Europe

In 1825, Paris physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard assessed a French noblewoman in her twenties who, from the age of seven, had ‘ticked and blasphemed‘. She was one of ten people with similar symptoms described in an article by Itard. 

Artillery rounds
and a barrage of shellfire
It looks and it sounds
like extending an empire

Bombing and shooting
civilians slain
Expansionist Putin
invading Ukraine

Threatening nukes
and rain hell from the skies
Dismissing rebukes
with chauvinist lies

Conscripts uprooting
and sent in to 'train'
Murderous Putin -
get out of Ukraine!

Back in 2018, Janine performs ' Unpublished author' in front of a shopload of books. Venue: Berkeley Books, Paris.

One hundred years ago, an arts movement was forming in a mainly-black district of New York City. Later known as the Harlem Renaissance, it was primarily cultural but also inescapably political. Literature, poetry, jazz, theatre, sculpture and more articulated the lives and demands of African-Americans no longer willing to be grateful that they were no longer enslaved.

O black and unknown bards of long ago.
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long.
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

James Weldon Johnson

I'm doing a bit of cash-in-hand work
in a specific and limited way
I’m nicking some pens as a justified perk
in a specific and limited way

I’m short on cash so I won’t pay my bills
in a specific and limited way
I’ll slip in some extras as I go through the tills
in a specific and limited way

There is an increasing number of companies which explicitly employ autistic people, promising to value their work and provide suitable working conditions. This has been widely welcomed.

But what are the experiences of autistic workers in these companies? 

On this website, I will be hosting guest posts to give a platform to these workers and allow people to see behind the headlines.

The first is from V, in Paris.

Janine Booth speaking at a seminar in Paris on 24 July 2019. This opening section of the talk introduces Janine, and explains the five key principles of the Labour Party Autism and Neurodiversity Manifesto.

Soldier F said he only harmed
protesters who held bombs or arms
Soldier F had truths to hide
The soldier lied

Lord Saville said
none of the dead
had posed a threat
but that did not stop Soldier F

When one-and-twenty soldiers shoot
then why no prospect to prosecute
Soldier L or Soldier M
who killed a lad who crawled from them?

Widening roads
parking lorries
carrying loads
of no-deal worries

Laying Tarmac
digging ditches
making car parks
burning bridges

Office holder
riding high on 
a hard Brexit shoulder
to pull over and cry on

Sailing boats away
laying mines
widening motorways
narrowing minds

Guardia Civil
know the drill
Drafted in from other places 
beating unfamiliar faces

Keepers of the peace
Police

That's the theory:
There and here, we
expect protection 
get subjection

Saw that theory
cracked in practice
Dragged and kicked
grabbed and nicked

Keepers of the peace
Police