Years ago I read about Aspergia on here, let's build in ONT.

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Hey, guys.

I took a hiatus of several years on here, forgive me for this plug, but here it goes.....

Five years ago I joined this forum and while reading it I read concepts about "Aspergia" and other autistic country and land-based concepts. Since then I've been formulating plans and have two partners in my province (Ontario, Canada) working with me on this project. We decided to name it "Autario" and the "Aspergians" as the "Autarian people (Autarske narod)".

We're looking to start our first Autarian Central Committee in Simcoe County (an hour north of Toronto in the area of Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay) this fall, along with two other Autarian Central Committees in Sudbury and Timmins in Northern Ontario, and possibly a few other ACCs in York Region, Durham Region, rural Peel, and Dufferin County, all of which border Simcoe where I live currently.

Our goals are basically to buy land and build villages for ourselves, which we'd own, but being inclusive, anybody can live in them, provided they don't try to supplant us out of our homes through gentrification or other means.

We'd have several groups of villages and small towns across the Central Ontario countryside and in the outskirts of Sudbury and Timmins where substantial quantities of rural land would be available, as well as urban presences in the downtowns and central business districts of the larger cities within our areas, such as Barrie, Orillia, Newmarket, Orangeville, Downtown Timmins, Downtown Sudbury and suburban Sudbury downtowns, with our urban presences consisting of mixed-use commercial-residential buildings that the Autarians would own, with the units being rented to Autarian residents mixed in with market rental units, allowing us to make money on those buildings.

Our concept is pretty much based on local community-based control of our resources - our farms and industrial concerns would be run as co-operatives, while instead of using a Bay Street bank, we'd start credit unions/caisse populaires to allow our citizens access to financial services. Our urban buildings would be owned by the Autarian people through a co-operative which would manage the units, renting units out in a manner that allows the place to be mixed-income, so it's not seen as either an exclusively Autarian or exclusively council-housing ghetto, but a place that's open to the whole community. We designed our planning models for our buildings, towns and villages like old European towns, with a public square where all the important buildings are around it and there's stuff to do regularly, with markets running once a week.

Farming, manufacturing and real estate is what we see as the best way for the Autarians to gain community independence and prosperity, in a manner where we own our resources, with most being sold on the open market so we can make money off of it, and a minority of things such as fresh food being distributed to our residents as part of their membership in the co-op and political organisation. Every Autarian citizen of the co-op/political organisation would have voting rights in how the money from their operations is spent, as well as receiving dividends and holiday bonuses based on how well the entreprises performs during the year. Workers at those places, whether Autarian or NT, would receive a fair wage, but for the interests of self-preservation and survival, most of the managerial and leadership positions would be staffed by Autarians. The NTs we'd like to employ are those who are poor, homeless, or just general have-nots, we feel this is a way that we can give back to the community and lift them out of poverty because the government sure won't (we'd also help fund charities and other initiatives through our development bank, using proven methods, not ideological ones, because we want the opioid crisis to stop as much as everybody else does).

Our industrial activities would also generate money which would go to a development bank we'd own, and then this development bank would invest in local projects, whether government, private-sector or charitable, as another way for the Autarians to give back to the community. Stuff we'd fund would be for example the purchase of extra transit buses for a municipality that needs more but can only afford less than they actually need, and public infrastructure projects that would benefit the whole community such as park and public square improvements, library/community centre expansions, improvements to municipal roads that Autarians frequently use to get from our towns to the cities or provincial highways, as well as helping fund worthwhile charities that do good work in the area, whether through financial donations or time from groups of our people who can help out physically, as well as organising disaster relief and truck convoys across Canada in times of crisis.

We believe that as Autarians, the more positive outreach we do and the more positive relationships we have with the wider community, people will think of us and what we as a people do locally next time $peaks asks society to donate to LIUB every Spring. That's the best counter-offensive ever thought of. When we as a people put lifting ourselves up to prosperity as a community as our goal, and then helping the wider community do the same, people will notice us and remember us.

