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| Image of Arnaldo Rios Soto, a nonspeaking Latinx autistic young man in a gray hoodie with crew-cut brown hair and a clean-shaven face smiling broadly for the camera. Credit Matthew Dietz, Esq. |
That final traumatic event, the moment Arnaldo Ríos Soto screams out in his frequent nightmares in the single word utterance "POLICE", cannot be fixed or undone. Any parent of an autistic young adult would hold those responsible to account for the lifelong care he needs. The state of Florida is accountable for Arnaldo's lifelong, 24/7 care and support. This should not even be in question.
So why then was the cost for his lifelong care cut? Lifelong damage was done. Irreparable damage. The kind of trauma Arnaldo experienced cannot be undone. Put simply it is the obligation of those who caused this trauma to care for him.
Arnaldo was evicted from his home because the state cut the funding needed for his care in half. He was evicted after a contract was signed saying his care facility would continue his care despite the funding shortfall. His former care home should lose their license.
I have been steadily updating on Arnaldo's situation because but for the grace of God Arnaldo could be my son.
I wrote an essay on the eve of Arnaldo's eviction that was published in Poor Magazine, but still, no one seemed to give a damn. So I'm reposting it here. Let's hope someone out there listens this time.
Arnaldo was evicted from his home because the state cut the funding needed for his care in half. He was evicted after a contract was signed saying his care facility would continue his care despite the funding shortfall. His former care home should lose their license.
I have been steadily updating on Arnaldo's situation because but for the grace of God Arnaldo could be my son.
I wrote an essay on the eve of Arnaldo's eviction that was published in Poor Magazine, but still, no one seemed to give a damn. So I'm reposting it here. Let's hope someone out there listens this time.
Arnaldo Rios Soto, Autistic, nonspeaking, and
Latinx, was evicted from his current group home.
His ongoing crisis brought back a personal memory.
When I was in my teens, I worked summers as
part of the Youth Conservation Corps. One of our projects was assisting efforts
to reclaim the Palso strip mine. A group of us were standing with our supervising
forest ranger on the top of a mountain of slag looking at miles of blasted
fields and ponds filled with acid runoff when suddenly the rubble beneath us
shifted and three of us tumbled downward with the landslide. The other two
managed to stop and scurry back up. But each time I moved, the mountain seemed to
respond by raining more debris around and over me. It was an avalanche. I was
sure I was going to die that day.
If we were to create a timeline of each pivotal
event in Arnaldo Rios Soto’s life, I believe those traumatic moments would
morph into a rubble mountain of suffering and trauma. Arnaldo has now seen the
ground shift beneath him one too many times. An avalanche is happening, and
Arnaldo, like me the day I hung suspended on a slag mountain, is scraped,
bruised, too young to die. The detritus of a failed disability care system
falling like rubble all around him, he has now been evicted from another group
home on the excuse that money was cut from his care budget.
Arnaldo’s life is measured by how much profit he
makes for those who offer services to house and care for him. His family’s
lives have been punctuated by seeking the land of autism care Oz, that place
where Arnaldo won’t be beaten, chemically lobotomized, where someone, anyone,
can truly see him as a human being and not a collection of behavioral reports,
untreated complex PTSD and medications. They are tired, burnt out with
disappointment in that shattered dream of an American mainland utopian
disability care system they sacrificed and journeyed from Puerto Rico for in
vain.
What will happen to Arnaldo now?
What happens to Arnaldo now is up to all of
us. We are his family now. He is in our care. So we
need to understand how and why Arnaldo matters. Arnaldo’s situation is greater
than his news headlines. His situation right now is bigger than my personal
emotional reaction, informed by the fact that he once looked so much like our
son that both my husband and I cried out in shock when we saw that video of him
sitting in the middle of the street, holding his toy truck, police shouting and
Charles Kinsey shot and bleeding beside him.
It is
greater now than Arnaldo not understanding that he was about to tumble down
that cruel mountain of police interrogation for the crime of sitting in the
street holding a toy truck while disabled and brown. Arnaldo is now the symbol
of what it means to be a nonspeaking autistic male of color at the mercy of a
system that views the Black and Brown disabled body as a threat. This system,
founded on eugenic attitudes, views those with complex support needs as burdens
or cash cows. When the profit margin is not enough the cash cow is sent to the
slaughterhouse. For someone like Arnaldo, who was harmed by agents of the
state, leaving him without shelter and the complex support he needs is
tantamount to destroying his psyche entirely. And returning him to a hellhole
institutional setting like Carlton Arms is unthinkable and unacceptable.
What that means is that what happens to
Arnaldo now has the potential to impact how future cases like his are handled
across our country. If we can act together and change his destiny it
will demonstrate that our community has the power to transform the destinies of
others brought low by this system. It means that the lifetime efforts of
hundreds of disability justice activists have managed to change something. We
need this hope because we multiply marginalized people have become the targets
of hate groups instigated by those who feel that the current administration has
given them a free license to hunt those who are oppressed and vulnerable. So
what I am doing right now, typing, wheezing with asthma, pushing past joints
that ache to write this is reaching out to say this is the time when all of us,
ALL OF US can help Arnaldo. #SaveArnaldo can trend on every
social media platform enough to make those who made the decision to cut funding
for Arnaldo’s care rethink their decision. Organizations can support the AutisticSelf Advocacy Network’s leadership and issue statements in support of the Sotos
family. Legislative advocates can reach out to their lawmakers. This takes a
few moments, a click, a retweet. But multiplied exponentially, collective cross-disability community action could be an avalanche that forces a positive
resolution to Arnaldo’s crisis.
As I was sliding down a mountain of slag
towards my death, two other people volunteered to lay flat, one grabbing the
ankles of the other, and acted as a human rope. Five others held on to the arms
of the person laying flat on the top of that mountain for dear life. Then they
all heaved up and backward.
Together, they saved my life.
I am asking you all to make a human and
virtual chain. Get him off that sliding bureaucratic slag mountain and back
into a place where his family can see him every day and he can be safe and
cared for. #SaveArnaldo.
Peace.
Poor Magazine Lays out My position on
catastrophic encounters with Law Enforcement:
Read and hear more about Arnaldo:
Miami Herald coverage of Arnaldo's eviction CN: for Ableism
Aftereffect: Against the Erasure of Arnaldo
Rios Soto
Aftereffect: A SWAT team, an autistic man, an
American tragedy.
Podcast: Aftereffect — an indictment of
America’s disability care
On catastrophic encounters between disabled
youth and men of color with law enforcement specific to Arnaldo’s case:
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