“If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I’d have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order. But I’m just fine. I had a good long run and am grateful for it and everything else.”- Garrison Keillor.

"I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the p***y. You can do anything."- Donald Trump.

How is Garrison Keillor any different than Donald Trump?

My deconstruction from the deep centrist culture of NPR and PBS began when a report came out about Garrison Keillor’s horrible and dishonourable behavior towards women in his workplace. Yet despite proof upon proof, NPR Centist will always be by his side, making excuses for him to behave no differently from our current president. Meanwhile, in Keillor’s own state of Minnesota, people are shot at and arrested for wanting a better socialist government that cares for its people instead of abandoning them and bowing down to billionaires and dark money. Every theater needs to close its doors to people like Garrison Keillor, who promotes Liberal Christian Nationalism and Midwest Blut und Boden.

If you don’t know what Blut und Boden is, it’s the Fascist Philosophy that once all Liberal Institutions of Democracy are destroyed, then people can repopulate and farm the land like a new Lake Wobigon. The women must be strong in their faith and virtue of beauty, the men must be good-looking and toxically masculine, and all children have to be above average. This is a dangerous ideology for any civilized society. It was the horror that my great Oma and Opa Krappmann had to flee from in Germany during the early rise of the Third Reich. Germany is now a socialist democracy that values childhood, taxes, churches, and corporations, makes healthcare a priority, and teaches history without propaganda and an agenda. That is because of Immigrant Children who later fought against fascism and taught Eastern Europe to learn from the horrors of Fascism and authoritarian governments. Germany’s stance on learning about these dangers is never to repeat them.

I grew up in a household that listened to NPR and watched PBS. I was homeschooled to be a critical-thinking centrist with a 6th- to 7th-grade reading level, way ahead of most people in my class, because I read and did homework on family vacations. Yet when I got into fourth grade as the only girl in my class of wild boys, I had a very hard time being a child because of all the manners and standards placed upon me as an Autistic person. My Mom found it problematic that I got along better with boys than girls my age.

A lot of the playmates I did have came from homeschooling environments, and so the one good friend had to be a girlfriend. She is where I first learned about Veggie Tales and Adventures in Oddyssey from them, and yes, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cukecumber are better than a creepy old man running an ice cream shop. Her family are hardcore Disney Adults before the term was even coined on social media, many of whom come from high-demand cults and religious groups, only to join one run by Walt Disney, a union buster with the attitude of a creepy old youth pastor.

I hate it when people who are NPR or PBS centrist or even leftist say about religious or culty groups of people, “Let them live their life!” when there are so many things about religious and corporate cults that are horribly harmful, and abusive. As an Autistic Person myself, I know that many families or people who seem normal on the surface are actually silently suffering on the inside. This is why masking is horrible for a lot of neurodivergent women, because the silence is loud and clear that they feel uncomfortable and miserable in certain environments where ableism is clearly normalized and polite.

The Danger of Living in an Above-Average World.

Garrison Keillor’s vision of how the world should be is not the kind I want to live under, because then we get people like Temple Grandin. Whose voice appeals to people like Garrison Keillor, ABA Moms, and other NPR journalists who are neurotypical and do not understand the perspectives and cultures that allow Autistic and Neurodiverse people to flourish and be themselves. She spent her entire life trying to cure her Autism instead of embracing it with love, kindness, acceptance, and compassion that all Autistic people need. When you grow up thinking she is the most trustworthy person in the room, it creates internalized ableism and normalizes seeing ableist ideals as the way things are.

As an adolescent, I grew up with a lot of self-hate and shame about myself, and my dad, being an undiagnosed Autistic, did not know how to deal with and overcome a lot of struggles. Toxic positivity, gratitude exercises, and over-realistic thinking were the salt given to me that rubbed my wounds in the worst way. Therapy eventually helped me realize all of my emotions and feelings were valid and real. I did not need a cure for my Autism; I needed people who would listen to me and believe in me, no matter what. This is why I find teachers who refuse to help kids and complain about them, or parents who do ABA and view it as a moral high ground for homeschooling and unschooling, the worst nihilistic people who do not know how hurtful they are. They refuse to evolve until it’s too late.

I even called out my Mom on a very nihilistic statement she said yesterday that teachers should not be taking care of children, but only care about teaching the kids, which will not work in today’s climate because of the damage of Covid-19, 40 hours of ABA therapy, and homeschooling on both ends of the political spectrum. The whole mission and goal of teaching in general is to nurture the brains and bodies of all children and adress their needs when they are not met by a parent. This is why Educators fail as Teachers because they do not know how to be nurturers of young minds and bodies who are developing and growing constantly. Good teachers should be worried about parents who refuse to take action in a child’s own well-being. They should also be very wary of ABA and the bad SEL that comes from ABA, which often is not helpful for neurodivergent children and teens, like Whole Body Listening and Zones of Regulation.

When there are journalists who are neurodiverse and disabled themselves, they can give people new perspectives and ways of thinking about the challenges, obstacles, and struggles disabled and divergent people face every day. Yet when NPR turns down hiring any of us, we get situations like Here and Now’s Camp Jabberwokcy story, where clearly the father of a son with cerebral palsy used his own son’s death to make people aware of all the good Camp Jabberwokcy does without holding his own biases accountable on air. Imagine if Tiny Tim died and Ebenezer Scrooge wrote a book to profit off of something he should have done but did not do anything to make Tim’s life better and give him dignity.

Stephen Hawking did a lot of great things to promote people’s curiosity about science and physics, and he was in a wheelchair and could not speak. One of our greatest progressive presidents was Franklin. D. Roseavelt, he had to use a wheelchair after being struck by Polio; he promoted great social programs and got people out of poverty. He later worked with people who discovered cures for diseases and sickness, and wanted healthcare and support for all people.

People with disabilities or neurodivergence are not perfect people; this is the whole point of what Stella Young’s TED Talk about Inspiration Porn was trying to point out. Yet the obstacles and struggles we have to overcome make us better human beings than any athlete, neopo-baby, Hollywood Director, or Forbes 500 CEO. This is what ASAN means by their motto, “Nothing About Us Without Us.” The danger of living in an Above Average world is the assumption that all of us can be Above Average if we act and behave like uptight centrist people and bow down to business as usual, even if said business or enviroment it toxic and harmful to our wellbeing and creative spirit as human artists.

“Can We All Agree to Disagree…” begins with the letter C for Centrisum.

Alongside many of the classics in the PBS canon like Aurtur, Sesame Street, Bill Nye, and Wishbone. One of my favorite shows I would wait for as a kid every Sunday was the Brian Jacques Redwall series on our local PBS station. It’s about a group of animals who live in the Middle Ages who must work together to fight off nasty and very wicked rats, foxes, and weasels who engage in slavery, cruelty, and other nasty things people did in that time. Around the same time in the gay 90’s and 2000’s was a debate over violent video games like Mortal Kombat and fake weapon-based play based around movies and shows like Star Wars, Dragonball Z, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Harry Potter, and of course, Redwall itself. For years, kids have always known the one kid who takes violence too far and set up boundaries to protect themselves from Freddy, who enjoys hurting other people. Kids are not stupid little people and know when another kid takes things too far.

Any kid right away knows the difference between a Nerf gun and a Super Soaker because they are designed differently, with bright colors to signal safe play. Yet take away conflict, struggle, or violence from a show or media for children, and the lines get blurred by people who profit from those boundaries and safeguards being eliminated. Take away Captain Underpants and any manga, graphic novels, and comics in general out of classrooms, and surely some abelist like Jeff Kinney will replace the curriculum with Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Take away a show like Redwall, and others with conflict resolution and some violence, and it’s bound to be replaced by far worse shows like South Park, Barney, Wee Sing, or Caliou. In fact, Baby Einstein’s shadow created the monster that is Cocomelon just by exploiting an age group that, according to every journal of pediatrics, should not have screen media in general until they turn 6 years old and watch media with a parent or family member.

When Don Bluth’s film The Secret of NIMH became a wide success in animation, Disney wanted to minimize his triumph after he left Disney because he took risks, much like PBS in Michigan did with Redwall. Instead of learning the lessons of people like Jim Henson and Don Bluth, who made risky decisions to create meaningful and story-driven art that is still impactful and long-lasting. They went ahead, bowed down to parents and corporations like The Heritage Foundation, and canceled Redwall. In Redwall, characters had to fight hard and work together for a happy resolution. In Super Why, the happy resolution means changing the entire story with their flashy superpowers of bowdlerization, which has a very dangerous history of cultural erasure, basis sanitization, and whitewashing.

Those Meadeling Teens and Their Trans Gender Woke Screens!

A lot of the panic created by Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation around teenagers and their screentime is no different than the fight against comic books, graphic novels, and manga that is still ongoing in every literature class today. Dr. Fredrick Wertham was a disgraced member of the Frankfurt am Main School of Sociology who claimed comic books were destroying the minds of the youth because of disturbing violence, horror, and themes of radical acceptance of race, feminism, disability, neurodivergence, and gender. Contrary to what he wrote, comic books have always appealed to people who are outcasts and outsiders, and are a gateway into understanding literary structures and narratives. Yet the wars against them as literature in classrooms go back to the 1950’s, even though it’s 2026. The X-Men themselves are an allegory for Neurodiverse, Disabled, and LGBTQA+ people living under one roof using their powers for good.

Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy deals with grief, how humans abuse and use technology and workers, and the human struggle of fitting in from the point of view of a robot. The first instalment of Astro Boy is about a father who loses his son Tobi in a car crash. His grief drives him to create Astro Boy to replace his lost son.

