Apologies for not posting for a few days due to storm-related power and internet outages.

It is not often that my disabilities inclusion world and my Grateful Dead worlds come together.  Yesterday was a wonderful exception.  Yesterday was August 9th.

Yesterday, I was honored to present and participate in a several hour long webinar on Accessibility and Inclusion for Birthright Israel and Israel Free Spirit.   The 50 plus participants learned about inclusion of people with disabilities, people with various medical issues and people in recovery on Birthright trips.  The participants were delighted to see two ASL interpreters on the Zoom webinar, taking turns interpreting the many sessions of the day.  It is so important that Jewish communal events continue to become more and more accessible.  The Jewish deaf need to feel welcomed and truly belong in our Jewish communities.

Yesterday, I was delighted to learn more about the Deaf Deadheads community!  There has been a lot in the news this first week of August about Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.  Last week was the Daze Between, the days between the August 1^, 1942, birthday of legendary Grateful Dead guitarist and singer, Jerry Garcia and the August 9, 1995 date of Jerry’s death of Jerry.  The event, announced by The Jerry Garcia Family and The Rex Foundation, included musical performances and storytelling for nine days!

In honor and in memory of Jerry Garcia, CBS Morning News decided yesterday to rerun a 2017 broadcast of a segment on “Long Strange Trip,” a four-hour documentary about the Grateful Dead.  I loved this movie and wrote about it when it came out for the Jerusalem Post.

I was familiar with most of the things mentioned in the CBS segment–those Deadheads who sat in the PhilZone, those who sat in the Jerry Zone, the Wharf Rats, the Tapers, the Twirlers and more.   I have to say—I had not heard of the Deaf Deadheads!  Of course!  Why shouldn’t people who are deaf also enjoy Jerry, Phil, Bobby, Bill and Mickey (and others like Brent, PigPen, Vince, Donna, Keith—and sometimes Trey and Bruce) as much as the rest of us.

The footage showed deaf people close to the stage, holding balls, and enjoying the music through the vibrations.  When the date of “Fare Thee Well,” the three days of concerts in Chicago celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, neared, Deaf Deadheads approached concert organizer and major mensch, Peter Shapiro, to ask about a section at the show for people who are deaf.  There was a wonderful Wall Street Journal article reporting on Deaf Deadheads.  It is entitled, “‘Deafheads’ Marked a Milestone of Their Own at Final Grateful Dead Shows.”

It told the story of 40 deaf and hard of hearing fans in a “Deaf Zone,” a gated off area on the stadium floor about 60 yards from the stage.  There were three sign language interpreters, standing on a lit platform, working in rotation, translating the meaning of Dead songs—no easy task given the nature of the lyric!  Some Deafheads held balloons which helped catch sound pulses in the air.

It is amazing that Deafheads got their start in the 1980s—approximately 10 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in July, 1990!  According to the Wall Street Journal article, Deafheads say their cohort emerged in the 1980s in Washington D.C., home to Gallaudet University.  “As they found each other in a pre-Facebook era, they also sought out like-minded interpreters and connected with the Dead’s longtime sound man, Dan Healy, who helped carve out space for them at shows.”

I am pleased that we continue to make strides toward greater inclusion of deaf people at Jewish events and conferences.  I am even more pleased to learn that the Grateful Dead has been including people who are deaf since at least the 1980s!

Looking forward to seeing Deafheads at the next show—once this pandemic passes!

The names of sports teams have been in the news a lot lately.  While the Florida State Seminoles, Chicago Indians, and Atlanta Braves—and dozens of other teams in pro, college and high school sports—are in the midst of examining their team names as it becomes clear that strong feelings are elicited by such names, it is the Washington Redskins which have gotten the most attention.  After much deliberation, they have chosen to by extra time by going with The Washington Football Team, for now. 

Some roll their eyes and ask what is the big deal? It is only the name of a team, and it has been around for so many years?

Consider this:  I was teaching a student about the recent Tisha B’av commemoration on the Jewish calendar, where we remember sad and tragic events in Jewish history, including the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.  Other events which happened on or around Tisha B’av include the First Crusade in 1096, where 10,000 Jews in France and the Rhineland were killed and communities destroyed as Crusaders marched through Jewish communities between 1096 and 1271 when Christian Crusaders marched to Jerusalem to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule.  I informed my horrified student that, until today, many sports teams, especially at Catholic schools, are known as The Crusaders.

