At The Intersection of Disability and Injustice

The Christmas truce was a series of widespread, unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas 1914, during World War I. Through the week leading up to Christmas, parties of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides – as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units – independently ventured into "no man's land", where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. Troops from both sides were also friendly enough to play games of football with one another.[1]

- Wikipedia

I met James Gallini, Esquire, at the intersection of disability and injustice, during a moment of truce in the Autism Wars. The truce occurred without fanfare, appropriately in December, just as the holiday hustle and rush began. James was standing across the virtual crossroad, firmly and passionately fighting for justice for his client, Emily Holcomb. He stood and fought, as his wife very aptly put it, like Gandalf staring down the Balrog  on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and shouting “You Shall Not Pass!” at the horrible injustice brandishing evil at his nonspeaking autistic client.  I have written about Emily’s nightmare indirectly through a discussion of her mother Jenny Holcomb here.  James finds discussions on his career accomplishments boring and dismissive of his clients. But he is not aware that the desperate crisis of Emily Holcomb was the instigating factor in the Christmas truce of the Autism Wars. It began a series of episodic ceasefires during which our entire community put aside differences and came down on injustice by the hundreds in anger and shock, campaigning united against autistic people being harmed at school and denied care in hospitals.  As a result, I met a valued colleague and accepted him, as he was, never asking whether he espoused the medical or social justice model of disability, simply accepting that in that moment, we sought the same thing, to keep autistic people safe from deadly harm and wrongful imprisonment.

Very much like those men in the trenches, I crossed the invisible line to no man’s land and began discussing matters of people I advocated for and asking James for referrals when these families needed legal help and were in other States. Each time, he did his best to help me find resources, when others were just too self-important to bother. Therefore, I was able to see him as a colleague and friend.

James Gallini’s passion for special education law comes from his love of his family. I am fortunate enough to see that in a slew of photographs, the look of love and pride on his face as he stands with his family for a holiday photo, hugging his sons before they leave for church in their Sunday best, or a quick photo of James endeavoring to teach his beautiful autistic daughter the finer points of bowling.  He didn’t have to tell me he loves his family. Each photo made that apparent.  One day I read that James and Jenifer decided to compromise on their daughter’s wish for Christmas in July. They compromised, and made Christmas happen in her bedroom complete with blow up Santa and that did it for me. She was happy, they were happy. I was happy.  I knew in my heart that these parents loved and more importantly listened to their autistic daughter. They acknowledged her input. They loved her. In a world where the sleepless depressed parents fan the flames of their discontent by gathering in groups to drown in misery and blame it on autism, the refreshing nature of this family warmed my heart almost as much as Jenny Holcomb did doing the requisite redecorating of her daughter’s room to make it as grown up as Emily is becoming. Just as any mother would do for a teenaged daughter. No infantilizing.

And so, I have come to realize that I must navigate the no mans land more often and look at people for who they are and what they do rather than accept my preconceived opinion of what they may stand for ideologically. Just see how they actually behave and speak about their autistic loved ones. Love can’t be hidden. Passion for justice is apparent. And James Gallini has both. If only more special education attorneys were more concerned about their clients and less concerned with establishing a relationship with the school district, the educational life of our children would be perfect.

Please welcome the very brave James Gallini, Esq., his lovely wife Jenifer, and their four wonderful children, into our autism advocacy community. There were always here. If you hear a cease-fire moment in the Autism Wars, walk to the middle of the intersection of disability and injustice. They will be standing on the side of justice, and you will all see them as I do.


Much love

This is the third segment in a series on people who need to be recognized for the work they continue to do for the betterment of the autism community.

On the Sad End to the Search for Mikaela Lynch

The body of Mikaela Lynch, age 9, Autistic, was found in a nearby lake where she apparently drowned. I am sorry to say that when I saw the red flags of a nonspeaking missing child, a nearby body of water, and unfenced backyard leading to woods, I feared the worst while praying for the best.

I have asked my Congresswoman to consider expanding the Maryland Silver Alert system to include missing Autistic children, who are not covered by the Amber Alert System. Please join me in this effort in your States as well.

I'm going to comment on the article in the Cafe Mom's The Stir because I don't wish to increase hits on the Examiner article which vilified the parents without a clear grasp of what happened that day. We weren't there. We don't know what happened. We only know what is reported to us. I will wait for the police to finish their autopsy and investigation, and pass on my sincere condolences to Mikaela's family.

In 2012, I asked the Maryland Autism Commission to recommend survival swimming be part of the educational curricula for all Autistic children and adults because the numbers of first time wanderers with developmental disability who die by drowning is frighteningly high. Unfortunately the Commission wasn't able to include this in their final draft.

We have been engaged in teaching our son water survival rather than swimming since his school reported him missing and he was found by chance in February of 2010. He was found near a backyard pond, according to his principal's account of events on the phone. We will never know what happened that day.

But there is a much more critical issue here, a dangerous slope we as parent advocates can easily slide down in our fear that our children might be next, and that we might be scrutinized for parental negligence. Let us not fall into the trap of calling for a behavioral code for wandering, and imprisoning our children in the name of protecting them from harm. Instead it is critical that the billions of dollars being allotted to brain research include funding set aside to understand the causes of wandering, and search for solutions that don't imprison our children and try every parent who will spend the rest of their life second guessing the last day of a wandering autistic child's life for neglect in the court of public opinion.

In my own research on wandering, there were cases of drowning in which the victims were wearing tracking devices linked to police emergency centers. This issue was a matter of public outrage in Colorado in the cases of the drowning of Kristina Vlassenko and the wandering incident of Brandon Wells, who was fortunately found despite the failure of his tracking device. In addition, Brandon's mother was later brought up on charges for the device's failure to hold a battery charge.

It is saddest to me that we tend to forget that all children do deadly things daily. When I was growing up, parents were warned about keeping all children away from old refrigerators. Each year typical children fall in bodies of water and drown. They swim in areas of riptides and are carried away. Children who are capable of reading ignore warnings and fall through ice on frozen lakes. When other developmentally disabled children or typical children are the victims of horrible accidents, the parents are allowed to grieve and media coverage occurs in a humane fashion. Nor does anyone lay blame on the pathology of the children. Two things have to end here. One, we have to see our children as people with degrees of impairments that need to be addressed and managed; NOT as medical nightmares who need to be behaviorally controlled but as people who need accommodation and supports for such potentially catastrophic events. Accommodation must be made so that solutions account for autistic people running from abusive placements in both school and institutional settings.

I made the effort to write this in extreme pain because I don't want us to go down that path where we imprison our children in the name of protecting them. It is our job to empower our children and teach them to survive. It is the difference between surviving 15 hours in water by shouting "to infinity and beyond"  and locking your child in a cage to keep the child "safe".