including sexual orientation and gender identity), immigration status, and religion;
  • has accessible, affordable, stable, safe, and quality housing;
  • has access to reliable, affordable, and accessible transportation;
  • can live independently, with dignity, access to support in the community, and access to culturally and linguistically appropriate care and services at their direction;
  • has access to the health care they need, when they need it, and from the providers they want to be served by, including primary and specialist health care, sexual and reproductive health care, dental care, mental health care, medication, telehealth, and emergency care;
  • has access to adequate, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food;
  • is provided a high-quality, equitable education in an inclusive educational setting, from early childhood to post-secondary education, including an affordable higher education;
  • can find and retain equitable employment at competitive wages, in integrated settings, and with appropriate accommodations and paid leave, including access to self-employment and entrepreneurship opportunities;
  • has direct, equitable pathways to attain economic security and mobility through building wealth and savings;
  • has access to an equitable public benefits system that provides a robust social safety net adequate to ensure a basic, dignified standard of living and free from intrusive barriers to work, savings, and marriage;
  • is provided fair and equitable access to and treatment by the American legal system, including through civil, criminal, immigration, and family courts; court fines and fees; and the right to support for legal decision-making and the right to counsel as a reasonable accommodation;
  • can engage in civic participation by voting and engaging in the democratic process with appropriate accommodations provided equitably and fairly;
  • is centered in emergency and disaster planning, as well as climate change sustainability and other infrastructure discussions, to ensure accessible and inclusive solutions for the future of the United States; and
  • has access to and can fully engage with affordable technologies at home, in the community, and at work, including broadband and assistive technologies that keep pace with the rapidly changing technology of the times, while ensuring freedom from surveillance when engaging with such technology.
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Source: How to Embed a Disability Economic Justice Policy Framework in Domestic Policy Making

Economic Justice Is Disability Justice
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🤘 Testimonials

“Stimpunks is an essential resource for educators.”

Ira Socol, co-author of Timeless Learning

“Timeless Learning” is a fundamental text of progressive pedagogy and an important part of our journey at Stimpunks. It helped us develop our notions of classroom UX, toolbelt theory, caves, campfires, and watering holes, and more.

More About Timeless Learning
close up photo of mushrooms

When learning is allowed to be project, problem, and passion driven, then children learn because of their terroir, not disengage in spite of it. When we recognize biodiversity in our schools as healthy, then we increase the likelihood that our ecosystems will thrive.

To be contributors to educating children to live in a world that is increasingly challenging to negotiate, schools must be ​conceptualized as ecological communities, spaces for learning with the potential to embody all of the concepts of the ecosystem – interactivity, biodiversity, connections, adaptability, succession, and balance. 

Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools
multicolored umbrella

Creating paths to equity and access for all children remains the grand challenge of public education in America.

Equity provides resources so that educators can see all our children’s strengths. Access provides our children with the chance to show us who they are and what they can do. Empathy allows us to see children as children, even teens who may face all the challenges that poverty and other risk factors create. Inclusivity creates a welcoming culture of care so that no one feels outside the community.

Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools

Sadly though, the social, political, and economic narrative of schooling in the past has been grounded in a “soft eugenics” belief that while some children have the capacity to become whatever they choose to be in life, others do not. This plays out in the decisions that educators make, often based on decontextualized data and confirmation biases that stem from immersion in traditions of education that did the same to us. Even if lip service is given to words such as equity, accessibility, inclusivity, empathy, cultural responsiveness, and connected relationships, schooling today is still far more likely to support practices from the past that have created school cultures in which none ​of those words define who educators really are, no matter what they aspire to be.

Consider how the “habitable world” concept developed by Rosemarie Garland‐Thomson, Emory University researcher and professor, sits at the core of the philosophy of educators who developed and now sustain the structures and processes of schooling that impact young people such as Kolion (Garland‐Thomson 2017b). Garland‐Thomson views public, political, and organizational philosophy as representative of one of “two forms of world‐building, inclusive and eugenic” (Garland‐Thomson 2017a). Unfortunately, often it’s the soft educational eugenics philosophy that is most often expressed in practice, if not in words, across the nation’s schools rather than the creation of habitable worlds that are inclusive of all learners.