“Crusaders” high school football is ‘a Christ-centered, athlete-focused, Division VII competitive football program with experienced coaches and state-of-the-art training programs and facilities. Players benefit from one-on-one instruction and opportunities to play early and often throughout their high school careers. Crusader coaches focus on preparing players for college-level football with the newest techniques and up-tempo offensive schemes. Crusaders compete against top high school and prep school teams throughout Ohio and the surrounding Midwest.”  And Crusaders FC is a semi-professional Northern Irish football club from Belfast, founded in 1898.  Perhaps Crusader teams and leagues should consider a name change.

Sometimes names seem innocent at one moment.  Then something happens and it no longer seems right to keep the name.  Thanks to Peter Sagal, host of the weekly podcast “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me,” the August 1^st podcast taught me about a sports team I had never heard of before:  The Windsor Swastikas!  Please don’t confuse this Canadian ice hockey team from Windsor, Nova Scotia with the Fernie Swastikas, who played across the very large country in British Columbia!  How, you may ask, do they get away with a name like that?  For one, they played from 1905–1916, when the swastika was a symbol associated with luck and success.   That all changed with Hitler and Nazi Germany.   The association was no longer with “luck and success.”  In fact, in 2005, according to a BBC article, “German politicians have called for Nazi symbols to be banned throughout Europe after Prince Harry was pictured wearing a swastika to a fancy dress party.”

Just goes to show that it sometimes does become necessary for teams to change their names.  It is worth it.  We live with the changes and move on!

I’ve been following and often posting about many wonderful disabilities relates stories this summer—from our successful National Ramah Tikvah Network virtual vocational training and socializing program, to several of our Ramah campers creating successful ventures—from Uriel’s t-shirts were a lot of money was notated, to the shredding company started by Uriel and fellow camper Jacob.

But, it is also important to report on upsetting stories.  It is known that people with autism are sometimes misperceived as “acting strange” or “dangerous” by law enforcement personnel.  Autism Speaks even has a link on their website which explains that “A person with autism might:

Have an impaired sense of danger.

Wander to bodies of water, traffic or other dangers.

Be overwhelmed by police presence.

Fear a person in uniform (ex. fire turnout gear) or exhibit curiosity and reach for objects/equipment (ex. shiny badge or handcuffs).

React with “fight” or “flight”.

Not respond to “stop” or other commands.

Have delayed speech and language skills.

Not respond to his/her name or verbal commands.

Avoid eye contact.

Engage in repetitive behavior (ex. rocking, stimming, hand flapping, spinning).

Have sensory perception issues.

Have epilepsy or seizure disorder.

It then goes on to offer tips for first responders to be able “to identify that a child or adult may have autism, [so] he or she can then respond in a way that best supports the individual.”

This is useful background to a troubling case that has been getting a great deal of attention in recent months.  I first learned of the now widely reported story of Mathew Rushkin from colleagues at neuroclastic, the autism self-advocacy organization.  There have also been articles in the Washington Post and Salon, and blogs at neuroclastic.com

Please read some of these articles. It is essentially the story of a young black autistic man was sentenced to 50 years for a car crash.  Rushkin was on a trip to pick up pastries at a Panera where he worked, accidentally struck another vehicle in a parking lot, fled and then had another car collision. According to reports, prosecutors claimed that he was trying to kill himself by citing words he said that others claim were taken out of context, but his defenders insist that it was a genuine car accident.

Terra Vance, an autistic woman and psychology consultant, who first told me about the case studied the case in depth, blogs about it extensively, and concluded that it was a regular car accident without suicidal intent. She published a letter from a forensic engineer and traffic collision reconstruction expert who studied the evidence and likewise concluded that it does “not support the theory of suicidal behavior or attempted homicide” but rather “strongly suggests pedal misapplication as the primary collision factor.” This is supported by the fact that he told police during his interrogation that he had applied his brakes, tried to stop and did not intend to hurt anybody.

The forensic engineer's letter also notes that poor executive function is common in autism and ADHD. (I can relate: this author is on the autism spectrum and, because of his executive functioning disability, cannot drive.)

The case is now attracting a lot of attention, protests, and calls for his release. He is still in prison, where his mother claims he has received neither mental health care nor attention for the headaches, dizziness and transient blindness he has suffered since the crash.

