🏩 Mission

We pay

We pay neurodivergent and disabled creators and amplify them to our clients and throughout society.

We offer financial 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 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 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 organizations and individuals directly, maximizing our impact in neurodivergent and disabled people’s lives and communities.

We create

We create anti-ableist space for passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability.

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.

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:

  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.

One in seven people has a disability. However, our community receives only 2% of US grant funding and makes up only 18% of the US workforce. 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 so we can be our real selves and keep on livin’.

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.

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.

Philosophy

We steer by these acquired phrases. They are compasses and stars that align us on our mission.

Stop, Hammer Time

“It’s not Science vs Philosophy … It’s Science + Philosophy. When you measure include the measurer.” –MC Hammer

Code of Conduct

We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

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
Table of Contents

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.

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.

Ann Memmott PGC🌈 on Twitter
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'
Support Our Mission
Ask for Help Against the Onslaught

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
Support Our Mission
Call the Fire Trucks

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
Support Our Mission
Make It Back to Our Beat

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
Support Our Mission
We’re Gonna Live
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 feeling, we're living in the morning
sun
Peer Respite
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 feeling were living with 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
Support Our Mission
Wake with the Morning Sun

of all the sounds i’ve ever heard

death is the loudest

i wandered, lost: poems

Let Us 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

Power wheelchair with rainbow umbrella
Power wheelchair with rainbow umbrella
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

Autistic and queer folks share some dark history—and some bad actors. Chapter 7 of NeuroTribes, Fighting the Monster, shares the legacy of Ole Ivar Lovaas, the twisted father of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and conversion therapy. He applied his abusive, torturous techniques to autistic kids and “sissy boys” to make them “indistinguishable from their peers”. He had little regard for their humanity—they were engineering projects.

Neurodiversity and Gender Non-conformity, Dysphoria and Fluidity

I’ve experienced several moments of burnout in my life and career. Being something that I neurologically am not is exhausting. Wearing the mask of neurotypicality drains my batteries and melts my spoons. For a long time, for decades, I didn’t fully understand what was going on with me. I didn’t understand the root causes of my cycles of burnout. Finding the Actually Autistic community online woke me to the concept of autistic burnout. When I found the community writing excerpted below, I finally understood an important part of myself. Looking back on my life, I recognized those periods when coping mechanisms had stopped working and crumbled. I recognized my phases and changes as continuous fluid adaptation.

Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Masking and Passing
Get Off the Fence
Help Us Be Our Real Selves

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.

ROLLING WARRIOR: THE INCREDIBLE, SOMETIMES AWKWARD, TRUE STORY OF A REBEL GIRL ON WHEELS WHO HELPED SPARK A REVOLUTION 
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 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

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 is it. 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
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

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 Good, Be Loud

Support Our Mission

Creed

I know

I know that pluralism is our reality. I know that Neurodiversity is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation, and that Neurodiversity friendly forms of collaboration hold the potential to transform pathologically competitive and toxic teams and cultures. I know Autistic forms of communication within a neurodiverse team and within a psychologically safe environment impart a collaborative advantage to the entire team. I know neurodiversity, the social model of disability, and intersectionality are urgently needed reframing necessary to equity and inclusion.

I reframe

I reframe out of the confines of the medical model and pathology paradigm and into the respectfully connected expanse of the biopsychosocial model and the Neurodiversity paradigm. I reframe from deficit ideology to structural ideology.

I center

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.

I will

I will never stop learning. I will communicate as much as possible because communication is oxygen to an organization. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out another Stimpunk. I will maintain learner safety and remember what it is like to be a new contributor. I will make other people feel equal and not alone. I will build with, not for. I will default to open. I will move carefully and fix things. I will make things that help people, and I will not make things that harm people. I will bake ethics into everything I do. I will be a threat to inequity in my spheres of influence.

Raise your hand if you’re not from a mold (yeah me)
Varied strings are worth more than gold

Mah-ah-ah-ah-ahl function away
Mah-ah-ah-ah-ahl function away
Malfunction! Malfunction! Malfunction!
...
Their Malfunction isn’t us, it’s all the clamor and the fuss

I’m about to pick you up
get you back up on your feet
you don’t need to worry love
Even if we’re incomplete

Come on baby open up
Pull out the wires and trim the fluff
Be yourself sounds so cliche
But hey let's do it anyway

-- Malfunction
Read More About Our Creed

Philosophy

We steer by the acquired phrases below. They are compasses and stars that align us on our mission.

