Citizen Carding: Toronto's Amended Carding Policy

Parents keep their eyes on the baby learning to open the the front door or climb over the baby-proof gate. Teachers watch those marking-software graphs, eyes out for a sloping curve. If we are suspicious of something to happen, we may step in and solve it in advance. There should be nothing wrong with this idea, right?

Do you know where I'm going? Maybe you do. A study performed by two researchers, one at the University of California and another at the University of Texas showed that in video games of "action/shooter variety of urban/street gaming, blacks and Latinos are portrayed as brutally violent, casually criminal and sexually promiscuous." Surely a civilized society is not done with racial bias?

If you live in Toronto then you must know where I'm going by now. If you don't live in Toronto then still sit back and I'll fill you in about Toronto's Carding Policy.

This month, amendments to Toronto's c0arding policy were approved by Toronto's Police Board. In the revised policy, police officers do not need to give receipts to those they have stopped. Instead they hand out a business card. They do not need to explain citizens of their right to walk away. They can investigate any citizen without a specified reason to do so. The policy's amendments come against the Ontario Human Rights Commission's reccomendations which include informing carded citizens of their right to leave and be silent, collecting and analysing race-based data to detect racial biases in the first place, hand out receipts, limiting an officer's power to stop a person and ridding any carding-related data which "lacks a non-discriminatory explanation."

Even though Toronto is only 8 percent black, in July 2014 the Toronto Star revealed that 27.4 percent of those carded are black. My calculator gives 3.4 times likely to be carded.

A police officer cannot be a community member when using racial bias on the job while serving a community. It may not be a crime, yet when we over-target specific communities, we continue to show that blacks are untrustworthy. We continue to propagate the idea which sat on the North American Plate since the first European settlers arrived, that a person with darker skin is more uncivilized than a person of lighter skin. We continue to put those of dark colour in fear of their next encounter and frustration of why it might be the twenty-sixth time or fiftieth time a police car has stopped them while doing nothing wrong in the first place. Last summer I read Malala Yousafzai's I am Malala (currently one of my favourite books) in which she describes her childhood in Pakistan, a place where one must bribe their way to a fair trial. I heard stories from India of authorities that will not give you a fair say for whom you are. When we allow those in authority to use discrimination on the job, we only stumble a few steps back - or let me be more inclusive and say wheel a few metres back - rather than moving forward to build the progressive multicultural society we want to boast of, some already doing. Race-based policing has no place and neither does a policy which embraces it.

Mark Saunders. Taken from:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/04/24/why-mark-saunders-is-a-bittersweet-appointment-for-torontos-black-community.html

The Toronto Police Board chose Mark Saunders as our new chief on April 17th. Unlike Blair, his skin is dark enough to call him black. Can we expect changes to the carding policy? I cannot say I know so. I'm not sure whether Saunders will uphold the policies rooted or shovel around the tree until it tips it over. Meanwhile I urge Saunders to amend the policy. I urge Toronto's police board to stand up to the amended carding policy. I want to walk Toronto's streets believing we live in a society of fair trial where you are not discriminated by a person in authority for whom you are. No person in authority should put down a person for their colour or stereotype.

- FA

P. S: I'm sorry to hear about the earthquake in Nepal. My prayers are with them and this week I'll be donating to relief efforts.



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Equal Pay Day: From a Female Future Engineer

April 20th. It's Equal Pay Day today.

The United Nations recently released a statement that at its current rate, we will not close the gender gap for seventy years. Currently worldwide, a woman earns seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man earns. In the UK, a woman without children earn 25% higher than one with two children. (I myself am one of two.)

Yes, I'm entering a STEM field. High expectations for one wrongly pressed button on the calculator can cost one hundred and fifty lives. About one in every four of my classmates is female. "Why did you go into engineering?" "I guess I like Chemistry, and it has good pay." "Why did you go into engineering?" "To make fossil fuels history." In the United States, for a dollar a male computer hardware engineer makes, a woman makes eighty-four cents. For a dollar a male computer software engineer makes, a woman earns eighty-eight cents. In the United Kingdom, by the age of 40 a female chemical engineer receives 75 percent of what a male chemical engineer receives in pay.

75 percent? By the grading systems I've lived with, a B. 84 cents of one hundred? An A-. 88 cents of 100? A. The only problem with such gradings is that the peers and I are not ranked by the same test.

Do I want to live my entire career - or life, considering that the average life expectancy for women in Ontario was 84 as of 2009 and I could be 88 by the time we are likely to advance against the gender gap - earning less than a male counterpart? No way. Do I want my salary to suggest I was taught fewer concepts than male classmates sitting in the seat next to me in every lecture hall I attended? No way. I put the word 'dread' to the gender gap.

