These sub-projects fall into the following broad areas:
- Advocacy and Activism – The Abolition Movement
- Assistive Software & Technology – Universal access
- Access to your money – Business solution
- Legal Instruments – Defense Fund and Empowerment Trusts
- Transition to Universally Available Services – Business and Regulatory
- Challenges in Courts – Guardianship, Family exclusions, MFP, other
- Post pandemic solutions for physical and social infrastructure
- Nationwide proposal for economy – Symbiotic Economy
Project 1 – Advocacy and Activism Campaign – The Abolition Movement
The focal point of this campaign is to Abolish the Involuntary Institutionalizations of our people [IDD, Elderly, and Mentally ill]. The so called “Nursing Home Care” entitlement – was not envisioned as an entitlement for a “Medicaid Institutional Care” – It is an entitlement for “Nursing Care in your Home”. This is what it was meant to be and this is what we need to restore.
The Advocacy campaign would be carried out by Autistic and Disability community and our allies. This project is in a state of definition and recruitment. For details about this project and participation follow this link to Project -1.
Project 2 – Assistive Software & Technology [Universal access for IDD people]
What is Universal Access? It is an access to natural and engineered environments, societal institutions and services, and human interactions commonly available in a convenient and equitable manner to general population. People with IDD however have both the internal barriers and the rules imposed on them that make access not only difficult but often practically impossible.
Many of these limitations [inherent and imposed] can be helped by assistive tools, and specifically assistive software and technology and most of the limitations can be significantly lessened allowing the individual a higher degree of participation and leading to full integration into society.
This project is seeking top software, technical, and business people to develop and bring these products to the market – consequently evolving it into an independent company or an independent Program under Divergent Labs auspices. For details about this project, the products we are looking to develop, and the business arrangements with the formed team please follow this link to Project 2.
Project 3 – Access to your money – Business solution:
With “The Fiscal Custodial Assistant” in the works [for details about the product link to Project 2] – we shall put together a business team that would approach the potential “custodial” partners [financial institutions] to work out the business arrangements for development, implementation, and promotion of this automated solution. Subsequently the team [including the partners] would promote this to the public and seek the participation of the Government.
There is a good precedent in ABLEnow and we’d like to extend this model to include all the governmental funds to which the person is entitled [qualified] and all the donated funds in SNTs and other similar accounts [see Empowerment Trusts].
Developing these tools has an initial cost but it would result in tremendous savings and benefits for society in a long run. We should look at this both as a non-for-profit endeavor as well as a business enterprise with great potential. For further details, participation, and to contribute useful resources contact echolaliaproduction@gmail.com
Project 4 – Legal Instruments – Defense Fund and Empowerment Trusts
The project’s goal is to define and establish legal instruments to be used to advance the freedom and rights of people with disabilities and specifically addressing the needs of people with IDD and to provide an Advisory Service in regard to it’s usage.
The Autistic [IDD] Defense Fund‘s primary intention is to fight Guardianship cases, but it is envisioned also to be used to address other legal challenges such as ‘family exclusions, the rights of a IDD children, Special Education’s segregation and restrictive environments, the ABA, the definition of Community settings, bring challenges to MFP, sheltered workshops, and other causes that are at large or may arise. To this effect the project would be seeking to enlist a group of talented lawyers who would become affiliated with the Autistic Defense Fund and would be paid by the Fund for their services or would provide their services pro-bono or on a pay forward basis. For further details and participation please continue to Project 4.
The Generosity Trust: Generosity trusts is a novel idea. It is established for the purpose of practicing generosity as well as for cultivating a generosity virtue in older children by the guided practice of being generous. This trust can be created for trustees of any age. For example it can be created by parents for their child so that child would learn [as a trustee] how to be generous with family and friends – a very important skill in our society. The trust also advances the ‘Quality of Life’ for Disabled adults otherwise deprived of the virtue of gifting [by Medicaid arrangements]. Seniors as well can establish a Generosity trusts for their own use in a later years when their expected [limited] income may prevent them from being generous – the virtue they may have practiced and continue to value. The Generosity Trust will function as a Pooled Trust that would work similarly to the way most pooled trusts work but will be highly automated by employing the expert rules based software [see Assistive software]. For further details and participation please continue to Project 4.