∞ Design is tested at the edges.

∞

Design for real life.

Design for pluralism.

Solve for the infinity.

Foreground complexity as the baseline.

Multiplicities are an intention: We build the best collaboration, the deepest learning, when we expand the opportunities for complex vision.

⛑

Design is tested at the edges.

Compassion is not coddling.

James Baldwin…deserves flowers everyday, most of all, because he was willing to discuss things that were painful, hard to look at, hard to see, hard to accept.

Meshell Ndegeocello

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

James Baldwin

🫀🧠🌈 Human cognitive diversity exists for a reason.

🦼

Disability justice (and disability itself) has the potential to fundamentally transform everything we think about quality of life, purpose, work, relationships, belonging.

The moment has come to advance and recognize the promise of disability justice. Together, we can meet the moment, center individuals who are most impacted, and rebuild as a more just nation if we see disability as part of the continuing struggle for our full civil rights and liberties. We recognize that there is no justice that neglects disability.

Disabled people live at the intersection of all systems of oppression and social justice issues. There isn’t one issue or one intersection where you will not find disabled individuals advocating for or experiencing the effects of those issues.

There is no justice that neglects disability. Achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion means putting disability justice in every policy discussion and making it part of the continuing struggle for civil rights.

If the philanthropic sector is to advance social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion, then we must recognize that disability is a key element in our work.

Elevate ableism as one of the injustices of our world.

Create more anti-ableist spaces. Let’s act to hold ALL spaces accountable for providing care and access to disabled folks with all types of bodies and minds.

🌈

Human cognitive diversity exists for a reason; our differences are the genius – and the conscience – of our species.

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

Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general.

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

To be pro-neurodiversity is to be anti-racist.

Difference is not our deficit; it’s our operating system.

Diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing.

Mind is an embodied phenomenon.

Magic happens when you combine collaboration and neurodiversity.

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

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

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.

To me this particular composition contains Mr. Mingus’s personal and also a social message. He feels intensively. He tries to tell people he is in great pain and anguish because he loves. He cannot accept that he is alone, all by himself; he wants to love and be loved. His music is a call for acceptance, respect, love, understanding, fellowship, freedom — a plea to change the evil in man and to end hatred.

Charles Mingus: The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Liner Notes

📚⚖️ The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by diagnosis.

📚

The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by diagnosis.

Written communication is the great social equalizer.

Writing is too important because, though forms and structures will differ, writing is the path to power for those born without power.

To not presume competence is to assume that some individuals cannot learn, develop, or participate in the world. Presuming competence is nothing less than a Hippocratic oath for educators.

Noncompliance is a social skill.

Laziness does not exist.

It’s not about behavior.

If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context.

📖

Learning is rooted in purpose finding and community relevance.

Social justice is the cornerstone to educational success.

Dehumanizing practices do not belong in schools.

Learners are respectful toward each other’s innate human worth.

Design learning where there is no option for oppression.

People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder.

Maybe you weren’t always able to look at human behavior this way. That’s okay. Now you are. Give it a try.

Laziness Does Not Exist: But unseen barriers do

Laziness does not exist.

When I went to your schools
I went to your churches
I went to your institutional learning facilities!

--Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies

🛏 We urgently need a society that’s better at letting people get the rest they need.

Nothing in this culture wants us to have rest. Wants us to have ease. Wants us to have care. The softness was stolen. Our dreamspace has been stolen. Our space to just be has been stolen.

Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry.

🔨 Stop, Hammer Time: When you measure include the measurer.

It’s not Science vs Philosophy … It’s Science + Philosophy. When you measure include the measurer.

MC Hammer

I would insist on the embodied nature of all vision and so reclaim the sensory system that has been used to signify a leap out of the marked body and into a conquering gaze from nowhere. This is the gaze that mythically inscribes all the marked bodies, that makes the un-marked category claim the power to see and not be seen, to represent while escaping representation.

Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

The interpretation of objectivity as neutral does not allow for participation or stances. This uninvolved, uninvested approach implies “a conquering gaze from nowhere” (Haraway 1988). In many ways, claims of objectivity allow one to “represent while escaping representation” (Haraway 1988) and mimics the construction of Whiteness2 in the racialization of marginalized peoples (Battey and Leyva 2016; Guess 2006). Indeed, there is extensive evidence suggesting that STEM cultural norms are traditionally White, masculine, heteronormative and able-bodied (Atchison and Libarkin 2016; Chambers 2017; Eisenhart and Finkel 1998; Johnson 2001; Nespor 1994; Seymour and Hewitt 1997; Traweek 1988). Thus, while purporting to be a neutral application of a generic protocol, science-and STEM more broadly-has a distinct set of cultures that governs legitimate membership and acceptable behaviors. The concept of a meritocracy is often used to justify who succeeds in STEM cultures. However, far from “leveling the playing field”, meritocracies exist in cultural systems that prioritize people who have, or to a lesser extent closely emulate, these traits. Success in science, then, tends to privilege cultural traits associated with the above identities and often marginalizes scientists who can not or will not perform these identities. This introduces structural inequities in the pursuit of science that align with social manifestations of racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia and ableism (Cech and Pham 2017; Wilder 2014).

Defining the Flow—Using an Intersectional Scientific Methodology to Construct a VanguardSTEM Hyperspace

The failures of autism science are not random: they reflect systematic power imbalances.

Autism and Scientism

= There is no path to equity that does not involve a direct confrontation with inequity.

=

There is no path to equity that does not involve a direct confrontation with inequity.

Inequities are primarily power and privilege problems.

In order to achieve equity we must prioritize the interests of the students and families whose interests historically have not been prioritized.

Equity requires the redistribution of material, cultural, and social access and opportunity.

Educational outcome disparities are not the result of deficiencies in marginalized communities’ cultures, mindsets, or grittiness, but rather of inequities.

You cannot counter structural inequality with good will. You have to structure equality.

We are all accountable to the urgent work of building a more just, more equitable world.

🦄🦓🌈♿️

By focusing on the parts of the system that are most complex and where the people living it are the most vulnerable we understand the system best.

When we make things for people at their worst, they’ll work that much better when people are at their best.

Everything we do publicly can be made more inclusive and uplifting with intersectionality, and everything we do can become exclusionary and oppressive without it.

It is in the dignity of the most vulnerable that the dignity of all mankind is upheld.

When we build things – we must think of the things our life doesn’t necessitate. Because someones life does.

A mismatched interaction between a person and their environment is a function of design. Change the environment, not the body.

Flexibility makes a big difference in inclusion.

We need to have universally designed systems designed around the reality of human variance opposed to the myth of human sameness.

It’s not a problem in the person; it’s not a problem with the difference; it’s a problem in the interaction between a difference and a context built for the myth that we should all be the same.

Accommodation is fundamentally about not changing the person but changing the environment around the person.

Accessibility is a collective process!

Affordability is a part of accessibility.

The accommodations for natural human variation should be mutual.

I wish you could know
What it means to be me
Can you see
You’d agree
Everybody
Should be free
(Because if we ain’t, we’re murderers)

--I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free by Nina Simone

One of the most punk angst people in history is Nina Simone.

AFROPUNK: The Movie

She was neurodivergent and did her best work as an activist completely unaware she was bipolar and suffering from PTSD. As such, the disability community should embrace her as a savant in the wider sphere of neurodivergent people who demonstrate talent usually limited to the label autistic savant.

Nina Simone: Black Activist, Bipolar Savant | NOS Magazine

I sing from intelligence. I sing from letting them know that I know who they are and what they have done to my people around the world.

That’s not anger. Anger has its place. Anger has fire, and fire moves things, but I sing from intelligence. I don’t want them to think that I don’t know who they are.

Nina Simone on BBC HARDtalk, 1999

🫶 It is time to celebrate our interdependence!

🧷

Psychological safety is a condition in which you feel (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to challenge the status quo—all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way.

Giving inclusion safety is a moral imperative.

All human beings have the same innate need: We long to belong.

The spaces where we belong do not exist. We build them with radical love and revolutionary liberation.

The place where we belong does not exist. We will build it.

❤️

Putting care—not just care work, but care—at the center of our economy, our politics, is to orient ourselves around our interdependence.

Care is an organizational structure needed to keep our nation running. It’s, by definition, infrastructure.

Care work makes all other work possible.

Health is at the center of the human experience.

We need a counterculture of care.

I feel that that the fundamental property of humanness is to fill those spaces where humanity has been abandoned with love. Those who would change the system have to begin with love, and with the vision to build geographies of care built from that love.

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. If we do not understand that we are interdependent with the planet we as a species will not survive.

It is time to celebrate our interdependence! Collaboration allows us to create genuinely safe spaces.

