Some of us have seen this behavior from her time and again over the last three years, particularly in relation to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights though usually it’s been in spaces such as the AAAFC/”Adult” adoptees board, behind logins.

What happened on the FB alt adoption board last night is a rare publicly available example.

For those of you who might have been trying to understand some of the many reasons some of us refuse to work with people like Joy and those who tag along with her seeing nothing wrong with what she does, this ‘discussion’ may provide some illumination.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging and ‘National Adoption Month’.

*UPDATE*

Not surprisingly, a number of Joy’s posts from last night have gone ‘missing.’

Fortunately, it’s never so easy to make information disappear as some might wish.

My partner, Mike Doughney was also in Philadelphia with me last week and naturally, has his own perspective on the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

He and I have been to adoption conferences and protests together down through the years, and he was also on the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizing committee for last year in New Orleans before we both resigned May 30th, 2008. (He had offered to help with website design and general logistics- rides, moving materials, helping get materials printed, editing, and a host of other odds and ends) for last year’s ARD. He is also a Bastard Nation lifetime member, although both of us made it clear from the outset, our work on last year’s ARD was as “independents” not in any capacity as being ‘with’ Bastard Nation.

He has done the the letter writing and sign holding, presentations at conferences and theorizing, etc. right alongside Bastards and in support of Bastards for more than a decade.

He approaches restoration of Original Birth Certificates adoption work from the perspective of a non-adopted person, yet someone deeply familiar with issues information access (and lack thereof) particularly as it relates to individuals and government. Additionally, he brings a wealth of knowledge about the motivations and tactics of those opposed to OBC access restoration.

When asked at conferences etc. what position in the “adoption pentagon” he occupies, his response tends to be “Sleeps with Bastard” (which was also the original name of his blog.) See his about page for a more general introduction.

In any case, I appreciated the fact that he took the time to sit down and write his perspective on all this, and wanted the broader community to have an opportunity to see what another former ARD committee member had to say about what he saw in Philly.

Originally posted to Mike’s personal blog July 28th:

When adopted people torpedo their own cause

In my last post I directed readers to my partner “Baby Love Child’s” blog, where there’s a rather lengthy, illustrated discussion of a so-called “adoptee rights demonstration” in Philadelphia last week. It’s hard to figure out where to start, since there is much I could comment on from the Sleeps with Bastard perspective. To clarify, I am Sabina’s/Baby Love Child’s partner and I provide some technical assistance with her blog. I’ll first start off with a suitably inflammatory title and these important notes:

1. If you go out on a public street and participate in a political “march” – better yet, an event in a public place that was promoted online and to the media and that even received press coverage prior to the event – others may take your picture and write about your event. They can even write about your event in ways you don’t like. They don’t need your permission or a release from you first, and the legal precedent for this is vast.
2. Traveling to such an event in a public place and watching it – and in fact, never at any point interacting with the event participants – doesn’t constitute “stalking.” Neither does taking pictures of the event and the people who were there and publishing them, particularly when the individuals in the photos are barely recognizable if at all, and in fact, aren’t even individually known to us. So don’t write to us and demand that we remove our pictures of your demonstration from our blogs. We now even have a form letter with which we’ll reject each of these nonsensical requests.
3. If you’re going to accuse people (us) of libel or slander (different legal terms meaning different things, though obviously those making those accusations can’t be bothered to know the differences), you’ll have to demonstrate that something that we wrote or said was actually false. Truth is generally an absolute defense against such claims. Just because statements made a year ago were deleted from various blogs and online forums doesn’t mean copies weren’t saved for later reference to establish what was written at the time. Those who are accusing us of libel and slander have yet to even express an understanding of what we have written, much less show any inaccuracies in our writing. We do, however, disagree strongly with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) organizers and we maintain that the ARD in its present form may have the ultimate effect of actively undermining the cause of obtaining open records for adoptees regardless of its organizers’ and participants’ intentions.
4. Having been completely vilified and attacked at the time for simply withdrawing our (Sabina/BLC and my) support for the ARD one year ago, and writing about that, we will not be considering any future participation in their event in any form. A number of commentators seem to think that some sort of positive engagement with ARD organizers by us is possible. It isn’t. For one example of why that was so, take a look at the comment thread on this July 2008 post from Bastardette’s blog. Commenter “joy” there and elsewhere, Joy Madsen, a current member of the ARD organizing coalition, wrote, “… there is no way we are touching them [Sabina, Marley Greiner, and Bastard Nation] with a 10 foot pole next year, we have learned our lesson. Next year… we are not letting them near us.”
5. For current examples of invective being thrown about by members of the ARD organizing coalition, take a look at this blog post by current committee member Jimm Mandenberg that contains this: “Baby Love-child? BLC? Gimme a break. More like Bitchy Little C*nt.” There’s also, of course, this lovely little blog post by coalition member and alleged “founder” Kali Coultas, who did in fact not bother to show up this year to see her stillborn creation, repeating more falsehoods alleging that there was an organized Bastard Nation campaign against their event (”… BN mocks the very people who would fight hard for them. They… will turn on you in a heartbeat if needed.”) In fact, BN, organizationally, has been silent about the ARD since withdrawing from the coalition over one year ago. Coultas further alleges that by simply operating a blog, or showing up on a Philadelphia street corner to watch, Sabina/BLC “has tried to sabotage the protest from the moment she was asked to leave the committee.” Sabina and I voluntarily resigned, after a number of irregularities and the attempted involvement of an adoption agency in last year’s event came to light, and were never asked to leave, as I discuss below.
6. ARD organizers and its “founder” falsely allege or imply that Sabina and Bastard Nation are conspiring together, by attributing commentary written by Sabina/BLC to Bastard Nation, or by claiming that Sabina was “sent” by BN, as in this by Joy Madsen: “… BN bailed, that was their choice. I mean obviously they are so busy with, with, with, well something I am sure. Not too busy to send nutter BabyCakes to stalk the protest. “ Our only relationship with Bastard Nation is as lifetime members. We do not set policy or otherwise direct the organization. Likewise, Sabina and I are independent and our writings reflect our opinions and not those of any other individuals or organizations.

That said, I’ll throw out a few more points that will perhaps clarify the rest of my comments. These come from a decade of being around activists who’ve worked on these matters in the field of restoring access to original birth certificates, with a track record of success and a great deal of knowledge of the history of these efforts.

1. You might, in fact, want your original birth certificate. That’s great. But if the visuals and words you’re providing to the media and the public are full of “I want my mommy” sorts of messages, when it’s time to deal with an actual bunch of legislators with the power to change the laws, don’t be surprised if they try, instead of the simple act of unsealing birth certificates, to “give you your mommy” by some other means. Namely, through the expansion of “mutual consent” registries with vetoes and the use of intermediaries, both of which insert other parties and institutions – in many cases, the same institutions that promote adoption and have an interest in keeping records sealed – between you and your birth certificate.
2. Likewise, emphasis on finding “my mommy” brings up a whole set of complicating details, that often involve the gross misuse, misunderstanding and outright abuse of the word, “privacy.” So every public discussion that drags in the slightest whiff of the stench of “I want my mommy” gets answered with some intentionally-created-out-of-thin-air obstruction like “We must respect your mommy’s ‘privacy’.” See “mutual-consent” registries, above.

Exhibit A for the above two points is the Philadelphia Inquirer article that accompanied this outright assault on the cause of adoptee rights orchestrated in the form of the so-called “Adoptee Rights Demonstration.” With a photo of a “demonstrator” carrying a sign saying “WHOSE MY MOMMA” – let’s hear it for the organizers who certainly went out of their way to check demonstrators’ signs for horribly stupid, humiliating spelling errors – the article is yet another litany of the manufactured objections to open records by the institutions who have the most to lose from open records, containing no articulation or response to those objections. It makes adoptees look like delusional children.

