Capitol Steps for Autism!

On Tuesday, April 24th we had an AMAZING rally in Madison at the State Capitol and a very successful day of lobbying! I am getting wonderful reports about how impacted our representatives were by the OVER 1,000 people that attended!

Let’s keep the ENERGY from going! As the mother of a 5 year old with autism who spent a YEAR on the wait list I was so gratified to see the wonderful turnout in Madison. As a former political organizer in my pre-autism life, I was impressed. Let’s keep it going! I just started a new yahoo group called WOARN, Wisconsin Organizing for Autism Rights Now:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/WisconsinOrganizing4AutismRightsNow/

Please join me to keep up this incredible effort, because although there was a lot of frustration with some people not getting to see their elected officials, I know that they were impressed with the number of us who came to Madison, and I hope we accomplished our goals of getting the language back in the budget for insurance coverage, and getting it passed into law!

But why stop there?

All of us know that the wait list is terrible and the funding levels don't include enough hours.

All of us know that services for kids and adults over eight is almost non-existent!

We all know that what little respite care is available is mired in long waiting lists as well!

We all know that there is not enough research about Autism and that there should be more!

And we are all tired of not getting enough support for the big financial hit that our families take while we stay home to provide care for our loved ones!

But we CAN use this energy that we unleashed in Madison to push for these goals!

The first step is to find out who are friends are in Madison, who is on the bench and who is not with us, so that we can develop a strategy for introducing pro-autism legislation.

If you were at the rally, please introduce yourself, who your legislators are, if you were able to talk to them and what happened in the exchange, and what their stance was on our issue!

Wisconsin's state motto is FORWARD! I noticed it engraved on doorknobs to every representative and senators office! So let's go FORWARD together WE ARE WOARN!