It's not just I and the friends I've made in my courses these past eight months or my industrial engineering aunt almost completing a year of work at her new company, having been laid off at her previous company after returning from her second maternity leave. I went out to lunch this week with a very close friend studying Health Sciences. I've been cheering on a twelfth-grade friend via email as she aims for a spot at the University of Toronto's Rotman. Executives in an organization I'm also an executive for studying subjects such as History. Do I want to see their futures lagging behind those of male job applicants or male coworkers for their gender? Not a single bit.

There is nothing impatient about not wanting to wait until my five-month-old cousin - my very first female Canadian cousin with an electrical engineer for a dad - turns seventy. The change is well-overdue by decades. Three years and I'll be ready for my first full-time job. After its acceptance will come the other milestones of adulthood: first paycheque of my new job, thirteenth paycheque of the job, first apartment alone, first money deposited for retirement and if the highway's commuters shift to a future relief line and growth increases exponentially in the renewable, maybe buy my first and solar-panel-run car. (Taking the subway is actually cheaper, so I may stick to it.) Financially it should not be harder for me than a male person sitting in my lecture halls unless they were born with engineering knowledge. Financially it should not be harder for any woman on this planet and a male counterpart.

What do I do for now? The answer is easy for now. I enter my exam tomorrow (Yes, I'm blogging the night before an exam.) where I'm sure I will not be asked easier questions than a male friend. Fast forward a few years and I've slipped on my iron ring, however . . . the words of a former teacher echoing in my head about women's participation in the Sciences at a time when I had first considered entering the Sciences and only a few months before I suddenly pieced together my vision of my future engineering career, my determination that I would stay unstoppable . . . "Science needs you . . ."

- FA

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The Right to Free Healthcare: Funding At-Home Cancer Drugs

Daffodil Pins for Daffodil Days

It might've been on your commute or as you were walking into a multi-storey office building downtown or in a grocery store you attend. A person in a yellow apron carrying a box filled with plastic pins and a money slot. Daffodil Days. I myself raised some funds downtown. Meanwhile at the end of March I heard about the Daffodil Days campaign starting back at my high school and felt pride to my former teacher supervisor for continuing my initiative. As it is Daffodil Month, today's blog post shifts towards healthcare rights in, as you most likely guessed in the last second, cancer.

First as a backgrounder, cancer is caused by cells in the body dividing uncontrollably due to a negative mutation, or change in its DNA information. Different methods of treatment currently include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, biological therapy, hormonal therapy, stem cell therapy and surgery. Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancerous cells, radiation therapy uses high-energy light (radiation) to repeatedly destroy cancerous cells, hormonal therapy changes specific body hormonal levels to prevent cancerous cells from growing, biological therapy changes cancer cell behaviour by using substances mimicking regular substances which cancer cells use, stem cell transplants introduce stem cells to the bone marrow if it has been damaged by other types of therapy while surgery removes the cancer-infected portion of a patient's body. In 2009, it was predicted that "45% of men and 41% of women" will develop cancer in their lives while 2006-2008 estimates predicted that the five-year-survival rate is 63% of those diagnosed, ranging between 17% for lung cancer and 96% for prostrate cancer.

Three types of the treatment I mentioned above require specific cancer drugs to be treated. Alongside treatment-specific drugs, cancer patients are prescribed medications to reduce negative side effects of treatments.

Approximately one-third of cancer medications are taken at home rather than the hospital, though this number is expected to reach sixty percent. If taken at the hospital, cancer patients do not have to pay for their drugs. If taken at home, they pay additional costs. According to the Canadian Cancer Society, "about three-quarters of newer cancer drugs taken at home cost over $20,000. The average cost of a single course of treatment with newer cancer drugs is $65,000." Even though Ontario has its Drug Benefit Plan which covers cancer medication costs for those on social assistance or seniors, co-payments result in paying $6,000 annually. The plan also sets an annual deductible of around $100. Furthermore differences in cost coverage between provinces have that a patient's location decides what amount they pay. Canada's western provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) and Quebec cover costs for home-administered drugs while the same coverage lacks in other provinces. Three years ago Manitoba introduced its initiative to "fund oral cancer drugs through the new Manitoba Home Cancer Drug Program (HCD) which is a program for Manitobans diagnosed with cancer that funds eligible outpatient oral cancer and specific supportive drugs, as listed in the HCD Program Formulary, at no cost to the patient." For almost a year in New Brunswick, the program has been in effect. Yet some believe that the insurance rates of the plan are costly for rates which "range from $800 per year for an individual earning less than $26,360 or a single person with children or a couple with or without children earning $49,389 or less. The highest fee is $2,000 per year for an individual earning more than $75,000 or a single person with children or a couple with or without children earning more than $100,000." At the same time, it requires a 30% co-payment for each drug, limited to thirty dollars per prescription.

