Destroying the Intolerance Monster

A charity in the UK called Action for Children has created a truly appalling short film called Dan's Story, which is being shown on TV as an advertisement. It depicts a boy as having been eaten by a wicked autism monster and suggests that the monster must be destroyed. Several bloggers already have written about this horrid imagery, including Mike Stanton, Socrates, Bev, Sharon, and Shiva.

Socrates posted contact information on his blog for Gary Day, Head of Supporter Care at Action for Children: gary.day@actionforchildren.org.uk

Unfortunately, it appears that Mr. Day does not understand (or perhaps does not care) how grossly offensive this advertising campaign is to the autistic community. His mass-mailed response to our complaints, which is posted in Socrates' comments, asserts that the ad is acceptable because "Dan tells his own story in his own words," and goes on to say that anyone who does not like it can complain to the UK's advertising standards authority.

The dismissive tone of his message strongly reminds me of the mass response sent out by Dr. Harold Koplewicz of the NYU Child Study Center a few days after the Ransom Notes protest began. Dr. Koplewicz also claimed that he was just trying to raise awareness and help children. Less than two weeks later, after thousands of blog entries and protest e-mails, a joint letter prepared by ASAN and signed by thirteen other disability organizations, and media coverage, Dr. Koplewicz conceded defeat and withdrew the advertisements.

During the campaign against the Ransom Notes ads, contact information was posted for prominent NYU Child Study Center donors, and protest letters were copied to these donors so that they would understand the harm that was being done with their money and would put pressure on NYU to withdraw the ads. The same thing needs to be done here. I am not familiar enough with British job titles to know exactly what a "Head of Supporter Care" might be (and would appreciate it if my British readers would enlighten me in the comments). If supporters are the same as donors, and if Mr. Day's job consists of keeping them happy so that they will give more money, then the next logical step would be to post e-mail addresses for the charity's main supporters and make them as unhappy with the charity's actions as possible (if you have such info, please post it here). A joint letter signed by several UK disability rights groups, similar to what was done with Ransom Notes, would also help, with media coverage if possible.

As for the argument that the ad came from Dan's own words, I recommend reading a post on Ballastexistenz entitled Why Students Praise the Judge Rotenberg Center, which describes in detail how children with disabilities can be conditioned (brainwashed) to think of themselves as unworthy of having any say in their own lives and to make only positive statements about their caretakers, no matter what is done to them.

We can destroy the intolerance monster. The campaign against Ransom Notes shows exactly how to do it. Let's get busy.


Edit, January 26: ASAN has set up an Action Alert on Change.org, which provides a basic template for letters protesting these advertisements and automatically sends them.

An extensive list of contact information for corporate supporters, etc., can be found on Socrates' blog.