Cranky

I hate how people believe that AAC will automatically fix and make everything better. Like it’s this magical thing that will fix all your problems. And I’m mostly referring to the parts of the community that are mostly speaking people. I realize completely that AAC could help a LOT in these situations, but sometimes, it can cause more harm than good.

This is just in my observations and experience, but the amount of ableism that AAC users experience is ridiculous. The amount of people who believe that if you use AAC, you are this zoo animal who has suddenly gained a talent and must be stared at and gawked at.

AAC will NOT fix your family problems. Your family will still be ableist. AAC will not fix all your speech problems, you will still have speech problems. AAC is hard to figure out. AAC will not make everything better, and I’m tired of people acting like it’s some magical thing that will. Will it make your life easier if you’re nonverbal or nonspeaking and NEED a way to communicate? Absolutely. But that doesn’t change the other shit.

I have read nonverbal and those with very limited speech discuss how they are often hung up on on the phone because their aac sounds like a robot, that they are at massive risk of police brutality as a result of seeming "disrespectful" or "dangerous", that they are left behind in conversation constantly because they take longer to communicate (esp those who may use pictures/word folders instead of typing, and/or those who may have physical disabilities that affect their speed at typing/tapping/searching for the words they need).

yes ! Before Pixie get Sunshine , just going for walk could get Pixie murdered by Police officers . because . Pixie have very few chooses in how to communicate with them . and . no safety in any choice made .

1- Use Pixie sign and hope them not shoot Pixie for “ waveing hands around “ when was told to stop moving and answer questions .

2- Try getting AAC device , Or communication cards , out from bag Or pocket . and . hope them not shoot Pixie for “ Possibly reaching for weapon “ .

3- just walking away , risk getting murdered for “ not doing what am supposed to “ and “ running means am not innocent , but an actual criminal “

Pixie have had these things happen to Pixie . and . been very very very very very lucky to be able run away quickly enough to be safe every time this happens . Pixie lucky in so many ways .

Pixie keep hearing about more and more nonverbal autism people , especially black men , who have been murdered , or shot , by Police officers .

And . Pixie walk kind of different … people can definitely tell there be something wrong . and so many people they Call Police officer s , usually because assume is drugs makeing Pixie behave strangely

the reality of being nonverbal is often so awful and scary …

This meme is tongue in cheek, but this too is part of class warfare. In this case, keeping the law too complex for non-experts to even begin to have a chance to understand it means that only those who can afford to hire experts can protect themselves adequately and engage in ventures and activities that don’t directly relate to subsistence.

this is a bad take. I know I shouldn’t expect anything better from fucking catchymemes, but it’s a bad take.

Look. The reason the law is so goddamn complicated is not necessarily because the people making it want to hurt you, Random Joe Q. Protelariat, specifically. It is complicated because when you are making laws, you have to account for every goddamn thing, or let a lot of injustice happen by not accounting for it.

like, okay. let’s say you’re writing property law, and you’re specifically talking about the boundaries between people’s property. what legally counts as “your property” and “your neighbour’s property”? what legally counts as “trespassing”?

if you think this is a simple question, you have never had a property dispute with a neighbour. there are all kinds of bizarre edge cases that you have to deal with when making laws about these things.

what happens when your neighbour has an aggressive dog that keeps trying to attack your kids? what happens when your neighbour chucks trash in your yard and doesn’t clean it up? what happens if your neighbour drains stormwater into your yard (or conversely, in the desert, steals your water to irrigate their yard)? what happens if your neighbour plants a fruit tree on the property line, or if you want to build a fence and they don’t want you to?

these are all questions that you could theoretically take to a judge or a jury, and the judge could theoretically rule in favour of whoever was the most reasonable. but that is a system that allows for way more injustice than legislating the edge cases in advance. what if the judge is having a bad day? what if the judge likes the lawyer who grovels at him more? what if the judge is a bigot? the more you leave judgement up to individual members of the justice system, the more you allow individuals’ bias to affect their judgement.

it is better to legislate as much of this stuff as possible so that everyone is held to the same standard. if you have standard rules about fence building, stormwater drainage, aggressive dogs, and so on, and everyone gets held to the same rules, in theory, you’re going to have a much more just society than if you just let a random judge in Alabama decide who’s right.

and that’s just talking about property law, which is incredibly low-stakes. no one goes to jail over stormwater drainage disputes. what happens when someone’s life is on the line?

and like, look, I know that in practice the law still does get applied unjustly. I am not saying that a complicated legal code inherently makes things More Just. some laws are deliberately written to be selectively enforced; some laws are arbitrary, unjust, or just plain wrong. and on top of that the law is still enforced and ruled upon by flawed human beings.

but… if the law is going to be applied to everyone regardless of class, race, or creed, it needs to be as concrete, as impartial, and as specific as possible. you need to define everything clearly, you need to spell out exactly what is and isn’t permitted, and you need to make rules for how that will be enforced.

and that means the law gets complicated, and it gets complicated fast. even if every law was written in plain enough language that a fifth-grader could understand it, with no legal jargon or complicated structure? you’d still wind up with bookshelves full of it, because a good legal system has to think of as many edge cases as possible.