What impact arises from paying large amounts of money to receive cancer medications? According to the Canadian Cancer Society, nine of ten cancer patients experience financial difficulties in paying for cancer treatment. 16.5% of Ontarians in a study found out-of-pocket treatment costs "significant" and 3.9% found them "unmanageable." Rural patients have travel costs for treatment, an estimated of $1000 in Newfoundland and Laborador. The younger a patient is, the larger the financial impact the patient pays for treatment. Additional costs arise in those that take time off work to be treated or to care for a family member with cancer. Some have sold property or assets to pay for costs. Recently the Ottawa Citizen covered a woman who sold her business to pay for her cancer treatment, leaving it with only one other employee. Some cancer patients are skipping doses or treatment altogether to avoid the financial impact. A study performed by the University of North Carolina showed that those with higher drug co-payments were seventy percent likelier to end their treatment and forty-two percent likelier to skip doses.

Why should a living person on the planet need to spend large amounts of money to fight for their life? There is no right to give a person the opportunity to choose survival chance at the price of financial hardship or saved money by guaranteeing death. There is no right for cancer treatments to be as costly as an expensive Ontario university education. (Whose costs also need to decrease) Is cancer not enough of a stressful challenge without worrying about the inability to pay for treatment? Life-and-death situations should not become debt-or-death situations. A person at meetings at the Canadian Cancer Society battled cancer at a young age. I know those that know those fighting cancer. Last year when I did a Daffodil Days campaign at my high school and travelled across the school to collect signatures to an "I'm donating for" wall, many had personal connections to cancer. Is this what I want them and those they know with cancer to face? Not at all. 45% of males and 41% of females. (As I am religious, I will use the following term -) God-forbid my dread that those close to me or those close to those close to me join the statistics, how will they pay? The second-last situation I want to see them in is to consider selling their assets or anticipating social insurance simply for the right to fight for their life or not having enough in the first place to fight for it. (What is the last situation, you wonder? Death itself.) It is almost a situation where one is convicted of a crime and must bribe large amounts of money to receive a trial. Is this what we call free healthcare? The right to healthcare? The right to treatment? I disagree.

In the dread of being another person watching a person we know enter hardship in the face of survival, another doctor addressing patients' financial concerns with empty solutions, or a cancer patient ourselves wishing we relocated to another province earlier enough, what do we do? I believe there is hope. A coalition of thirty non-profit organizations, CanCertainty, are calling to provincial governments to cover take-at-home medications. The Canadian Cancer Society's Ontario Division posted a petition to Ontario MPPs (provincial politicians) on its Ontario Division Take Action webpage. Media coverage is spreading on the issue. We have the power to address our politicians. We have the power to not give up in turning around Debt-or-Death to fulfilling of one of CanCertainty's slogans: "Cancer isn't fair, but access to treatment should be." 
 

One of CanCertainty's slogans: "Cancer isn't fair, but access to treatment should be."
Taken from http://www.cancertaintyforall.ca/social_media_resources

- FA

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International Day of Pink: Stepping Beyond the Door of Dismissal

Happy International Day of Pink!

(For those of you that saw my last blog post, don't worry as this time I got the colour right.)

TDSB Pink Logo. Taken from
http://www.tdsb.on.ca/News/ArticleDetails/TabId/116/ArtMID/474/default.aspx?ArticleID=536

Schools encouraging their students to wear pink. The TDSB (Toronto District School Board) logo going pink on its website today. At the same time it is upsetting that the need to bring everyone together in a pink shirt still remains. In other words, bullying continues. It's not only the kid that pushes another on the playground. It's not only the kid being laughed at for their height, whether it be tall or short or somewhere in between. It's not only stories like Jeremy Dias's and the stream of insults and push against ignorance he received for being gay. It's in some workplaces. It's in some societies with parental pressure and relatives' ideologies.

Why isn't it stopping? Before I answer it, I want to turn your attention to two myths on bullying.

Myth one: Bullies grow out of it.
Fact: Those predicting that age is inversely proportional to one's kindness level calculated with the wrong formula. According to a 2007 survey, 37% were bullied in the workplace. In fact, "workplace bullying causes $3 billion in lost productivity and a staggering $19 billion loss in employment every year." A few months ago I was at a scholarship reception and person serving us told me of a person she knew who had to switch her job because she was bullied. Meanwhile a second study showed that childhood bullies were likely to become criminals. I myself have been bullied of those across multiple age groups - from those whose also born in 1996 to ex-aunts, ex-uncles and a former history teacher. To them, was bullying simply a phase of childhood? I think not.

