Autistic Advocacy Month 2026

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
A question. What does moving from acceptance to advocacy mean for you? My name is Philip King Low. Many of you may know me as the owner, producer, and host of Today's Autistic Moment: A Podcast for Autistic Adults by An Autistic Adult, and that is me. And throughout my now into my sixth year of doing the podcast, I have interviewed many autistic adults and many of our allies.

And after what took place last April with the announcements that came from Robert F Kennedy Jr., And there were there was a group of us who came out of that meeting feeling so burned out, so tired, and obviously just suffering from everything we heard. And in the in that moment that we met, we began talking about the creation of a new movement. Because one of the things we all said together, and I this isn't gonna be verbatim. This I'm not gonna be word for word, but we said that we did not want to go through another April like this without doing some things for autistic people and our communities. We came together.

We we created some working groups. We created some places for people to have conversations. We still have a survey going on. And that's how we came up with a name together, Autistic Advocates United, and Autistic and Allies Grassroots Movement. And among the things that we, as group agreed agreed with, it is time to make a change for April.

Autism awareness became autism acceptance month. And while all of those have definitely contributed to the infrastructure we built, We recognized that since we had this horrible some horrible set of events about about a year ago, we said something needs to change. And it can't just be autistics and our allies laying there feeling helpless with what could come next. So we decided we're not going to do that anymore. We're going to become advocates, and we're gonna rename April as autistic advocacy month so that we can all be proactive rather than just reactive or feeling like we're power powerless.

So we're we're in this, we are helping autistics take up the flags, if you wanna say that. We're taking up the power that is within us to bring lasting change that will hopefully become a household name.

A.J. Locashio
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And, you know, as far as your role in this, you are the one who really brought that group of people together to have those conversations. You're the one who reached out to me, and and, you know, said, hey. Together, we can make this happen, so let's do it. Right.

So you have a role definitely as a leader and a founding partner of of the movement
Mhmm.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
Which is great.

And I was proud to do that. And I was proud of all the people who came together, and thank you so much for coming and helping us start this out. Yes. Everybody who came and has participated since then, either through your comments, criticisms, or your input, whether it's negative, positive, all that, you've all contributed somehow to making this happen. And AJ has been the communications coordinator.

Okay? And so AJ has been helping out with communicating with me, meeting with me. And we've been talking together, and we've been really hashing things out. And so, AJ, thank you so much for all the work you've done we've done together.

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, it's my truly my pleasure, as a fellow autistic to, you know, to work with someone who understands how I work, who, is willing to have communication when we're not working on the same thing in the same way. And and, you know, we're able to just have good conversation and come to a collective agreement on how to move things forward. And and that is that is so important.

Mhmm. You were talking earlier before we started, and you said, it makes me so proud to work with an organization who you're working with, who doesn't sit back and wait for a neurotypical to come along and help them do the work. They're doing the work.

Right. Right. Yeah. And I've seen so many people on Today's Autistic Moment and and throughout my local community here where they're doing just that. They're not waiting around for a bunch of neurotypical people to get their heads together and bring us something that probably isn't going to meet our needs.

These are autistic neurodivergent people who are saying no. We're not waiting around anymore. We're gonna do it ourselves if they won't. Yep. And the people that I have been working with are unbelievably successful.

That's why we're doing this. We want autistic people to be successful in advocating for ourselves. Community is not just how we survive. It's how we thrive. When we bring our heads together with everybody with their individual means of advocacy, we have authors.

We have political activists, journalists like Eric Garcia and some and more like him. We have politicians who are acting. Mhmm. We have wonderful folks who are reaching out, like Carol Jean-Whittington, our dear friend, who does all this work with autistic women when so many of them are being told you don't exist. You know..

And that sort of thing. And I I interviewed Zoë about how dealing with autistics thriving in crises. And, you know, let's not forget the wonderful work that Becca Lory Hector does with self-care. And we need all different levels of advocates because sometimes when you're advocating, you need to step forward about something that you know that you're an expert about, and other times you need to step back. So when you're talking about these, you know, these advocates and and how we have different people from the community sharing their story, sharing your story is one of the most powerful advocacy things that you can do.

Right. And even if that means you have to step back and take care of yourself, I know how some people feel. I have to be point blank fully engaged. No. You also need to be engaged and taking care of yourself.

That's an advocacy thing. Yep. Because if you don't take care of yourself, you are not going to be able to advocate for yourself or anyone else. That's why this is so crucial for you. And, you know, the thing is is that for some people, the month of April has become the time of no social media, and I don't blame you.

You know, no reading, no, you know, no responding to anything. And sometimes it's like, no. I gotta respond to everything because I'm just concerned. If whichever way works for you, if that's what works for you, you feel like you're making contributions, then do it. So I hope whomever is hearing this, you know, whatever way you're advocating during this month of April, I hope you will take time to celebrate your way of advocating.

A.J. Locashio
Yes. And we actually have that built in to the calendar. I'm we have our calendar. It's on our website at autistic advocates sorry. Autisticadvocacymonth.com.

[
One more time. Autisticadvocacymonth.com. You can go on there and see our events calendar. And we have a lot of days that allow people invite people, I would say, to practice some kind of self care. For example, our April 5 event was post and talk about your favorite recipes.

Now people can post and talk about whatever they want. We're just throwing out this idea of how cool would it be if we have 30 people share a recipe, and then we put those recipes together in a booklet that people can download, and they can have a whole book of recipes completely designed by autistic people.

Yeah.

How cool is that? That's exciting. All of these activities that we have put on the calendar, those are all going to go into a community repository that people can go in and search and find things. And it we will continue to build it as things grow.