If we want our schools to be learning ​spaces that reveal the strengths of children to us, we have to create a bandwidth of opportunities that do so. That means making decisions differently, decisions driven from values that support equity, accessibility, inclusivity, empathy, cultural responsiveness, and connected relationships inside the ecosystem. Those are the words representative of habitable worlds, not words such as sort, select, remediate, suspend, or fail.

Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools
A rocket ship flying across the screen with 3 thick red lines as its trail.

Human Restoration Project

An astronaut in a spacesuit reclines on a crescent moon while holding an open book in one hand and a steaming coffee/tea cup in the other hand. Steam coming of the cup forms the text: "The future needs you!"
An astronaut with a graduation cap looking into the distance.

“Stimpunks is a creative, thriving community that is vital to connecting and learning. We must critically examine our classrooms to build neurodiversity-friendly spaces. Stimpunks gives us the tools to do so.”

Human Restoration Project

Neurodiversity is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. Human Restoration Project understands the importance of neurodiversity and disability in an era of mass behaviorism and unvarnished eugenics. They are true allies in the fight for the right to live and learn differently.

HRP’s vision for human-centered education is compatible with neurodiversity, the social model of disability, and human dignity. They understand that sharing power fosters self-determination, something dearly important to our community of neurodivergent and disabled people.

Human Restoration Project The future needs you. Illustration of children pursuing their interests, including puppets, planes, astronomy, and reading.
A Celebration of the Wonderous Joy of Childhood Imagination and the Power of Play
Artist: Farimah Khavarii
More About Human Restoration Project

Human Restoration Project is informing, guiding, and growing a movement toward a progressive, human-centered education system. We are bringing together a network of radical educators who are transforming classrooms across the world.

About Human Restoration Project

At Stimpunks, we choose the margin, because design is tested at the edges. HRP likewise designs for those of us at the margins. That’s because they have joined us at the edges. They show up. They listen. They integrate. They practice good allyship.

This is exemplified throughout their work, including the implementation of the Conference to Restore Humanity, a conference model for the future compatible with us Stimpunks like no other. No one else includes us like HRP.

Conference to Restore Humanity! is an annual, designed-for-virtual conference centering progressive education, social justice, and preserving the humanity of classrooms. We strive to bring together the radicals reimagining their classroom spaces and demanding for a just future.

Conference to Restore Humanity

Reframing is a big part of our advocacy. Reframing ourselves and others is hard and important work necessary to all other work.

“The long-term well-being and empowerment of Autistics and members of other neurocognitive minority groups hinges upon our ability to create a paradigm shift – a shift from the pathology paradigm to the neurodiversity paradigm.”

Dr. Nick Walker

HRP helps create this paradigm shift with their handbooks and why sheets. HRP’s materials help us reframe people as we journey through our systems.

Finding HRP was like finding an oasis. They understand, and they help.

100 Seconds to Midnight: The Need for a Human-Centered Education
100 Seconds to Midnight: The Need for a Human-Centered Education

Stimpunks is gently debugging society.

The charity protects, helps and comforts individuals, while pointing out library-level flaws in some of the concepts that end up harming those individuals.

This help is profoundly wonderful, morally and functionally coherent to great need, and as true as a pure circle in its cause-and-effect form.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool
A kitten sits in a chair in front of abstract art depicting a faceless human head
“Artistrian homunculus” by Adriel Jeremiah Wool is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Thank you so much @stimpunks for supporting & believing in me & my artwork.

It’s okay to be you. It’s okay to be different. It’s okay to have a disability. Never give up on yourself.

Jasmine Slater

If y’all care about me, read what @stimpunks is saying.

Liana McCrea

Huge thank you to @stimpunks for this generator so if we lose power, the oxygen concentrator can still run! I can’t thank you enough!!

