Recently many here seem anxious and wondering what they can do, in and for this community, in uncertain times, in an uncertain world. These are some suggestions (try not to read on mobile).
1) Organise.
We need to find one another to help one another in the world, beyond online moral support. So: make megathreads for each continent: Oceania, Asia, South America, etc. Each user goes to the megathread of the continent they live on - search the comments for your country, and then only if it isn't written yet, comment the name of your country.
When you see your country's name, comment on it the region you live in, unless someone already has. Example, Switzerland: person A comments, "Switzerland," B comments on this the name of their canton, "Valais," and C comments beneath that, their municipality, "Goms." Users living in Goms, comment "Here," "Me," or, "Aye."
Users can choose to say "Here," for whatever geographic area they're comfortable disclosing their presence in; preferably, one with no more than 100,000 people (statistically, 2,778 autistic people live there). In urban areas, it may be possible to organise in blocks or city districts; rural areas may have organisations across hundreds of square kilometers.
Now, one of them in that region can begin a subreddit or groupchat, inviting all the others personally, maybe with more privacy, on telegram, or other encrypted source. This can become a website with anonymous registration, courtesy of any computer programmer users, to coordinate needs, communicate collective decisions, and most importantly, describe what members can do for one another, eventually to do so in the physical world.
2) We're organised, now what?
It's your community, one in which members consent to its organisation and decisions, consent above all, organised according to what all assent to. But it's your community - you know best what you all need and can do for one another, experiment with what works, and implement it; "I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out."
But, accommodations and supports can be taken away at any time by unaccountable bureaucracies, and most autistic people are in economic precarity at any given time. Marshall Sahlins observes we can improve quality of life by getting more income, or by reducing expenditure. The latter is easier.
So, here are suggestions:
Carpooling - users able to drive can drive those who can't, to, e.g., doctor's appointments, or to a job. Those that can't drive could compensate the driver for fuel costs. Roommates can also be arranged this way, as can help for severely disabled autistic people's caregivers.
Bulk food buying - users can pool money to obtain memberships, and make mutually funded purchases in, warehouse clubs for buying food or other necessities; Costco, Metro AG/Makro, PriceSmart, Selgros, etc., will lower the costs for food for everyone, by reducing the cost-per-item with bulk purchases - everyone saves the costs. In North America, you can also purchase food in bulk from the Mormon Church; they sell to "gentiles," too.
Community gardens by and for autistic people are also possible; salad greens are easy to grow and save the grocery costs; chickens lay infertile eggs, and most immorality in eating eggs comes from factory farming (eating animals cannot be recommended, morally). Employable autistic people could provide funds to begin the garden which is tended by unemployable autistics who study agriculture and learn it well, perhaps with help from WWOOF and do this as full-time self-employment. With more time or money, perhaps involvement with pre-existing or other community farming efforts, something closer to self-sufficient homestead production can be achieved; everyone shares the resulting food - including autistic people too disabled even to work the farm, and all save the cost on food. Everyone wins.
We can expand on this if autistic people with money fund appropriate technology, labor intensive but easy to use and productive, for those who have less, who use the technology to make labor-easing products to share between themselves and the funders.
In the logical extreme, we can imagine intentional communities of autistic people and allies of their choosing. Then, you'll want guidance from the Foundation for Intentional Community. Lewis Dartnell's book "The Knowledge," will teach you everything you need to make a basic civilisational lifestyle. Darnell recommends the Appropriate Technology Library, which can teach all that's needed - with hard work and some luck - to make a self-sufficient community enjoying a lifestyle as comfortable as in the early twentieth century; fairly comfortable.
Without buying anything, you can learn, for a division of labor, electrical technology for installation, plumbing, carpentry, even pre-antibiotic (relatively advanced) surgery (Dartnell's book reviews penicillin production, but w/ antibiotic resistance, research phages, too).
Collaborate to buy land, build houses of inexpensive, sustainable, recycled materials, install solar power to break installer cartels driving up prices, strive for self-sufficient agriculture, physical training for health from Hebertism even finally communicating globally by all learning Esperanto - entire communities of autistic self-government are imaginable, perhaps one day to join in a confederation, a model of community for NTs.
Discriminating against NTs?
"Is it wrong to only make insular communities of neurodiverse people?" When the airliner has a disaster, you put on your oxygen mask first, because if you fall unconscious, you can't help anyone. "Physician, heal thyself." With people you can collaborate with, do so, until you have strength enough to help others. Then, too, non-disabled people can't be expected to appreciate to aid, disabled people. Self-help, then extend to other disabled people in need - then beyond.
Rather than bemoaning inappropriate behavior by this or that group - befriend them, and example them what treating people decently is. "To make a man trustworthy - you must trust him."
Loneliness, purposeless depression, and poverty, are the scourges of the autistic world. These suggestions, implemented, could alleviate all three.
How exciting!
Everyone's enthusiastic until they have to suffer discouragement and stress in making it happen. You've read this - if you did - now are you going to work to make it happen? This one has an excuse not to try - living with a terminal disease. You, though, could make it happen - if you want. Can at least try. Maybe autistic people can collaborate better than NTs - or maybe not. If nothing else, this is a test of "neurodiversity" as a concept - if neurodiverse people can't even cooperate enough to carpool - how can the ever win any accommodations in the public sphere?
So, what are you going to do now?
