Stephon Watts News Today

Law enforcement often lacks disability awareness training, including learning de-escalation techniques, essential to better outcomes for people with ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergent disabilities.

The One Big Problem With Elon Musk’s Autism Announcement Slate 1 hr ago Over the weekend, Elon Musk used the occasion of his Saturday Night Live opening monologue to announce that he has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Musk claimed to be making history as “the first person with Asperger’s to host—or at least the first to admit it.” At Newsweek, opinion contributor Peter Fox described it as a “small but significant milestone in the history of neurodiversity.” There aren...

Elon Musk was not, in fact, the first person with Asperger’s syndrome to host Saturday Night Live. He did not make history or break any barriers. That honor belongs to former SNL cast member and all-time great Dan Aykroyd, who has openly discussed his diagnosis for almost two decades, and returned to host in 2003. For Musk to say he was first to do something when he quite obviously wasn’t is entirely on-brand. In 2018, Musk enthusiastically spoke about a bold new kind of transportation: �...

Understanding the Policing of Black, Disabled Bodies February 10, 2021, 10:27 am Freddie Gray, Laquan MacDonald, Kevin Matthews, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Charleena Lyles, Sandra Bland, Quintonio LeGrier, Stephon Watts, Korryn Gaines, Natasha McKenna, Eric Smith, and Daniel Prude are all Black, disabled victims of state violence. In the United States, 50 percent of people killed by law enforcement are disabled, and more than half of disabled African Americans have been arrested by the time they ...