Karrie Higgins
Crowdfund Jasmine
Crowdfund Liana
Crowdfund Karrie
Black mother and daughter holding hands and wearing sparkly crowns and ball gowns
Artist: Jasmine Slater

Stimpunks has put the fingernail into the orange-peel of the rigid world. It leaves a crescent 🌙 that others can use to help peel away those dangerous layers of as-of-yet-unmade change.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool
I want to say thank you and tell you you made a big difference in someone’s life today. I can’t stop crying. I’ve never felt understood or seen like this before. I’m desperately looking for community, perspective, support, tools to survive and feel backed into a corner.

I’m honestly in tears right now because of you guys.

Thank you so, so much for caring about my family. Thank you for sharing your kindness & support.

I want to say thank you and tell you you made a big difference in someone’s life today. I can’t stop crying. I’ve never felt understood or seen like this before. I’m desperately looking for community, perspective, support, tools to survive and feel backed into a corner.

Thank you for reaching out! I’m doing well – thanks to your generosity as well as some other donations I was fortunate to receive, I was able to trade my car for a van and order a lift for the wheelchair! The lift won’t be here until the end of March, but I’m SO excited to finally be free to use my wheelchair out in the world! Thank you SO much for your donation!!

Oh my gosh, thank you SO MUCH! This is truly amazing!

Extremely blessed to be able to get my procedure and medication. Huge thank you to @stimpunks. I’m honestly in tears, thank you guys so much.

Thank you so much. This is exactly what I needed right when I needed it. Y’all are heros. I appreciate your help.

Thank you all so very much! This is a very beautiful thing your team is doing and gives me hope for our society.

Deeply appreciative of this and all of you at Stimpunks, thank you so much! This is an extremely impactful relief.

Again, thank you so much for everything you’ve provided. Stimpunks is doing wonderful work. Our needs may be great, but our gratitude when we receive what we need is even greater. 💕

It shocked me, humbled me, and made me wonder how you were able to do what you did for me!

I can’t believe how incredible y’all are. I’m in tears. This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me like this.

My partner told me about you and when I saw your mission page I cried for like an hour because it resonated so strongly.

Thank you so much for the support. I truly appreciate it! It’s really nice to connect with others who “get it” too!

Thank you so deeply for your help and for your care of others.

Thank you so much for reaching out and I cannot express how grateful I am to have been selected! This is going to be a massive weight lifted off my shoulders!

You made someone struggling alone feel a little better and less lonely today.

☂️ Our Umbrella: Are You a Stimpunk?

Disability and neurodivergence are broad umbrellas that include many people, possibly you. The neurodivergent umbrella includes a diversity of inherent and acquired differences and spiky profiles. Many neurodivergent people don’t know they are neurodivergent. With our website and outreach, we help people get in touch with their neurodivergent and disabled identities. We respect and encourage self-diagnosis and community diagnosis. #SelfDxIsValid, and our website can help you understand your ways of being.

If you are wondering whether you are Autistic, spend time amongst Autistic people, online and offline.  If you notice you relate to these people much better than to others, if they make you feel safe, and if they understand you, you have arrived.

A communal definition of Autistic ways of being

Requiring diagnosis was counter to trans liberation and acceptance. The exact same is true of Autism.

Dr. Devon Price
A purple umbrella labelled “Neurodivergent Umbrella”* Beneath the umbrella, in colourful text on a black background, it lists: ADHD DID & OSDD ASPD BPD NPD Dyslexia CPTSD Dyspraxia Sensory Processing Dyscalculia PTSD Dysgraphia Bipolar Autism Epilepsy OCD ABI Tic Disorders Schizophrenia Misophonia HPD Down Syndrome Synesthesia * non-exhaustive list
Image Credit: Sonny Jane Wise (@livedexperienceeducator)

Image Description: A purple umbrella labelled “Neurodivergent Umbrella”* 

Beneath the umbrella, in colorful text on a black background, it lists:

  • ADHD
  • DID & OSDD
  • ASPD 
  • BPD
  • NPD
  • Dyslexia 
  • CPTSD
  • Dyspraxia 
  • Sensory Processing 
  • Dyscalculia 
  • PTSD
  • Dysgraphia 
  • Bipolar 
  • Autism
  • Epilepsy 
  • OCD
  • ABI
  • Tic Disorders 
  • Schizophrenia 
  • Misophonia 
  • HPD
  • Down Syndrome 
  • Synesthesia 