Until he realizes the limitation of a robot is that they can’t grow up or replace a real human, which really angers him. So he is sold to a circus where robots battle in gladiator combat. Until he is discovered by a Scientist who discovers that Astro is capable of compassion, kindness, courage, and empathy compared to most robots whose only work is in a factory or fighting. Many of Tezuka Osamu’s works were people’s first introduction to manga and anime, and many people who founded the first Furry Conventions were huge fans of Tezuka more than of Walt Disney, and introduced Kimba the White Lion to a wider audience. Tezuka’s works should be a part of the literary canon along with Der Struwwelpeter, The Lord of the Rings, Matildia, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, and Art Speigalmann’s MAUS as important keystone texts of literature instead of Animal Farm and 1984 on the desk of every Middle and High Schooler.

Many kids do not read for pleasure anymore because our reading curriculum dates back to the Cold War, where people burned comic books in fiery pits, forced kids to watch films on good manners, respecting your parents, and housekeeping, and read Animal Farm, which has always been libertarian propaganda in public schools.

How is banning comic books, video games, iPhones, and screens in public schools any different than what Nazi’s did in the 20’s, or the Satanic Panic in the 80’s? Yet because NPR and PBS want both sides of a good story, they give people like Hadit a shiny new soapbox to shout on, Hidden Brain, and proclaim with no research or evidence that an iPhone will make your child depressed, anxious, and mentally ill LGBTQA+ when that is not how gender and psychology work. He is just as crazy as Alex Jones talking about gay frogs, yet because he is a centrist with a platform and wrote a bestselling book like Garrison Keillor, and Temple Grandin he is more important than the Journal of Nature, which says teens mostly use phones and devices to play games, create, and socialize with other peers, which increased during Covid 19 when people were on lockdown and needed spaces like Discord and Twitich to communicate and share their creativity and ideas with others.

Take Discord away from people who do need the platform to socialize with real users, and there is no healthy environment for teenagers to vent and learn from peers all over the world who experience similar challenges with mental health and anxieties about their future. Fearmongering about screens also distracts teachers from crafting and creating a better environment for children, where they have a safe place to be who they are and express who they are.

This is why public schools need to fight back not only against religious groups sneaking into public schools but corporate power as well, including Standardized Testing, Ed Tech, Landmark Education, Bands of America, Drum Corps International, and Big ABA Therapy, which have always gone hand in hand with homeschooling, troubled teens, and the conversion therapy lobby. Not all parents are respectful, accepting, or kind people, yet so much of PBS’s media for children focuses on children who live with their parents instead of focusing on how kids can be autonomous and independent humans away from their parents and develop relationships that last.

There Are No Both Sides to Fascism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism.

1. NPR and PBS should not allow content or take money that is backed by dark money, corporations, or groups like the Heritage Foundation or Autism Speaks to control content and programming.

2. NPR and PBS need to hire and accommodate the voices and presence of the LGBTQIA+, Neurodiverse, and Disabled community.

3. NPR and PBS need to meet the needs of rural areas by providing programming and opportunities for young people in them.

4. NPR and PBS need to know how to use and adapt to changes and challenges in media, technology, and teach media literacy.

5. NPR and PBS need to question the biases and beliefs of guests on their shows so that people make better decisions.

6. NPR and PBS must respect workers’ unionizing and participate in reporting on active protests all over America.

7. NPR and PBS need to respect and engage with minorities and marginalized communities without gatekeeping, elitism, or judgment.

8. NPR and PBS need to be open to learning the history of all immigrant and migrant peoples and their cultures.

9. NPR and PBS need to defend teachers and students in public schools and defend them from religious and corporate influence.

10. NPR and PBS need to respect the well-being and development of all children and teenagers and help them build and create new programming for the next generation.

“We take a young mind, we take somebody who is just learning something new. We are showing him excellence, not musculatures in terms of activities, but results. Here’s your trumpet, here’s your mouthpiece, and it can sound beautiful. Imitate by trial and error. Be willing to make a mistake.”- Arnold Jacobs.

I have tried to get every band director or someone from the marching and performing arts to read about or learn more about Alife Kohn and Arnold Jacobs, but they haven’t been receptive. This is all the proof I need to know that band directors who are taught to be militant, toxic, and cruel to students and only care about constant winning at all coast are cowards and monsters in the band room who are too afraid to confront their own ideology and change as human beings. People like Mr. Kohn and Jacobs are the challenge needed by all music teachers and students to know the true knowledge of why students and teachers suffer and struggle with authoritarian teaching methods by band directors, and what they can do to change these systems.

When Arnold Jacobs describes Song and Wind, a better way to think about how it works is not like Harold Hill’s Think Method, but Ying and Yang. Song is our mental and creative soul as musicians and artists that needs and craves expression. Wind is our own physical body with all our muscles, lungs, mouth, and other parts working with the brain. Song and Wind can never be separated, or else we become robots and machines that play without emotion, feeling, or passion, and only focus on numbers and scores. This is why teachers and educators like Alfie Kohn pair well with the philosophy of Arnold Jacobs, because he wanted musicians to see themselves as individual human beings who are capable of goodness and strength. Not as robots and able-bodied machines with an input and output.

I also understand what both are saying because so many institutions of music education want to crush the humanity out of musicians until the point of obedience or burnout. To understand suffering is to understand how and why people are forced into systems of obedience and burnout, and how they can escape and build empathy and kindness into musicians and artists who care about deep human nature.

Alife Kohn says that testing, grades, and toxic competition do not prepare students for softer skills that are needed in colleges, like self-advocacy, cooperation, accomidation, creativity, imagination, and deeper thought. No score number, degrees on a wall, or trophies on a shelf can prove who a student is at the end of the school year; it’s about what you do with the knowledge given to you.

Yet teachers who do not take risks to challenge systems of power and abuse are the worst, along with those who promote ABA therapy and SEL tactics based on ABA. They are the ones who become prey to parents, politicians, fearmongers, and directors who abuse their power and manipulate them to live inside a burning building with only a bucket of water and a teaspoon to put the flames out.

I hate the trendy teachers on TikTok and YouTube who film their classrooms and complain about kids not reading or obeying them when they are a part of the problem instead of being the fighters they should be for every child to learn. If a child saw a video of their teacher doing this, how would they feel?

Another problem is the parents who think predatory and militant people like the ones who run Drum Corps International and Bands of America should teach music classrooms when their abuse of power is very clear on day one. Corporations, Religious Groups, and ABA therapy need to get out of Public Schools, so we have teachers and staff who deeply care about the well-being of all children going into school.

Any parent who thinks homeschooling and unschooling are the right thing is missing out on class solidarity between parents and teachers. I know because I was the child of a very Centrist ABA culture that I could not question as a child. After all, I thought this was the way things had to be until I became an adolescent and struggled with aggression and socializing as an Autistic Teenager. In Centrist ABA culture, anger and sadness are seen as negative things that need to be regulated and fixed.

Then a therapist made my world better by telling me all my emotions were normal and valid instead of calling me crazy and paranoid. Now that I’m a more balanced person, I have had to unlearn a lot of things about Centrisum and ABA as a whole that made my world unhappy and full of suffering. I also had to unlearn a lot of the demonization around teaching and education that was taught to me by my Mom. I’m a deep-blue socialist in Michigan, a purple swing state with a rich history of union and class solidarity and activism. So many Autistic people think they need to be another Temple Grandin because of the years she absorbed internalized ableism and hate around neurodivergent people and culture.

Autistic Culture News

The Trouble with Temple (Episode 24)

In this episode of The Autistic Culture Podcast…

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3 years ago · 8 likes · 4 comments · Dr. Angela Kingdon

My therapist wanted to meet her after a talk, and she hid out in a bathroom because of her own high masking that was taught to her, and because she did not question why interalized abelisum exist insted of trying to cure Autism. I have hid out in many a bathroom and cried because of highly toxic people who were abusive, I dealt with daily, and my therapist is not one of them. Yet people like her don’t realize that one must leave toxic environments like ABA therapy to become a free human being.

If Siddhartha stayed with the monks who made him take a vow of starvation, he would never learn to feed himself, share with others, know the true nature of suffering, and become the Buddha. Sadly for Temple Grandin, ABA therapy has become her brand that she will never question or hold accountable for so much damage and suffering done to Autistic people. Much like for many band directors, DCI or BOA has become a thing they will never question or hold accountable until they die because of the nature of it being a cult akin to Scientology.

We, humans, have a choice to leave toxic environments and make the world better than it was before. Robots and machines don’t. We, neurodivergent artists and performers, are not robots or machines; we are human beings. Leave toxic competitive environments or die trying to be a robot or machine.

We are creatures of Song and Wind. Not Scores and Results.

When I borrowed Snoopy’s copy of the DSM-5, I realized that the adults in our community were all narcissists. That said, I own my own actions and fully recognize that, as I still don’t have a degree, I can’t diagnose anybody, not even a dog.- Lucy Van Pelt’s Response to Charges of Medical Malpractice by Alison Lowenstein

How many Autistic people have been told that their behaviors are always a problem, even when they are not hurting or harming anyone? How many of you were told their hobbies, which led to future career pathways and foundations, were unrealistic? How many of you had a parent who set a very high goal post expectations, and gave up because you couldn’t get there, even though you did so and tried really hard? How many crushed wants, needs, dreams, hopes, imaginations, and desires do you have ripped and torn to pieces? Ever felt like talking to such people felt like talking to a leaking brick wall that won’t move? When you had a problem with people, did they blame you for wanting change, equality, freedom, independence, and justice? Ever felt exhausted trying over and over again to prove them wrong?