The Circle of Support Trust – This trust is a Grantor trust established for a group of beneficiaries [which in this case would include a “vulnerable child”]. It may include real estate property to share and use, corporate assets, as well as the liquidity that may be invested. The trust is designed to cultivate an initial “circle of support” for each of the beneficiaries; distribution of the dividend is designed to cover situation when a beneficiary falls under guardianship or is not self-sustaining [relies on Government’s help], in which case the distributions may be made to the Autistic Defense Fund, the Generosity Trust, or other charities as defined by the Grantor. This trust is in a process of definition and would serve as a boilerplate for trusts of this kind.
The project is seeking to form a team of legal experts to define the Autistic Defense Fund and the said Empowerment Trusts according to the laws and governing regulations pertaining to such matters. The project is also seeking Grants and Donors to support this work and savvy business oriented professionals and entrepreneurs. The project is expected to evolve into individual business entities including a non-profit organization or alternatively a full fledged Program of Divergent Labs. For further details and participation please continue to Project 4.
Project 5 – Transition to universally available services – Business and regulatory
To begin with let us clarify the meaning of universally available services – these are the public and private services commonly used by the populace, such as transportation, hospitality, travel, finance, entertainment, sports, professional services, merchant services, communication services, etc.
All these services and supports are commonly arranged for IDD person outside of the general service industry. It is largely a parallel industry that is inflexible and expensive. With these services in place a person [even self-directing] is channeled by regulations to services that commonly do not intersect with general population.
The objective of this project is to transition from this parallel inflexible and expensive special interest industry to the use of universally available services – beginning with “housekeeping, transportation, paying bills, and meals, and other ongoing social services”. A simple change in the regulations allowing this option along with person’s direct or instrumented by technological means timely access to their money is all that is needed to create a universally accessible marketplace that includes IDD people.
This project is in a process of soliciting ideas for strategy and tactical approaches to advance project’s goal. For further details and participation please continue to Project 5.
Project 6 – Challenges in Courts – challenging the illegality of regulated obstacles to freedom, equality, and inclusion of IDD people.
The goals of this project are the same as the goals of our Advocacy campaign [Project 1] but it takes another approach. The project seeks to assemble a superb legal team [young and old, pro-bono and pay forward] who would distinguish themselves by successfully challenging in Courts the discriminatory and unjust arrangements that isolate, segregate, and enslave people with disabilities and especially people with IDD. The project also is seeking Grants and Donors to this effect.
The following lists the specific areas where we believe the laws and regulations overstepped the civil rights boundaries of our people.
- Challenging involuntary institutionalizations as a violation of civil rights [this would become very visible in a post Coronavirus time]. Individual challenges to guardianships and conservatorships.
- Challenging the legality of ‘Community Settings’ definition – which subverts the legislated right of IDD person “to live in community” by equating it to being institutionalized in the midst of community.
- Challenging the constitutional legality of “appropriate and least restrictive” loophole in housing, workplace, and in education – what is appropriate for IDD person – shall be same as what is universally appropriate to each and all in our country – “no more no less”. Challenging the constitutional legality of a de-facto lawlessly regulated marriage of “Disability & Restriction”.
- Challenging ‘Family exclusions’ in health care (Medicaid and waiver Services) on constitutional grounds as illicitly and arbitrarily manipulated to induce institutionalizations .
- Rights of a child – addressing segregation, isolation, captivity, and diminishment of IDD children within the family, in education, and in the society. Individual challenges on behalf of a child against “war on autism” parents, segregated “behavioral” schools, and backstairs habilitation.
- Challenging the denial of access to society via monetary means and regulated segregation of IDD people – Medicaid and HCBS rules, MFP, other.
- Challenging legality of sheltered workshops [as fitting the definition of slavery]
- Challenging Autism CARES Act’s distribution of funds to combat natural human diversity [eugenics].
