Open Society

The 3 core traits of autism are: hyper-connected neurons, monotropic thinking, and bottom-up processing

Meltdown is a sign of extra stress energy that the nervous system needs to release. Society’s intensity causes meltdowns - they are not caused by a lack of self-regulation.

What is a punk band, after all, but an affinity group with guitars?

“PUNK ROCK EQUALS ANARCHY PLUS GUITARS AND DRUMS. ANYTHING LESS IS JUST SUBMISSION.” -Italian Punk

This subculture has to be inclusive—and not just in the superficial sense associated with the liberal politics of representation. Rather than just preaching to the converted, it should draw in people from a wide range of backgrounds and politics. We want to reach the same young folks who are going to be targeted by military recruiters, and we want to reach them first. Sure, that will mean rubbing shoulders with a lot of people who are not anarchists—it will mean a big messy stew of different politics and conflicts and contradictions—but the goal is to spread anarchism, not to hide out in it. Get everyone together in a space premised on horizontality, decentralization, self-determination, reproducible models, being ungovernable, and so on and let them discover the advantages for themselves.

The most important thing is the participation of those who are poor, volatile, and angry. Not out of any misguided notion of charity, but rather because the so-called dangerous classes are usually the motor force of change from below. The self-satisfied and well-behaved lack the risk tolerance essential for making history and reinventing culture.

Picture a self-education society without instructors, ranks, or lesson plans. Teenagers will teach themselves to play drums by watching other teenagers play drums. They won’t learn about politics in dusty tomes, but by publishing zines about their own experiences and corresponding with people on the other side of the planet. Every time well-known musicians perform, musicians who are just getting started will perform, too. Learning won’t be a distinct sphere of activity, but an organic component of every aspect of the community.

From the beginning, punks took great pains to distinguish themselves from hippies; in retrospect, punk was everything hippie that couldn’t be domesticated and commodified.

Punk caught on among the forerunners of today’s superfluous workforce at a time when the futureless were still a bitter, isolated minority. It was the song of the canary in the coal mine.

All the shortcomings punks identified in the unidirectional capitalist media of the late 20th century (“Kill your television!”) inform the participatory capitalist media of our own day. Who needs to go to band practice when you can make a video on your smart phone and post it to Tik Tok immediately? Do it yourself!

Punk combines the engaging agitprop and global networks of 21st-century cultural movements with the longevity of pre-internet political formations.

Let’s imagine the ideal cultural vehicle for anarchism.

“Today, in the anarchist movement, we sometimes miss the Dionysian spirit that characterized the hardcore punk underground at its high point: the collective, embodied experience of dangerous freedom. This is how punk can inspire us in our anarchist experiments of today and tomorrow: as a transformative outlet for rage and grief and joy, a positive model for togetherness and self-determination in our social relations, an example of how the destructive urge can also be creative.” -“Music as a Weapon: The Contentious Symbiosis of Punk Rock and Anarchism”

Simply put, White privilege is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. The Privilege Institute looks at White Privilege intersectionally, in the Context of Various Systems of Privilege. Here are some examples from our past speakers and co-conspirators: ​ “Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege doesn’t determine one’s outcomes, but it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations a person with privilege has will result in something positive for them.” ~ Peggy McIntosh“White Privilege is the other side of racism. Unless we name it, we are in danger of wallowing in guilt or moral outrage with no idea of how to move beyond them. It is often easier to deplore racism and its effects than to take responsibility for the privileges some of us receive as a result of it… once we understand how white privilege operates, we can begin addressing it on an individual and institutional basis.” ~ Paula Rothenberg "I can completely understand why broke white folks get pissed when the word 'privilege' is thrown around...I was constantly discriminated against because of my poverty and those wounds still run very deep...[But] The concept of intersectionality recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not in others." ~Gina Crosley-Corcoran   ​​“Whites need to acknowledge and work through the negative historical implications of ‘Whiteness’ and create for ourselves a transformed identity as White people committed to equity and social change...To teach my White students and my own children...that there are different ways of being White, and that they have a choice as White people to become champions of justice and social healing.” ~ Gary Howard “The most powerful message that continues to reverberate through my head and heart is that of looking at the future and eliminating systems of oppression through the lens of possibility and hope.” ~Educator commenting on WPC 7

Learning in, with and through nature is vital for children and the social, cognitive, physical, and emotional benefits for children are well documented.

Lopez describes our attachment to nature and place as “a fundamental human defense against loneliness.” This matters because despite being more digitally connected than at any other time in history, levels of social isolation and loneliness have soared in recent years, described by some as an “epidemic of loneliness”.

When children have a storied relationship with a place, when they know its history and understand the flora and fauna that call it home, they care.

When taking learners outdoors, particularly very young children, there are four main elements to consider:Be clear about why you are going outdoors and what students will be doing in the chosen space.Work out how you're going to get there. What are the risks involved with travelling to the location? What happens when you arrive?Establish clear boundaries about how far students can move from the meeting point. This might include using natural or built features in the environment to set boundaries. For younger students, it could include taking a certain number of steps or a short amount of time.Know how you will get everyone back together. It could be a simple “Cooee” or a whistle or bell.

According to Barry Lopez, a framework for developing a lasting connection to place should go beyond function or beauty. Lopez posits three qualities are required, paying intimate attention, creating a storied relationship rather than a purely sensory awareness, and engaging in reciprocal ethical unity.

UDL means many things, depending on which group of researchers and advocates you are speaking to, but the general idea is to create learning environment which can be individually adapted to learner needs. In other words, the environment adapts rather than forcing the learner to.

