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fair chances for child authors with asperger syndrome

maurice frank | 09.12.2003 16:15 | Education | Health | Liverpool

A hate mailer working on self appointed behalf of the Luke Jackson machine - I don't accuse the Jacksons themselves of backing her - is working to suppress autistic organisations from carrying website articles speaking out for child authors whose chance was ruined by abusive school homework.

Below is the text of an artcle, entitled "Recognition - Young Authorship", which had been sitting quite happily for 5 months on an autism website. I won't yet, just yet, say which website, because the organisation is still seeing a lawyer about its website vetting system and the article's removal might not be permanent. But neither have I been given any guarantee, after a week, that it's not permanent. If it is permanent, its removal is abject compliance with the wishes of a hate mailer, and that obviously is illegal.

I had already spoken out in the Cross Party Group in parliament, on there being an internet vendetta conducted by some home educating parents, against anyone who expresses views they don't like on the education bill. I had mentioned the hate mailer in a parliamentary submission, actually before she discovered this article and started sending sexually filthy hate mail to the website that had hosted it. The vendetta started in a group advertised in Freaks Geeks and Asperger Syndrome, which book Luke Jackson's mother admitted in the Times 16-8-02 is 12/13 by her, so not really by Luke at all. The article is not about the education bill, so the hate mailing campaign shows that the vendetta makers now also want to suppress any speaking out about child authors whose chance was destroyed, and any expressions of unhappiness with the Luke Jackson machine for not caring about the issue.

There is nothing legally wrong with the article: it clearly consists of political opinion. E.G. calling it horrible how adults use Luke Jackson's personality cult, is not a personal attack on him. If there was anything legally wrong with the article it would not have been accepted in the first place, nor remained in place for months with no problems. It has been removed by personal edict of the chair of a constituted charity that has a committee. It is apparent from this, as from unproductive letter writing to big organisations: that in the world of Asperger Syndrome services, some leading figures are rating it necessary for their own career prospects, not to upset the public perception of Luke Jackson in any way, and they can be nobbled to censor writing that does this.

Meanwhile, don't you think Jacqui Jackson wronged every aspie child in Britain, when she said on TV on August 1: "They don't write books, like Luke does"? That type of thing is why it was necessary for me to write the article, and for Asperger support workers to want it kept on the web in defiance of intimidation.