Myth two: Bullying strengthens its victims.
Also proven false. Those having been bullied are likelier to have health difficulties. Those bullied in the workplace have "stress-related-problems." We also cannot discount those that have committed suicide from bullying, those that never had a chance to 'get over it.' I myself still have shudders from my tenth-grade History teacher forcing me to endure violent movies, the right to promote Autistic dignity unlearned.

I have noticed that one of the biggest factors in bullying is ignorance. Yes, we've heard "Don't be a bystander. Speak up." When bullied in elementary school, I told teachers and yet the situation worsened until I begun high school in another area. (A similar situation happened for a friend who left earlier to Oshawa.) Just turn to Google News and you'll find recounts of parents that told authorities who claimed they could not stop the situation. What about the 62% of employers that are told about workplace bullying but do not act on it?

Yes. It is easy to live without doing the difficult. It is easy to live attempting to believe that structures are working well, that the person reporting workplace harassment is overacting or that kids will grow out of what they are doing. Yet we cannot end bullying without acknowledging it. We cannot end bullying without confronting it, without taking the extra few stories up a CN Tower-analagous staircase, without exerting our courage against a fear of put-downs, of 'getting involved,' a fear analagous to the pull of gravity. Yet take a look at the world. We've come several stories up the staircase with anti-bullying initiatives and bullying sometimes in the spotlight on Google News. I already suspect my twitter feed will overcrowd from #DayofPink. I see many leaders and ordinary persons alike with the ability to implement and improve bullying prevention training in workplaces or stand up to the next person uttering a slur. Sticking to my CN Tower analogy, we all have the potential to reach the tip of the tower in communicating for a discrimination- and harrassment-free tomorrow. The stop starts with us.

- FA

Holding a CCGSD Day of Pink button in my pen-ink-stained hand.

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World Autism Day 2015

Wearing purple for World Autism
Day today

Finally. World Autism Day 2015.

It's been a day of substituting a teal spring jacket for two hoodies. Wearing as much violet as I can. Noticing the CN Tower reflect 8:30 AM rays. Noticing that its glass windows reflect blue in the daytime. Other than that, it feels it is an ordinary day. Lectures, tutorials, email inboxes, twitter feeds, excitement that a train I boarded today had a a different subway chime . . . Yet Toronto's own Mark Saunders has tweeted to Autism Speaks. Yesterday had I looked south on my commute home from an evening tutorial, I might have seen the steel needlepoint-and-disc-shaped tower and its blue photons. I imagine it wouldn't have been a pleasant view. I therefore address each of you today.

To those that are Autistic, there is nothing wrong with you. Having Autism demonstrates that you are awesome. Let's combine this further and call you 'awetsome.' Maybe you can't look a person in the cornea. Maybe you don't use your voice to speak. Maybe you have a hearing sensitivity so strong that you couldn't concentrate on your studies on the bus for two minutes because several loud teenagers boarded the bus. In the long run they are not your weaknesses but your strengths. For example, my hearing sensitivity gives me the ability to work with the songs I like on my musical keyboard. Your talents, passions and qualities therefore do not make you part of an endemic or a pandemic, but humanity. Today I celebrate you.

To those that aren't Autistic but support Autistic individuals for whom we are, give yourself a pat on the back. (Or if you're not comfortable with patting yourself on the back, go buy yourself some non-Lindt chocolate.) Autism acceptance does not take only one Autistic or one person, but both Autistics and non-Autistics to manifest to reality. I am grateful to have witnessed such a reality in several people. Thank you for smiling at our strengths and regarding our weaknesses as traits to complement our personalities rather than hindrances to our lives. You make the world a better place to be. Keep it up.

To those of you that believe Autism is an illness to be cured, it is time to identify the neurons in your head synapsing "illness," "disease," "pandemic," "epidemic," "cure," "hopeless," "incompassionate," and "missing" and halt your synapse in their tracks. Begin the electric potential in the neurons which recognize words such as "talented," "complete," "person," "diverse," and the phrase "worth it." Do you believe your negativity raises awareness? Think again. It only propagates hatred for something which need not be disliked. They say two negatives make a positive, but negative-one subtract one only makes negative two. It's time you learned to add.