Reframing is self-care and social change.

Those who are the most sensitive and traumatised and have not lost the ability to extend trust constitute an enormously rich and diverse repository of insights and hold many of the keys needed for co-creating ecologies of care.

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

--Three New Songs by Ezra Furman

👏 Community is magic. Community is power. Community is resistance.

🤝

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.

What I have always been hoping to accomplish is the creation of community. Community is magic. Community is power. Community is resistance.

Without community, there is no liberation…but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.

We can start building more accessible, care-centered communities now. We can combat ableism now. We can lay the groundwork for a world that works better for all of us.

Collaboration is contagious.

⚖️

Fix injustice, not kids.

Free, life-changing, and available to everyone.

Provide freedom to those who deal with a world that’s built to be hostile toward them.

Democracy is served by centering and empowering people’s voices.

Everyday there's a sad a twist of fate
And it's easy to think there's no way we can make it
But I swear you and I can stay strong through the fight
If we hold on long enough to face it

Sure there's
Purple haze in the sky
And they say maybe we're running out of time
But I don't care cuz you and I
Know that love is all we need to survive

If the world is on fire
I don't care cuz you're down for the ride
We'll survive
We'll get by
From now on til the end of times

--Purple Haze by Joy Oladokun

⏳ Dreams are met, bridges are built -timelines changed.

Dreams are met, bridges are built -timelines changed. All these realities become more true via each other, being ourselves; being that: we are the materials which become the embodiment of such.

Dreams are met, bridges are built -timelines changed.

All these realities become more true via each other, being ourselves; being that: we are the materials which become the embodiment of such.

Title: We Artistrian
Author: Adriel Jeremiah 2022 -noetic

*We Artistrian” was an utterance by A Badelle in pondering viewing a prior work titled “The Adorned Man.”

The Adorned Man

🩸 We exist as friction.

🩸

Attend to the practices, policies, and aspects of institutional culture that traumatize children at school.

We must infuse trauma-informed education with a robust understanding of, and responsiveness to, the traumas of systemic oppression.

Dislodge hyper-punitive cultures and ideologies.

We must not allow pressure for resilience to permit broken systems to persist.

Being trauma-informed means consciously cultivating space in our mental models so that, even if we know nothing about a particular set of circumstances, we avoid the temptation to mindlessly apply rules.

👩‍👩‍👧‍👦

Nothing about us without us.

Build with, not for.

We exist as friction.

Nothing About Us Without Us

Strong content warning: Holocaust, genocide, ableism, eugenics, euthanasia

My kind were identified
By twisted scientists
Separate by neurology
Focused ideology
The ones of us most profound
Sadly were oven bound
It seems I would have been
A super soldier unseen

Nothing about us
Without us any more
Do not rewrite history
On my account
Nothing about us
Without us any more
Do not rewrite history
On my account
I am not satisfied
To be marginalised
By ableist dictators
Robots patronising me
My condition was revealed
By a creator I oppose
Yet the source of my current chaos
Are my allies allegedly

Nothing about us
Without us any more
Do not rewrite history
On my account
Nothing about us
Without us any more
Do not rewrite history
On my account

--Nothing About Us Without Us by Tommy Concrete

More than two hundred thousand disabled children and adults were murdered during the official phases of the child euthanasia and T-4 programs, and thousands more were killed in acts of “wild euthanasia” by doctors and nurses on their own initiative. Obviously, the notion of transporting hundreds of corpses on roads that had to be kept clear for military convoys was impractical. As clinics, hospitals, and schools throughout the Reich dedicated their resources to the programs, crematoria were built next to these institutions, with conveyor belts to transport the bodies from the Kinderfachabteilungen to the ovens. In some institutions, improvised furnaces on wheels were employed to dispose of the corpses.

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (p. 135)

/Strong Content Warning

I first heard the expression “Nothing About Us Without Us” in South Africa in 1993. Michael Masutha and William Rowland, two leaders ofDisabled People South Africa, separately invoked the slo- gan, which they had heard used by someone from Eastern Europe at an international disability rights conference. The slogan’s power derives from its location of the source of many types of (disability) oppression and its simultaneous opposition to such oppression in the context of control and voice.

