From my mother.

Mel Baggs — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:28:00 +0000

I don’t normally respond to the various bullies that try to make false claims about my life. Generally, it’s something really inane, like they’ll claim to be revealing a secret about me when it’s something I’ve written publicly about before (often many times, in many places), they’ve made something up, they’ve played on inaccurate interpretations, or they’ve twisted something real and given it sinister meanings. But when I made an important post about the way police treat disabled people, my mother (who has been commenting on my blog for years) replied and gave more details about an incident that happened to me when I ran away from a day program after a fight broke out. A particularly asinine repeat-bully (not just of me but of many other people with ties to autism) responded by attempting to tell me that I had written what my mother said. I told my mother, and she sent me the following video in the mail:

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/s9ISrTDmryI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

It’s fully captioned, but if you can’t play videos for some reason, this is what it says:

“Hi, I’m Anna Baggs. Amanda Baggs is my daughter. I’d like to make some things clear. Amanda is autistic. She was diagnosed when she was 14. I sometimes write on her blog under the name ‘Mom’. No one else blogs there under that name. Amanda does not tell me what to write, and neither does anyone else. I’d like to make some things perfectly clear. Amanda has my infinite support. I’ve had a chance to meet some of the other bloggers at Autreat last year. I took Amanda and it was an incredible experience. For others that I have not had a chance to meet, this will serve as our introduction.”

video – Ballastexistenz

From my mother.