To those of you that hear upon curing on your SONY or Panasonic screens, your iPhone showing your local newspaper

Union Station on the Yonge-University-Spadina
Subway

(whether it be the Toronto Star, CBC or otherwise) or just walked past the Geneva Centre for Autism on an ordinary day in Toronto, and have neither internalized Autism positivity nor negativity, you have two choices. First, you can see us as disorders. Those that will never fit into society. A person that will not say "I love you" to a mother and maybe cannot love. A child whose social skills are at the point that she knows the stations on Toronto's Yonge-University-Spadina line more than she knows her own classmates. Is it worth a trip down the YUS to Geneva? A teenager who can't stand movies because she's too sensitive for their violence and how in the world is she going to survive a university program where one is repeatedly warned to never break a bridge? Yet you have another choice, and that is to understand us as human beings rather than assume us as collections of failure. The person that couldn't communicate using sound could still communicate, for the person had emotions and social media. (Only the tip of the iceberg to non-verbal communication.) The child that didn't say "I love you" felt it. The subway-loving child grew up to reroute her commute the night a station on her route closed and shuttle bus lineups packed the station. The adult who found friends that understood her including one that asked that the volume be turned down in a loud restaurant so both could enjoy a falafel plate. You have the choice to build or hinder a community of Autism digintiy, of Autism acceptance.

In fact you all have the choice - and potential - to build or hinder such a community. In such a community it is time to become an architect.

- FA

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The Hues of Autism Awareness

In two days it will be World Autism Day. In the past week I've looked over midterm marks, planned how I will celebrate World Autism Day and finalized an apology letter to the teachers back in my high school.

Apology letter? Why?

Today I'm here to tell a story. Similar to my last post, it begins with a young person by the initials FA. A young person unknowing that puzzle pieces represented incompleteness, a person unsolvable as Schrodinger's Wave Equation. A fourteen-year-old standing in her living room one night in April 2011 as her mom watched CP24 announce it was World Autism Awareness Day and her own CN Tower and Niagara Falls were lighting up blue for Autism. In excitement, at her hP laptop she Print-screen-sys-rq on CP24's website and saved the photo to her computer. Forgetting to delete it before backing up her former laptop's hard drive as it started breaking and amidst a search for a Windows 7 laptop just as Microsoft launches Windows 10, its binary digits will not be resuscitated for deletion from a 2 TB external hard drive until she finally find a Windows 7 laptop. (Yes, just as Windows 10 is being released. No wonder it is taking too long.)

Canadian Cancer Society Main Office

For those of you that know what Autism Speaks is, skip the next few sentences. For those that don't know, Autism Speaks, though told to be the largest organization worldwide for Autism, is also one of the most hurtful. It promotes that we, the Autistic, are burdens to those that we know and need our Autism removed if we shall function in today's society. For example, its founder Susan Wright compared having three million Autistic children in the United States to having three million missing children. (Shudder.) The organization released a video in 2009 called "I am Autism" in which a voice states that Autism is worse than "pediatric AIDS, cancer and diabetes combined" and that we "know no morality." But we, the Autistic, are not what Autism Speaks portrays us to be. Because I can focus deeply on my passions of global equality and the Sciences, I am succeeding in first-year Engineering with visions of leading the the renewable energy industry. My passion for social justice fuels my blog and landed me a scholarship. Surely I must not lack at least a molecule of morality? I will fundraise this April for the Canadian Cancer Society's Daffodil Days. Last year I raised $175.75 at a subway station for them and coordinated a team to raise over $300 at my high school. Does it sound worse than cancer? Surely this cannot be Autistic? Autism Speaks cannot speak for me.

Two years passed and I was an eleventh-grade student swirling sodium hydroxide flasks for my Chemistry teacher (I used to volunteer for him), urging my fellow Student Parliament members to serve halal food or at least post disclaimers at our events, celebrating my success arranging Pink Shirt Day and organizing an Autism Awareness campaign at my high school. For a week leading up to World Autism Day, I performed announcements highlighting the medical view of curing Autism and challenged the school to consider how much it hurt. If you didn't know me you wouldn't have known that "their" were based on "mine." I concluded with a final announcement on World Autism Day shouting with enthusiasm to focus on the positive in Autistic individuals. Yet my campaign was not black and white in the call to acceptance, yet rather splashed with my organized Wear-it-Blue and success for at least a third of teachers and students came that day in blue tops and hijabs.