“Nothing About Us Without Us” resonates with the philosophy and history of the disability rights movement (DRM), a movement that has embarked on a belated mission parallel to other liberation movements. As Ed Roberts, one of the leading figures of the international DRM, has said, “If we have learned one thing from the civil rights movement in the U.S., it’s that when others speak for you, you lose” (Driedger 1989:28). In this sense, “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and “Power to the People” can be recognized as precedents for “Nothing About Us With- out Us.” The DRM’s demand for control is the essential theme that runs through all its work, regardless of political-economic or cultural differences. Control has universal appeal for DRM activists because the needs of people with disabilities and the potential for meeting these needs are everywhere conditioned by a dependency born of powerless- ness, poverty, degradation, and institutionalization. This dependency, saturated with paternalism, begins with the onset of disability and con- tinues until death. The condition of dependency is presently typical for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US: Disability Oppression and Empowerment

A motto of the self-advocacy movement is “Nothing About Us, Without Us!”. Lots of people talk about us without letting us talk. We should always be part of the conversation, and be in charge of our lives.

WELCOME TO THE AUTISTIC COMMUNITY

We should always be part of the conversation.

🪢 Embracing pluralism is good citizenship.

🪢

Embracing pluralism is good citizenship. Democracy demands equal accommodation.

Fostering healthy pluralism, which democracy demands, means confronting intolerance.

Pluralism is our reality.

In order for true diversity to flourish, we need to first become unswervingly anti-racist.

🤲

Default to open.

🔌 Name the systems of power.

😢

Do not be the oppressor.

People suffer, and when they do, it’s for a reason.

Shame is not a weapon. Shame is toxic. It is the difference between “sorry I did” and “sorry I am.”

🔌

Just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.

Every single one of us has a moral obligation to use whatever resources we have — time, money, knowledge, skills, emotional energy, access to physical resources — … in service of justice, and fighting against injustice and oppression and violence in all of its forms, structural and individual, subtle and overt.

Inclusivity involves looking at a space and seeing all the ways it’s set up to benefit those in power. And then redesigning and resetting that space to support, affirm, and amplify marginalized folks.

The lens of power can really help us see what’s going on.

Name the systems of power.

You wanna be somebody?
See somebody?
Try and free somebody

--List of Demands by Saul Williams

🏩 What if love said: Hear me out a bit before the future comes around.

We make things that help people, and we won’t make things that harm people.

Move carefully and fix things.

Technology should create opportunity, not deny it.

What if love said: Hear me out a bit before the future comes around.

As If We Existed

A COMPUTER
CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER
MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

1979 IBM Presentation

Like gods, these mathematical models were opaque, their workings invisible to all but the highest priests in their domain: mathematicians and computer scientists. Their verdicts, even when wrong or harmful, were beyond dispute or appeal. And they tended to punish the poor and the oppressed in our society, while making the rich richer.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
What's the problem with my genius?
Too attached to ever leave it
Silent for the new achievement but
What I long to witness is the equal shift
Of lifted gadgetry to intuition by
Genius giving up its selfish tact
And bringing praise of spirit back (Hey)
Pay respect upon the debt incurred
By non-belief when soul was speaking
Called simplistic by a name familiar to
Those regulars who think intelligence a competition
Missing opportunity to be a real show embarrassment
The care is not
The care is NOT spewing tools to ax the problem
Rather asking have or how they aptly solve themselves
...
What if love said: Hear me out a bit before the future comes around
...
This isn't anger, no, it's passion so let's live the way we should
As if we existed

"As If We Existed" by Solillaquists of Sound
Build Community on This Philosophy

Code of Conduct

NeurodiVenture : an inclusive non-hierarchical organisation operated by neurodivergent people that provides a safe and nurturing environment for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction.

NeurodiVentures | Autistic Collaboration

Punk was created by women, people of color, and queers. And without all of us, it would be nothing.

Alice Bag

Maybe that is the punkness of being a woman.

Marina Muhlfriedel

There have always been, like, women in it, and queer people, and people of color.

That community is also something really cool about punk.

Eloise Wong of The Linda Lindas

When you’re black, you’re punk rock all the time, you’re a target all the time.

Sacha Jenkins

We have been pushed to the margins, but we create in those margins. It doesn’t get more punk than that.

Shawna Shawnté

But before all of them, was a man who inhabited punk in all its definitions. A queer, Black man, who played his music loud and fast and with a defiantly masterful un-polish. Little Richard set the stage for everything that punk would become while inhabiting every sense of the word with pride. John Waters once declared Little Richard “was the first punk.”

QUEER PUNK HISTORY: 1575 – PRESENT

“I went through a lot when I was a boy. They called me sissy, punk, freak…”

Little Richard

Punk has never not been queer.

