Tag Archives ⇒ targets

Autism, anxiety, and bullies

September 2, 2015
· Martin Kelley

A pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment from my wife Julie ear­li­er this evening:

Autis­tic peo­ple feel anx­i­ety just like all of us. How­ev­er they may cope dif­fer­ent­ly. For neu­rotyp­i­cals, if the anx­i­ety is a result of some­one taunt­ing or being some­how rude or abra­sive or annoy­ing, we know to walk away. But in my expe­ri­ence with my spec­trum kids, they don’t under­stand why peo­ple are mean, and they’ll freak out or just keep com­ing back for more. They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get that it’s best to leave some peo­ple alone and walk away. It takes many such lessons to “get it” because their minds work dif­fer­ent­ly. They go from the spe­cif­ic to the gen­er­al, not the gen­er­al to the spe­cif­ic, as Tem­ple Grandin points out. They are easy tar­gets for bul­lies. #The­MoreY­ouKnowAboutAutism

Feds targeting activists at airports

July 25, 2003
· Martin Kelley

There is now some hard evi­dence in the charges that the fed­er­al agency over­see­ing air­lines has com­piled a list that tar­gets and har­rass­es activists. A Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request has not turned up the names or who they rep­re­sent but has dis­cov­ered that the list itself is 88 pages long.
There have been a num­ber of activists who have expe­ri­ence extra scruti­ny and spe­cial search­es, espe­cial­ly in the San Fran­cis­co and Oak­land air­ports. The FOIA case, filed by the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia ACLU, is the first to start shed­ding light on the prac­tice. Dis­sent is always chal­lenged as unpa­tri­ot­ic in times of war and scan­dal. Con­trary to the opin­ions of the many cranks who write in to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s not the mil­i­tary who has ever pro­tect­ed our right to free speech – it’s groups like the ACLU fight­ing to bring harass­ment to pub­lic attention.