We exist
We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.
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.
We pay
We pay neurodivergent and disabled people and amplify them to our clients and throughout society.
We offer creator grants and mutual aid. We pay neurodivergent and disabled people to work and live. We pay expenses like rent and medical bills as well as buy medical equipment or other necessities. We hire our community members as consultants. Client services are how we live our mission to employ neurodivergent and disabled people as well as how we raise capital for grantmaking.
We believe
We believe that direct support to individuals is the most effective approach to alleviating the barriers and challenges that prevent neurodivergent and disabled people from thriving in neurotypical and ableist environments.
Unlike most foundations, we support individuals directly, maximizing our impact in neurodivergent and disabled people’s lives and communities.
We create
We create learning space designed for our community. We create space for those most ill-served by “empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity“. We create paths to equity and access for our learners so they can collaborate on distributed, multi-age, cross-disciplinary teams with a neurodiverse array of creatives doing work that impacts community.
We serve
We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
Our “Moment of Obligation”
Stimpunks was created to forge the way for educational inclusion and to give our community the means to thrive. We as a disabled and neurodivergent run organization had to roll our own education, because even the “all means all” of public education failed to include us and those we serve. We had to create our own care systems, because “we realized that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.” “Responsibility for the survival of entire communities lies with us.”
Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society…
Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the 21st Century
Please stay alive Please stay alive Please stay alive Please survive Please survive -- Old Friend (Stay Alive)
Through Stimpunks Foundation, we:
- Offer financial and mutual aid;
- Hire our community members as consultants;
- Provide a learning space designed for our community; and
- Support our community’s open research efforts.
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.
Disability justice (and disability itself) has the potential to fundamentally transform everything we think about quality of life, purpose, work, relationships, belonging.
DISABILITY VISIBILITY: FIRST-PERSON STORIES FROM THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Keep on Livin’
We would like to honor all the neurodivergent and disabled people who survive the care system, somehow.
And all who did not survive this onslaught.
Let Us Be Our Real Selves
Let us be our real selves, loud and proud, and show the world what we truly are.
Be Good, Be Loud
This isn’t just a story that disabled children will love; it’s a story about what is possible when we fight for ourselves and each other. It is a story about how tenacity, strength, the power of community, and the willingness to fight for what matters can start a revolution.
Neurodiversity and Disability Justice, taken together, are indeed celebrations of who we are and how we exist in the world. They are also movements rooted in lived experience, which ask us to understand and engage with the many ways we relate to our bodies and brains, inside our own minds, and in social context.
Autistic Hoya — A blog by Lydia X. Z. Brown: The neurodiversity movements needs its shoes off, and fists up.
Keep on Livin’
We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
I would like to honour all the autistic people who survive the care system somehow.
Ann Memmott PGC🌈 on Twitter
All those who survive extreme ‘therapy’.
All those who are brought to their knees, reading hellish descriptions of their loved people.
And all who did not survive this onslaught.
Look up to the sky, sky, sky Take back your own tonight You'll find more than you see It's time now, now, get ready
This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and This is your time, this is your life and
You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!) Keep On Livin' by Le Tigre
A safe place to rest and rebuild in between moments of stress is essential for autonomic nervous system balance.
THE VAGUS NERVE & CHRONIC ILLNESS — TRAUMA GEEK
Wear it out (The way a three-year-old would do) Melt it down (You're gonna have to eventually anyway) The fire trucks are comin' up around the bend
You live, you learn You love, you learn You cry, you learn You lose, you learn You bleed, you learn You scream, you learn
You grieve, you learn You choke, you learn You laugh, you learn You choose, you learn You pray, you learn You ask, you learn You live, you learn
-- You Learn
We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other.
The Next American Revolution:
Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century.
Dive in, don't you roll over Don’t you promise your lungs to the fights Starving, hardly knew Mozart Don't you know he was never quite right He used to see craters, in her head He used to be darling and cheap But no one believed him When he said he lost his strength I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images and cling The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing Zombie eyes are promising Crooked teeth are sweet Don't leave me gravity Don’t leave me gravity
He used to see craters, in her head He used to be darling and cheap But no one believed him When he said he lost his strength I always believed him When he said he couldn't find his feet I always believed him When he said it didn't feel complete I always believed I always believed Breathe Breathe I always believed him 'til he made it back to our beat
-- Don’t Leave Me Gravity, Skating Polly
Peer-run warm lines – staffed by people who have lived mental health experience – have been shown to reduce loneliness and participants’ use of mental health crisis services. Additionally, a review of several studies found that digital forms of peer support improve the lives of people with serious mental illness by “enhancing participants’ functioning, reducing symptoms and improving program utilization.”
