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Peace foundation. Workshops will be held on a variety of
current issues: Peace and Economic Justice,
Latin America, Israel-Palestine, Nuclear Zero, Darfur Africa
Peace and justice resources, Music, Poetry, Dance,
Informational tables, and more.
The Event is free, and open to everyone.
To learn more, check out BrooklynPeace.org
or call 718-624-5921.
And you are listening to WBAI in New York and
WBAI.org on the web. The preceding program, the
Personal Computer Show, Can be heard every Wednesday
evening from 8 to 9 pm. We hear next
The Largest Minority, right here on WBAI.
Please, Stay Tuned.
[Music: Freaks for the Festival by Rahsaan Roland Kirk]
Good evening, Babylon, Welcome to the Largest Minority
WBAI's program focusing on the News and Views of
people living with disabilities. Our aim is to increase
communication within our community, and to facilitate
understanding with society above labels and beyond
classification. The Largest Minority airs right after
the Personal Computer show, 9pm on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday
of each month, Alternating with The Joy of Resistance:
Multicultural Feminist Radio. It's April 25th,
2012 and my name is Brendan Costello, and I'm joined
telephonically by activist and abogado T.K. Small
and like bacobits on your radio salad, the salty,
tangy Sydney Smith is on the board with us tonight.
As always, we are coming to you live with portions
on recording from America's largest open crime scene,
Wall Street. And April, in addition to being the
cruelest month and National Disability Awareness Month,
is also Autism Awareness Month, and while I'm not
a huge fan of "awareness" or awareness months,
it worked out that tonight's show, we have a couple of
great guests we are going to be talking with.
about issues relating to Autism. We'll be speaking with
Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone, Activist, Advocate, and
member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network
discussing some of the pressing issues facing Autistic
folks in America. And We'll speak with
Lisa Quinones-Fontanez, a mother of an autistic son
and creator of the website, autismwonderland.com
It's going to be a great show, and so thanks very much
for tuning in, and stay tuned. T.K, Good evening
how are you?
- Hey how are you there?
- Very well, very well
-We're patching me in my apologies.
-That's okay, we sound like we are just checking,
I think we're having a little-You need to speak
a little more so we can get a better, proper level
for you there, TK.
-Okay it's good to be on the call with you guys
-Yes, okay, you're a little scratchy there
there's some- there seems to be some tech issue with
perhaps with your headphone. or Perhaps with the line?
Which will be- which will make this an interesting and
fuzzy show if that is in fact the case.
Say something else, TK, tell me about- tell me
your thoughts about April.
-Well April is is a cruel month, because it's the month
that we have to pay our taxes. So, the correlation
between paying my taxes and getting sick.
Which happened on April 15th
-Ok you know what we're going to do, we're going to
pause for a moment, and we're going to call you right
back but while Sydney is calling you, I'm just going
to talk very briefly about some of the things that
I've learned recently. For example, this- the statistics
about Autism have been changing quite a lot, and
there's been a lot of different awareness that's
come up in the last few years about Autism, and
certainly there have been controversial celebrities
and different people coming out talking about totally different
ways of treating it, and part of it is that there's
been something like a more than 75% increase
even since the beginning of the century, since
the beginning of 2000, of the incidence and the
detection of Autism, and maybe we can talk a
little bit- one of our guests might be able to
illuminate us a little more about the phenomena
related to that because it seems to suddenly have
become- it almost seems to be exploding, and
there are a number of different questions as to why
that might be. What we're doing right now,
we're getting TK to call where we're just checking
on the situation with TK's line. Let me just
see what's going on.
Ok, so what we're going to do is, we're going to
put on a bit of music for a moment, and straighten
some things out, so just stand by and
we'll be right back.
[Music: Big Brother by Stevie Wonder]
Okay, and We're back again. And TK, are you there?
-I'm here
-Okay. Once again, I was just talking a little about
I don't know if you heard this in the midst of
all the phone stuff. But, I was talking about
the fact that it seems that in recent years,
incidence or detection or whatever it is of Autism
seems to really have exploded.
And it's becoming a- almost a- I don't know if
we want to call it a phenomenon or an epidemic
or what exactly the word would be, but I was
wondering if you had any thoughts about
that, the statistics and the demographics of that.
- Well, I think probably has to do with the
refinement in the identification, so, I would
think that absent some external cause, that Autism
has always been there, but we didn't know what to
call it, or we didn't call it anything until we
called it something else. That's kinda what I think.
There's lots of people that get kind of mislabled.
I know somebody who was told she had ALS, Lou Gerig's
Disease? for like, 20 years. And they figured out
that oh, this was something else
-and it's something that I think that sometimes
those misdiagnoses lead to a lot of what these
apocryphal miracle cures, you know, all of a sudden
somebody realizes that they've been treating the
wrong disease and they find the right treatment
and, you know, they get better in you know 6 months
or something like that. But it is a thing, and
it's also an interesting thing o see how it's
coming about in terms of advocacy, and our first guest
we're going to talk with Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone
about that momentarily, because it is, a part of
it is public awareness or understanding of the situation
and people being, as her group is called, the Self-Advocacy Network, part of it
is being about those people being allowed to
speak for themselves rather than being spoken for.
-I think it's kind of interesting cause that
A whole section of folks that ask you 'what constitutes
autism?' so it doesn't look like the same situation
in every person. In many ways, they demonstrated
a lot of really cool and interesting characteristics
it's almost like a cool-ish disability, you know?
-I think every disability disability is a cool
disability, man. That's a part of, that actually
might be the new version of the show, we're just
going to say that every week, we're just going
to get on for an hour and talk about how cool it all is.
but in fact that is also a media creation, and
there is a thing about that, you know,
'Oh, Autism is like Abed on Community, right?'
Like there's, like Asperger's is a form of,
is considered a form of Autism. But I want to
get to our guest, so we're going to pause for
another moment and we're goin to give
we're going to get Savannah on the line.
Do you want to add anything else before we break?
-No, looking forward to speaking to Savannah.
I've been seeing her work, and I think she's kind of
a rising star in her community.
-Yeah, absolutely. And we've got, folks, you can
link to or you can find her work through her facebook page
which is, she is linked to our facebook page
which again, if you go to facebook, then you go to
Largest Minority Radio Show, you'll find us
And we'll be right back with Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone.
[More of the song, Big Brother by Stevie Wonder]