Autism Open House displays open faces

The awareness video clips from Autism Speaks.org are to the point. One nudged me like a rolling bolder off the complacency road. It is the image of a young child in a tub at a back yard, with a backdrop of dark clouds moving in from the horizon with sporadic sounds of thunder. The supervising adult takes the child out of the water as the atmosphere gets threatening. These words stream: Odds of being hit by a lightning: 1 out of 664,000; odds of being diagnosed with Autism: 1 out of 150.

They are just ordinary voices—young, exploring and not quite firmly sure—who helped read the governor’s proclamation of April as Autism Awareness Month, along with a parent, all starkly ordinary and yet individually unique and special. It is this awareness of our common humanity and individual diversity that has come to color our view of this not so minor minority in our body politic, the 1 of 150! It is this view of diversity within our commonality that needs to permeate all fiber of our contemporary society—economics, politics and culture—for there is no strength in union if walls are built for exclusion!

And so it was that gentle Uncle Ben, surrounded by persons with names like Maria and Marissa, Larissa and Larrisa, Nicolas and Alyssa, Alii and Jimmy, Louie and Julie, Chad and Dolores, John Carlo and Gregorio, Susan and Joann, Derek and Tom, and many others whose names are just like “yours and mine,” inked with his executive pen a focus on this condition called autism for our urgent attention and deliberate action.

Ben F. told the crowd in attendance that “I will see you again next year.” That political astuteness, and this is not meant to be pejorative, relative to the disability is not lost in the other declared gubernatorial candidates. Heinz SH authored the autism bill that will now begin a process of creating the big picture re autism in the Commonwealth. Juan Pan has members of his family who are active in Autism Society. Former Governor JB recently wrote an article sighting current figures gleaned from such sources as the PSS Special Education program and may even initiate/support a class action vs. the toxic thimerosal in vaccines and other medications. We are not up-to-date on Kumoi’s platform but with David B. previously presiding over the education portfolio and its Special Education program, the tandem would have a proactive stance toward autism.

Starting today and for two other Saturdays in April at the Family Service 360 Parent Center at NMPASI on Pale Arnold Road (Middle Road), guest and friends will meet face-to-face with someone who is, or related to, 1 of the 150. Hidden faces not too long ago was the common practice among those diagnosed with what has now come to be recognized as a misnomer, a disability, (and we dare previously coin a new word, “differablity”) to refer to that minority group whose open faces are unabashedly and celebratively on display these April Saturdays (except Holy Saturday in Lent) at the Parent Center.

The Open House doors will open at 8:30am, closing at 3:30pm without a noon break. On the 18th, there will be a rugged outdoors physical experiential system’s (ROPES) training followed by a session on the cruciality of parent participation in the service delivery process; on the 25th, SpEd’s Individualized Education Plan process will be discussed, and at the end of the day, at 3:30pm, an Autism Walk will commence at the American Memorial Park, Marina section

The WALK is a symbolic culmination activity that focuses on the challenge of creating authentic community that supports and enables rather than excludes and discriminates. This paradigm shift that has been expressed in many documents from quality production lines to human resource systems, alternative political movements and sunrise/sunset conversation groups, traditional culture awareness and appropriation programs to the gifts of plurality and diversity meetings, is just now scratching the surface of our strategic and tactical plans of creating our future but it is making a significant headway. The openness by which the Autism Awareness month is being conducted by the Autism Society and the NMPASI and its triagency colleagues is a big step in the right direction.

We are witnessing the proceedings of the G-20 pact and the plebian convulsions down Excel Center, Fleet Street and the Victoria Docks area by the Thames in London. The word in the United States to grasp the nature of the banking crisis is the identified “toxic assets” that are illusory entities in our financial books. Similarly, the debate between genetics and environment that has accompanied research on autism has since been won by the latter with the high level of toxicity in our environment, our food chain, and the mindless avarice of pharmaceuticals.

While a six-hour event on three Saturdays in April is a simple matter, the profound implication of building community from the perspective of openness is staggering. The newness targets possibility before limitations, generosity of resource before scarcity of means, the sharing of gifts before the frenzy of acquisition and possession.

It spills over the economic summit dealing with Obama’s stimulus package in that we would be served best if we zero in on proposal making rather than problem solving, on natural, human and technology resource appropriation rather than cowering in fear culture, in the rehabilitation of short-sighted efforts rather than on heavy-handed retribution over perceived past failures.

We know that small groups are the unit of transformation and are the valued container for the experience of belonging; that transformation is linguistic, which means that we must think of community as practical conversations. At every level of our society, we live in the landscape of retribution rather than affirmation. We live out of stories that limit our possibility (“can’t do that,” or, every lawful enactment has eight oversight provisions!) rather than stories that give meaning to our lives, help us find our voice, and free our self-expressions.

Our existing community context markets fear, assigns fault and worships self-interest. It is time to dig deeper into the treasures of humanness. The platform of faith I am familiar has this credo: For all that had been, Thanks! For all that will be, Yes! For all that is, Amen! Come meet, join and celebrate with us at the Open House!