Welcome to Dispatch #40! To close out Mental Health Awareness Month, we want to take a moment to celebrate neurodiversity and the ongoing fight to challenge the stigma and social limitations that come with having a different brain. Let's learn about the Mad Pride movement, why neurodiversity is necessary for solving humanity's biggest challenges, the effects of moral disengagement, and more!
PS - We just added a new design to our merch store! Grab a "Mutual Aid is Love" print or t-shirt today (all proceeds goes back to supporting this project)!
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Easy Actions to Take
Why: On Eid al-Adha, Netanyahu ordered Israeli forces to seize 70% of Gaza, an expansion of an unlawful occupation past the line the October ceasefire confined them to. CNN called it 'take over'. Reuters and Sky News called it 'control'. The Independent and the BBC buried who killed the 10 they reported dead. Their own reporting says otherwise. File five standards-anchored complaints in one click. Organized by Newscord
⏱~3min | (US Only) Remove Military Collaboration & Integration with Israel from the FY2027 Defense Bill
Why: The draft of this year's defense bill gives Israel even more advanced military capabilities and leverage over our defense priorities than ever before creating an unprecedented level of integration between the US and Israeli militaries, all while American taxpayers foot the bill. Organized by A New Policy
Why: The International Congress of Mathematicians is an global gathering of mathematicians that has selected the United States for the next conference despite the US’s hostility toward immigrants and other nations. The ICM previously decided not to host their even in Russia due to the country’s aggression toward Ukraine, and the same standards must be applied to the US. Organized by ICM Out of USA
Little (Movement) Wins
Defeating Authoritarianism with Stacey Abrams & Center for Artistic Activism
Join Stacey Abrams, Steve Lambert from the Center for Artistic Activism, and narrative strategist Janelle Treibitz for a participatory workshop on disrupting the logic of authoritarianism and building a better way forward
June 15th 4pm Eastern - 90 minutes. Free and Open to All
How Mad Pride Turned Illness into Solidarity
Activist History
For decades, being called “mad” was an insult, like being called crazy, psycho, or weird. This language became a tool to socially exclude and dismiss the millions of people who have mental health conditions. In the 1990s, the Mad Pride movement pushed back against the stigma by creating one of the most overlooked civil rights movements in the past century. Far from being about celebrating suffering, Mad Pride was a refusal to be ashamed by it.
Continue reading to learn about the Mad Pride movement, their goals, actions, successes, and what lessons we can take
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Moral Disengagement
The Conscious Citizens Dictionary
Moral Disengagement is a term for the process of convincing yourself that certain ethical standards do not apply to oneself in a particular context. This is done by separating moral reactions from inhumane conduct and disabling the mechanism of self-condemnation. A person's moral beliefs and values usually serve as brakes on aggressive impulses or tolerating violence, but studies now show that habitual exposure to media violence tends to lead people to fail to engage these inhibitory processes, thus leading to increased aggression or disengagement.
Moral disengagement functions in the perpetration of inhumanities through moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, displacing or diffusing responsibility, disregarding or misrepresenting injurious consequences, and dehumanizing the victim. Religious principles, nationalistic imperatives and righteous ideologies have long been used as means to justify reprehensible and destructive conducts.
Why Neurodiversity is Humanity’s Secret Weapon
Deep Dive
When we look around the world, it’s relatively easy to see the effects of capitalism and colonialism in our physical world - the wars, the broken communities, the climate crisis (and more) are all painfully obvious scars. But what is sometimes less obvious is how our dominant system has changed the way humans relate to one another and changed our definition of “normal.”
In today’s society, being diagnosed as autistic, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexic, or some other mental health condition makes you “neurodivergent” - meaning that your brain is different from what is considered the norm, or “neurotypical.” It has, somehow, deviated from what is standard. But - what does normal even mean? Who told us what the standard was? And what do we lose when we narrow our definition of what a “normal” human looks and thinks like?
All across the world, especially in the West, there are efforts to suppress the experiences of neurodivergent people and conform them into a neat box, whether that’s through treatments, medication, or social pressure. Here in the USA, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, has advocated for creating autism registries to track autistic people, and has framed neurodivergence as a “tragedy.” But what is so tragic about thinking differently from the norm? In fact, we would argue that neurodiversity is an essential feature of humanity, not a bug, and bringing more diversity in how we think, otherwise known as “cognitive diversity,” inside our organizations and institutions is exactly what we need to solve some of the biggest problems we face.
Continue reading to learn about the roots of neurodivergent stigma and why cognitive diversity is necessary for humanity’s survival
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– Dale Carnegie, writer & teacher
Resources & Tools
Here are some recent adds to the directory. Please share these links with anyone that might find them helpful:
- 🧠 Activist Burnout Guide | A guide by the Activist Handbook and the Federation of Young European Greens on how to navigate burnout as an activist and how to prevent it.
- 📚 Offline Kids | A cute collection of screen-free activity ideas for kids, organized by age, location and messiness level – started by a tired parent who needed simple, low-effort ways to spend time with their kid without defaulting to screens.
- 🌳 World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms | A really cool non-profit organization linking visitors with organic farms/farmers from around the world that will host you in exchange helping or working on their farm. You get to learn about agro-ecological and sustainable farming methods through hands-on experience and your host offers accommodation and meals with no money exchanged (just your helping hands!).
- 🎓 Foundations & Futures | The most comprehensive collection of Asian American and Pacific Islander histories and perspectives available for free and online for high school, college, and lifelong learners.
- 📓 How to Call Your Reps: A Neurodivergent Friendly Step-by-Step Guide | This is a helpful guide created by Autistic Self Advocacy Network that walks through the entire process, provides scripts, and other helpful tips.
➡️ Explore More on our Directory!
Know any resources that you think would be a great add to our directory? Share it with us! (We only see so much from our corner of the world)
If you're new here, don't forget to sign up to get full access to our directory and free newsletters sent to your inbox every other Sunday. Till next time, do your best and take it one day at a time. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up. And remember, you're not alone. We always have each other.
With Love & Light,
Elisa & Ray
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