Exploitation Of Special Needs For Gun Control? [VIDEO]

Exploitation Of Special Needs For Gun Control? [VIDEO]

Exploitation Of Special Needs For Gun Control? [VIDEO]

We’ve seen how glowingly the media treated the children who participated in Wednesday’s walkout (as sponsored by the Women’s March). And the Women’s March is still busy toting the awesomeness of their totally-spontaneous-not-at-all-astroturfed walkout. But these images represent a new low, even for them.

https://twitter.com/womensmarch/status/974703695811301376
Your eyes do not deceive you. These are special needs students who attend the Viscardi Center in Albertson, New York, who were “walking out” on Wednesday. The Viscardi Center advertises itself (on the page that glowingly talks about their students “protesting”):

About The Viscardi Center: Founded by Dr. Henry Viscardi, Jr., who served as disability advisor to eight U.S. Presidents and became one of the world’s leading advocates, The Viscardi Center educates, employs and empowers people with disabilities. It provides kindergarten through high school education (up to age 21), school-to-work youth transition services, vocational training, career counseling and employment placement, assistive technology, and adapted driver education to children, adolescents, and adults with a wide variety of disabilities. It also assists businesses in diversifying their workforces and advancing inclusive cultures in their workplaces.


And the Center even tweeted about their protest, which the Women’s March then cheered on in their tweet.


So, I have a question for the Viscardi Center, as the parent of special needs children who will eventually need legal guardianship:
DID YOU GET PERMISSION TO REMOVE THESE STUDENTS FROM CLASS FOR THIS PROTEST?

Because if you did not, and that was MY child out there holding a sign that he could not understand, without MY permission, we would be talking through our lawyers. Despite the excuses from another Women’s March-affiliated account, this is absolutely inexcusable.


Yeah, no. I will make a judgement call, given the Center’s own description of their students, plus the physical appearance of the students in these pictures, and I will guarantee you that I will find students who could not consent to leaving the classroom, and I bet they didn’t get parental permission for it, either. This is, by definition, exploitation.


And other special needs parents like myself are equally horrified.


So, as a special needs parent of a middle schooler on the autism spectrum, let me tell you what I did for my son on Wednesday. (My daughter’s story is here.) My 6th grade son’s school was also participating in this walkout (my children do not attend the same school due to his disability program), and while my son is many things, politically aware is not one of them. We are constantly on our guard because he can be easily led (he has a hard time reading others’ intentions), and have many accommodations written into his individual education plan (IEP) to make sure he is not led astray or bullied by other students.

I emailed his case manager (who is also one of his teachers), along with the teachers from the period of time that encompassed the scheduled walkout, and informed them all that he did not have my permission to leave the classroom, he was not to participate in this walkout, and that no student was to tell him otherwise. All his teachers responded affirmatively, and he stayed in class, under adult supervision, carrying on with his class with the least amount of disruption to his day.

I did this because I didn’t want any misunderstanding between myself and his teaching team. I would have been livid if I had found out that my express directions had been ignored. Can I say with absolute certainty that all the Viscardi Center parents communicated their wishes to their instructors as clearly as I did? No, but neither can anyone else assume that every single parent consented to allowing their disabled student be taken out of class that day, either. Again, this is exploitation!

Oh, and a parting thought about the end goals of the Women’s March, who are so busy lauding and using these Viscardi Center students for their virtue signaling:


But since they’re here, the Women’s Center and their own school see nothing wrong about using them to protest for their approved cause.

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10 Comments
  • rbj says:

    I worked as a child care worker at a Devereux residential school right after college. IIRC we were not supposed to discuss any child’s case because of HIPPA. Seems like an awful lot of HIPPA violations going on here.

    • Micha Elyi says:

      It’s not “HIPPA”, it’s ‘HIPAA”. The acronym is not pronounced to rhyme with Pippa, it’s most correctly pronounced as ‘high-pay’. Remember, when a vowel is separated by another vowel by only one consonant, the leading vowel is pronounced as a long vowel. And when two vowels go walking together, the first one does all the talking (i.e., is pronounced as a long vowel and the second vowel in the pair is silent).

      • Evil Otto says:

        That’s nice, Micha. I’ve got a word for you: pedantic. Feel free to tell me how to pronounce it.

    • MarkM says:

      As long as the discussion is appropriately anonymous, there is no violation oh HIPAA. Parents are not prevented by HIPAA from talking about their child. HIPAA primarily governs what medical professionals and their support (“covered person”) can do with the information. There is a separate statute which requires schools to keep certain information about their students confidential, actually. That one has not been broken here either.

      There is a word for removing these students to the sidewalk without their consent (assuming they are capable of giving such consent) or their parents’ consent for the teachers’ benefit… I believe that meets the definition of kidnapping.

  • Jodi says:

    That last tweet is EXACTLY what I was thinking, Deanna. This is the most egregious example of exploitation I have ever seen.

  • Dave says:

    It’s even better in Massachusetts: Mentally disabled adults are registered to vote, and an assistant accompanies them into the voting booth and “helps” them fill out their ballots! Not letting them vote would be ableist, you see.

  • Tecumsehtea says:

    As the parent of a mentally impaired adult, I, too, would be livid. Am I surprised that this happened? Not at all. These children were just props, means to an end, just like the regular kids are to their “betters.” Once our son turned 18 he was “helped” to register to vote, without our consent, even though we are his legal guardians, as well as his parents. Imagine our surprise when he got a postcard from Obama thanking him for his support. Our son cannot read or write. He is developmentally 5-8 years old. We contacted our county clerk and explained the situation and he was removed from the voter rolls. When we asked around at his program as to how this all came about, one of the aides explained that when they took the students to the DMV for their state IDs they also registered them to vote. I had to sign a permission form to allow them to get his ID. Nobody said anything about registering to vote.

  • GWB says:

    As we say in the targeting business, Deanna: SHACK!
    (Direct hit)

  • Cosima Burundi says:

    It’s no harder than hanging your signs on utility poles, and you save money on staples to boot.

  • Sh Rembo says:

    Why aren’t the people of this school calling out that is was a National WALKout Day? Isn’t that insensitive? Looks like some of these children couldn’t walk out. Oh, that’s right. Hypocrisy is ok if it’s done by the left.

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