We initiate this project with our firm belief that the best people in legal profession are drawn to it not only by the promise of monetary returns but by their innate calling for fairness and justice. This project is in a process of soliciting ideas for strategy and tactical approaches to advance project’s goal. For further details and participation please continue to Project 6.
Project 7 – Post pandemic solutions for physical and social infrastructure
The post effects of pandemic would have profound implications for our society, as it rebuilds itself. The rebuilding must include the infrastructure that would permit our country a stable and comfortable functioning in all spheres of life in the time of similar aerially transmitted outbreaks [which per current trends are likely to escalate naturally or may occur as a result of biological warfare]. The 6-foot rule shall necessarily become an important factor in redesigning our spaces, including places of leisure, places of work, and especially the educational grounds. Similarly various social norms may be modified leading to solutions that allow people to avoid withdrawal within their primary circles. Contrary to a backward view a redesign along these lines presents many opportunities for positive changes and we should put our hearts and minds to make this happen. For further details and participation please continue to Project 7.
Project 8 – Nationwide proposal for economy – Symbiotic Economy
This proposal is based on a premise that increased demand generates an increased supply – the premise that is based on a proven way the market economy works. As a consequence various branches of economy can be stimulated by way of engineering an increased demand in the targeted areas of interest [while attempts to achieve this by stimulating the supply chain directly have proven to be largely ineffective and wasteful].
This proposal is seeking to build on this premise to evolve a Symbiotic Economy which we define in very broad terms as Organic, Green, and Sustainable. We have assumed that there is a strong public sentiment towards each of these*, and that it is strong enough to result in wealth sharing [donations and governmental support] to specifically support these by a wealth sharing subsidy to consumer effectively leading to a sustainable symbiotic economy relevant to our time.
This project is seeking to engineer a way to enable a first stage of Symbiotic Economy beginning with Agriculture that is Organic. We have chosen to begin with farming industry [Organic farming] because the contemporary [dominant] non-organic farming directly and adversely affects the health of consumers and the environment, because it is grotesquely inhumane to domestic animal, and also because the farming produce has achieved a well defined stage of ‘organic’ labeling lending our endeavor the highest probability of success.
* While ‘Organic produce’ is sufficiently well defined for labeling, what constitutes a ‘Green produce’ on a larger scale [beyond farming] is not; and it would need to be rigidly defined. This is not a trivial task for some products [it is not just carbon based] as it would clearly need to take into account many parameters. Nevertheless it is a path that society is embarking on and so our solution should be able to scale to include ‘Green products’ as it evolves.
This project ties into Project 2 [Assistive software and technology] because it effectively envisions both to employ a similar expert system providing access to Organic funds as well as extending this access to IDD people. The project has undergone a peer review producing a framework that is elaborated in further detail here – For further details and participation please continue to Project 8.
Summary:
Everybody communicates!
Challenging involuntary institutionalization as violation of civil rights [harboring slavery] – includes elderly and mental illness.
‘Supportive decision making’ replacing guardianships – ‘circles of support’.
Assistive technology; universal services, automation, access to funds, universally used fiscal custodians;
Defense Fund & Empowerment Trusts
HOME BASED CARE!
Priorities:
&Open letter to autistic and disability community and organizations
&A brochure that outlines what we are fighting for and what we are working on.
&Recruiting top software developers and thinkers
& Recruiting talented lawyers in different areas of expertise from human rights to parental rights, to gritty sleuths who can trace where the vile begins and bring it where it ends.
&Recruiting business savvy people and entrepreneurs
&Outreach to parent groups and public
&Instrumenting access to funds: ABLENow + SNT+ SSI + SBAP + waivers +
Immediate Actions:
In line with Divergent Labs mission, Rhizome program is proposing various avenues for progress – from paths to activism, to solutions addressing integration of our people into society, to solutions for rebuilding our country, to solutions for humanity. All of these rely on volunteerism and specifically people joining Rhizome Core and contributing to various Rhizome projects. Project 2020 begins with rebuilding Rhizome Core.