I understand that some ARD organizers are quite proud of that article. Perhaps they suffer from some problem with gross illiteracy or even simple understanding of what actually appeared in the newspaper; certainly the photo suggests that the ARD has some general difficulty dealing with the English language.

It’s not enough to see yourself reflected in a newspaper article. The rest of the article isn’t about you. It’s about maintaining the status quo of sealed birth certificates; today, much of the function of the press has become maintaining the status quo and ridiculing, mocking and making impotent those who advocate change. ARD, with its childish signs and messaging, fell right into their trap.

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As I wrote above in # 4 of the first list, Sabina, Bastard Nation, Marley Greiner, and others along with I were attacked and vilified for merely withdrawing our support of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” one year ago and speaking about it. That withdrawal and its aftermath set the stage for what is happening now.

There’s a fundamental difference between those who continued with these demonstrations and us, and that is that we want to see, and work toward, concrete progress toward open records.

Despite many claims that the ARD organizers likewise are working toward open records, as far as I can tell, the ARD organizers are instead solely focused on a (poorly funded and ineffective) presence and awareness raising at this particular yearly conference, hopefully, from their perspective in perpetuity, paid for by others in the community, and a(n attempt at a) street “demonstration” nearby. Neither can be shown to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of producing such progress. Neither has generated any progress over the past year since the first event in New Orleans. (We’ve asked if there is any evidence of progress as a result of ARD 2008. None has been forthcoming. It seems these questions are sidestepped by wild accusations of “slander” and “stalking” directed at us, perhaps because we merely raised this question.)

When the pointlessness of the event became evident to us last year, along with all other irregularities, we pulled out. I’d written on my blog how among other reasons, the active involvement of an adoption agency, which was fundraising by using the demonstration as some kind of marketing opportunity, without our knowledge and consent, and the close relationship between one of the organizers (Amy Burt, aka “Amy Adoptee”) and that agency, fundamentally made this something that I could not be involved with.

But I think there’s a kind of perfect storm here, which starts with a group of people who basically knows nothing about how government works and doesn’t care to learn. (Here’s one such example.) As is true of a lot of noise we see elsewhere, government seems to serve as a kind of sink for complaints that government cannot rectify. “I want my mommy,” clearly front and center among the “demonstrators,” is one such complaint, which is another part of this perfect storm; it’s the personal component. But that won’t get you an open birth certificate because the government can’t get you your mommy for you, nor can it get you your medical records.

The third part is the basic militant ignorance of members of the ARD coalition who, when faced with people who see what they’re doing and choose not to participate (and worse yet, clearly articulate why they refuse to participate), cast them out as outsiders, and lash out at them should they dare comment on their continuing actions which are potentially damaging to, generally, all activists everywhere and the cause of open records. Going to watch, to confirm that the event actually took place, and so that we can knowledgeably and accurately discuss their action, just gets us labeled as “stalkers,” since to them we are clearly already the enemy for simply refusing to participate in what we’ve come to believe is a destructive effort.

There was to have been a ”bastard boot camp,” an educational session that was to have been a core component of the New Orleans ARD event while Bastard Nation was involved with it. BN offered a preliminary educational effort, before people went out on the street or met with legislators, discussing the history of sealed records and open records activism, and what strategies, rhetoric and tactics have been effective in opening records in the states that BN has helped open.

Unfortunately, these plans were met with a clear, militant, outraged, contemptuous response from a subset of ARD organizers, many of whom remain today. They believed that they did not need, nor would they participate in, such an instructional session. It also became clear that we were dealing with a narcissistic bunch of uneducatable, incurious fools who would do whatever they were going to do without regard for how much damage they would do to the cause, both through their uncivil online behavior and their incapability of sticking to a rational focused message that would result in open records legislation instead of some alternative mess like the most recent round in California (to address “privacy”) or state mandated mediators or registries (as an alternate but ineffective method of finding one’s mommy while continuing to empower the adoption industry’s institutions.)