We also believe that the only way an Aspergia-style concept would work in the real world is that we need to be inclusive when it comes to our affairs with the outside world, even though it's non-debatable that Autarians will own 100% of Autarian assets, co-operatives, corporations and land, in the interests of survival against global billion-dollar developers and the like. being inclusive also gives us legitimacy, as it means that we're participating in the Canadian cultural mosaic while being distinct within it, instead of being isolated and separate of it like some sects of the Mennonnites and the Mormons are like. We'd have our own political organisations, but in the context of Central Ontario, our communities would coexist within the existing municipalities we'd be established in, with our Central Committee representing Autarian interests in relations with said municipalities as well as with the Province and Ottawa. Myself I'm aiming to see Autarians eventually running for council seats, mayoral seats and even MPP seats eventually, as well as serving in uniform in an Autarian-centric capacity, for example Autarian-descent police officers patrolling our areas under the principles of community policing instead of the NTs who do NT cop things.

As for the culture itself, the Autarians would have our own language (Autarska), culture, cuisine, dress and dance. Unlike Quebec though, we see this culture as our way of sharing in the Canadian mosaic, instead of something to vote Oui for in a separatist referendum. Our language would have its roots and accent in Scandinavian languages, with some Baltic, French, and Slavic loan-words and loaned-grammar, and even Canadian Indigenous loanwords and concepts depending on the dialect and the region the Autarian speaker lives in. Our cultural celebrations we'd have would revolve around farming, seasonal solstices, Christmas/New Year's, national holidays (we'd celebrate Canada Day and all other secular holidays, as well as each Autarian regional group having its own founding day holiday to celebrate when they were constituted and asserted their emancipation from their old lives). Our food would be a mixture of fresh foods from our fields, most of which would be delivered to our residents as part of a daily or weekly allotment, including milk, cheese, meats, pastas, breakfast cereals, vegetables, fruits, rice, juices, the whole range of fresh food that we can grow locally, while we'd have lines of packaged foods and snacks which would be produced to be healthier and produced from our local crops, including popcorn, healthier chips such as popped or kettle-cooked, healthier but still good-tasting alternatives to Cheetos and Doritos, bags of puffed rice and the like.

Our clothes would be unique as well, and would be produced locally in our own factories, including down puffer winter jackets and vests, general clothing such as shirts, hoodies, pants, shoes, and other clothes, including sensory-friendly ones like an inflatable jacket that can apply pressure when needed with a light electric pump, or the "parachute silk poncho" idea that I read about on here, with every product we make being tagless, and many others having graphics in partnership with every fandom followed by Autistics that you can imagine, including shirts, jackets, backpacks, whatever you want, as well as vintage-looking clothes that ideally would be worn as part of our own regional style, with a mixture of old and new styles fused together in a way that works, that would be consistent and wouldn't fly in the wind like NT trends are.

In our communities we'd have clubhouses where everything from model railroads to LAN parties to movie nights, to dances and anything else one would want to do to unwind after a long week at work or just to get out of the house could come over and do, as well as a dance hall and a community hall where dances and community business can take place. These three places along with a general store and a market in the public square would be pretty consistent across Autarian towns and villages no matter the size or region they're in. Having things to do is the best ways to prevent mischief we believe, plus it combats the social isolation that we often deal with. For the train, bus, big rig subway and ship nerds, we'd have a specific club that would serve as an outlet for those hobbyists, both for stuff like building model railways as well as supporting local companies during community events and storms, such as helping out with charity food and toy drives put on by bus companies, or helping shovel out bus stops. They'd have their own railway-style uniforms they'd wear as part of the club, as well as one or two club buses that they'd use for transport to events and excursions as well as potentially hiring them out for charters, with the buses having some sort of preservation value due to age, status, marque or the history of the vehicle, particularly school and transit buses.

I developed a transition programme for Autarians who are coming from the "old life in the NT world" as we call it as well as for those ageing out of high school (between 18 to 21 years old), which would be run by the Central Committee in the beginning and then eventually run by the community councils themselves, through sponsorships from other areas of the country and around the world.

This programme would....