___________________________________________________________________

>In all human organisations promoting causes, there is a temptation
>to do what makes the cause look its best to casual observers. Group
>psychology prefers everything to look positive and happy-clappy,
>than to be tarnished by any unfair experiences an individual has
>had. To look out only for the group, to let the dominant crush the
>inconvenient, is the level of primitive animal psychology that
>aspies always pride themselves on being above. Does that mean, on
>grounds of clinical need we can tie all the community of autistic
>organisations to rise above it too? That means, reliably and
>enforceably, to always back wronged individuals against groups in
>every case that ever happens, no matter how inexpedient.
>
>I think clinical need is a brilliant argument to use. We can't
>relate to groups, with the animal instincts of dominance and
>submission. We can't say the right thing all the time and guess what
>people want to hear. So any aspie can call foul any time any
>organisation concerned with our needs ever behaves unfairly as a
>group against an individual. The beauty is, you don't even need a
>majority of aspies to make the effort to do this, nor need to win a
>vote. Just 1 aspie is always medically in the right when they take
>this stand. But, if the 1 aspie is not just going to bring group
>exclusion onto themself by taking the stand, as has happened to me
>in an internet group on education, then the ground must be prepared
>before these situations arise. In research surveys of our needs, in
>groups you get on well with, in activities, and if you take part in
>any medical stuff, individual fairness is a clinical need for
>aspies. Cite it as one, at every opportunity you get. An
>orgnaisation can't deny it without sounding wrong towards aspies'
>social difficulty, then the organisation is tied to do the right
>thing when an example arises.
>
>Suppose you have been wronged by a group advertised in a book, and
>you can't make autistic organisations affix a warning about this to
>every copy sold? How bad that feels shows why you don't feel cared
>about, supported, even accurately represented to the public, by any
>organisation whose head office remote from your life just wants to
>have a happy-clappy image of doing good deeds for the poor dears,
>without responding to personal hurts. Aspies are bright enough that
>the difference between alienation and inclusion hinges on having a
>democratic voice in how AS is portrayed. This even includes the
>criteria for diagnosing it: without the difficulties with metaphor
>or facial reading I didn't have the confidence to count myself an
>aspie until other aspies in a support group gave me it.
>
>At present, a small closed aristocracy of famous authors obsessed
>with praising each other, and national organisations with
>businesslike images who don't want to advertise stories of injustice
>with groups, are the public voice of AS. To change this, it only
>needs a few people to keep asserting that the whole point of
>supporting our social relating problems automatically proves we must
>have explicit immunity from group rejection experiences. Then
>ordinary aspies will have to be listened to and allowed a platform
>to speak out every time we find anything socially unfair in the
>direction AS's public image is taking.
>
>I want to assert that I don't want to benefit from any fundraising
>sport activities with these rules: "The interests and reputation of
>the charity are of paramount importance. The society may at its sole
>discretion withdraw your place on any challenge if it believes it is
>in the best interests of the charity." and "If you are refused entry
>to the country you are visiting, any additional costs are your own
>responsibility." There is a group actually doing this, with these
>outrageous arrogant rules for the nice caring fundraisers. This is
>how I would change the rules: "Individual fairness is of paramount
>importance, and regardless of the best interests of the charity you
>are guaranteed never to have your generous emotions abused by a
>rejection", and "If you are refused entry to the country you are
>visiting, we will all turn round and come home with you and be
>contractually obliged to trash the country in our next literature."
>
>My greatest cause of pain in AS publicity concerns its use of child
>authors, that's Kenneth Hall and Luke Jackson. The wild adulation
>they are getting, is all written as if they had succeeded wholly on
>merit and as if any child with the same abilities could have the
>same success, implying no one else has the abilities. this is doing
>a poisonous mass injustice to both aspies and non-aspies, because it
>shows no awareness that most children who want to be authors are
>being denied the chance, by the volume and abusively tight
>enforcement of school homework that has existed for the past
>generation. I challenge you to look at the record and see that since
>Lindsay Brown in 1978 no child author has emerged to success,
>without having some special factor in their life outside school to
>protect them from homework ruining it. Kenneth Hall is home
>educated, and Luke Jackson, with his horrible personality cult
>labels of unique and amazing, simply had the adults interested in
>his dietary problem, to protect his chance to succeed. So they are
>creations of circumstantial luck most people don't have, and until
>them no non-famous children at all had succeeded as authors since
>1978: a sinister lost generation, that I belong to. Can any aspie
>suffer a more wounding pain of oppression from the present AS image
>machine, than this? - to read the words "It is not often that a 14
>year old boy gets a book published", after I never asked to be a 14
>year old boy with too much homework to get a book published?
>
>There are other reasons, captivity of mind, international law on
>slavery, the abusivensss of mad expectations, children who have
>committed suicide, for holding as I do that homework is a crime
>against humanity. but to every destroyed child author, aspie or not,
>who is upset by Luke, I have an offer. I'm a child author whose
>completion of a sci-fi novel was prevented by criminally idiotic
>life ruining homework in this way, but before it was, I was lucky
>enough to get child author publicity in Welsh newspapers, South
>Wales Echo 20 August 1980 and Western Mail 19 January 1982. The
>point of boasting of this is that it vindicates the genuineness of
>destroyed child authors' experience and shows from historical record
>that we exist. So all destroyed child authors without any historical
>record of their own, you can refer to this in order to have the
>confidence to speak out. Don't live in fear that no one will believe
>you were a child author.
>
>At present this is my top hurting issue, for demanding an
>opportunity to speak out against its present treatment by leading AS
>publicists, that leaves out any recognition of people hurt by a
>common and serious trauma. If we already had the clout we can build,
>to get our social justice feelings voiced by automatic right through
>the big autistic organisations, an alienating pain like this
>couldn't happen.
>
>Maurice Frank - July 2003

maurice frank
- e-mail: aspieknee@lycos.co.uk

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

what's your point?

