Recently, people who did not like the vaccine causes autism movement urged a boycott of Chili's restaurants when they created a fundraiser to help one of their organizations. The backlash was so great Chili's was forced to cancel their fundraising event.
Those who don't like Autism Speaks (most of whom have some affiliation with neurodiversity and or ASAN) have suggested boycotting organizations that support AS such as Lindt Chocolates. Over five years ago, I wrote a blog post mentioning other organizations they could boycott if they did not want to support AS. Recently supporters of a boycott Autism Speaks Movement have asked Big Bird and the rest of Sesame Street to end their partnership with AS. To the best of my knowledge though, no one has suggested boycotting Wrong Planet, Alex Plank, Jack ("Cubby") Robison, Michelle Dawson, or Laurent Mottron and his other affiliates for accepting funding from AS.
In my previous blog post of a few days ago, I pointed out that ASAN (The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network) had posted their 2011 and 2012 990 tax forms on line and Ari Ne'eman's substantial salary increase. I neglected to mention the various organizations that have donated money to ASAN and the one other one who has enlisted high school dropout John Robison to teach a course on Neurodiversity on their faculty:
1. Dan Moreno Foundation
2. Cafe Press
3. Mitsubishi Corporation
4. The arc (charity giving sizable donation to ASAN)
5. Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation.
6. Enterprise Service and Technologies.
7. William and Mary College (not necessarily relevant to ASAN but gives a course on neurodiversity with high school dropout John Robison being one of the adjunct professors)
8. University of New Hampshire
9. Oregon Health Sciences University
10.Special Hope Foundation.
11. The HSC Foundation.
These are all organizations that should be boycotted or not have money donated to them or products purchased from if you want to crusade against ASAN and the neurodiversity movement. There may be others that I don't know about and I will post them if I find out about them. I know I won't be purchasing products made by Cafe Press or Mitsubishi again. I'm not sure if it is worth contacting any of these organizations and asking them not to partner with Neurodiversity in the future as some of these probably gave ASAN one time donations and may not do so in the future. Apparently, from reading their 990's, their donations dropped off tremendously in 2012 but they made up their revenue by making nearly $200,000 in "contract services" in 2012 whatever those are. So this is the list if anyone is interested.
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9 comments:
I would not boycott the ARC. These are volunteer folks that serve as trustees to many disabled and mentally retarded adults who have no living relatives. They protect their money, pay their bills and advocate for them with state government. I can't attest to any of the others, but the ARC should not be boycotted simply because someone gave money to ASAN, probably under the false assumption that they advocate for autistic people. We all know they don't, they advocate only for the people that are self diagnosed. The ARC actually works with people with serious disabilities. Ari Ne'eman doesn't and when given an all expense paid trip to see the life of real life low functioning autistic people, he refused the offer.
@Your anonymous I wonder why an organization that is set up for people with intellectual disabilities would give money to ASAN which is largely comprised of people claiming to be on the autism spectrum who mostly seem to be lawyers or graduate students or college professors which means even if you don't want to say their autism is suspect, they sure lead different lives of the other 99.9% of persons on the spectrum. They should do their homework before giving ASAN money if they are an organization set up for people with serious disabilities.
Even though I think Autism speaks may do some good research that might lead to a cure I still recommend boycotting them because they funded Mottron and had Robison on their board.
Also, I re-reviewed ASAN's 2011 tax return. The Arc was by far their biggest supporter giving them $137,000 out of about $274,000 of total revenue, so they were responsible for about half of ASAN's funding in 2011. So, an organization with this much capital at their disposal should really do a better job of doing their homework if they really cared about developmentally disabled people.
@i'manonymous he refused not because he doesn't care, but probably because he was ONLY going to be showed the bad sides of it and how bad it is for the parents instead of the children themselves. those kids might be suffering from their parents' negative attitude towards their kids, and they can't realize that some kids just take longer to develop than others.
i would go to that trip just to see if their parents were causing some of their kids' misery.
personally, jonathan, i would offer you an all expense trip to see Amy Sequenzia. she's who you'd describe as "lower functioning" and yet she doesn't want a cure because she knows autism can come with positives. so anonymous can't say it's the "real life" because it isn't necessarily like that.
First to Jonathan,
The ARC relies upon private donations and is a 501c3 corporation. The ARC receives some of its funding from the United Way but they also receive funding from private individuals such as myself. I gave the ARC $25,000 over the last 5 years. I can designate those funds to be restricted for certain needs, such as probate court, lobbying to extend Medicaid benefits under Obamacare, or to pay for shopping trips. I could also restrict those funds for giving to another entity, such as ASAN. Do not assume ASAN received funding from the ARC because of someone at the ARC, which has branches all over the US, was responsible for giving those funds to ASAN. Ari Ne'eman has very wealthy parents and connections. I would not put it past him ( I know him personally) from asking someone to give to the ARC on a restricted basis for the funds to go directly to ASAN.
Nate sportyboy, you are an idiot, excuse my rudeness. The type of autism you think exists (Bettelheim autism) has been disproven over the last 50 years. Autism is a neurological disorder, not caused by "bad parenting". The kids in this autism school, which you pay $2500 a month to send your child to, are not the parents that abuse their children. They are parents that mortgage their homes, their 401k's and borrow from relatives and banks to give their child the best chance they can. They mortgage their own personal independence. Your ND claptrap about parents causing autism is exactly why Ari Ne'eman wouldn't go because he didn't want his view of autism to be challenged, just as you don't. You refuse to believe in science, as he does. I won't respond to such non-sense going forward and I'm a bit disappointed that Jonathan let your comments slide without a response.
Jonathan, your off base on this one. First time I've disagreed with you, but its also the first time I have knowledge of something you don't have access to.
Good god Jonathan, Nate Sportyboy is friends with the most notorious fraud in the autism community, Amanda Baggs. By the way, did you know she legally changed her name to Amelia Baggs?
@ You're anonymous: I hadn't heard anything about Amanda Baggs in quite some time. I guess she blogs under her ballastexistence blog but I really don't pay any attention to it. I thought she was basically a has been at this point. I did not know she'd changed her name. I did briefly check out Nate's link which was to a google plus and noted that he had amanda in his circle.
I've never heard of being able to donate to a charity and then designating it to go to specific purposes. Assuming that's true, Arc should have refused the donation and refused to write a check to ASAN. I don't think they are legally obligated to accept a donation if they don't want it. Also, whoever it was that directed it could have given it directly to ASAN rather than ARC, unless they did not want to be identified as donating to ASAN for some reason or there was something illegal or corrupt invovled. Of course, I'm not an expert on any of this. ASAN is also listed as a 501c organization with the IRS and that is why their information is public, yet, apparently they made about half of their 2012 revenue for some sort of consulting services rather than private donations. Lots I don't understand.
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