By Los Angeles County Politics (LACP)
Areva Martin has spent years training parents of children with autism to navigate school systems, fight for services and hold legislators accountable. These days, she has a new adversary: the federal government itself.
The Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney and founder of the Special Needs Network made the point plainly at a Women’s Month event in Beverly Hills.
“A lot of junk science coming out of this White House,” Martin said, “creating a lot of confusion and chaos in the autism community. Studies that have been debunked by qualified scientists are now being advanced by this administration.”
Martin, whose son is on the autism spectrum, was referring specifically to claims circulating under the current federal health leadership linking autism to Tylenol use and residential geography — theories she says have been dismissed by credentialed researchers. The science, she argues, points elsewhere. Autism results from a combination of environmental and genetic factors across a broad spectrum, meaning no single cause and no single profile. “It’s a spectrum disorder,” she said, “so it impacts different families and different communities differently.”
The disorder’s reach is significant. Autism now affects between one in 34 and one in 36 children in the United States, Martin noted, making it the fastest-growing childhood disability in the country. That growth, she said, makes the current wave of federal misinformation all the more dangerous. “It frustrates me as a nonprofit leader,” she said. “It frustrates me as a mother of a son on the autism spectrum.”
Martin’s response is operational. The Special Needs Network — the LA-based nonprofit she founded — attacks the problem on three fronts. The organization provides parent advocacy training, equipping families to fight for their children at the IEP table and beyond. It works the legislative corridors in Sacramento and Washington, pushing for policy that reflects the actual science. And it builds economic pipelines for adults with autism, helping them find employment, earn living wages and live in their own communities.
“We go where families are,” Martin said, “and we provide them with credible, scientific, evidence-based information to help combat so much of the disinformation.”
Martin spoke at the MPowered Maverick Celebration, a Women’s Month afternoon of cocktails and conversation hosted by Mona Scott-Young at the Sofitel Beverly Hills. Scott-Young, the Monami Entertainment CEO and creator of VH1’s Love & Hip Hop franchise, organized the gathering to honor what she called the “Maverick spirit” — the capacity to push beyond conventional limits.
“This is about making sure that we pour into each other as women,” Scott-Young said, “and that we enjoy the sisterhood of being in this world together.”