Fast-forward a year and the twelfth-grade FA was celebrating her three early acceptances to university, stressing over a novel-sized Writer's Craft project and organizing an Autism Awareness campaign. This time I planned a single-day announcement. If you saw my previous blog (and if you didn't, don't worry) you would know that I abandoned researching Autism and spoke in pretense that I interviewed another student. (As I said, does the Autistic need Google to look up Autism?) Those that knew I had Asperger's Syndrome saw through the supposed interview. Otherwise the one with FA's initials was and was not Autistic, Schrodinger's duality. Some never suspected I didn't interview a student. My French teacher from the ninth grade complemented my announcement in the hallway. My Chemistry teacher from the eleventh grade complemented me with "Nice announcement!" smiling at me in a blue shirt. That's right. I ran Wear it Blue once again. My Physics teacher showed up in class in a blue sweater. My blue sleeve raised my hand to his questions. The only blessing in disguise was that I did not promote Wear it Blue well in advance and it was only those that I personally told to wear Blue that remembered. I had been glad seeing my teachers promoting Autism Acceptance and proud to not only hear the announcement compliments knowing that I was almost starting a revolution of Autism Acceptance. I didn't know I had to fear that I sent the wrong message or complain that I left it behind, that of all the questions I could have asked, taking up my teachers' time with them, there was one I never asked.

Albert Einstein stated, "The important thing is not to stop questioning." For three years and a half I did not question Autism's association with the colour blue. I assumed using blue for Autism awareness seldom differed from using white in the commitment to end violence against women, pink for Pink Shirt Day, the pride flag to celebrate LGBTQ individuals and yellow for cancer. I never questioned their history - who wants another Montreal Massacre? Who wants a kid bullied for wearing a pink shirt? Why should we call a person unworthy for the gender of their crush or themselves? Who wants cancer? Nobody. I didn't need to question them for I almost memorized the story of Pink Shirt Day, read in July that the late NDP leader Jack Layton begun the white ribbon campaign, discovered that the rainbow flag was started by a LGBTQ advocate and read walking through the Canadian Cancer Society's main office as an office volunteer last summer about Daffodil Days's first days. I didn't consider that Autism's association with blue had a more sinister story, a bit closer to a pink triangle than a pride flag.

Regretfully I admit that I only discovered last December 22nd as I prepared to launch Arriving at. Awetsome. the next day, carefully tailoring my Google search to uncover Autism's association with the colour blue, trying to ensure I made no mistakes in my blog. Along with Autism Speaks's official website, Google returned Why I will not light it blue on Huffington Post and other complaining Autism advocates. The passenger assistance alarm had been pulled and finally the train had stopped. Finally the flashlight revealed Autism Speaks's name beside the blue photons.

How did I get away with hosting Wear it Blue in a public institution, in a high school, moreover a high school which had a semi-segregated program specifically for Autistic students? (I didn't qualify as 'severe' enough to be in the program and therefore had an integrated experience. Meanwhile I see little difference between them, I and the school's other students.) A few teachers in my school were known Autism Speaks supporters and wouldn't have put down Wear it Blue. Yet what about the teachers that promoted a respective environment for me, from the teacher who suggested the name Awetsome for my blog to my in-school Daffodil Days supervisor to my Equity Club supervisors? How did it pass under their noses, alongside the school's at-least-thirty more staff and its Principal? They simply did not know. As the fourteen-year-old teenager watching the SONY HD on April 2nd in 2011, they inhaled the same double-standard from the media that while Autism is something to be cured, there are mathematical geniuses whose brains succeed from Autism. They, as I, had heard the voice of reporters and disappointed parents rather than the Autistic themselves. They, as I, had heard about the CN Tower and Niagara Falls shining their 475-nanometre-emmiting LEDs to raise awareness. None of us - teachers, students, community members and I alike - noticed hatred beneath the surface. I therefore am unsurprised that no one questioned my initiative. Light it Blue fooled an Autism advocate after all. If my teachers had known about Autism Speaks's devaluing work, I imagine at least five teachers potentially pulling me from class or calling me to their offices on our lunch break. Both campaigns would have ended before execution if my own Equity Club supervisors had caught me. I wouldn't have projected the colour blue to my school community, a community with Autistic students, a community where many could warm my heart in respect and excitement for difference. I wouldn't have searched for a teacher back in my high school to convey my apology to its staff. I took almost three years to notice that I had led a team into the rain without an umbrella, for I live on a planet where few notice storm clouds forming.

Some Autistic advocates argue that we do not need awareness but acceptance. I want to tailor this definition. We need awareness of the need for acceptance. We need awareness that we, the Autistic, are not your mother's troublesome child. Yes, since I was a baby I woke up my mom at 6 AM in the morning on weekends. It was just something that made me me, just as another kid points out ice cream while passing Baskin Robins in a mall. We need awareness that we, the Autistic, can turn our passions and obsessions to strengths. When I was a child I made story after story. At almost 16, I got published in a short-story contest and at 17 I earned the highest mark in my writer's craft course. When I was young I constantly touched the furniture in my relatives' houses. (They were extremely strict and so I was told off most of the time.) The same curiosity made me one of my high school's strongest Science students last year. We need awareness that there is nothing wrong with our sensitivies, or seeming lack of them. My emotional ability is strong enough that I can't watch regular movies. My emotional ability is so strong that I can blog for social justice and was once called one of the unlikeliest to become a Macbeth. We need awareness that we, Autistic individuals, are hurting. Hurting in being shuttled between therapies. Hurting in being told off for being ourselves, for doing something simply because nobody else is doing it. Hurting because those of us that are non-verbal are accused of not being able to communicate. Hurting because we are told that we shouldn't need to close our ears when an ordinary conversation almost blares. Hurting because each month I cannot survive Google without finding even the mere outline of a link against Autism. It's time we stop the hurting. It's time we stop seeking to light the CN Tower with blue quanta at 0.3 million kilometres per second and rather shine the light on Autism. Talent will glint in the pool of your flashlight if we change the direction we point them. We were never able to read books in the nighttime as long as we pointed our flashlight to the window.