WARM LINE GIVES PEER MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT – NC HEALTH NEWS
I watch you dancin' and I watch you cry I watch you look up and Scream out why Oh now my dear you got So much to give I heard them talkin' and You're gonna live So hold me closer and Hold me tight A little closer till we're Into the night Cause you and I we've got So much to give I heard them talkin' and We're gonna live That's right It's alright — Last Song, The Bobby Lees
Everyone who works at Afiya (as with the rest of our community) identifies as having ‘been there’ in some way. Experiences of various team members range from histories of psychiatric hospitalization to trauma to living in residential programs to living without a home to dealing with addiction and so on. No clinical supports are offered, but people who stay at the house have free access to the community where they can keep (or get) connected to clinical supports as desired.
Afiya House (full version) – YouTube
What if I say to you it's alright, we're alright And if you say you need me too, I'll be up all night, It's alright The shadows only last 'til sunrise, it's alright, you'll be alright 'Cause you were born in the sunlight, in the sunlight and it's very bright (Hey) Can you feel it, waking with the morning sun What a feeling, we're living in the morning sun Sometimes all you need is darkness to see the light, we'll see the light We get high in the sunshine and the moon light and it's alright (Hey) Can you feel it waking with the morning sun What a feeling, we're living in the morning sun (Yeah) Ah ah ah ah ah ah Flower in the sun (Ohhh no no) Ah ah ah ah ah ah Flower in the sun (Ha ah hah) Ah ah ah ah ah ah (Yea yea yea yeah) Flower in the sun (Flower in the sunshine) Ah ah ah ah ah ah (shine on me) Flower in the sun (Come come come come come come on let it shine) Ah ah ah ah ah ah (Yeah, yea yea yea yea) Flower in the sun Ah ah ah ah ah ah Flower in the sun Ah ah ah ah ah ah (Whoa oh oh oh) Flower in the sun --Flower Song by New Sol
This song is for anyone who has had to brave a long and lonesome road. For those of us who have had to be “cowboys” at one time or another.
Aubrey Hays
And I know it's been a while, Since you've traveled here and smiled, If there's something on your mind, I can promise to be kind, Maybe I can ease the load. Cause even cowboys can cry, Shed a tear from time to time, You ain't falling out of line, If you fall and start your cryin' You don't have to tell me why. Cause even cowboys can cry, Shed a tear from time to time, Cause I'd rather see you cry, Then have you tell a lie, Cause sometimes even cowboys cry.
“Even Cowboys Can Cry” by Aubrey Hays
of all the sounds i’ve ever heard
i wandered, lost: poems by Kristina Brooke Daniele
death is the loudest
Be Our Real Selves
There is room for all of us to play our part. And whatever we do, however we do it, we can do it with ‘loud hands’ and ‘loud voices,’ and loud whatever else we need, in whatever way that works for us individually or collectively. Let us be our real autistic selves, loud and proud, and show the world what we truly are.
Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking (p. 125). Autistic Self Advocacy Network
True colors are beautiful
Like a rainbow
Members of the neurodiversity movement adopt a position of diversity that encompasses a kaleidoscope of identities that intersects with the LGBTQIA+ kaleidoscope by recognising neurodivergent traits – including but not limited to ADHD, Autism, Dyscalculia, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Synesthesia, Tourette’s Syndrome – as natural variations of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
“Queer,” in any case, does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.
Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography
She is our miscreant She is our detox She is our dagger in the dark She is the knot mess She is the undressed She is the boy borne in my heart While you sit on the fence I will burn in hell
Be Good, Be Loud,
Be Feisty, Be Friction,
Be Different, Be Proud,
Belong
This isn’t just a story that disabled children will love; it’s a story about what is possible when we fight for ourselves and each other. It is a story about how tenacity, strength, the power of community, and the willingness to fight for what matters can start a revolution.
ROLLING WARRIOR: THE INCREDIBLE, SOMETIMES AWKWARD, TRUE STORY OF A REBEL GIRL ON WHEELS WHO HELPED SPARK A REVOLUTION
Be Good, Be Loud
In time the fever that's kept you weak Will have full on taken its toll It's taken away and it's taken its shape In the illusion that you still hold Nothing's okay Nothing has changed and it's all too familiar So we curl up and hide from all that's outside Closed shades and locked up doors It's true, it's loud, it's hard and it’s all I know I can't take anymore I just want out right now
I had assumed I would have been gone by now But the ship has weathered the storm And the feeling of defeat That lies underneath is still alive and on its course I'm destroyed, weak I have nothing but to speak of the truth as I see fit I have nothing to lose, I have nothing to gain I'm at the whim of what I've retained Be good, be loud Hands up to the sky and shout At the top of your lungs 'til the floor falls out --Be Good by Off with Their Heads
I have loud hands. I must, since I use my hands to communicate. I type what I want to say. But that’s not the only reason why I have loud hands. It is because I finally learned that I cannot be silenced, I will not be silenced.