"Sure," they say, "with enough humiliation we can allow you to do things differently, as long as you understand that we'll never consider you an equal part of the school."UDL wants to change that.A decade ago the Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST) proposed 3 principles that could be applied to the curriculum and set an agenda for inclusion, as follows:1. Provide multiple representations of content.2. Provide multiple options for expression and control.3. Provide multiple options for engagement and motivation.and these remain essential, but I want to add a fourth which must apply to them all:4. That these representations and options be available to all students on the basis of understood needs and/or informed preference, without the need for diagnosis.And here is my example - which, again, I have used before:I often hand out reading assignments to students. When I do I always deliver those digitally. They arrive as accessible text documents, delivered to their computer. Many students, as many as half of the students, print these documents out onto paper. They do this because they prefer it that way. Whether because of their eyesight, or their cultural training, or where they want to read, or how they want to take notes or highlight things, they prefer ink-on-paper.That's fine. I have never once said, "You can not do that. You must read that on the computer, or listen to it using text-to-speech software."But if I, as a dyslexic student, want to take my ink-on-paper textbook and convert it into digital accessible text, this gets difficult. I have to "prove" my disability to some campus bureaucrat. I have to beg for the accommodation. I need lots of time, special software and perhaps hardware, and sometimes special permission to bring that book into class (see all those profs who ban laptops or mobiles). I may need a copyright exemption. And look out if I want to carry that digital text into an exam!This is not just privileging one media form over another, this is elevating the "how" over the "what" to an extreme extent. It not only humiliates those labelled with "disabilities," it refuses to accommodate the very legitimate choices of all students. Choices which might significantly improve the comfort, attention capabilities, and learning opportunities for that 60%-65% who currently fall far behind, and might even help those already doing well to achieve their full potential.UDL says scrap that system. Under UDL content would be fully flexible in delivery. Want that book on paper - here it is. Want it as an audio file - there you go. Want it as digital text - that's easy - seen a book lately that did not begin as a digital file? Need it in some other form - pictures or braille or whatever? No problem - as long as the content can be delivered.UDL should really go further - especially in recognizing that not all students benefit from following the same path to skills and knowledge. Any system which applies the same pedagogy to all students is clearly not a universal design (in my mind it is not even moral). Insisting on everyone using the same textbook, or doing the exact same assignments, or following the same schedule - those are all industrial practices which are based in the belief that students are a raw material which can be shaped by repeated stampings. Any claims to some kind of rational meritocracy within that "same requirements" argument are simply a mask for the essential anti-humaness of the system.

But UDL is, for me, a litmus test. If you do not embrace the concepts and work toward it, you really do believe in education as an industrial process. If you do not embrace the concepts and work toward it, you really do not see students as individuals or those with disabilities as equals. And if you do not embrace the concepts and work toward it, you really are not interested in educational success for all, rather you believe in school as a sorting system which separates those pre-destined for success by family and/or luck from those pre-destined for failure.

People generally are very pleased with themselves when they have made an accommodation for me. I know this because they proudly announce it! In turn, I have learned to say thank you when people announce their thoughtfulness at making an accommodation for me. I truly am thankful because it allows me a fuller participation in the events going on around me. It also makes me smile because I have been making accommodations for people my whole life and it has never occurred to me to announce it! The fact is that autistics are required to make numerous accommodations every day they are among other people. This is because the world is not set up in a neurologically friendly way to autistics. We live in a very fast paced world where speed in understanding and responding to people is expected. We also have much information constantly being delivered over numerous electronic devices. We expect everything to happen instantly! For the most part this isn’t a good match for people with autism because we generally have a “too much” experience of the world due to the way our sensory system takes in information from the world around this. Once that information “arrives” it is then, for many autistics, processed differently. A common result of our difference is referred to as a processing delay. This means it takes more time for us to process and respond. Not only is this is a huge disadvantage in our fast paced world of instant expectation, but one unspoken assumption is that I will accommodate for my differences and act “appropriately,” i.e. act as a neuro majority person acts. It takes time and energy to accommodate another person regardless if you are the person with autism or the person without autism. Based on years of observation of numerous autistics, myself included, I can see autistics pay a much higher cost for the accommodations they must make as compared to the neuro majority person. Part of the reason is the sheer volume of accommodations an autistic is required to make each day compared to others. The really funny part of this is that autistics rarely are in any way acknowledged for the heavy burden of accommodations they must make just to survive in this world while others are thought to be the people making the accommodations! Furthermore, I am expected to make accommodations for you while you have the option to choose when, if, and how often you will make accommodations for me. This differential is a result of assigning the measure of normal to the experience of the majority of the people. Even though I make considerably more accommodations for you than you make for me, because your experience of the world is considered the norm and my experience the deviation it is the understanding of the majority that I need you to accommodate me and this is true. However, nobody notices all the accommodating other autistics and I have done all our lives!

For me, making accommodations is not optional. Because your ways are considered the norm I am expected to do whatever I need to fit into this norm. For me, making accommodations for you is not optional. It is expected and therefore, no credit given. In fact, the only time people notice me in regard to accommodations I make for them is when I neglect to make them! When I cannot or do not make accommodations for you something is considered to be wrong with me.

When they finally learned of their autism in adulthood, they began to better understand who they are and why they experience the environment differently from others. This new understanding taught them that their so-called weird habits are actually part of their authentically autistic ways to cope with the weirder world. This study suggests that autistic adults' insistence on sameness is an authentically autistic way to exercise their right to comfortably co-exist and live as human beings and as themselves.

I think a big thing for me is respect. We’ve constantly had to write in our rider what our pronouns are and explicitly instruct the crew not to call us “ladies” or “gals.” And there will STILL be people who disrespect our wishes and misgender us. At this point, I refuse to work with people like that, no matter how much of a big deal they are in the music scene. If they’re not going to respect me as a person, not only me as an artist, then I don’t want anything to do with them.