Boycotting businesses who support Autism Speaks

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Last year, I made a silent decision to boycott business and corpos (corporations) who have the infamous Autism Speaks amongst the organizations they support. For our members outside of North America, a good part of this may not necessarily apply to you. Still, I'd like us as an autism/Aspergers community this April to honor Autism Awareness Month by showing them that Autism is NOT a disease, as they so view it.

A list of Autism Speaks' corporate sponsors can be found here.

I thought Panera bread had cut ties.

I've bookmarked the page and I'm going to write boycott letters to all of those companies this April.

In general, I want us to follow the activist technique of speaking truth to power.

And where the large bureaucratic organization is mistaken, we can use that as an occasion to continue the conversation, for example:

"And people can also speak through sign language and through a laptop keyboard."

"And autism is a spectrum, and it's high time that the majority of the board is composed of persons who are themselves on the spectrum"

And, one of my favorites, "We are all middle functioning.  And if you look at it a certain way, we certainly are"

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DISCLOSURE:  So far, I personally have not had real good results when I'm shared with people that I'm almost certainly on the spectrum.  I self-diagnose and I'm comfortable self-diagnosing.

I think I'm going to start experimenting with "now, you have heard that autism is a spectrum, right?"  And then keeping it light and positive, and most of all brief.

i never shop at those stores anyway, however i am worried about FedEx; i cannot choose which shipping company handles my packages.

damn,america seriously needs a lorna wing [she launched the UKs national autistic society and it is a incredible charity],pity temple grandin coudnt set up a truly autism friendly autism society.

a few of the old support staff of mine from the national autistic society [UK] are also friends of mine on fb and they were promoting autism speaks 'light it up blue' campaign during last years awareness month-to them it looked like an innocent thing to forward amongst each other,so had brought them up to speed on AS beliefs,immoral donation spending,quack investing etc, woud recommend WPers from the UK who come across AS educate them in time for april the second [world autism awareness day].

we may not be able to avoid buying from companies that are in america,but we can certainly contribute in other ways.

i will let all 4 of "my people" know about this boycott

Modells is going to be painful but I'm in!

I will pass the link along

Nice topic! Thank you. I will pass the info about all the corporations.

We have Toys'R US here in Australia I don't buy there though.
Even if I had anyone to buy for I wouldn't go there knowing they support an organisation like that.

Autism speaks views people as people on the spectrum as puzzle pieces to be solved and to do that they think that "behaviour treatments" at an early age get kids "off the spectrum" in early adulthood. It reminds me of attempts to "cure" gay people decades ago. Just awful.

GUYS!! GUYS!! time out! When are you gonna get it in to your heads that Autism Speaks is not the problem here. It the NT parents of autistic kids that's the problem. We need to educate these parents about autism because it the parents that think it the end of the world because there kid is autistic and it's because of that that why Autism Speaks exist.

You can't educate people who don't want to be educated. If you can speak you have no right to speak for or about my child. That sentiment is almost unanimous among their supporters (not all parents of autistic kids). Hopefully someday they will listen to their kids, although that is questionable, they will probably reason it is Autism speaking not their kid.

Autism Speaks gives these parents a sense of unity and Autism Speaks money puts their thoughts into action.