* non-exhaustive list 

More About the Neurodivergent Umbrella (non-exhaustive)

Friendly reminder that neurodivergent is an umbrella term that is inclusive and not exclusive – this means mental illnesses are considered neurodivergent.
⁣
A few things: ⁣
⁣
Neurodivergent is an umbrella term for anyone who has a mind or brain that diverges from what is seen as typical or normal. ⁣
⁣
Neurodivergent is a term created by Kassiane Asasumasu, a biracial, multiply neurodivergent activist. Neurodiversity is a different term created by Judy Singer, an autistic sociologist.⁣
⁣
Neurodivergent doesn’t just refer to neurological conditions, this is an inaccurate idea based on the prefix of neuro.⁣
⁣
Identifying as neurodivergent is up to the individual and we don’t gatekeep or enforce the term. ⁣

Sonny Jane Wise (@livedexperienceeducator)
  • ADHD
  • DID & OSDD
  • ASPD 
  • BPD
  • NPD
  • Dyslexia 
  • CPTSD
  • Dyspraxia 
  • Sensory Processing 
  • Dyscalculia 
  • PTSD
  • Dysgraphia
  • Tourette’s Syndrome
  • Stuttering & Cluttering
  • Anxiety & Depression
  • Personality Disorders/Conditions
  • Bipolar
  • Autism
  • Epilepsy 
  • OCD
  • ABI
  • Tic Disorders 
  • Schizophrenia 
  • Misophonia 
  • HPD
  • Down Syndrome 
  • Synesthesia
  • Panic Disorders/Conditions
  • Developmental Language Disorder/Condition
  • Developmental Co-ordination Disorder/Condition

Self diagnosis is not just “valid” — it is liberatory. When we define our community ourselves and wrest our right to self-definition back from the systems that painted us as abnormal and sick, we are powerful, and free.

Dr. Devon Price

Though our direct aid focuses on neurodivergent and disabled people, anyone can be a Stimpunk. All neurotypes welcome. All abilities welcome. All bodyminds welcome. Allies welcome!

Painting of the earth held aloft by 7 hands of various skin tones with flowering vines twining around hands and earth, interconnecting them

It is time to celebrate our interdependence!

The notion of disability in our society is underscored by a bizarre conception of “independence”.

It is time to celebrate our interdependence!

Collaboration allows us to create genuinely safe spaces for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people.

The Myth of Independence: How The Social Model of Disability Exposes Society’s Double Standards » NeuroClastic

To face the challenges of the future, we’ll need the problem-solving abilities of different types of minds working together.

The Best Autism Books, recommended by Steve Silberman
Hard plastic toy of Hamlion, a Randimal that combines a hamster and a lion

“What makes us different, makes all the difference in the world.” —Randimals

Hamlion says, “To face the challenges of the future, we’ll need the problem-solving abilities of different types of minds working together.”

Pluralism is our reality.

A multicoloured sphere showing examples of neurodiversity. Neurotypicality along with a selection of neurodivergent conditions are listed: Developmental Co-ordination Disorder/Condition, Personality Disorders/Conditions, Developmental Language Disorder/Condition, Bipolar Disorder/Condition, Anxiety and Depression, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder/Condition, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder/Condition, Autism, Stuttering and Cluttering, Tourette’s syndrome and Tics, Panic Disorders/Conditions, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia.
Image source: MetaArXiv Preprints | Bridging Neurodiversity and Open Scholarship: How Shared Values Can Guide Best Practices for Research Integrity, Social Justice, and Principled Education; License: CC-By Attribution 4.0 International
Abstract, algorithmic art resembling a mothership lifting off on rainbow propulsion
“Neurodivergent” by Adriel Jeremiah Wool is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

I intended to represent ND as I made it. I wanted the colors to be the illuminates of the greater intricate whole crystal. I wanted to make something beautiful and detailed with the colors representing myself, and you, and all the people who would want to be those colored sections. Even though the homogeneous black sections are the majority, they are not the entire body. The entire bodymind includes us, with our wounds, our flaws and our sometimes uncharacterizable spiky profiles.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool

Do you know why we have the sunflowers?