Loud Hands: I Speak Up With My Fingers
Be Feisty
I wanna see a feisty group of disabled people around the world…if you don’t respect yourself and if you don’t demand what you believe in for yourself, you’re not gonna get it.
Judith Heumann
One more, one more, one more, one more I got one more song I must sing Ting-a-ling Freedom ring I got one more song I must sing Simple song, so sing along One more, one more, one more, one more
All we got One more life to live One more love to give One more cliff to climb One more It's my time --One More by Jimmy Cliff
Be Friction
We, Stimpunks
We exist as friction. The work that we do; it’s wildly painful.
On “Haitian Fight Song”, Mingus said “It has a folk spirit, the kind of folk music I’ve always heard anyway. My solo in it it’s a deeply concentrated one. I can’t play it right unless I’m thinking about prejudice and persecution, and how unfair it is.
There’s sadness and cries in it, but also determination. And it usually ends with my feeling ‘I told them! I hope somebody heard me!’“.
Wiki – Haitian Fight Song — Charles Mingus
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.
Autistic Hoya — A blog by Lydia X. Z. Brown: The neurodiversity movements needs its shoes off, and fists up.
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.
Be Different
To be imperfect is perfect to me.
YUNGBLUD
Got called an alien for bein' myself I ain't got the patience to be someone else --hope for the underrated youth by yungblud
I'm just a fleabag, nobody loves me Send me to rehab, somebody touch me I wanna turn back time I wanna fix the way I was designed Crawl behind my eyes And kill my stale state of mind
I fade and fade And every time I try to change, to change I stop 'Cause I'm just a fleabag, nobody loves me Send me to rehab, somebody touch me I'm not your monkey I'm not your puppy I'm just a fleabag, nobody loves me at all
I dance 'round the truth I'll be a ballerina boy for you No matter what I do You twist my words and get confused So I fade and I fade And every time I try to change, to change I stop
'Cause I'm just a fleabag, nobody loves me Send me to rehab, somebody touch me I'm not your monkey I'm not your puppy I'm just a fleabag, nobody loves me at all --Fleabag by YUNGBLUD
We call ourselves Warriors and Weirdos.
Be Proud
I want you to know that I see you.
I think about you all, and I am with you every single
day.Yungblud is about all of us.
It’s about a generation that will come together to enact positive change in this world.
And the people who try to hold onto an old ideology that will hold us back will inevitably fail.
Because we’ll all outgrow them all.
Never ever be ashamed to be who you are.
I promise you we’re winning, even if they don’t see it yet.
Never ever change who you are.
Be proud of who you are.
YUNGBLUD
Belong
As soon as I said, “Hello, this is exactly who I am”, I found the most beautiful community of people.
yungblud
But, do you know what?
I found you!
I love you.
I love all of you out there.
And this is why I’m so proud to belong here.
Because this family is about spreading love.
yungblud
You are with us.
Look at the people around you.
You finally belong somewhere.
yungblud
It’s about rejecting pity, inspiration porn, & all other forms of ableism. It rejects the “good cripple” mythos. Cripple Punk is here for the bitter cripple, the uninspirational cripple, the smoking cripple, the drinking cripple, the addict cripple, the cripple who hasn’t “tried everything”. Cripple Punk fights internalized ableism & fully supports those struggling with it. It respects intersections of race, culture, gender, sexual/romantic orientation, size, intersex status, mental illness/neuroatypical status, survivor status, etc. Cripple Punk does not pander to the able bodied.
what are the principles of cripple punk? Are there any rules?
Let’s organize our lives around love and care.
Mission
We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.
We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.
Creed
I center the marginalized and the different. I center edge cases, because edge cases are stress cases and design is tested at the edges. I center neurodivergent and disabled experience in service to all bodyminds.
Covenant
We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.
Philosophy
We steer by these acquired phrases. They are compasses and stars that align us on our mission.
Interdependence
It is time to celebrate our interdependence. Interdependence acknowledges that our survival is bound up together, that we are interconnected and what you do impacts others. Interdependence is the only way out of most of the most pressing issues we face today.
Edges
Our designs, our societies, and the boundaries of our compassion are tested at the edges, where the truths told are of bias, inequality, injustice, and thoughtlessness.
Let's organize our lives around love and care Let's write each other letters and call it prayer Let's congregate in the place that isn't anywhere At the temple of broken dreams
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