WEBVTT

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Parents are sometimes intimated by professionals

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and how some of them are able to overcome that,

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and you’ve alluded to that.

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And so what I’d like to ask you instead

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is about another movement

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other than the parent movement.

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I saw a picture not too long ago

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that Gunnar sent me

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of you marching down the street

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with a banner twice your size, I think,

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and you were with some self-advocates,

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some people with developmental disabilities

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who were trying to make the point

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that they wanted their rights and their own recognition.

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Could you describe that movement and

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give us some insight into that?

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Oh, that was a great day. It was...

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We were marching from

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the gates of the institution

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into the town

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where we were having a meeting on the common

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in western Massachusetts.

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And a lot of the people

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in the procession

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had been residents in the institution.

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It was a great day.

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But the whole self-advocacy movement

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goes back, oh, it’s almost 20 years now since

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Bengt Nirjie in Sweden

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realized the importance of

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what self-advocacy could do for people,

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began to have small groups

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of mentally retarded young people

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meeting together, perhaps with

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some college students

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who were interested in the whole field,

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and his...the brilliance

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that he showed was

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that he realized

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that they could speak for themselves.

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If given a chance,

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given an opportunity,

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they could think and they could

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really express their own needs.

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That was the beginning.

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It spread from Sweden

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to England where they

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began to have a few small conferences,

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to Canada, to the United States,

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so that now

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nobody has any numbers

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but I think that

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in every state there must be

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a group who are

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beginning to help us learn from them

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what the real answers should be.

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There’s a very interesting historical aspect to this.

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One of the very early propaganda leaflets

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of the National Association

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for Retarded Children, as it was still

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called in those days

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and that’s important in connection

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with what I have to say

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it was entitled We Speak for Them.

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And it was a real true feeling

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of the parents that nobody but they

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were interested and ready to speak

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for their children.

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But, you see, what faces the parents today

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is that these children

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and young people

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are learning to speak for themselves.

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And the parents have to learn,

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they have to learn to listen.

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And that is difficult because

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it was... they were so convinced

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of their responsibility to be the spokespeople,

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that for them now to realize

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that these young people

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have minds of their own,

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be it limited

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we are all limited

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compared with some other people

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but they can speak up.

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And so they are a challenge,

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and not in any negative sense,

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but they are challenged with the very movement

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whose horizon is suddenly being widened

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by opinions which they didn’t expect to hear

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from their offspring.