If you ever said yes to all of these or empathise with these feelings, then you grew up with a Mother or person like Lucy Van Pelt from Peanuts. Let’s make it clear that none of these actions should be the right way to raise any child, including those with disabilities, neurodivergence, or LGBTQA+ children and teens. My Mom grew up in a family with narcissistic parents and promised herself that she would not likely become a narcissist. Yet as Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." Disabled and Neurodivergent people are walking mirrors of how society hurts and harms the most talented, creative, thoughtful, and vulnerable people in this world. We are Nietzsche’s Abyss that exposes the awful cruelty behind ABA therapy, which is banned by WHO and the EU, recognizing it as conversion therapy for Autistic and other Neurodivergent people that has led to trauma and harm to the identity of all of us.

Yet in the UK and the USA, Big ABA Therapy is an industry that not only preys on parents but also on educators as well. One YouTuber called Autistic AF did something brave that goes against the moral fibers of Autistic people who are victims of ABA. He applied to become an ABA practitioner.

He discovered, much like Homer Simpson does, that anyone and everyone can apply to be a registered ABA practitioner online and elsewhere, much like becoming an ordained minister on some random website that has very little oversight.

He took a course in RBT with oversight by another CRBT therapist, as oversight over whether he had a criminal record, and worked with kids remotely. In the training, he was told by them that a full-on session of ABA is 40 hours a day, and many other problems with consent, autonomy, and lack of respect for Autistic identity, individuality, and independence. Yet kids who live and breathe ABA-centered Homeschool and Occupational Therapy by my Mom or other Parental Avocates think this is normal and is supposed to be normal until it’s not normal or healthy for an Autistic person mentally and physically.

My Mom always complains about people who just should not be parents of Autistic people, yet allowed her parents, who were narcissistic and manipulative people from the start, to watch over me every time she and my Dad went to bussness trips. They did not know what OT or ABA was and did not care about it, as my Mom did. When you are a child with these kinds of people, you don’t know you're being manipulated or used by them as a tool, which is why masking your expression and behavior is so dangerous for younger Neurodivergent and LGBTQA+ people.

Both she and her mother, Grandma Pow, as I called her as a child, hated men, and both had very unhealthy expectations of men and demonized my Dad and his family. They made my Dad feel guilty for not doing the therapy and health work, not loving enough, and not reading the room when he himself is an undiagnosed Autistic. How could he know early on that both my Mom’s parents were narcissistic and manipulative people when half of the time he was at work a lot? His family did business trips, and others took care of his family, like my Aunt Gurtty?

When I became a teenager and started to like men, old or young, big, adorkable, geeky men, was when I felt drawn and quartered between a healthy example of men like my Dad, my brass teacher Chuck Russel, and Chuck Daellenbach of Canadian Brass, and the dangerous men like Grandpa Pow, Mr. Schuster, and Uncle Jeff. Much of my smut was colorful, circus-themed, band geeky, and had a bassoonist named Bradford Schlulz. If the smut was too overtyly cuddly and huggy, my Mom and others would go bezerk. So I had to disguise it as a child’s drawing out of fear in High School and early college that someone would tell a guidance counselor or my Mom that I liked men asexually, which meant constant heartbroken conflict and lots of lonely meltdowns.

What is a Good Person, Charlie Brown?

Let’s make one thing clear: there are abelist Autistic People like Temple Grandin and Katyln Paltroe from Love on the Spectrum who exist. There are also homophobic and transphobic gay men and women who have hidden in their closets until they are skeletons in an attic. And finally, Toxic Feminism should never be an excuse for another man’s toxic masculinity.

As a child and teenager, I always wondered in an alternate Peanuts universe what would happen if Charlie Brown did not give Lucy five cents or kick the football? It’s a question that has baffled Schulz experts and presidents like Barack Obama. Yet one thing they never ask is, “Is Lucy Van Pelt ever a trustworthy character in Peanuts?” The answer I would give as Dr. Ramni would be this: “NO!” and even if he stopped giving her the quarters and kicking the football, he would be guilt-tripped into not doing so and still be called a depressed and lonely blockhead. A good person would remind Charlie Brown over and over not to kick the football, not to give her 5 cents, and absolutely not to pick her to be captain of the baseball team!

Also, they would not make Charlie Brown guilty for feeling sad because we all have emotions that are dominant and are important to us as humans, regardless. For him, his driver is deep sadness; for Struwwelpeter, it’s passionate anger. The key is that both of these emotions are frequently demonized by ABA and by cultural norms that come into conflict with toxic positivity. Yet the deep sadness of Charlie Brown is why he enjoys Schroeder playing Beethoven, and for Struwwelpeter, it’s his anger and passionate singing of opera, lieder, and folk ballads that help him fight ableism in both Volksmusik and Opera, which are gatekept from younger people by elitum and classisum in the music industry.

Charles Schulz grew up in an era where being outspoken about mental health was risky. He divorced a woman who fit the Lucy Van Pelt archetype. When he got his first house, he was forced to give up having a new puppy for peat gravel, which inspired Snoopy. He also worked on pamphlets and comics for the Lutheran Church, made for older kids and teenagers alongside Peanuts. Around this time, sadly, there were people like James Dobson, founding Focus on the Family and wrote The Strong-Willed Child, and Norman Vincent Peale, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Both men are the polar opposite of Charlie Brown and promote toxic parenting and positivity.

Lucy Van Pelt knows that she can break Charlie Brown’s willpower and use him, yet his sadness and anxiety also make him a good friend for Franklin, Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Snoopy. Negative Emotions and Feelings like Fear, Anger, Sadness, and Anxiety are supposed to challenge and create emotional change and development.

This is also the message of the Inside Out films, whose message has been corrupted by ABA and bad SEL lessons in classrooms that allow ableist behaviors, bullying, and rewarding masking to thrive, like the Zones of Regulation and Whole Body Listening.

I would love writers at Pixar to also address two new characters for the 3rd Inside Out, Norms and Doubts. Norms (Monty Python’s Eric Idle) is a buildup of assumptions Riley learns about gender and boundaries from her peers, media, teachers, and parents that prevent her from expressing who she truly is as a person. Now she is finally going into High School, and what if her coach from the second movie is replaced by a gross, sexist, John Lasseter-esque coach? What if her parents don’t fully understand that she really loves girls like Vale? What other harmful norms are there in High School life, like hazing, conformity, cliques, cyberbullying, trolling, sexism, and assault, that she and her emotions all have to battle with? At least it would be better than a techphobic 5th Toy Story or Coco 2. I would love Michel Sheen from Good Omens to be Dobuts because Dobuts are how we question our norms, push away toxic boundaries, and become more empathetic to others and what they are struggling with. To do so, Riely has to learn to love herself and trust herself for who she is.

Even after my Mom and I saw both the first and second Inside Out movies, which both made me cry hard. She still missed the boat on the message of both films, as many ABA Mothers and Practitioners have done. You have to remember that in the Zoomer era, there was no Neurodivergence, Julia was non-existent on Sesame Street, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast came out after Howard Ashman died of AIDS and won Academy Awards, and the only hero Autistic Girls were conditioned hard to look up to was Temple Grandin. ABA Moms talked about Autisum like their children were Goosebumps or Der Struwwelpeter characters and how hard it was for them as parents, and oh the holly horrors of being an Autism Parent! This environment is what births a Lucy Van Pelt from birth to death because the whole environment is built around shaming the Autism instead of celebrating it every day, no matter the challenge.

Too many diagnosis stories are more like grief, hopelessness, and loss rather than embracing and loving a child exactly for who they are. When a child does ABA Therapy, they lose the love they can give to themselves and learn that masking is a form of love to make their parents proud while they are suffering and hiding who they are, which does not make Lucy van Pelt proud. Hiding how you are feeling as an Autistic Adult is not an act of love or kindness, but pain and suffering.

Be Proud of Your Child!

One Disney lost song that hits me hard with tears is Proud of Your Boy from Aladdin by Howard Ashman, who finished the whole song and story of Aladdin before dying of AIDS. Frozen’s Do You Want to Build a Snowman? or even Let it Go does not make me have the same sadness or gravity I get from Out There, I’m Angry, Rainbow Connection, I’m a Bluebird, or this song. So many ABA kids and teens are told to Let it Go all the time, and it makes me mad! It also makes them afraid that if they do express that they are hurting from holding up a mask of happiness and normal behaviors, no one will love or appreciate them exactly for who they are as people. Aladdin is the story of a starving artist who is trying to survive an environment of people who do not care what happens to poor or vulnerable people.

Howard Ashman found it hard to come out to his parents as a gay man, as did many LGBTQA+ people during the Zoomer era. Being an Asexual Romantic person, I was afraid I would not find a good man or die alone. It also did not help that I really liked men, which my Mom was not proud of. I looked up to men like my brass teacher, Chuck Russel, Chuck Daellenbach of Canadian Brass, and Arnold Jacobs. I found out in Middle and High School that finding women and girls to be friends with was hard, and there was a stigma about young women who liked older men like Chuck Daellenbach because they are good people and not in the creepy way like Woody Allen or Garrison Keillor. When Autistic Women are high maskers, they get into situations that are dangerous and get stuck in toxic relationships, and they find it hard to get out of them. Especially relationships with other NT girls and women who are manipulative and abelist. And when we call out the manipulative and abusive behavior, we are told to forgive and forget or let it go.