-provide real-world life skills that we as a people would need but some folks are lacking in (our sp-ed classrooms in Ontario are anywhere between glorified daycares to crypto psych wards depending on the kids who populate them and what staff work in them, and I learned more hanging out with the science, politics and heavy equipment teachers than I did in "Life Skills" as we call sped in our part of Ontario. I enjoyed the trips we went on though!), this would be cooking, cleaning, performing minor repairs on the house, car, appliances, and gas-powered yard implements, having people from various government orgs, charities, religious/cultural groups and business orgs come in to talk to us about what they do while offering advice to us, for example the police could come in and talk to us (the Central Committee would have an application and vetting process so we get officers with the right mindset in our programme instead of muscle-headed hotheads with attitude problems, plus the ability to sack officers from the programme if they f**k up. We'd look over every record imaginable from their employment file all the way to INTERPOL, NATO, EU, Military, US, Israeli, Russian [the latter two we'd be discretionary with and would take with a grain of salt when necessary] and CSIS background checks in the case of ex-military or other officers with international experience to be sure we've absolutely weeded out every lunkhead or Bratwater out there.), offering advice about crime prevention, safe vehicle operation, drugs (we'd however do drugs with both a cop and a doctor coming in to talk to us, in a way that allows our members to develop their own viewpoints based on the information instead of just one biased viewpoint, especially when it comes to weed legalisation), and things Autarians can do like auxiliary police, citizens on patrol or neighbourhood watch, as well as having fire prevention officers coming in to give us demos on fire safety that many of us never had, the whole nine yards including cooking, smoke alarms, electrical stuff, car stuff, forest fire prevention, demos of fire apparatus, and other safety-related stuff, as well as having local railways and transit systems come to talk to us about how to use their systems as well as specific info they can offer to the railfan community among us, Crime Stoppers coming to talk to us about their system and how we can use it, the whole nine yards, and having elections officials talk to us about voting and municipal, provincial and federal politicians and parties coming in to talk about their jobs and what their platforms are.

-Build trust in the community through the visits by community members to talk about relevant topics and build trust and rapports with us. (This is important for people such as myself who don't go out much and rely on the news media to learn about the world and the Internet to learn about social interaction and how society acts. For example the internet has basically taught me that society and the public space is like a schoolyard where the big bully douchebags with their lifted trucks, pitbulls, muscles, sorority girl trophy wives and their hipster beards pick on the weak and the "betas" for the sport of it, and the news media taught me that nobody can be trusted and everybody's lying. I'd imagine for others who are socially isolated the viewpoint's probably the same. I agree it's a toxic viewpoint to hold, and that's why I designed this programme after some post-meltdown self-reflection last year.).

-help our members learn the ins and outs of farming, including how to plant, how to harvest, and all the planning and other operations that happens inbetween, as well as animal raising (we'd use ethical methods including Grandin's slaughter method), operating tractors, trucks, combines and other machines, and working in a basic processing plant and storage facilities (our communities would run our farms as a community effort with most residents of the villages and towns taking part in it if they can, in roles they're comfortable in, with factories and non-essential businesses closing down for a week during planting season along with Autarian schoolkids being let out of school to take part in planting, while during the harvest, the same closures would happen but with more of a community effort going into transporting the crops to the mill and then processing them).

And last but not least...

-Find out what the special interests of our members are, and group them into special programmes where they can learn a trade that aligns with their SIs/passions, whether it's cars, trucks, trains, public transit, fashion, music, intellectual pursuits, restaurants, sports, anything fandom-related, we'd find a trade for them to work in whether as an employee in a corporation or as a small business owner. For too long society has said "Nein, Nyet und Nada!" to us living our dreams. I know this, my dream to become a locomotive engineer at Ontario Northland was crushed by the end of Grade 9 because of the monotony of Sp-ed and no programmes they could offer me to become one. The entire basis of the Autarian economy and culture, is the community supporting ourselves as a collective so our members can live our dreams, and not taking Nein for an answer!



Anyways, here's what I'm looking for....