QUEER PUNK HISTORY: 1575 – PRESENT

I was gay. It’s nice to be happy. I was happy, and I wanted the world to know I was happy. And I wasn’t ashamed. I had been that way all my life, and I didn’t know nothing else but that. And so I told everybody that: I am gay.

“I told everybody I am GAY” Little Richard 1932-2020

All Stimpunks agree to abide by the contributor covenant.

We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Contributor Covenant

A tldr one-liner of the contributor covenant that often appears in the codes of conduct of online communities is, “Don’t be TRAASH.”

Don’t be TRAASH (transphobic, racist, ableist, abusive, sexist, homophobic).

At Stimpunks, we add an extra A to TRAAASH, for antisemitic. Like Autistic people, Jewish people are a canary population alerting us that “Never is now”.

Don’t be TRAAASH (transphobic, racist, ableist, abusive, antisemitic, sexist, homophobic).

Another good one-liner: “No proselytizing.” Consult this article and infographic from Chrissy Stroop on anti-proselytizing principles.

Empowerment against Evangelization: Countering Conversion Attempts by Asserting Moral Autonomy
Anti-Proselytizing Principles
Anti-Proselytizing Principles

Remind yourself that shared values, rather than shared beliefs, are what matter when it comes to interacting with others, and that there is no replacement for doing the hard work of making yourself better. 

Chrissy Stroop
Embracing Pluralism Is Good Citizenship
Embracing Pluralism Is Good Citizenship

Don’t be TRAAASH.
No proselytizing.

Those 5 words distill the minimum requirements to maintaining inclusive spaces.

“Everything is politics”, but the code of conduct is not about an advance of progressive/left-wing politics. It’s about establishing a minimal level of civil and professional collaboration. Civil, non-discriminatory, and professional behavior should be a baseline and shared value held by people of all ideologies, regardless of political affiliation (with the obvious exception of hate groups).

Contributor Covenant: Frequently Asked Questions about Contributor Covenant

When social spaces are designed without concern for all groups of users, the space will become an echo chamber of ideas and perspectives from a narrower range of people.

ADL Social Pattern Library | Inclusive Social Spaces – ADL Social Pattern Library
Pluralism Rocks: Inclusion Songs
I know you think I'm not something you're afraid of
'Cause you think that you've seen what I'm made of
Well I am even more than the two of them!
Everything they care about is what I am!
I am their fury, I am their patience
I am a conversation!

I am made o-o-o-o-of
Lo-o-o-o-ove, o-o-o-o-ove
And it's stronger than you
Lo-o-o-o-ove, lo-o-o-o-ove, lo-o-o-o-ove
And it's stronger than you
Lo-o-o-o-ove, lo-o-o-o-ove, lo-o-o-o-ove
And it's stronger than you
Lo-o-o-o-ove, lo-o-o-o-ove, lo-o-o-o-ove

-- Stronger Than You
A rainbow doesn't choose to be a rainbow
It just shines in the sky

To all of you in darkness
We're here turning on the light

Now I stand with you for the world to see
My love, my dreams, and me
My love, my dreams, and me

-- Rainbow Connections

Fostering healthy pluralism, which democracy demands, means confronting intolerance.

Chrissy Stroop
Let love conquer your mind
Warrior, warrior
Just reach out for the light
Warrior, warrior
I am a warrior-ior-ior-ior-ior
Warrior, warrior
I am a warrior-ior-ior-ior-ior
Warrior, warrior of love

Underneath darkened skies
There's a light kept alive

Let love conquer your mind
Warrior, warrior
Just reach out for the light
Warrior, warrior
I am a warrior-ior-ior-ior-ior
Warrior, warrior
I am a warrior-ior-ior-ior-ior
Warrior, warrior of love
Warrior of love
Warrior of love

--Warrior by AURORA
Hostility is not the road
The proper basic human code
Chauvinist intolerance is what we loathe
Let's embrace diversity
By first rejecting bigotry
There’s no more room left in society for animosity

We refuse to look away
And ignore issues at bay
We will conquer the hurdles in our way (We are warriors)
(We are warriors)
We won't take shit anymore
A pebble cuts right to the core
All these excuses, what are they for? (We are warriors)
We are warriors

We are warriors
We are warriors
We are warriors
We are warriors
We are warriors

--Warriors by Bad Cop/Bad Cop
Table of Contents
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