The month is drawing to a close, but our fight is not. We’ve been updating you all month about the most pressing issues affecting our community and how you can take action. Each action is just a few clicks away. We need you to make those clicks, take your pick, and create change for our community.

For more information about our advocacy targets this month, check out our Action August page here.

If you have five seconds:

• Use our email tools and tell Congress to act now: it only takes a few clicks to urge your members of Congress to pass the Keeping All Students Safe Act (KASSA) and the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act (TCIEA), and to include SSI reform and funding for home- and community-based services in the next COVID relief bill. KASSA would ban nearly all types of restraint and all types of seclusion across the country. It would also require schools to collect data to prevent any further use of these dangerous and abusive practices. TCIEA would end the discriminatory practice of subminimum wage, and give states and service providers the resources they need to create better employment support programs.
• Send a letter in support of Massachusetts Bill H.225, which would ban “aversives” like shock torture in Massachusetts, where the Judge Rotenberg Center is located.

If you have five minutes:

• Call your members of Congress! You can find out more about calling your members of Congress from our fact sheets on making phone calls to elected officials, available in Plain Language and Easy-Read forms. If you want to make a call, but you can’t or don’t want to speak on a phone call, consider sending in a script via our Proxy Calling system! Our Proxy Calling system is open for Action August! Want to help someone else make a call? Volunteer to be a proxy caller!
• If you’re a resident of Massachusetts, you can contact your representative in the state legislature and ask them to #StopTheShock. Bill H.225 would ban “aversives” like shock torture in Massachusetts. You can find your MA state legislators here.

If you have a couple hours:

• Write an op-ed about any of these issues! An op-ed is an article published by a newspaper or magazine that is written by someone not on the staff of the newspaper. You can use an op-ed to share your opinion and make more people aware of the issues that matter to you. The OpEd Project has a great guide, which you can find here.
• Check out Auteach’s guide on asking prominent organizations to condemn the skin shock torture happening at the JRC. Consider writing a letter talking about why #StopTheShock matters to you. You can use our Sharing Your Story toolkit to help you think about what you want to say and how you want to say it!

Then when you’re done: tell us about it! We want to hear about the advocacy you’ve been doing -- tweet us with #WeActAugust to let us know, or post in the Facebook event!

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

PO Box 66122
Washington, DC 20035

 

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