Bad girls and women in films and media were asexual until Pixar’s Brave came along with a very asexual strong princess, Merida. Then Netflix’s Queer Eye showed me that Asexual people could have love, have healthy relationships, and families, which was something I was not taught in a loving or affirming way. Part of the reason I wanted to adapt Der Struwwelper was that so many German American kids and teens live in therapy deserts and need examples of healthy creative outlets and safe spaces to express who they are and identify how they feel, which builds autonomy and independence in life. So many shows with Autistic characters like Bluey and Carl the Collector have them hang out with their parents yet don’t adress how neurodiverse people can create their own communities, independence, advocacy, and autonomy.

If parents really cared about the well-being of students and teachers, they should support public school programs instead of isolating children in 40 hours of ABA therapy and homeschooling with limits on social development and playtime. They should hire neurodiverse teachers and parapros that do help the well-being of all children, throw out those Whole Body Posters, Zones of Regulation sheets, Blue Books, and Scantrons. They would build walls of church and state, abolish corporate monopolies like Drum Corps International and Bands of America from school property. They would set up Non-Compete clauses for all school activities and not force children to compete in all after school activites. They should question all ableism and ableist practices in both Public Education and Higher Ed. When parents only see ABA as an end-all or be-all for their child, they can never love their child exactly for who they are.

#NoFiveCents

Marching Arts Access, Safety, and Inclusion Network (MAASIN) coordinates a collective voice to address safety, accessibility, inclusivity, and equity in the marching arts. We advocate for the needs of our diverse performer population, especially the needs of historically excluded and underrepresented groups. We advocate for safe, reasonable, and comfortable working conditions for staff, including increased protection from wrongful termination, sexual harassment, and discrimination. We strongly oppose all forms of inequity, discrimination, and harassment.

In many circles of politics, education, and social reform, there is a metaphorical joke about chickens who work for KFC. Why would a chicken want to work for a group whose sole goal is to gobble up every chicken? This is also the dilemma faced by the young Gelfling protagonist in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which is a prequel to the epic movie The Dark Crystal. Long ago in Thra, the Gelflings lived and worked together until the Crystal of Turth cracked into The Dark Crystal. The Skeksis are a race of evil creatures who divide the Gelflings into different classes within their many monarchies. And force the Gelflings to tithe and work for them in the castle.

Little do they know that this is how they are controlling the Gelfings to work for them and fight against each other. Fantasy is a good mirror of reality, a reality that many people in music education refuse to accept, which is why they should not work for Drum Corps International and Bands of America, and why both corporations need to be abolished from public schools.

If the Skeksis were all-powerful and had everything, then why do they require tithes from even the poorest Gelfling?-Brea from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

Many of DCI’s World Class corps are in low-income and poverty areas, which I discovered using the USA Government Poverty Map by entering every county of a DCI corps into their database. This is done strategically so that they can target students to leave impoverished music programs by having band directors affiliated with a DCI corps consistently pay the upfront cost for students to be in the corps. There is also a Corp to College Pipeline if you're rich enough to keep on tithing to the corps until there is no money left.

This is why there is a commonality between band directors and billionaires who sell their labor to another person and receive the profits. Another commonality is that they are predatory by nature, being predatory people in the profession of band directing as a whole. This is why one credo of r/FlyingCircusOrchetra that angers people in music education is Be a Music Teacher, Not a Band Director. It’s not about the title; it’s about what a music teacher values that separates them from band directors. Music Teachers care about people and their love of learning; band directors only care about power and profit over others. Why would music educators in general want to work with Drum Corps International and Bands of America or any affiliated groups if they can’t question the systemic issues and problems behind the two monopolies that make their lives and the lives of all students miserable?

Old Creatures of Song and Wind

I joined the Flint New Horizons Band in my twenties after graduating from high school in 2010, and teacher and tuba player Arnold Jacobs would definitely describe the people in that band as old creatures of Song and Wind. The Concert Band at Davison High School was treated terribly compared to the Symphonic Band, and as an autistic person, I struggled with ensemble as a skill because Mr. Schuster pushed us to read music that was difficult. He also called kids horrible names, like one baritone sax player, whom he called Short Bus, for going to the Alternative School. During a band trip to Boston, he tried to hit up my own Mom, who was already with my Dad at the time. Aronld Jacobs, my teacher, Chuck Russel, and Chuck Daellenbach were my trinity, and younger people who loved Mr. Schuster treated all they taught and represented like dirt or mud on their shiny shoes. I was glad to leave and graduate with honors.

My body was not the same as it was when I was pre-pubescent. I got a lot of mixed messages from my Mom and cousins, who did dance, which is full of toxic messages and ideals of weight and health. My life was full of people who told me I would never be as good as Chuck Daellenbach because of my developmental delays, body strength, abilities, and aggression. Yet the people in the Flint New Horizons Band helped me prove so many things wrong and why they were wrong in the first place. A Double Bassist told me I would become a virtuoso player at 30 years old!

Leo and Nancy directed the band at that time, and they wanted it to be a welcoming place for all and supportive of people helping each other. My Mom and I would make soup for the band during cold Michigan Winters which Brian, the tuba player, would gulp down. Leo would tell us not be afraid of being stuffy or quiet, and tell us to use our “Chicago Symphony Sound,” meaning to play with a blast of loud, warm tone to make the air ring out, and the floor vibrate. I would play above the staff and Brian much lower, which was a great lesson about parshals and how powerful they can be in creating a choir of sound.

Many brass instructors in DCI and BOA circles hate the message that Arnold Jacobs has to offer the world because it conflicts with much more militant and authoritarian ways of being taught and challenges the toll those actions have on the bodies of perfroming artist. Yet his teachings are the ones that are at the foundation of Canadian Brass and the show Blast. They are afraid of auditon free enviroments because they were taught to hate people who can be talented and creative and squash any ounce of it out of performers by turning performing and marching arts into a business. Once a community band or any performing arts group auditions and judges people, it’s no longer for the community, but for the people who profit off the labor of students and are rewarded for stuffing them in all the square boxes when no person is a square box. Students are no longer a part of a band or corps, but a cult and corporation that chews up creativity, education, and community, and lets in the worst kinds of people who abuse and weaponize power and prestige.

The Chapel of Cantus Firmus.

I wanted to be a music teacher and educator of special ed kids because so many kids and teens who are disabled or neurodivergent fall into a trap I call the token to victum cycle. Much like how Siddhartha became a monk to learn about the nature of suffering, I wanted to perform and become a music teacher with people my own age because of a stigma of not being seen, since I worked with old people in the Flint New Horizons Band. My Therphist and my Parents were the only people who saw me perform the 1812 Overture with all the youth ensembles. They were very proud of me overcoming a lot of obstacles, challenges, and being able to trust Leo and Nancy as directors. My Mom started to feel uncomfortable around my Dad's family because of a certain lack of understanding about autism and PDA. And my Dad had a rough time understanding why my Mom cut ties with her own family because of how manipulative they were of me. This friction of trust is perhaps why I thought, “If I work hard enough as a tuba player, perhaps Chuck Dallenbach will listen to me or rescue me from being torn apart. I’ll have money to travel the world, listen to and play all kinds of Volksmusik, and study it!”

Most of the advocacy for Autism landed on my Mom, and when you're in early college, and your Mom follows you, it’s seen as very unhealthy by peers, friends, and teachers. It’s also the reason now, as a young adult, I hate kid shows where a parent is constantly following a character around when kids and teens need autonomy and rebellion to become independent. My Mom had to dominate everything, or there were consequences and a lack of comfort for hard emotions. She had to be the most monstrous, protective, and fearsome dragon like Tarro’s mother. Yet acting this way made her be manipulated by people I was supposed to trust.

Dragons are always the worst and most taken advantage of when they are weak weather they are protecting wealth or a person. The worst antagonists in fantasy stories are those who take advantage of a mythical beast and turn it on another person. It’s what Mary Porcopio did to my Mom to make her feel sorry for her rather than fight the discrimination, abuse, threats, harassment, and bullying she did to me, staff, and students at Mott’s Music Program. When staff and students got mad at her for how she treated me, they were told to do nothing but bow down and keep going with their studies, despite the abuse that was clear as daylight.

In Tarro the Dragon Boy by Isao Takahata, it’s the Kami of the river who takes advantage of Tarro’s Mother who needed to eat because she is pregnate by turning her into a dragon to protect their river, forcing her to abandon her own child. Her child is raised in a village that calls him fat, lazy, and ungrateful when, at the end of the day, he feels exhausted and needs to eat a lot. Most Western people think of Kami as the forces of good and Yokai as the forces of evil, when in actuality, both are cursed with human vices like naccisum, vanity, greed, jealousy, rage, and even enslaving other living things and even humans to do their bidding.

The Firebird Inside ALL Victims.

The symbol of r/FlyingCircusOrchestra is Tezuka Osamu’s Phoenix, which compaired to the Western Phoenix, is immortal and female. In the manga, she watches over humanity and is hunted for her imortality which comes at a terrible cost. Firebird and Phoenix symbology is also used in The Hunger Games with the Mockingjay. Recently, Americans United for Separation of Church and State found the current president of Mott Community College propagating Christian Nationalism. People like her are exactly the ones who allow bullies like Mary Porcopio to thrive and prey on vulnerable people like students with special needs, disabilities, LGBTQA+, and many others.

Then they turn on victims for standing up and holding abusers accountable; while they boast about all their diversity, accomidation, and inclusion, when nothing has been done to end the abuse systematically and bring justice to myself and other students and staff who do care. What MAASIN is doing is a window display of things they want to see in DCI and BOA to be when those things will only exist when both monopolies are abolished completely out of public schools so that they can focus on creating programs with community, accomidation, and mental and physical well-being in action, not words or guff.