Happy to finally see a good take on this post.

I wanted to add: this picture shows a library of what looks like case reporter books. This is just a bunch of court opinions on various lawsuits. Neither lawyers nor pro se litigants use those to read cases anymore. Like everybody else in the 21st century, we now use the internet and keyword searches. Westlaw/Lexis if you’re fancy, Google Scholar if you’re not. The legal field is now more layman-accessible than it ever has been in history.

There is undoubtedly a problem with legal jargon and outdated procedural rules in (American) law, but “there’s too much law” is not the issue. It’s actually a feature of a highly flexible legal system that ethically considers individual circumstances instead of doling out sweeping punishments. People fought and died (and are still fighting and dying) for this level of nuance and flexibility in our legal system, and we should never take that for granted.

Yeah so this is a delightful misinterpretation of the obvious intent of the meme commenting on how THE EXPECTATION IS THAT EVERY INDIVIDUAL WILL SIMPLY BE A LAWYER AT ALL TIMES.

The law is complex for a great many reasons and nothing about the OP disagrees.

But the way our (us) and most other legal systems globally function is by making mistakes criminal, then making access to legal counsel expensive.

This is a known goddamn quantity in your field as students of the law, and your playact of ignorance is not fucking helpful.

The complexity necessary for the law to function is willfully, constantly WEAPONIZED often in direct DEFIANCE of both the word and intent of the law.

OFTEN BY MEANS OF THE ‘IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE’ PHRASE VERBATIM.

Often when the only ignorant party is the police officer saying it.

Oh, or did you get so far up your high horse that you forgot that for most of the rest of us, we only hear this phrase when a cop is LYING in a bid to ARREST OR KILL US, fully irrespective of the actual law?

Ignorance of the law is a consequence of the complexity the system needs if it is to be employed fairly and in pursuit of justice.

But that inevitable consequence is ABUSED BY GODDAMN COPS CONSTANTLY.

And even if you are the greatest research paralegal on earth, you can’t know everything. Not that it matters what you know, because the cop who 'accidentally’ smashes in your skull without even arresting you may “know” something else entirely, and decide to kill you for it.

~Finally a good take~

No, dipshit, you’re literally taking this fucking post back three steps in the cognitive process by pretending this is a criticism of the technicalities of law, and not of THE CONSTANT MISUSE OF THOSE TECHNICALITIES TO JUSTIFY BRUTAL VIOLENCE

My father- who has been Deaf since he was 6 but was not aware of his severe hearing loss until he was in his 20s- taught this to me when I was a child. He had multiple negative interactions not with gangs but with police because they thought the big, loud black man was flashing gang signs at them when he was just having a conversation with his friends. He cannot help his size (6ft4, over 250lbs) or his deep voice or his dark skin, he cannot control his volume because he has no idea how much sound he makes, and he cannot understand a cop shouting at him from behind or across the street. Or even recognize that that cop is actively talking to him.

Deaf people and especially Deaf black people are killed or assaulted every day for just using ASL and BASL to communicate, because the assumption of "gang signs" is stronger than the recognition of ASL/BASL.

Please, if you do nothing else, take a short class on ASL and learn basic signs. Learn how to recognize when someone is communicating. And learn how to accomodate all disabilities. ASL is not a closed language nor is it a "deaf only" thing- hearing people are encouraged to learn how to sign because if we can communicate with our deaf peers, it means hearng/deaf interactions will be much smoother.

Hey if you’re feeling bad here’s some of the articles The Onion is putting out literal days after unionizing

Responding to an officer’s threats to arrest you. Transcribe and share yall

Picked it up at the people’s response team training i’m at rn

Important rn

This is important as hell, but someting about the way it’s phrased makes me think of the Super Friends book with the Lex Luthor 40 cakes thing.

That’s probably because you have to teach police officers human rights the same way you have to teach a small child how to read, except the cop has, like...a gun, and a government that rewards temper tantrums in which the gun is used.