Occupy Wall Street gets support from MoveOn, trade unions, community groups

By Cory Doctorow at 10:23 am Friday, Sep 30

A coalition of activists, community groups and trade unions (whom Crain's New York Business hilariously refer as "agitators," as though they were the Red Menace a post-WWII installment of Little Orphan Annie) are set to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The new group includes MoveOn, some SEIU chapters, Workers United, the United Federation of Teachers, and a Transport Workers Union local. They're also being backed by the Working Families Party.

Signs and chants will likely call for an extension of the so-called millionaires' tax and a roll-back of state budget cuts. They will also likely show support for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's position that a proposed settlement between banks and attorneys general over troubled mortgage pools is too lenient.

Organizers of the march said they aren't looking to take control of the Occupy Wall Street protest, which has captured headlines since it began nearly two weeks ago, but add to it.

“We're not trying to grab the steering wheel or to control it,” said Michael Kink, executive director of the Strong Economy For All coalition. “We're looking to find common cause and support the effort. It's the right fight at the right time and we want to be part of it.”

(via Consumerist)

(Image: Day 12 Occupy Wall Street September 28 2011 Shankbone 14, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from shankbone's photostream)

Veteran agitators flock to Occupy Wall Street [crainsnewyork.com] Tags: activism, Business, finance, moveon, nyc, occupy wall street, politics

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Integrating autistic people into the community

On the cover of today's NYT, a 8,000+ word feature on Justin Canha, an autistic high school student who has been participating in an intensive program that aims to integrate people with autism (and not just the "high-functioning" kind) into the community. Justin is a talented artist, and is often sweet and charming, but he is also extremely confused by many everyday social interactions. His teacher, Kate Stanton-Paule, has been accompanying him through a multi-year program of daily community routines (shopping, working at part-time jobs), and Amy Harmon's long, well-written piece chronicles the triumphs and failures of the new approach that aims to replace segregation and institutionalization with integration and participation.

Some advocates of “neurodiversity” call this the next civil rights frontier: society, they say, stands to benefit from accepting people whose brains work differently. Opening the workplace to people with autism could harness their sometimes-unusual talents, advocates say, while decreasing costs to families and taxpayers for daytime aides and health care and housing subsidies, estimated at more than $1 million over an adult lifetime.

But such efforts carry their own costs. In this New York City suburb, the school district considered scrapping Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program almost as soon as it began, to save money on the extra teaching assistants who accompanied students to internships, the bank, the gym, the grocery store. Businesses weighed the risks of hiring autistic students who might not automatically grasp standard rules of workplace behavior.

Oblivious to such debates, many autistic high school students are facing the adult world with elevated expectations of their own. Justin, who relied on a one-on-one aide in school, had by age 17 declared his intention to be a “famous animator-illustrator.” He also dreamed of living in his own apartment, a goal he seemed especially devoted to when, say, his mother asked him to walk the dog.

Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World - NYTimes.com (Thanks, Scott!)

(Image: A job at a bakery, Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times, used with permission)

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