Edited by author 09-01-2004 05:01 PM
Hi Philip:

I often use the NAS as an example of the right general direction for an autism society to take, if it starts in the state Autism Society Canada is in.

It is still not by, about, for autistic people. Autistics are still in third person there. Are the goals of NAS the goals of autistics? You are in a better position to say.

I stand by what I say until autistics are represented equally with non-autistics in an autism society, as a matter of course, and that all materials publicly presented by this society, and all its decisions, have significant autistic participation. That when you phone or contact the NAS, you will be communicating with an autistic.

The presence of a "real" autism society could be detected if and when appalling stories about autistics, false and damaging information about us, were instantly countered by these societies. This distribution of false and damaging information should then be diminishing, having been effectively countered. Is this what is happening? What I see is an escalation.

I have seen the NAS counter public insults (though a non-autistic person was assigned to do this); and their involvement in the cases of the AS people locked up in secure facilities was very good.

But compared to for example the CNIB in Canada (Canadian National Institute for the Blind, which has a blind president), which objects when a television show suggests that the possibility of blindness is cause to contemplate suicide--and compared to the Canadian Down Syndrome Society, about which I've written extensively, the NAS is still in a primitive state.

Can you imagine the NAS putting a large colour advertisement in the Times (featuring an autistic adult, along with a non-autistic adult, captioned "Different Genes. Same Value.") stressing the contributions of autisics to society, and saying that intolerance must be cured, not autism? Because the CDSS has done the equivalent in Canada, and (they told me), they are just getting started.

The NAS looks good to me, too, but only in comparison with the pathetic situations elsewhere, of which Canada's is the worst. That doesn't make it an organization about and for autistic people.

I wouldn't dare speak for him, but I think the NAS's autistic board member might not quite entirely agree with your view, while pointing out that through his own hard work and determination (and humour and all round brilliance) he has been able to make headway in the NAS.

That's good, but given what is happening to autistic people, is that enough? Unlike ASC, the NAS is not directly harmful (compare their website to ASC's, and their position re intervention to ASC's) so far as I can tell. That's wonderful, and can (to my mind) be credited to autistics who fought in various ways (fighting against the autistic "quota" system, handing out leaflets at all meetings, etc). But this struggle is far from over. And of course in Canada it has already, so far as I can tell, been lost. I think you are telling me that the NAS has taken a direction towards a real representation of autistics, and I would agree with that (which is why I state the situation varies from country to country).