A psychologist friend, Marcia Eckerd, has been closely following the case and is pleased with the amount of attention the case is attracting—including from the star of the Netflix series about an autistic person ( Atypical)–and the cast is making a happy birthday video for him.

Marcia’s letter to the governor of Virginia offers a good summary of the worrisome story:

 Matthew was a college student with a job, a girlfriend who volunteered and was praised by the many character witnesses. He is also an autistic young man with a history of a TBI, anxiety and ADHD. The allegation in this narrative, that Matthew committed a “horrible, selfish reckless action” is that he intentionally caused the accident, based on what he said at the time of the accident, that he wanted to die.

What an autistic young man says in a traumatic situation in which he is described as overwhelmed and incoherent, surrounded by police, being yelled at, being pinned against a car, is only evidence that he is completely emotionally overwhelmed. Autistic people can be overwhelmed emotionally by social and sensory overload; this situation went far beyond that.

Matthew was taken to jail and interrogated for 7 hours.  To interrogate an autistic person after a what was clearly a traumatic accident for 7 hours without a familiar person or anyone who is supporting him or trained in autism is to take advantage of him and to undermine him and to overwhelm his ability to cope with the situation and make decisions.

Although to my understanding, VA Beach has people trained to deal with mental health crises and autistic individuals. At no time was a someone trained to deal with an autistic individual in crisis called, even though the entire narrative of the interrogation based on the camera footage is pushing Matthew with the suicidal intent narrative. At one point when Matthew is repeatedly denying being suicidal and stating that it was an accident he tried to avoid, he’s told “but you know what it looks like,” pressuring him to change his own thinking.

The only way Matthew could be determined to be suicidal would be for a trained mental health professional to evaluate him. At no time was there an evaluation by a trained mental health professional with the knowledge and experience to determine if Matthew was in fact suicidal.  A policeman or a prosecutor or a judge are not competent to ascertain if someone is suicidal. No one present was qualified to make that determination. And without an evaluation, there is no evidence that this was intentional.

The only trained mental health professional who came anywhere near Matthew was Dr, Keenan, who evaluated him on 1/17, the day after the bail hearing in which Matthew was denied bond based on the idea that he presented a danger to himself or others. He diagnosed Matthew as having an anxiety disorder and as needing treatment, but said nothing about him being suicidal. Given what Matthew went through in the days since the accident, it is not surprising that he presented as a young man with extreme anxiety

The fact that Matthew signed a plea deal is meaningless. A fundamental quality of autistic people is that they are truthful, and they are subject to being manipulated because they don’t understand when someone is lying and something is against their own interest. If someone told Matthew that signing a paper was the right thing to do, he would believe them. According to Matthew, he thought signing it meant he could go home.

This entire case is based on a narrative that is belied by reality. A young college student with a job, a girlfriend and good community connections as indicated by the letters I read by those with whom he volunteered is accused of having malicious intent to knowingly harm people based on one comment he made in an overwhelmingly emotional moment. Matthew’s treatment by the VA Beach police can only be described as cruel given his autism and the total disregard for his wellbeing.

The prosecution used hyperbole to put it mildly to describe Matthew’s callous indifference to life which has no supporting evidence whatsoever. And no evidence was presented with alternative explanations of what might have caused the accident, although now Terra has a book of possibilities.

Basically, Matthew was presumed to be suicidal and guilty of intentionally causing the accident from the time he was was brought in to the time when he was sentenced with no evidence proving it whatsoever; they could have called in a psychiatrist or mental health professional to evaluate him but they actually weren’t interested.

In jail, Matthew has been vulnerable to being targeted and attacked by other inmates. (Don’t mention drugs- if that shows up publicly there could be consequences). He has had transient blindness and severe headaches but despite his prior TBI, cyst on his pituitary gland and neurological symptoms, his only opportunity for an MRI after 1 1/2 years is to be taken to a jail where there is Covid. The daily heat is over 100 degrees, which exacerbates his neurological symptoms.

165,000 people have signed a petition for his release. BlackLivesMatter has included #FreeMatthewRushin. His case is getting national attention and is before the Governor, which means going to the Commonwealth Attorney and the parole board.

I encourage everyone to follow this case closely and get involved as you see fit.