10.12.2003 20:41

I don't understand what point your making. Is that exploiting children is wrong, or saying that promoting writing by children with aspergers is not always expolitative.

um???


seems plain enough to me

16.12.2003 14:10

The point is fair recognition for everyone, as the article's title said. The Asperger's scene shouldn't promote and iconise the 2 child authors who circumstantial luck has allowed to succeed, without also having to recognise as child authors the missing generation whose chances to succeed and complete books was destroyed by abusive schoolwork loads. It's oppression to leave us unknown and treated as if we weren't child authors.

maurice frank
mail e-mail: aspieknee@lycos.co.uk


What You Going On About!!!

09.03.2004 00:30

I don't know wot yer going on about, but if it's to do with the fact that Luke Jackson got his book recognised due his Asperger Syndrome, then good luck to him.

I 4 1 have read his book Freaks, Geeks And Aspergers Syndrome, it was really kool. I have Aspergers Syndrome myself and it is about time us Autistic people are recognised for whom and wot we are.

I've seen too many times when I've been treated like shit and a person like Luke comes along wot a God send!

Remember Aspies that "Different Is Kool!"

Robby
mail e-mail: Different_Is_Kool@hotmail.com


closed minds

17.03.2004 17:06

First, the good news. A revised version of my article was reinstated on the website concerned. The time it took concerned me that in the meantime the jerk trying to silence me would think she had won, but now it's clear she has not won.

Now, to answer the strange last message. My clear phrase, "a missing generation of child authors whose chance to succeed and complete books was destroyed by abusive schoolwork loads", does not seem to me logically to square with the question "what yer going on about?" It seems to me that it's obvious what I'm going on about, and a mental blockage only arises if you psychologically don't want to believe that child authors with unfair experiences like mine exist.

It seems to me that a question like "what yer going on about" is a form of the "I don't understand trick", when people who understand a thing perfectly well, claim not to understand it for the real reason that they have closed minds and don't want to hear it. I have Asperger's too btw. We are supposed to have logical minds concerned with sharing truth, and that means we must constantly fight against the "I don't understand" trick because it is an oppression of free speech. Facts must be told without being intimidated by whether readers want to hear them. Logically, it is wholly in the spirit of Luke's writing, that the public should be told if there is a ruthless adult machine around him that does not treat other people in a way that fits the writing, and I have experienced personally that this is the case.

maurice frank
mail e-mail: aspieknee@lycos.co.uk


everyone's personal fairness has an automatic right to be heard

28.03.2004 15:22

It is a form of social oppression to say "Wot yer going on about?" to ANYONE who has explained perfectly well what they are going on about. The "I don't understand" trick, when a person who clearly understands a thing perfectly well but claims they don't for the real reason that they don't weant to hear it, is a trick to destroy free speech and control ideas.
Every human being who doesn't want to care or think about the oppressed child authors, is automatically a child abuser. The only human beings on the face of the earth who are not child abusers are those who do, by automatic duty, want to care about the oppressed child authors including me.
I have been treated like shit by groups advertised in the book concerned, and that makes it fraudulent that the book has not been automatically withdrawn from circulation, including by Luke's mother who knows I exist, to remove both groups from its contact list. Nothing about the ruthless publicity machine around Luke is what it seems to complacent wishful thinkers. And how can Luke possibly be a godsend if he thinks "there is no smoke without fire?" Though he didn't really write 12/13 of the book, as his mother openly admitted in the Times 16-8-02, if he wants his name associated with a Lord Denning belief system perhaps he would like to explain himself to the Northern Irish miscarriage of justice survivors. Some godsend, hmmm? And do you think crackpot advice to get themelves badly hurt at school by openly telling their peers who they fancy, was a godsend for any vulnerable suicidal teenager to read? I don't think it was at all!

maurice frank
mail e-mail: aspieknee@lycos.co.uk


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