Our first committee is planned to be established in Barrie, Simcoe County, in the Province of Ontario. We're looking for potential partners who live in the Simcoe County area who'd be interested in working with us to get the Autarian Central Committee of Simcoe County established. We plan to raise money through a combo of government grants if possible (my friend/business partner and I plan to have a meeting with the Ontario Government's Independent Living branch in Barrie in the next couple of weeks when he comes down here to see me and get to work), donations (received through a chequing account at a credit union in town), and possibly an investment portfolio owned by the committee with the partners involved making decisions on it.

I have reached out to Facebook groups I'm on looking for partners over the last week with no luck (I'm also affiliated with an Ontario-based self-advocacy group called A4A, which was formed last year when we looked into establishing an ASAN chapter but weren't able to because of lack of resources on the other end. No hard feelings towards ASAN, they do great work and that's why we went to them first.), so I'm back here on my old account looking for partners here, because there's bound to be somebody from Barrie or Simcoe willing to help? Right now the entire burden of this project rests on the shoulders of three different Autistics in three different Ontario cities, so we feel if we can find partners in Barrie and eventually in Sudbury, Timmins and York Region, we can work more effectively than we can being scattered throughout the province relying on social media and computers to organise.

We want partners from the Simcoe County area to meet us in Barrie between the 12th and 14th of September, 2018, if any of you are in the area are interested, contact me on here and we'll discuss things. We're also open to having people from York Region, Dufferin, Peel and Durham come up here if you can potentially make it, since the bus service has improved in the northern areas of York and Durham as well as in Simcoe County in recent years.

Anybody we take in to get the committee going will be in charge of helping us get off the ground and established, and eventually hiring staff (preferably Autistic, we believe in the "nothing for us withous us" philosophy) to deliver our programmes and then buy land to build transition housing for Autarian members going through the programme. The reason we believe we should house people in the transition programme is so that those who would have to juggle paying rent for an apartment through a crappy job in the NT world wouldn't have to do that any more, as they'd have a place over their head and can concentrate on becoming Autarian without having to worry about being homeless and penniless.

I have political connections among local left-wingers in Simcoe County as well, and have talked to three Barrie City Council candidates about the project and gotten nods of approval about the concept. I also got nods of approval from various members of the local NDP, including the provincial candidate I volunteered for in the 2018 Queen's Park elections.

Later in September-October I plan to go to Sudbury and Timmins to organise similar committees. I have family in Sudbury and Timmins as well as one of my two other partners lives in Sudbury.

I have several volumes of papers on Autario that I've been writing and updating over the last five years called the "Autistic Freedom" series, with each volume dealing with a specific region of Canada as well as another manifesto on the way that'll be used to make sales pitches to the outside world.

If anybody's interested, please contact me in private messages. I also have a Facebook group we designed to discuss the project and develop it, as I do almost all my communication via FB as does my two other partners.

tl;dr

Whom do you expect to finance this project?

We're hoping for an Ontario Trillium Foundation grant, but also plan to open a bank account to receive donations (through a local credit union) and also get an investment portfolio through a credit union. Once we get our committee going our first priority will be to build some money-making assets like factories, farms (with the villages on the first farms serving as both residences as well as training areas for Autarians to learn how to farm), and urban real estate (which we'd use first as housing for transition programme members but then would be rented on the open market after we reach totality), so that we're not forever depending on government subsidies or donations which we know can and will eventually dry up.

The whole goal of this project is that we as a people and community be self-sustaining, so we're hoping that the only bit of government support or donations we'll have to use is in the beginning. We know how government works and want to avoid the "annual bailout" scenario that's all over the news these days.

Maybe you could get funding by putting it forward as a reality TV show (joke).

I can't help with it, but if it did exist I would probably go there in a few years.

You know, when I left home, my father gave me some very sound advice:

1. Never trust a man who can't look you in the eye.

2. Never talk when you can listen.

3. Never spend venture capital on a speculative endeavor without a detailed analytical fiduciary prospectus.

Absolutely. We are talking hypothetically if it existed already and was financially feasible.