Three sunflowers beneath a rainbow
“Sunflowers” by Betsy Selvam is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need. Connection.

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
Oil painting of sunflowers in a vase
Sunflowers (F453)
Oil painting of sunflowers in a vase
Sunflowers (F454)
Oil painting of sunflowers in a vase
Sunflowers (F459)

Whether neurodivergent, disabled, or an ally, being a Stimpunk means reframing.

We center the edges in service to all bodyminds.

Join us!

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Asking for help is a wonderful way to build community & engage in meaningful collaboration. In asking for help you also uplift others who want to show up for you.

JUST A REMINDER THAT ASKING FOR HELP IS A CONTRIBUTION

🫀🧠🖼 We Reframe

Abstract algorithmic art where a butterfly is made out of butterflies
“Emergence Papilio” by Adriel Jeremiah Wool is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Challenge the norm and change the narrative by reframing.

Reframe these states of being that have been labelled deficiencies or pathologies as human differences.

Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences

Content note: Our website includes music, lyrics, writing, and art that address ableism, eugenics, exclusion, mental health, depression, dysphoria, behaviorism, abuse, chronic pain, and death. There are a few swear words in quoted materials.

Also included is an outpouring of neurodivergent and disabled perspective, culture, and joy.

Ready, Punk? Rock onward!

Black and white umbrella with the handle shaped like a capital U

Stimpunks combines “stimming” + “punks” to evoke open and proud stimming, resistance to neurotypicalization, and the DIY culture of punk, disabled, and neurodivergent communities. Instead of hiding our stims, we bring them to the front.

Everything that was normally supposed to be hidden was brought to the front.

PUNK SUBCULTURE – WIKIPEDIA
Hey girlfriend
I got a proposition, goes something like this
Dare ya to do what you want
Dare ya to be who you will
Dare ya to cry right out loud
"You get so emotional, baby"

Double dare ya, double dare ya

Double Dare Ya by Bikini Kill

Rights, rights? You do have rights!

Double Dare Ya by Bikini Kill

My kids have been kicked out of many, many places for being different—just like I was.

The question is simple: Is there room for disabled kids at a piano school? On a swim team? In most classrooms?

The answer, right now, seems to be no.

Catapult | The World Doesn’t Bend for Disabled Kids (or Disabled Parents)

We have protests to stage, driven by the fuel of our righteous anger. We have speeches to make, written from the soaring pleas of our individual and collective trauma, and our wildest dreams of joy and freedom and love. We have cultural narratives to rewrite because they really do hate us and they really will kill us, and if we’re going to rewrite the narratives, then there’s no reason to hold ourselves back from our most radical and defiant rewritings. We have autistic children who need us to support them as architects of their own liberation against the schools and clinicians and institutions and police and prosecutors who would crush and destroy them.

We’re going to need our anger and our public celebrations of stimming and our complicated, imperfect, messy selves for this long and hard road, because we need all of us, and all of our tactics and strategies, to keep a movement going and ultimately, to win.

Autistic Hoya — A blog by Lydia X. Z. Brown: The neurodiversity movements needs its shoes off, and fists up.

We’re going to rewrite the narratives.

Ordinary tried to fix me
I was a threat to a page in history
Miss me with the treatment, doo-wop bleaching
Straighten my kinky with a new pop legion (That's right)

It's just me and my MPC
Questing out to meet my tribe unique
Keep it funky for the followers eager to speak
The same dialect is on when we greet in the street, fam
Why would my sound be tampered?
Or better yet, watered down and then pampered?
Cater to who, I influence the standard
Check it… we 'bout to change some manners

Talent by Swamburger and Scarlet Monk of Mugs and Pockets

Reframe with Us

Not having the vocabulary to understand yourself and your loved ones is a tragedy. Our story of reframing continues via the “Continue” button at the bottom of each page in the journey.

Next on our journey: “Reframe Disability and Difference: We’re Going to Rewrite the Narratives“

Continue