If not blue on Thursday, then what colour? I heard that several Autism advocates are going red. Yet since Monday December 22nd, my mind is fixed on purple. It is my blog's colour after all. You'll see on my Twitter that I used a black permanent marker tinged with violet to write "Arriving at. Awetsome." on a piece of plastic. What better way to celebrate my own Awetsome this Thursday than violet? Yes, I'll need to work my way around wearing my blue spring jacket and still stay warm as Torontionian temperatures fluctuate between zero and ten degrees this week. Maybe I'll layer all my non-blue sweaters, transforming into an indoor sweat machine for a day? I do need to replace my running shoes's blue laces. Yet I look back at the simplicity of a blue shirt, at a blue CN Tower, blue Niagara falls and blue who-knows-what-else. Scientifically, violet light is higher-energy than blue light. It's time to challenge you to look beyond the blue, to take the extra energy to not believe the news' simple facts - and smile in the power of nuance.

- FA

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The Puzzle Piece: A Misconception of Incompleteness

Subway train at the end of the line

Though I remember having a jumbo ten-piece Sesame Street puzzle about fifteen years ago, I don't recall being too fond of puzzles. Rather I was interested in complex or real-life questions to be answered and challenges to pursue. For example, why are we getting on the train that just entered the station from the opposite direction? (Because not all trains reaching terminal stations go straight to the Train-yard.) What procedures do you follow when the fire alarm starts ringing? (As a child I took a liking to my then-apartment building's information guide. Not only did I learn about waving a cloth on your balcony if you can't evacuate a fire but made my sister laugh at the rule barring bringing furniture to our swimming pool.) Will Harry survive his encounter stopping Snape from snatching the Philospher's Stone? (You seldom need a spoiler alert to know one cannot survive book 6 without surviving book 1.) What mass of sodium hydroxide do you need to react one litre of 1.0 M (Moles per litre) hydrochloric acid to make salt water? (Abut 40 grams. Meanwhile I am not responsible for the result of any at-home experiments with home-grade Muriatic Acid.) What speed must the car maintain on the inclined ramp if it will stay on it? What plot will bridge my character between the first and last pages in my novel? What path does the road connecting a lecture on electric flux to fulfilling my envision of a fossil-free city take? Or, how do I stop the world in believing my worth as an incomplete jigsaw?

I don't know from where I heard it. I don't remember whether it was another person, the SONY HD crowding my living room or the screen of a Windows Vista projecting bits and binary digits from a blue Ethernet wire. Yet at a time in my life I heard that the puzzle piece symbolized Autism as a simile to that the Autistic way of seeing the world differently fits to us. Everything falls into place. Everything makes sense.

Imagine the twelve-year-old FA's perceptions. Imagine that a person having been bullied for not being able to shoot a basketball into a net and excluded for reasons I still don't understand, gaining attention for something she could do. Though I was a bit confused how everything to me fit into place, I was glad that the world gave me attention for something I could do.

Childhood innocence began to falter. I started wondering why Autism Speaks, an organization advocating to remove Autism from Society and setting its logo a blue puzzle piece, had 'abused the puzzle piece.' About a year ago, attempting an unsuccessful research for facts on Autism for my World Autism Day announcement at my school, I saw the glimpse of a person stating he wanted to find the "missing puzzle pieces." He was referring to his Autistic child. Aside from finding and distracting one of my high school's kindest teachers also on spare from a marking pile to complain to about until I felt better, I wondered why the man on the internet abused the puzzle piece sign. In fact, how were so many individuals and organizations abusing the puzzle piece sign? Had the sign but not the meaning itself become the norm in portraying Autism?

Trees in a thin soil are meant to uproot. For what it was meant, Autism Speaks, the man in the news and countless more organizations weren't abusing it. The puzzle piece was not meant to represent completeness but incompleteness. To the person that first introduced the puzzle piece idea to the human realm, I was not a person whose view fit in my own way, but one missing fundamental parts of being a person and I deserved to have my 'missing pieces found.'