Hypothetical situations are best handled within the genre of science fiction.

Here's the thing. I'm actually planning to do this and have plans written to make it work.

No matter though, I've found some partners locally to work on the project, and am in the process of setting things up. I know the discussions on here that have taken place in the past have been quite hypothetical, but I've figured out a way to carry this through, and plan to do so.

I'll give WP regular updates through this thread if you guys wish? I figure if we wait for the government to come rescue us we'll be dead from old age or other health issues by the time that happens. I'm not about to wait four more years or longer!

Sure ... and we'll be checking established sources to verify your claims, as well.

What kind of factories have you got in mind for your settlement?

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams, no doubt.

The factories I have in mind are food processing plants (we plan to use crops from our farming co-operatives as feedstock for them), renewable gasoline and diesel plants, vehicle rebuilding facilities (we plan to import 15-year old and older European cars and big rigs, as well as Mexican tour buses and 1-year old and older Mexican-spec European cars, as well as some 15-year old vehicles from South America, Australia and Taiwan, particularly Taiwanese Fords, Chevys and Japanese vehicles, Australian sedans, utes and big rigs, which would be converted to LHD and winterised, along with South American pickup trucks from the late-70s to the Canadian 15-year-old cutoff) that would take grey-market vehicles, rebuild them with everything required for the Canadian market, and then sell them to dealerships, thrifty buyers, car guys and to Autarians especially (me and my partners think today's cars are too complex, can't even do your own oil changes or replace a lightbulb anymore without dropping a grand at the dealership, and seemingly simple problems now require a rocket scientist/mechanic to fix it with a tablet or a smartphone like a magician), as well as factories for building materials, clothing, housewares, tools, and other basic goods that have a low to moderate start-up cost, as well as niche factories such as those producing videotapes, cassettes, and the equipment to play them, along with CRT TVs. All these factories would be built to a scale that's large enough to provide gainful employment in the local area, but small enough that we don't end up with a supply glut and then have to cut production. The niche plants especially will be small operations, probably one factory that produces for the whole world. Our plants won't be massive like the GM plants in Oshawa or the ones in China.

If you're wondering why I want to open rebuilding plants for grey-market foreign cars from obscure countries, I figure something like a LandCruiser, a Brazillian Silverado, a 1982-88 Peugeot 505 or anything else that's not the crap we get in Canada (*cough F-150 *cough luxury 2018 German SUVs *cough) would be a more unique status symbol/fun vehicle to drive than any 2018 Mercedes or BMW. We're trying to not be like the NTs lol.

Our trucking industry's fleet is gonna be based on imported cabover European trucks and trailers, which will have an Autarian-run dealership and garage network to support as would the cars and the buses. Our economy would be based on local food production and sales of food to communities within Ontario, renewable gasoline and diesel made from waste as well as vegetable oil for our vehicles (which we'd make a good run on as people fed up with petro prices flock to us), domestic goods, and niche goods that only we'd be able to manufacture that we'd make all the money off of, like the VHS/Betamax/cassettes stuff. And our players we'd make would also play DVDs and Blu-Rays as well, as a means to make them more appealing to the masses.

I'm serious about this. Years of research and Autistic ingenuity has gone into this project and will continue to do so.

Also, this is not just one village, we plan to have three committees to start, in Simcoe County, Sudbury and Timmins, and possibly four others in Dufferin, Peel, York and Durham where there's rural areas, further spreading out as time goes on. The goal is to use this project to create a dignified existence for autistics, and create a cultural identity which will exist within the Canadian multicultural mosaic, not separate from it. That's the only way we see this project gaining legitimacy, and us succeeding. There'll be hundreds of small communities spread out across Central and Northern Ontario and a substantial urban presences in the small and medium-sized cities that are nearby, including professionals, entrepreneurs and others in the Downtowns of these cities, which we plan to not only have training programmes for (these professionals will be matched into their ideal roles through identifiying their SIs), but also a community-based tuition fund and support network should they decide to go to school.

Last edited by ON697Northlander on 03 Sep 2018, 5:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Cool