Start-Up Learns From Its Autistic Staff

Matt Sabady of Einstein Productions.

It's all about living, loving and working -- our new mission at YAI. And it's stories like this which are so reaffirming.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. -- Renee Graber graduated from Marquette University nearly two years ago with a major in broadcast and electronic communication and a minor in film studies. After trying to find her footing in Los Angeles, she returned to Milwaukee where she found herself working with Matt Sabady, a 23-year-old with high-functioning autism, at a local Milwaukee start-up company - Einstein Productions - that is breaking the stigma regarding young adults with autism.
Einstein Productions, a nonprofit that opened its doors in September in The Shops of Grand Avenue, aims at assisting two sets of individuals in achieving their future careers in communication: recent graduates of Marquette University's Diederich College of Communication and high-functioning young adults with autism spectrum disorders.

The R Word is Never Acceptable

The great U.S. Supreme Court Justice and American civil rights hero Thurgood Marshall once wrote that the plight of persons with developmental disabilities was not unlike a “regime of state-mandated segregation…that in its virulence and bigotry rivaled, and indeed paralleled, the worst excesses of Jim Crow.”
Despite progress, though, it is undeniable that Americans with developmental disabilities still remain second-class citizens in the eyes of the law and our fellow human beings. Those with developmental disabilities are rarely heard from in our popular culture or social policy or political dialogue. Part of this tragic injustice is the ridicule of the developmentally disabled, and there is no greater symbolic gesture of this ridicule than the accepted use of the word “retarded” in day-to-day speech.

Autism Does Not Cause Violence; It's a Developmental Disorder, Not a Mental Illness

Much has been made of Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., who took so many innocent lives, as having Asperger Syndrome, a high functioning condition on the autism spectrum which has recently been reclassified as autism. Experts and parents who have children with Asperger Syndrome want everyone to know that there is no correlation between autism and violence and express concern that autism is a developmental disorder and NOT a mental illness. Parents of those with autism, who are already too often stigmatized in our society, are worried that this will lead to their kids being further shunned and misunderstood.

Student Honored for Campaign Against 'R-Word'

BEDFORD, Texas -- Two years ago, Katie Pullano stood up to a teacher who used an offensive word during class.
"A teacher in the seventh grade said that something a student had done was retarded," said Pullano, a ninth-grader at Harwood Junior High School. "I told her the connotation of the word doesn't come off right. She shouldn't be teaching it to teens."
An argument ensued but, Pullano said, the teacher eventually accepted her position and respected her objection.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/05/20/3973833/bedford-ninth-grader-honored-for.html#storylink=cpy