Working on today's blog post

But Autistic people, including I, are not your incomplete jigsaw. We are simply those with their strengths, weaknesses, pet peeves, passions and quirks just like you. Yes, I have a hearing sensitivity which rendered sharing a bus with a group of teenagers yesterday almost impossible and sometimes has me reroute my commute. Yes, if you show me a violent movie (I'm already shuddering) I'll stay distraught for at least a few hours. But if you give me a musical keyboard, I can take advantage of my hearing sensitivity to fall into the emotion of a song. The same compassion rendering me distraught for several hours last month in leaving a lecture hall when an instructor showed a graphic video on an engineering disaster can jump in the face of inequality to offer some advocacy. Give me a Science class and my hand will almost glue to the air above it in an excitement and curiosity so extreme that in high school I had to ask all my teachers to let me answer all the questions for my birthday. Do I sound as though I'm missing anything? Therapy, perhaps? Squish a puzzle piece into the outer boundaries of a jigsaw? I think not.

It is not only with me. I have witnessed success and still see wide potential in a few other Autistic people I know or have seen. An Autistic person (that wasn't me) won my high school's Film Fest last year. This week I met two Autistic people, one a supervisor and another a Ph.D. student, in their lab lab. They showed me the diversity of their projects, toured me around their workspace, showed me a sewing machine which uses photos to embroider designs and two 3-D printers and engaged in a conversation with me about both being Autistic and their research. I come across stories of Autistic people with their talents in my twitter feed. I don't think I need to contact Hasbro. Definitely not Toys-R-Us either (with its Autism Speaks endorsement).

However ideas still persist that we, the spectrum, are incomplete. Lately I find it hard to read an online Toronto Star article without seeing an ad on the side saying "Causes of Autism" portraying the face of an angry child. (I believe I look nothing like him.) I wait for a train and a headline on the screens above me flashes an idea about Autism research or causes to me, even though I try not to look at them. Last year researching facts for my announcement had been almost impossible with the negativity swarming the internet. (It was one of the reasons I switched to faking that I had interviewed a person with Autism. But why Google Autism when you are Autistic yourself?) About two years ago, window-shopping a mall with my sister, my cousin and his grandparents, we entered Toys R Us at his insistence and I walked under a banner with the blue puzzle piece. (I believe it was I who convinced us to leave.) Even recently, without my mentioning of Autism, a person told me he didn't want to lower his voice for me so I can accustom to it and told me to keep it in mind during a job interview. (For the record a job interview yesterday mentioned nothing of it.) Plus I still remember the time my tenth-grade history teacher tried not to accommodate me, leaving me still with shudders from some of the videos that semester. These are only my experiences. Read upon E (from the Third Glance) as she tells how her parents constantly told her off for her Autistic qualities. Take a look at the Autism advocates being told by Lindt to contact Autism Speaks when asking why it supports it, as Easter approaches with its Lindt chocolate bunnies donating to Autism Speaks. We, those with Autism, need a world where our right to dignity and to be ourselves is accepted.

As World Autism Day approaches, I ask you - and urge you - to play your part in accelerating the perception shift from incompleteness to completeness, a perception shift as if we are transitioning from segregated bus seating to the first-come-first-serve-unless-you-really-need-it system on Toronto's Yonge-University-Sandwich. (Did I say sandwich? I meant Spadina.) How? The answer is simple. If you do not already defy the notion that we are incomplete, it's time to see us as complete. Have you already abandoned the incompleteness model before reading this post or never accepted it to begin with? Then congratulations. Keep it up. Look at an Autistic person through the same lens you use on your best friend, the ordinary student you teach in class, a client you serve, or the person at No Frills that pointed you to the potatoes when you couldn't find them. See us for the individuals we are rather than the stereotypes raised about us such as that we cannot have empathy (Surely an Autistic Rights blogger needs empathy to begin with?) or that we cannot communicate or that our ability to focus on our passions have no benefit. Embrace the power in our differences, the power in communicating in alternative ways when non-verbal, to demonstrate empathy while avoiding eye contact or selectively choosing those to hug, or the excitement in the stutter responding after an instructor notices my hand magnetized to the air in a 12 PM lecture. See the beauty in the power of difference.

Most importantly, do not eye me as though I am a clump of grey, painted, processed-cellulose shapes with a gap in the middle. As World Autism Day approaches on April 2nd, I will rephrase a statement trending amongst the community of Autistic advocates. I am not a puzzle piece. I am not an incomplete puzzle either. Regardless of my thought process, what better identity do I deserve than a person?

- FA

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