DCI and BOA have always been broken and culty from the beginning, and thrive on systems to be broken so they can profit and exploit. For change to happen in the marching and performing arts, broken systems must be disrupted and abolished. Toxic competition, judges, and auditions should have never been a part of performing and marching arts because what makes a good band is a good community and environment where people can thrive and create new things. A common song played in DCI circles is Rodgers & Hamerstines’s You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel, which is a musical that sympathizes with a toxic masculine sexual abuser who plays the victum and the town does nothing but blame his victims and do nothing.

The message of Blast is to Climb Every Mountain and Chase Every Rainbow. Not Crush People.

DCI and BOA have to be abolished for true change to happen. We no longer need them for performing and marching arts to create, change, and help communities. Public schools have a responsibility to get rid of competitions and auditions in all music programs and ban DCI and BOA events from public school grounds. MAASIN has to learn from r/FlyingCircusOrchestra that DCI and BOA are never in your favor as a corporate cult and will never change because they are a cult built on student labor. We serve Music Teachers, not Band Directors.

Solidarity Forever.

It is a gift ... a gift to the foes of Mordor! Why not use this Ring? Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor, kept the forces of Mordor at bay ... by the blood of our people are your lands kept safe. Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy ... let us use it against him!

What people in the performing and marching arts fail to understand is that DCI and BOA, as monopolies, were flawed from the very beginning, and therefore must be abolished from public schools entirely, including competitions and performances on school property, with members of those groups also being terminated. You cannot fight both groups with more groups that use the same models of breaking creativity and cooperation in favor of competition and profits. People who are the Boromir archetype fail to understand that you cannot beat the same systems of power with more power. The system of power has always been broken and must be destroyed.

There are no other replacements, so if you break them up, either the fees go way, way up, or someone else just fills the role. With marching band, a fairly niche activity, there are not hundreds of organizations to break up the pieces.

Yeah, there are some bad people in a lot of things, but as a member of a band that went to BOA, it was fun. I liked performing in the stadium. I think that some people should be removed from the competition, but BOA and DCI help talented musicians perform to a large amount of people, and I don’t see a problem with that side of things.

I see your subreddit, and it looks like you are coming from a generally social democratic, democratic socialist perspective, and I share some of those views. I just really don’t see why we should remove an opportunity for people who love the activity?-A Trolly Reddit User.

‘The Ring! Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing? So small a thing!”-Bornheimer when he tries to take the Ring from Frodo.

What makes me angry is that Music Educators fail to see what is truly wrong with profiting or working with Drum Corps International and Bands of America when they are Robber Barrons who profit off the labor of students. It’s not just a George Hopkins problem; it’s a problem in every public school when abuse happens at the hands of band directors and billionaires.

Wow—this was quite a read. I can relate to a lot of what you’re saying because I stayed in Marching Band mainly for the competitive aspect (MCBOA). The environment definitely thrives on competition—sometimes intensely so! For a lot of us, part of the appeal is pushing ourselves to be the best and playing with the best.

You mention how the competitive nature of organizations like DCI and BOA can be toxic, ableist, and exclusionary. I do wonder: Should highly competitive activities (not just marching band, but also sports, debate, robotics, etc.) be required to make full accommodations so that students with disabilities can participate at the highest levels? Is the value of striving for excellence always outweighed by the need for full inclusion, or is there room for both?

As for DCI, kids sign up knowing it’s going to be intense and stressful; for some, that’s exactly the appeal—they seek out the challenge- Another Drum Troll.

This Redditor’s argument is no different than a man who blames a womans assutlt because of what she wore that night. This is why DCI and BOA should be labeled as a toxic authoritarian cult and not a charity. It’s the same bullshit the Catholic Church gets away with for its years of grooming and abuse of young children.

This is not how you get people to take you seriously. Nor is linking books half a century old, which have no relevance to modern education-Another Drum Troll

If they want to know who Boromir is and what he reperesents they'd better re-watch or crack open The Lord of the Rings themselves.

Firstly, many people in both the marching and performing arts accuse me of wanting to eliminate something they love most. I’m in no way against either art form; I enjoy every marching band show, I love the show Blast, I continue to play the tuba, and I will forever be a band geek. I love both marching and performing arts. Yet the people that I will fight back against are the monsters that make both art forms abusive, exploitive, ableist, gatekept, and the environment toxically competitive. I was also a victum of discrimination, harassment, and vitriolic threats by Mary Procopio at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan.

I was told constantly to forgive her, forget the discrimination and threats, and practice other toxic positivities that do no justice for Autistic people like myself who remember everything. The Staff and Students at Mott never received justice, for they were also told to do the same cycle of forgiving and forgetting, which does no good, like the people who offer thoughts and prayers as a cop-out, then buy another hand rifle after a school shooting. The thing is, I wish my parents were more like the father who attacked and beat Larry Nassar, a man who thrived in an environment of abuse and sexually preyed on girls at an isolated ranch in Texas, where gymnasts were beaten into shape and shamed into dieting.

Instead of blaming the adults who allowed me and others to suffer in silence. I got blamed and shamed for wanting to be a music teacher or educator like my own teacher, Chuck Russel, and Chuck Daellenbach of Canadian Brass. It’s no different than a man who blames a woman for what she wore that night after he gropes her, like Garrison Keillor, who is still touring and speaking after he did so.

I wanted to be one because so many Neurodiverse and Disabled people in both art forms are not treated as humans, but as shiny tokens to make a band director look good on paper, without ripping the curtains away or avoiding accountability by the myth of the One Good Thing. My Mom would always remind me, yes, that Schindler was a bad person, but he did one good thing to save the Jews! The problem is at the end of the film, even after the Second World War is over. He still feels helpless and hopeless that he could not save all the victims of the Nazis and stop the systems of power that allowed them to thrive in the first place.

People who prey on children and teenagers at their most vulnerable are not music teachers, strippers, or drag entertainers. The worst kinds of groomers teach members how to be groomers from day one to one hundred. Band directors kill creativity, critical thinking, cooperation, equality, and the autonomy of every person. This is why a tenet of r/FlyingCircusOrchestra that angers people is to be music teachers, not band directors. Music teachers value the needs, rights, health, and well-being of children and teens.

It’s not about the title of who that person is; it’s what they value. People who value learning from all things are teachers; people who enjoy and embrace and empathise with the awkwardness and goodness of childhood and adolescence as things to protect are teachers. When learning music or arts no longer becomes an act of joy, play, creativity, and meaning, it is when we are no longer dealing with what Arnold Jacobs calls creatures of Song and Wind, but with Monsters and Robots, Scores and Numbers, Winning and Competition, Money and Profits. When the marching and performing arts are no longer art forms, but sports for others to judge and profit from. This is where the DCI (Drum Corps International) and BOA (Bands of America) Robber Barrons and Band Directors come into our Public School classrooms and harm and corrupt the arts into something devoid of creativity and cooperation by calling it an activity that will transform and change your life, only for it to be broken.

We Have Always Existed As Artists.

The Wilten Boys’ Choir, one of the oldest boys’ choirs. Six of its members formed, in the 15th century, the nucleus of the Vienna Boys’ Choir as established by Maximilian I.

Music has always been some form of expression and motivation; military, theater, dance, choirs, bands, and even animated films need music and songs to guide movement, actions, feelings, and doing. Day to day, we don’t realize we live in a world of many motifs. Motifs are the musical equivalent of a verb or proper noun in writing. Right now, if I told you to close your eyes and imagine a monster with no music at all…you would leave. Yet if you heard scraping strings, there’s a guy with a knife in the shower! Tuba players can conjure a Great White Shark, Godzilla, and a Brontosaurus! Motifs are the musical form of a verb in any language and convey different meanings.

Arnold Jacobs says we, as musicians, are storytellers of sound. So many cartoons, video games, and animated films would not have drive, motivation, and action if it were not with music and sounds. This is why a script and a score direct where things need to be in all animation art forms and mediums.

People have also always created places for artists to thrive and exist, with other artists doing the same in return. George Frideric Handel wrote The Messiah, facing imprisonment for debt. Debtors’ Prisons were a horrible place for poor people who could not afford rent or housing. They lived in sickness with no clean water, deteriorating living spaces, terrible food, and were forced into mental work or indentured servitude overseas. After he finally finished the job and got out, he made all proceeds from performances to free all debtors from prison. His work is performed for charity every Christmas season in honor of his kindness and compassion.

The performing arts have always existed outside of corporate power and ownership until the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Even then, there were still bands and choirs that became more widespread thanks to the invention of recorded music.

Sousa’s Mechanical Mennice

The Marching Arts range in diversity across all cultures, yet what happens when only one style and one way of doing the marching or performing arts is dictated to the point of oppressing and assimilating all cultures? This is something we begin to see with great composers like Johann Strauss and John Philip Sousa, with big egos and wealth dominating both Austrian and American classical music. Until they heard of people recording their own musical oral folk traditions and songs, laying the foundations of the study of field recordings and music anthropology. Instead of embracing these new tools, people like Sousa attacked them despite being the most performed, played, and arranged composer of his time. These recordings also laid the foundations of new emerging genres like Bluegrass, Country Ballads, Gospel, Blues, Dutchmen Polkas, and even Early Jazz. Sousa and other band leaders later founded the first band competitions to combat the menace of music, which were a waste of money and a failure for both schools involved, and the students who slept in conditions similar to today’s bands and corps.

Many college fight songs come from older traditions of march and pride music from Germany, Austria, and many other Eastern European countries. In traditional dances like Schuhplatter, Landler, and some Marches, each occupation and profession has a dance and music to go with it. Many Marches that are Volksmusik canon became their own folk pieces for other musicians, much like the Stomps and Rags of Early Jazz being improvised marches.

