About Mrs. Ç

Mrs. Kerima Çevik is curently a blogger for disabilty rights, autistic inclusion, accommodation, communication rights, and representation. A parent activist, editor and contributing writer who consults on Autism and Ethnicity, she blogs on topics of critical race, intersectionality, autism and social justice. An independent researcher, she focuses on shining a light on disparities in qualify of life for marginalized intersected disabled populations and their families through grassroots community building activities and pay it forward activism models. She is a married mother of two children, and world traveler currently homeschooling her adventurous son Mustafa, who is an nonspeaking high support needs Autistic teen who communicates through a combination of AAC, sign language, and his own gestural language.

Mrs. Çevik gave written testimony before the Maryland State Assembly in support of HB269/SB540 Child With A Disability - Individualized Education Program, which became law in May of 2010 and worked with legislators in support of Autism training for first responders. HB 361, a bill modeled on similar legislation presented before the Massachusetts Legislature by Autistic disability rights advocate Lydia Brown, was shelved after all stakeholders agreed to a regulatory mandate for autism training instead. After the Autism Training Bill, the language of which was proposed to be modified to include all disabled people, was shelved, Robert Ethan Saylor died in a catastrophic encounter with off duty law enforcement officers. This was the very event Mrs. Çevik was trying to avert. Former Governor O'Malley signed an Executive Order and pledged to implement statewide training standards, which you can read about here.

Mrs. Çevik’s professional and personal experience spans several countries, continents, and cultures, and includes work in translation and localization, project management, language instruction, and information systems management. She insists on the title 'Mrs.' after a series of encounters with school staff and administration at her son's former educational placements. These individuals continually marked paperwork and made comments erroneously indicating she was not married to her son's father, and promoting the idea that their son was conceived outside of marriage based on of the presumption that all women her skin color produced children outside a formal union. In this case 'Mrs.' is a protest action word.