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Dear friends, I hope this email finds you well this holiday season. I’m Colin Killick (he/him) and on November 1st I officially became Executive Director of ASAN. As the new Executive Director, I’m incredibly excited to take this opportunity to introduce myself to this community. I spent the last five years as Executive Director of Disability Policy Consortium, a civil rights advocacy and research organization in Massachusetts run by and for people with disabilities. In that capacity I worked on a variety of issues that I know are very familiar to this community, from protecting access to Long Term Services and Supports, to campaigning to stop the use of shock devices at the Judge Rotenberg Center, to overturning discriminatory Crisis Standards of Care that would have sent people with a wide variety of disabilities to the back of the line for ventilators in the darkest days of 2020. I am deeply honored to get to work on these issues and many more at the federal level, and to do it not only at an organization I have admired for years, but with a staff that, as I heard from many colleagues and have now seen for myself, the best of any disability organization in the country. At present, we are hard at work trying to secure some key final policy wins for 2024. We are rallying the community to support a new federal rule that would finally put an end to subminimum wage for workers with disabilities, and our advocacy just led to the inclusion of new technical assistance programs in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (which will hopefully be included in a continuing resolution). We also just staged an online panel on Medicaid, featuring experts on the program and veterans of the 2017 campaign that saved it, which was attended by more than 200 people. In 2025, ASAN’s work to defend and expand the rights of autistic people, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and the entire disability community will be more important than ever. We will stand up in defense of Medicaid, of community inclusion, and of all of the key programs that our community needs and has a right to access. We will deepen our commitment to intersectional advocacy and disability justice, including taking action against the police violence that disproportionately impacts our community, and defending the right of autistic people to access reproductive and gender-affirming health care. We will create new easy-read materials, welcome new Autism Campus Inclusion students, and issue more mini-grants so that we can spread knowledge and build power throughout our community. Above all, we will do all of this with all of you. From its first days, the power of ASAN has been that it is an organization run by the community it serves—a nonprofit run by and for Autistic people. We will need your help to accomplish these goals, and we hope you will get involved! If you’re able to donate, we’ve got lots of options, including:
Other ways to get involved include sharing posts on social media, reading our toolkits, or reaching out to your elected officials and joining in on our advocacy campaigns. Finding my own autistic identity was for me (as may be the case for many of you) both a confusing progression through a long series of diagnoses, and a journey of self-discovery as I tried to understand how to relate to the world. I am proud today not only to call myself autistic, but to have found a place in this incredible community, and I cannot wait to join this fight alongside you. Sincerely, Colin Killick Executive Director, Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Autistic Self Advocacy Network PO Box 66122
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