A new movement in Germany rose out of frustration with Music Education not teaching the soul, heart, and value of where music comes from, which is from folk traditions that needed to be preserved instead of assimilated or annihilated by classical elitism and gatekeeping by academics and the music industry. This movement became the Wandervogel movement, which protested the desolation of farms and villages by factories by camping and singing in the woods, along with archiving oral stories and musical traditions from each village.

Much of the philosophy of the movement influenced composers like Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Weber. Before Der Freischütz began as an opera, it was told orally and was a folk play performed by hunting clubs. The real villains of the story are not only Kaspar and Samuel the Huntsman, but the Prince of Bohemia himself, who owns land that does not belong to him and wants to marry Agathie for money.

• The Prince is Greed

• Kaspar is Ambisous Pride

• Kilian is Pettiness.

• Annchen, who is supposed to be Agathie’s Bridesmaid, is Vanity and Toxic Positivity.

• Samuel the Huntsman is Toxic Masculinity.

Max is no virtuous prince like Mozart’s Tamino from Die Zauberflöte; he is an ordinary person, and at the very beginning of the opera, he is mocked, told he’s a loser, and laughed at by the whole village for losing a shooting contest. Killian is a very sore winner, pushing all of Max’s buttons along with Kaspar. Many German Socialists sympathised with Max as a character and his struggles because of the income inequality between the wealthy who owned and gatekept mobility for people in poverty.

However, in its history, it has rarely been performed in America because of the great sin of anti-German sentiment and xenophobia in my country, which is still ongoing. Many German Americans experienced two waves of xenophobia and hate beginning in the 1920s because of the Temperance Movement, which terrorized and burned down businesses where German Culture thrived. Any fight or college song that mentioned bars or drinking was outlawed during prohibition, including Manie’s Stein Song under the Volstead Act. German-language presses and children’s picture books like Der Struwwelpeter and Max und Moritz were burned.

Around this era was the founding of the American Legion, which is a militant Christian Nationalist group that hammered Assimilation of American Values by forcing schools to not embrace other cultures, segregated dark-skinned people, and re-wrote history textbooks without the history of slavery, the civil war, or the mass genocide of Native Americans, and the tribal leaders like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geranimo who fought agression by the US Military. A good friend of r/FlyingCircusOrchestra is the YouTuber and Pocaster of The Marching Relolution, who goes further into the American Legion’s foundations that lead to DCI and BOA culture, changing its language from militant to jargon found in high-demand cults like Scientology and in large corporate retreat groups like Landmark Education.

Give Them A Piece of Blue Sky, or Be Broken.

Much of the language of modern DCI corps borrows language used in cults like Scientology. They now call it a transformative experience when victims know it’s anything but. When an art becomes toxically competitive, you lose the meaning and beauty of what a peice of art is, and its meaning and context, like Bluecoats show Garden of Love.

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door;

So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tombstones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.-Whihem Blakes The Garden of Love

George Hopkins is not the only bad apple in music education; many apples were and always have been allowed to be rotten for a long time by the foundation DCI and BOA in Public Schools. Many of DCI’s governing corps are in communities of economic poverty and inequity because that is how DCI works as a 501c3 to hide any investigation of abuses, much like Scientology does with the Sea Org.

BOA owns not only Music for All but also United Sound, which was supposed to help disabled and neurodivergent people in music education, until BOA corrupted it into what Stella Young calls Inspiration Porn. All Disabled and Neurodiverse people in all marching and performing arts need accommodations, cooperation, needs met, and mental health support, not treated like objects to avoid accountability in the marching and performing arts.

Bluecoats corrupted the actual meaning of Whiheim blake’s poem The Garden of Love, which is about religious or any kind of indoctrination from the point of view of a child. Many DCI and BOA members join the group around the ages of 12 and 13, when they should be playing for their own joy, creating new ideas, and playing with other kids in activities outside of music. No person joins a cult like DCI or BOA because they want to or know it’s a cult off the bat. They join because they are taught to do so by other people and are told it’s the only way out of poverty and suffering, by suffering and becoming broken with other people. Yet no victum is to blame for abuse in DCI or BOA, because it was the adults they trusted that did nothing but allow and profit off of more abuse and suffering of young people.

What Does Full Abolishment of DCI and BOA Look Like?

A world without DCI or BOA in Public Schools means that programs can focus less on toxic competition and winning trophies, and instead create new ideas and innovations that progress the Marching and Performing Arts into spaces of accomidation, cooperation, upward mobility, creativity, and equality. Local music stores and businesses will benefit by selling their goods to all Public Schools and Community Programs that benefit the well-being and needs of all people. One example of a corps that left DCI’s model of toxic competition was Star of Indiana. To find a way out of toxic competition, they joined the Canadian Brass to create Brass Theater, which laid the foundations for the Toney Winning Show Blast!

I have always been a huge fan of Canadian Brass, Blast, and even college marching bands at every football game. I have always enjoyed bands of all kinds around the world that perform at Macy’s. I enjoy the marching bands in my state, Michigan. The Marching and Performing Arts do not need monopolies or corporations like DCI and BOA to exist because musicians have always existed as human beings; we musicians and artists are all creatures of Song and Wind, no matter what body we exist in, and our limitations.

For victims of both DCI and BOA, know you are not crazy or alone and that there are others like yourself in the world. You need knowledge and truth to free yourself and others from the suffering done by people who broke you, and that others have every right to fight back against DCI and BOA as monopolies.

You cannot change both monsters from within; it’s like climbing into the mouth of a shark and thinking it won’t swallow you. The only way to save Music Education is to abolish DCI and BOA in all Public Schools and create a hard wall of separation between the Churches and Corporations on Public School grounds.

NAMM needs to be busted so all local and smaller stores and programs benefit. Music teachers need to join the IWW. DCI and BOA have always been broken and must be abolished. If Michigan is first, it will set an example for other states, from Wisconsin, the home of Chuck Daellenbach, Minnesota, home of the Six Fat Dutchmen, and Indiana, the home of Blast itself.

This fight will never be over for victims because you just can’t let it go. I will never let it go because I want justice and relief for not only myself but also others who have suffered from people like Mary Porcopio, Jonathan Waters, Morgan Larson, George Hopkins, Mike Stevens, and many other people who abused, hazed, harassed, discriminated, and groomed students.

Screw the thoughts, prayers, and toxic positivity of people who profit off of Drum Corps International and Bands of America. We have had enough of them.

https://www.iww.org/

https://www.angryeducationworkers.com/

Toxic positivity is the belief and practice that people must maintain a positive mindset and suppress all negative emotions, regardless of the circumstances.

As an Autistic child and even as an adult, I know something is wrong with Wee Sing as a pedagogical and curriculum supplement. It’s the same hunch sensible people feel about a self-help book like The Secret, or that one relative who will not stop bringing up quotes from The Bible to justify why they judge and dismiss your own problems. As a senior at Davison High School, I knew the stuff in our English Class was all propaganda dating back to the Cold War. Manga and Comic Books were not deemed good literature. When I tried to talk to people about the importance of the visual arts in literature, why choir and band are both important, and that a guy named Arnold Jacobs said we should not audition people and treat music and dance as a sport to be judged…

I was told that I would burn in hell, that people would kill me because I was a socialist, that no special needs people should be in the performing or marching arts, that the creationists in Inherit the Wind are the good guys because of The Bible, and that magical and fictional places like Middle Earth, Thra, the many places in Tezuka’s mangas, and Miazayki’s films, not even Dr.Seuss’s film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr.T had nothing to teach unless it’s always Gorge Orwell. I graduated from that hellscape in 2010 and was happy to do so. My first college courses were Sociology and Psychology, and I finally could read Tezuka’s epic manga, Buddha.

Like Siddhartha, I joined the cult of Music Education, thinking I could help Autistic people and teach them the self-advocacy and power I was not allowed to have or express. We, as students of Music Education at Mott Community College, did no outreach for other students or communities. Instead, you're stuck doing Counterpoint, Playing the Piano, which can be hard for many people who have never played or have trouble doing so, and the only two genres are Classical and Jazz. You are barred and gatekept from finding your own identity and passion as a musician and are rewarded by being put in a block, only to socialize with people forced into the same position.

The thing was, my peers really enjoyed me because I didn't want them to be just blocks, but people and a community of students who shared joy, pain, passions, and frustrations. When our band did a Christmas concert at the church on Mott’s campus, another tuba player decided that I would play the upper register, and she would work on her lower register. We were both very short people playing an instrument that is supposed to be loud. At the time, I played a three-valved Jupiter Tuba in the key of Bb, which was in the 3/4 size, which is very small. It was a combined concert with another band, and our low brass section made the church ring out with sound. Something I was taught that was important because so many people told me to be quiet, which is hard to tell a tuba player to do. The director, Mary Porcopio, bragged that she did not have to conduct the finale. This meant we, as a section, had to lead the band just by playing, and the result was an amazing applause from the audience! Both my Mom and Dad saw me play, and even the choir thought we did really amazing. Mary thought otherwise and began to threaten and harass me and the people around me who supported me, including students and staff.

Alongside the Mott Band, I played in the Flint New Horizons Band with directors Leo and Nancy Rubeke. There were a lot of supportive people in that band, along with my instructor, Chuck Russel. They all taught me skills that helped me as a tuba player and gave me the best confidence. At Mott, I was put in situations where the culture forced me to, no matter what, forgive my abusers and carry on! Imagine a kid who is bullied and harassed so badly by their peers, and some principal decides the best way to handle the bullying is by having the victum talk to the bullies…

My peers in the entire low brass section saw through the bullshit, knew it was bullshit, and were told to do nothing but write a complaint and wait for more bullshit. I was threatened on a jury paper, saying that I needed a four-valve tuba and a professional instructor, or else I would be out. I had doors locked in front of me on the last day of rehearsal! Quitting Music Education as a study was hard, yet I had to do it for my mental health and safety as a musician.