Yeah.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
And it it's just gonna grow and grow and grow over the years because what works for one person may not work for somebody else. Yeah. And I may not have the executive functioning today to find something that works for me, so I need to look at somebody else's ideas and try that.
Yeah.

A.J. Locashio
It's exciting. And that's why we say that we are we've made very intentional choices Mhmm. With Autistic Advocates United going into Autistic Advocacy Month. Very intentional choices that this is an autistic led movement.

Yeah. It's an autistic led movement. And, you know, as I say, whatever your way of advocating is, you need to celebrate that this month rather than waiting for some announcement that's just gonna hit you over the head. Don't just listen to messages like that. You celebrate something about you

Yeah.

That makes you happy. That's advocacy.

Yes. It really is. It really is. If you're feeling put out by something that you've seen on TV or social media or a conversation you heard happening in a restaurant where you were eating with your family, go look at the calendar. Find some things on the calendar there that make you feel like you are making a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Yeah. Contribution is so important. Sharing your story is so important.

And most likely, there'll be somebody who who is hearing you who may be having the same or a similar or even a very different reaction or whatever who'll say, you know, that might be something I wanna try.

Yeah.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
Maybe I need to sit down and write up a list of all the things I appreciate about myself as an autistic person. That's advocacy. Yep. You know, you're using that moment when it feels like, literally, the roof has caved in. And, you know, now you need to you get to turn that that moment into something you can celebrate.

A.J. Locashio
You know? And you can certainly do it on your own time. I mean, there's no one that says, hey. Gotta do everything at once. And that's actually one of the reasons why we have that calendar and series of events.

You may not be able to do the one on this the eighth, but you can do whatever is on the twenty first. That's okay.

Absolutely. And you can do them on whatever day, and you can keep doing them throughout the year.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
Yeah. Absolutely.

A.J. Locashio
I wanna say the Miriam Edelman, is a community member, and she helped build the calendar. And she and I are having conversations regularly about what it's going to look like after April as we continue advocating and doing advocacy events because we're not only autistic in April.

Yeah. Now how can you, as an autistic person, change that by taking all whatever you do in autistic advocacy or something you haven't yet done and carry it into the rest of the year and just keep doing that for yourself. And we really wanna encourage people to do just that. And I mean, if you run out of something to do after, go back to the calendar, find something you might like to do or do again or just do for the first time. You know?

Do it. Yeah. You know?

The calendar is not going away.

No. No.

[
Will be events. Umbrella ND's calendar is now published with events

For the community. And and that includes events that are specific for autistics and our allies and autistic advocacy.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
Yeah. I wanted to bring in something here that's important because we've really tried to make this accessible for a lot of our intersectional communities because we know that the autistic community is intersectional. And there are so many groups of people who are part of this, you know, of various races. I've had Charlotte Bachelor, a black autistic person. And now what I love about coach Lee Hopkins, coach Lee Hopkins is a black autistic trans man.

Okay? And so, you know, you we got all this diversity around us, And we do want people as part of those intersectional communities. We want you to engage in this to help once again bring out the true diversity of the autistic community, those who are multiple neurodivergent, whatever that way is. We want you in this because we need to hear your voices, you know, like those who say like precious Leslie once said, you know, the autistic community and the disability justice communities has this saying, nothing about us without us. But quite frankly, it's the people of color who often don't have a voice at that table.

A.J. Locashio

Yes.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
We need to hear that. And so wherever you come from, whatever group you are part of out in addition to the autistic community, we need to hear you. We need to see you. However, you chose to choose for us to see you. We need to see you, and we need to hear you because you're right.

The neurodivergent and autistic movements have been whitewashed.

A.J. Locashio
Yep.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
We've been you know, we had our moments of of gender discrimination and all that, and we need to know this community represents a this and I like how why you use the word umbrella.

A.J. Locashio
Mhmm.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
That umbrella represents our diversity

A.J. Locashio
Absolutely.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
Of all the people that are part of this. So wherever you come from, whatever you're part of, you know, come into it. But please come into it with this open of a mind as you can and realize there are more voices in this than what we are aware of.

A.J. Locashio
Yep. You know? And different experiences.
Absolutely.
We you know, they they say if you've met one autistic, you've met one autistic. I think it's important for us to remember that too. As autistics, sometimes we forget, and we can actually have biases against people who whose experience is different than ours. Yeah. And we need to remember that everybody's experience is valid regardless of what that experience is.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
Their feelings are valid.

Yeah. And I I I won't mislead anybody. I'm as guilty of that as anybody else.

You know? Because we like our we like our little space and all that, and there's nothing really wrong with that. But, you know, it's very difficult, and there's still some room to listen if you can. And this is why we need to do this this month. The autistic community is a lot more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.

A.J. Locashio
Absolutely.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
No. And I love how among the things we've said is that it's time that April reflects that power.

A.J. Locashio
In April, we've got activities going on every day. Again, people can go to autisticadvocacymonth.com, and they can see the events calendar. And, it is populated with the events. And as time goes and we continue building materials, those materials will be put into those dates so that they are there and ready on the day. Mhmm.

Sometimes you're gonna find things in there beforehand. Other times, we're just trying to you know, we're finishing something up, and it's coming. So one of those things that we're finishing up is the self advocacy survival guide. We have gotten it back from the editor and made those edits and are getting it, ready to publish and put out for people to be able to get their copy. And we're doing copies in multiple different ways.

And so our event that we're going to have for that is going to be April 30 where we will officially launch the self advocacy survival guide for folks to use throughout the year. Because, again, we're autistic every day, not just in April.

Philip King-Lowe (He/Him/His)
And we're still looking forward to whatever our autistic community brings forward.