Frequent contributor Alex Kronstein continues his exploration of autism and neurodiversity. Think of autistic culture as “our shared history, the way autistic people move, communicate, create, experience and understand the world around us in uniquely autistic ways.”
Safe streets activist Martyn Williams takes a closer look at the flawed and dangerous crosswalks in Halifax and elsewhere in the province. Crosswalks here have many inherent dangers – wide four or even five lane crosswalks with high overhead lights which are sometimes not seen by drivers, signalized intersections where traffic has a green light to turn left into the road which has the walk sign on, right turns on a red, and crosswalks which have overhead lit signs but no flashing lights. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Activist and talented photographer Jodi Brown went to the rally by unhappy Metcap Living tenants of a large apartment building on 15 Kennedy Drive, in Dartmouth. Here are her photos and her report.
In this video citizen-reporter and poverty activist Jodi Brown meets up with Sarah, a young woman who was in a bad spot when she asked Community Services for help. After stays in a shelter and hotel, Sarah now lives in a North Dartmouth apartment building, and deals with leaking roofs and all kinds of other building troubles. Landlord Metcap Living is in no apparent hurry to fix it.
Sure a bus will kneel, but once on the bus a wheelchair can give you a rough ride. New contributor Paul Vienneau writes on how he has been working with Halifax Transit to fix that, and how a trip to Disney World made him realize that a solution is out there.
Alex Kronstein on the #AgentofChangeNS campaign by Autism Nova Scotia. Although well intended, it does not go far enough, he suggests. In order to be a real “agent of change”, he lists many other things that radical activist autistics would recommend as well.
When frequent NS Advocate contributor Delilah Saunders read a poem by Shannon Webb-Campbell that contained a graphic description of the murder of her sister Loretta it caused real hurt. ” I can’t bring myself to share the poem with my parents or family. I’m unsure if she consciously decided to not reach out to my family because she knew no family would agree to having their loved one written about in such gory detail, or if she is just that out of touch with the protocols that exist in our Indigenous communities.”
Frequent contributor Alex Kronstein on autism awareness vs autism acceptance. “Many autistic people, myself included, find the traditional “awareness” campaigns to be insufficient and harmful, because the effect of autism “awareness” is that is ends up promoting fear and stigma against us, and encourages non-autistic people to think about ways they can make us more “normal” or pass as non-autistic.”
“I felt the strong need to write this post because of my frustration with this unresponsiveness from my worker, and I wondered how many other people on Income Assistance experience the same thing.” An income assistance recipient writes on calling over and over and about the stress of never getting that much awaited call back.
Delilah Saunders writes about the pain and emotional labour involved in speaking in public about her murdered sister Loretta and other missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. “My problem lies with the for-profit multi-billion-dollar industries/universities that penny pinch when a speaker provides expertise when their pricey textbooks fail to do so.”