So many music educators do not understand and are blind to much of the abuse and neglect of well-being and safety. This is because of a culture of toxic positivity and denial that the most talented students have become victims of horrible abuse, actions, and abandonment of their own identity as musicians in the vast prisons of Music-School Monasteries that turn students into medieval missionaries, cursaders, monks and nuns of Music Education rather than progressive, creative, and critical thinking students and activist who fight for changes in socity that need to happen, and build communties through teaching music.

Wee Sing is just a part of the problem, but the fact that our Music Educators are susceptible to cults is something larger and more critical.

Wee Homeschool Our Children!

After leaving Music Education, I wanted answers as to why so many abusive and discriminatory practices are allowed to persist in the performing arts. I grew up being pulled out of Second Grade and Homeschooled in a very over-realistic, critical-thinking, gross motor skills, and sensory integration homeschool run all by my Mom.

Many Homeschoolers who are Autistic or have many other conditions and disabilities lack a lot of communication and emotional boundaries that get pushed down all the time by parents who think they are doing the right thing until it’s not anymore. One thing that I desperately needed was tools like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Self-Avocacy, and Heather Shumaker’s book, It’s OK NOT to Share. Maslow’s Needs and The Children’s Bill of Rights have a lot in common because they are universal needs regardless of disability, gender, status, skin color, or culture.

Many people, like my Mom, think that as a parent of autistic children that they can be a child’s friend, playmate, and advocate. When the bigger picture is that Autistic kids need other Autistic and Neurodivergent friends and mentors outside of parents, like my therapist, to achieve the top part of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

A Parent is not a replacement for good friends, advocacy, and therapy because there are some things they will never understand about us or the whole Autistic Community, which is very diverse, and includes members of the LGBTQA+ community, and has vast numbers of interests, talents, and knowledge that are important to humanity.

Yet many grow up in environments where they think abelist, bigoted, and ABA therapy is the righteous thing. Recently, James Dobson of Focus on the Family died, with many Autistic people who grew up in Homeschool environments breathing yet another sigh of relief.

ABA has ties to Conversion Therapy because of Dobson’s work, which justifies many ABA abuses as doing the right thing for your child. When you grow up being told a pile of bullshit is a chocolate shake that is delicious for you, you share it, not knowing it’s a pile of shit that you're forcing people to eat. Temple Grandin grew up in this environment, and now people like me know her beliefs and ideas about Autistic People are absolute bullshit. Kattyln Paltrow of Love on the Spectrum is an ABA martyr and uses her platform to promote ideas steeped in years of eugenics and ableism without questioning why those ideas are toxic and harmful in the first place.

Take the Autism Onion, which teaches kids that their family is the most important boundary and that the rest of their needs, relationships, wants, dreams, and desires come last.

Yet some people are sneaky boundary pushers like my Mom, who met a young girl who wanted to be friends with me when I was forming my own friendships as a college student. As it sadly turns out, she was into Hentei, which made me feel very uncomfortable. The Onion makes it sound like all of us are onions, when different people are more like trees that grow in many different environments with different struggles, sufferings, and circumstances.

This is why the Buddha gained enlightenment in the forest, and not with the monks who made him starve. This is why Peter Kropotkin of The Conquest of Bread says cooperation is the law of civilization, not competition in the jungle, which is how we survive as humanity. When people cooperate, we have everything we need. Forests play a supporting role in the world of Middle-earth, with both Lothlorien and Rivendell being situated in forests. For Tolkien, trees and the struggles, sufferings, and circumstances they endure are all rooted in faith and hope. If you make Autistic People into all different kinds of onions, it tells you exactly who Kattlyen is and how she uses other people. She and other ABAers see other Autistic People like how the Onceler sees Truffula Trees in The Lorax, as products to become something she and other ABAers want people to see us, as tools other people can use however they want.

All children and teens need the right to healthy freedom, self-expression, creativity, imagination, knowledge, and empowerment. A parent, teacher, or person who sneaks in and takes these rights away from a child is a problematic boundary crosser. When a child or teen deals with too many toxic people who crush joy as a tough lesson or a consequence…Is it any wonder that many of these people are prime targets for cults at an early age?

Wee All Work Together!

Wee Sing’s popularity was not only due to the Homeschool Parents who never exposed their children to multiple genres of music because of good old religious values, or being exposed to different ideas about how diverse music can be. It also predated and supported the now-defunct Mozart Effect that inspired Julie Clark, a woman who hated Barney, to create Baby Einstein. What she created was a monster of unregulated media for babies and toddlers that preyed on parents, making their kids school-ready or ready to read.

Good Parents are supposed to read and play with their babies and toddlers to develop future language, creative, and cognitive skills, alongside listening to music. After the popularity of Wee Sing and Baby Einstein exploded in popularity in the 90s and 2000’s reports from multiple Journals of Pediatrics studied babies who were exposed to Baby Mozart and found that there was a drop in their cognitive, creativity, and vocabulary skills, which they needed from creative play and reading. Yet Music Educators and Parents kept using it as a babysitter despite papers and papers saying it was wrong and unhealthy to do so. Julie Clark and Wee Sing’s creators were like Hammond in Jurassic Park, the people who were fierce defenders of Wee Sing and Baby Einstein, and profited off of it, and asked Could we sell more! Instead of, should we read the evidence?

Sadly, and I’m sorry, Music Educators…Televisions are not babysitters or replacements for pedagogy that can actually be a part of a lesson plan! When a Harvard study did all it could to save music education from The Mozart Effect and Wee Sing, many Music Educators trolled the young man who developed the study and worked hard to prove something that was not right for parents or teachers to do. You can’t force a child to take music lessons to make them smarter; children need music as a form of play and interaction. Then the singing and instrument playing will fall into place as something the child enjoys rather than a drudgery.

In Eastern Europe, the term Volksmusik reflects that Music Education should be a human right, regardless of genre or culture. An instrument or singing should be a child’s choice when they choose to do so.

Otherwise, we end up in dystopias like the kind in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, where kids are forced to play the piano and only the piano, which is a reflection on many Music Institutions that enforce strict theory and isolation rather than helping communities. No music school should become a prison for young musicians who need community, cooperation, and independent autonomy. Yet what happens when Music Education violates all human rights and profits off of children and teens who perform and create music?

Wee Are A Musical Monopoly!

We live in a time where public schools need to draw a firm wall between corporations like DCI and BOA, and fundamentalist religious groups and cults. I have seen many young Music Educators get corrupted and duped by the things DCI and BOA promise, only to bow down to people with blood on their hands from allowing a culture of abuse and neglect of human beings to exist. Recently, Oklahoma fought back against Ryan Walters for teaching a religious curriculum based on American Nationalism and Abolitionism. DCI and BOA teach children and teens that music and performing arts only matter if you can win trophy after trophy and not care about the harm done to smaller music stores, music teachers, future students who can’t pay debts, and communities where the knowledge of a music genre is gatekept by elitism and gerontocracy.

We need the full abolition of DCI and BOA in Music Education, where students, parents, and teachers stand up to defend the smaller, struggling music stores. This includes never participating in or competing for BOA-affiliated competitions and shows, and stopping DCI-owned corps from performing on public school grounds and stadiums. NAMM, as a trade union, has become so big that they are no longer a merchant but a monopoly. Music Curricula need to teach the real history and culture behind all music genres and the people responsible for music preservation and advocacy, like the Wandervogel, Gospel Choirs, HBCU Bands, and many others who kept music alive in hard times. We need to give victims of abuse in DCI and BOA justice that they had ignored by people who only cared about their own position and profits, and were showered with toxic positivity by other members and people they needed help and safety from, until they were violated by staff and directors. We are sick of the toxic positivity and inspiration porn. Now is the time to fight back.

https://www.iww.org/

https://www.reddit.com/r/FlyingCircusOrchestra/

One thing I hate being called is Don Quixote, the man who thought windmills were giants. Today’s windmills are bigger and modern, yet there are still giants in music education. These Giants are so cannibalistic and careless that they don’t have empathy, humanity, imagination, or creativity in any ounce of their massiveness. They gather students, teachers, and parents and spit out every ounce of kindness and humanity they once had. The people who defend them are no different than the people who may disagree with the many abuses of the Catholic Church, yet defend them by harming others and defend their ignorance with vitriol. They are neither a non-profit nor a charity; these giants are DCI (Drum Corps International) and BOA (Bands of America).

The worst kinds of corporate cults are ones that never say they are one. Many DCI Governing Corps come from communities of poverty, educational disadvantages, food, healthcare, and service deserts. They prey on public schools that have dying music and arts programs, and instead of nurturing creatures of Song and Wind, which many musicians are, they teach them to be fearful of all things that make us human beings. Those things are imagination, a critical mind, a creative spirit, and a person with compassion and humanity.

Instead, they teach only the able-bodied, toxically competitive winners. Those with a soul in their bodies are broken and damaged and might not know how to leave the cult or stand up before it’s too late.

