April 14, 2025 By Diane DeNapoli
April is Autism awareness month. Being the mom of two grown(Ish) children in the Autism Spectrum I have always shied away from “lighting it up blue” because well that is my day-to-day reality. However, being an advocate for anything that helps promote education around the topic of neurodiversity I would reluctantly get into the spirit and appreciate anything that might help our community.
This April I am thinking about “lighting it up blue” for my children, my community, and my country through a different lens. On Jan 21, 2025, the accessibility icon and American Sign Language (ASL) content was removed from the White House website.
Last week as a condition for receiving federal money, the Trump administration is ordering K-12 schools to certify that they are following federal civil rights laws and ending any diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. Federal money, or IDEA grants (Individual with Disabilities Education Act) provides approximately one million dollars to the Hingham Public School Budget. IDEA grants make up a much larger portion of school budgets in states with lower state revenue.
On April 10 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated at a White House Cabinet meeting his agency would “know what has caused the autism epidemic” by September. Kennedy also added that by September “we will know what has the autism epidemic and we’ll he able to eliminate those exposures”. Kennedy later went on Fox news and stated “we know it is an environmental toxin that is causing this cataclysm. Through the NIH, we will find an answer to this question”.
Since President Trump declared his war on “DEI” on January 20 th I feel like there has been a mark on the back of every person with disabilities. There is an irony ending up on this side in the battle for inclusion because disability rights have traditionally not been a large part of most institutions’ DEI initiatives. Most educational institutions, including the Hingham Public Schools, had a tab on their website for DEI and a separate tab for Special Education. My oldest son went to Boston College High School, and they had a DEI Director who would not work to advance the needs of students with disabilities. The DEI Director told me “That (neurodiversity) was handled over there, in the academic center”.
So how the heck did we get here and does this visceral hatred for equity, diversity and inclusion seem preposterous in a country that was at least idealistically founded by signing the Declaration of Independence stating, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
I think about President Ronald Reagans Farewell Address to the Nation in 1989 where he loosely adopted a phrase from Mathew 5:14-16. In this address Reagan said “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God- blessed and teaming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace: a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And I there had to be walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get there”.
The idea of America, at its absolute best, is about practicing tolerance, advancing the common good and lifting each other up when things are hard. I know this has always been a messy business as the wills of man can make the attainment of meaningful justice daunting. However, I firmly believe in the motto of the United States which is “E pluribus unum”, which translate from Latin to mean “out of many, one”. This motto was adopted in 1956 to emphasize our countries’ commitment to religious tolerance, unity, and a shared commitment to justice. Was this DEI? Was it DEI when the male Pilgrims, and the crew members of the Mayflower, signed the Mayflower Compact and agreed to be ruled by the consensus of the majority? It must have been very DEI to allow Black soldiers to fight, approximately 10% of the Union Army, to serve and die in the Civil War. As a proud daughter of a disabled US veteran, a mom of two children with Autism and a friend of countless in Hingham with disabilities I humbly ask President Trump, and his Administration, to remember what makes our country the best on Earth. Our beloved country has always been its richest, its most peaceful, and our most divine when we seek to model that shining city on a hill. A place where ALL people can work freely, allow those with the will and the heart to access our immigration system, and to remember that people within the Autism Spectrum are individuals, with right, and not a plight to be eradicated.
