Safety in Public, with Rachel Barcellona, Thomas Iland, Jamiel Owens, and Maricarmen Hazoury

Discover what’s possible when awareness educates safety. 

This week’s episode is a recording of one of our Global Autism Community exclusive events. The topic of this round table discussion is Safety in Public.

The diverse panelists include autism self-advocates Rachel Barcellona and Thomas Iland, autism father and host of The Ausome Show, Jamiel Owens, and our Global Autism Project partner from the Dominican Republic, Maricarmen (Kaki) Hazoury. 

Other community members present at the event and part of the discussion are Jeff Snyder, David Sharif, Kia Burton, Karen Shapiro, and Ben Sharif. 

We hadn’t originally planned to produce a podcast episode from this exclusive event, but we later thought it would be great to make this rich conversation available to our podcast listeners as well. We apologize for the inconsistent sound quality, but I assure you that the stories and perspectives shared by our guests are really worth listening to. 

In today’s conversation, we discuss:

• Navigating around the community
• Autism-disclosure ID cards
• Interactions with strangers and law enforcement
• Setting boundaries on social media 

Roundtable discussions like the one you’ll hear today are open exclusively for members of our online Global Autism Community. We select a different theme each month, and our moderators monitor posts daily to ensure that our online space remains safe and respectful.

If you’d like to attend and participate in any of our future events, you can sign up today at community.globalautismproject.org. 

Also, just a heads up that next week we won’t be releasing a new episode in observance of Labor Day in the US. September is a good time of the year to reset and prioritize your own well-being, and our team will be taking the week off to do just that. I encourage you to find a moment for self-care during this weekend, whatever that means for you. For those of you living in the US, have a safe, happy, and restful holiday weekend. We’ll be back on our regular release schedule on Thursday, September 16th. 

To learn more about the panelists in this discussion, please visit:

Rachel Barcellona 

Thomas Iland 

Jamiel Owens

Kaki Hazoury 

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