The Band Director’s Belt of Truth

Much like the Church of Scientology, Fundamentalists, The Mormons, and Mega Church leaders, these groomers and predators don’t dress in drag. These people crave positions of authority so they can have their five-course meal of loyal parents and the most intelligent and vulnerable victims, children, and teenagers. They crave the pulpit and podiums of power and play God as band directors, staff, and section leaders. They think they wear the literal Armor of God and climb over the Seven Mountains of Power. Many Christian Nationalist groups, like Focus on the Family, love quoting the Armor of God because it gives power to themselves and others who are also willing and ignorant to join a highly authoritarian cult.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”- Ephesians 6 10–18

According to the Atheist YouTuber Profit of Zod, this quote from Ephesians cites the perfect tools to teach people how to be authoritarian cult leaders themselves. The devil can be any person who disagrees with the band director and thinks what he is doing is wrong, even if a person dies at their hands. Case in point being the band culture in A&M Florida’s Marching Band and the death of Drum Major at the hands of other band mates on a band bus. Why was the director of this band not held accountable for allowing a culture of violence to happen? Cause the band director has a Belt of Truth around his waist that he can take off and use to punish anyone who speaks out because whatever he says is true, no matter the detriment to others. DCI and BOA culture of abuse and power trickles down into how college band programs are run, along with public schools. Despite harming the pedagogies and curricula of music education, which hurt the creativity, imagination, and break the students’ humanity and well-being.

Who Closed the Gate, Tim?

Groupthink, Auditions, and Gatekeeping in Marching Bands and Corps is an example of another piece of the Armor of God, which is The Breastplate of Righteousness, or as Scientologists say it, “Able Helping the Able”. Yet tuba teacher and player Arnold Jacobs has this to say about why this is bad for music education as a whole.

“They are poor, especially for the player, I think it is very difficult to have auditions and find a suitable way to judge because we have a great many talented players to choose from. This means a lot of heartbreak for the people who are very capable.”-Arnold Jacobs.

This is because he cared about the music education of all people regardless of income, race, country, gender, biology, or disability. DCI and BOA only care if they use a person who can win the band or corps a trophy, and then do the same thing again. BOA bought up the group United Sound not to help disabled and neurodivergent musicians and artists create and flourish, but to use them as what disabled activist and writer Stella Young calls Inspiration Porn.

Ment to inspire other able and neurotypical musicians and artists with no regard for their mental health, creativity, needs, dreams, and desires, and treats them like tarnished tokens. After writing a letter warning United Sound’s Founder, Julie Duty, about how harmful BOA and toxic competition are to disabled and neurodivergent people. She sent me a letter telling me that it was too late to save her from the BOA’s corporate Kool-Aid.

“Thank you so much for your message and for taking the time to reach out. We value our partnership with Music for All immensely and can draw a very direct line between their support and our ability to reach lots of people. We haven’t been “bought,” and in fact we reached out to them for support, not the other way around. As a very small nonprofit (there are only two of us who work here), it would be impossible to create the momentum and enthusiasm needed to inspire teachers to make a change all alone. To that end, we have several partners who help us with marketing through events like the National Festival. It costs MFA both time and money to make space for 106 extra students at an already over-full festival, but they do it to support our mission, their mission, and because they are simply good people.

As a musician, I know you have felt the thrill of performing and being a part of something that is bigger than yourself. Our New Musicians never had the opportunity to participate in band before United Sound, and so much of United Sound’s success and mobility is due to the financial, marketing, and organizational support we have received from Music for All. Consider this: through United Sound, 765 students with disabilities have joined band or orchestra in the last four years. Can you imagine that? It’s enough people to fill a small high school! You are already in band and know how good it feels to exist inside of your band family. But 765 kids did not…and now they do. It’s not about the big performances at all. It’s about the 60,000 hours our students have spent making music together. The BIG things, like National Festival, are how we get the door open to new ideas.

There will always be issues of access for schools and ensembles from lower-income areas but Music for All is working especially hard at lending a hand, both programmatically and financially, to those schools. They don’t shout about it from the rooftops because that would be disingenuous. “Hey look, we’re helping!” No, they just go quietly about their business, doing as much good in the world as they can. The “profit” that is made from competitions and events is poured directly back into creating high-quality programming and equity of access for as many students and teachers as possible.

I’ll say again that I really do appreciate your email. As with any large or small organization, there is always room for growth and change and I will be sure to share your words with my own Board of Directors and the leadership at Music for All. Every voice is important and we all want to react to your opinion in the best way that we can. Your email today just might spur a small change that will in time make a big difference.”-Julie Duty, founder of United Sound.

Sadly, Music for All is also owned by BOA, which awarded The Lake Hamilton High School Marching Band at the Bands of America Grand National Championships in Indianapolis for doing a show based on Evangelical Revivals, when all public schools need to be places where there is a fine line between Church and State. Freedom From Religion Foundation got involved by sending Music for All a letter about how dangerous and divisively unequal shows with religious themes, including many of The Cadets Drum and Brass Corp Shows, and Bluecoats Garden of Love show (based on a poem by Willam Blake about religious indoctrination from a child’s point of view) are when marching bands and corps are supposed to make a level playing field with accommodations for all people religious and non-religious.

“Religion is a divisive force in public schools. Choosing a religious theme and props for marching band performances alienates those non-Christian students, teachers, and members of the public whose religious beliefs are inconsistent with the message being promoted by the school, including the nearly one in three Americans who now identify as religiously unaffiliated. These students certainly should be commended for their hard work that led them to the semi-finals of Bands of America Grand Nationals, but there are plenty of appropriate secular alternatives that the band director could select that would utilize their clear work ethic and talent more appropriately.” -FFRF’s Letter to Lake Hamilton Public High School.

BOA’s utter silence tells you exactly that they do not care about accommodation and equality, but profits and money. Both DCI and BOA delight in always closing the gate on people they deem are not able enough, like Tim the Gatekeeper in the film Robots. Even when they promise that the gates are always open, with diversity and inclusion in mind.

The Group must always be right, and the person who complains and stands up is always wrong. When there is no action, these words like diversity, equality, accommodation, and inclusion feel hollow and empty, like the halls of Mott Community College’s Music Program, which used people like me and many others in the program as an illusion of these principles when they don’t fire people like Mary Procopio, who do not respect these values at all.

She still works there years after hurting staff and students. After sharing my story with people in the Music Education sub-Reddit, many told me that I was a quitter, to suck it up, to let it go, touch grass, be more realistic, and other toxic positive nothings. No support for a person who was a victim of aggressive threats, harassment, locked doors, much like Tim, and ableism, because I have high-functioning Autism, inferiority because I was a smart, kind, funny, woman tuba player with a three-valve Jupiter Tuba. This woman hurt me so badly that I cried in a bathroom for hours. Many students left for other colleges and universities, whereas I could not even after graduating with an Associate's in General Studies. Yet the dean knew that quitting my major was very hard and told me that I could use my love for learning and music in other places, even without a piece of paper that makes you look smart.

The Good Tuba Player

“The Good Christian Shoemaker does not put crosses on the little shoes; he just makes good shoes because God loves a good craftsman.”-Martin Luther.

I wanted to be a Music Teacher like my instructor, Chuck Russel, and Chuck Daellenbach of The Canadian Brass. It was because so many people like me and other special needs people become victims of tokenism, hazing, abuse, and assault by band directors and their peers, which feels like backstabbing and heartbreak of something they love very much, like music or any art form. Unlike Chuck Daellenbach, I grew up with a lot of strikes against me as a woman tuba player with high-functioning Autism/ PDA / Anxiety / Aggression/ and Dyspraxia, which means some things I can’t do physically, like the amazing stuff the tuba players in shows like Blast do.

When I did Marching Band in my senior year of Davison High School, they put me in the pit, which meant I did not feel included or educated in the marching arts. So instead of doing their band camp, I went to the Herter Music Band Camp and ended up in the highest band, the Red Band, and made 1^st Chair. Aside from rehearsing our music, we had good instructors, directors, and did fun activities like the Water Trampoline, A Zip-Line that was thrilling and terrifying, walked in a wood full of nature, and every evening we had all sorts of performers like the Army Tuba and Euphonium Ensemble and many others. Most of all, and most important, was that we as students had lots of fun and learned a lot. It was hard being the only tuba in Red Band, which made me nervous, so our instructor played alongside me. Compared to the Davison Band Camp, there was more happiness, joy, cooperation, and kindness rather than the breaking of joy and humanity by suffering.

When PBS did a documentary on the show Blast called Music in Motion, the players in the London premiere did not feel miserable and discontented, but joyful and happy about creating and being a part of Blast. Yet despite audiences loving the show and devoting a fandom of people who themselves became good music educators, composers, and performing artists, many band directors hate Blast for its non-competitive philosophy of marching arts as theater, and accommodation for people who can’t do field marching.

Blast came from a culture that was not for DCI or BOA but fought very hard against its culture of toxic competition, gatekeeping, elitism, and body shaming. Many Blast performers have all different body types despite the triple threat of marching, playing an instrument, and singing Simple Gifts. Instead of a focus on winning a DCI Championship repeatedly like robots, their goal was to make the audience happy, cry, cheer, and have a fun time with them, which made them happy in return by winning a Tony in the year 2000.

Despite this triumph against DCI and BOA, many public schools participate in BOA events and allow DCI corps to advertise and indoctrinate students in band rooms all over. This is despite the culture of DCI being one of abuse of power and the assault victims of George Hopkins, Morgan Larson, and an ongoing list of band directors who happen to be abusers of power and people.

We at r/FlyingCircusOrchestra do not work with DCI and BOA’s culture of abuse and toxic competition; instead, we want Public Schools to work with local groups in their states, not affiliated with them, and their charities. To work against the culture of DCI and BOA is being the good tuba player, being the better person, and being a member of civilization, not a cult or corporate giant. I think Jesus would not work for DCI or BOA either. He would love Blast because God loves a good musician.

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble (abuse, assault, or harm a child or teen), it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea". - Matthew 18:6

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