Dear friends,

This November, we know exactly what we’re thankful for — you! As we approach the end of 2019, we’ve been celebrating our community and everything that we achieved together this year. As a part of this annual tradition, we recently held our annual ASAN gala, commemorating 13 years of advocacy. At the gala, our speakers and awardees discussed finding hope through the autistic community, building a strong and inclusive movement for disability justice, and how the stories we tell matter. We also released our 2019 annual report, with details about all the work ASAN has been doing thanks to your participation and support.

As we celebrated our lucky 13th anniversary, our Executive Director Julia Bascom noted, “There is so much work that needs to be done, and so much unmet need in our community — and every year, we are able to take on a little more. We’ve come so far.” As a part of that growth, this month ASAN updated our position statements to better reflect what we’ve learned over the years. We also released this statement on why the disability rights movement must work to combat all forms of oppression and systemic violence.

We continue to focus on making complex policy discussions accessible to our entire community, so that all of us can understand and advocate for our rights. Our newest Easy Read toolkit explains the Home and Community-Based Services Settings Rule, a regulation that helps people with disabilities live in our communities and control our own lives. Stay tuned for another Easy Read toolkit, focused on voting rights, which will be released in the coming weeks!

This Thanksgiving, as we take a break from a busy and accomplished year, we’ll be reflecting on how grateful we are for our community and our supporters. You make everything we do possible — and as long as we act together, there will be Nothing About Us, Without Us!

Best wishes,

Zoe Gross
Director of Operations
Autistic Self Advocacy Network

P.S.: If you’re shopping for holiday gifts, we just launched our new merch store, complete with some cool new stuff! Check it out here.

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