So as for the comments we’re seeing in various threads noting our non-participation and asking why we aren’t involved and actively engaging with the ARD organizers,we have done that, to no avail; this is why we cannot do that, they won’t let us do that, they’ve demonstrated since last year that they will take zero constructive input from us. Unfortunately, their actions, without the involvement of BN or any group of experienced activists who’ve historically worked around this issue, is making adoptee rights activism look ridiculous. That the ARD organizers don’t recognize that that’s what they’re doing, and call any criticism that points that out to them “slander,” makes clear that civil discussion with them is impossible.

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The fact that ARD leaders completely avoid considering what messages they are sending becomes obvious when they complain that Sabina “attacked” a 13 year old for posting a YouTube video. In fact, if the 13 year olds among this group of adults are coming away from the event with a message, spread all over the net, that continues to infantilize adults as eternal children, incapable of self-defining as mature individuals and political actors – and that, if popularized, will undercut any future efforts to obtain open records – an objection must be raised. This is clearly the message that the next generation gets from ARD – and ARD organizers seem quite pleased with this result!

The creation of a video montage with pictures of adults, and labeling them “forgotten children,” only serves make all future political progress impossible. It plays into the widespread, pre-existing insistence that adoptees will be forever children, without the rights of adults, including the right to an unaltered birth certificate. That ARD organizers are incapable of seeing the problem of this message shows what the ARD has become: a group of narcissistic, blathering, clueless and ultimately ineffectual people, who cannot be bothered to understand that some messages that their participants (regardless of age) come away from the event with will completely undermine any progress toward their alleged goal of opening records. But of course, if the actual goal is completely inwardly focused on this group of individuals, their social interactions, their group’s self-perpetuation, and their issues that would better be handled in therapy rather than out on the street, then we’ll just be seeing more of this, and perhaps, no further progress toward open records for the next few lifetimes, were they to become the sole focus of adoptee activism.

Fortunately, there are viable and experienced alternatives.

I took a little over 24 hours to decide whether or not I actually wanted to blog this, but as once again, the Adoptee Rights Committee isn’t doing a very good job of communicating what actually took place people are frustrated. Again, this year I’ve been urged by readers to put up a report.

Still, why go?

Lots of reasons. Not the least of which being, there was always the outside chance, I could actually see something that I didn’t expect, that genuinely changed my thinking about this current incarnation of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Adoptee Rights Day (ARD). Had such happened, yes, I would have written about that as well.

Ultimately, nothing substitutes for actually going out and taking a good hard look.

So I went, knowing that there can be quite a difference between those creating the events and those attending the events.

Regardless of what some of the “Adoptee Rights Coalition” members have said and done in the past, I still understand that an organizing committee is only that, the key component here has always been about those others who show up.

Particularly so, as the original framing of the event has been that of it as a “mass action” capable of not merely interacting with legislators but of placing pressure on legislators through sheer numbers and dogging their every step over the conference, demanding they enact legislation to restore access to Adult Adoptees’ original (unmodified) birth certificates.

So I was interested in how this actually plays out in the streets, and what it looks like in practice.

My partner, Mike Doughney, “Sleeps with Bastard” joined in. We grabbed our small video camera so we could travel light, and a still camera and headed off . Philly, being just a short hop skip and a jump from our home in Maryland, it was quick and easy.

Besides, Philly holds a lot of fond (and a few not so fond) memories for us, it’s actually the city where we first came together as a couple well over a decade ago.

What we saw yesterday held very little in common with most of the Bastard Activism, particularly public demonstrations we are familiar with or have participated in.

Comparing yesterday’s events to Bastard Nation’s 1997 Bastards at the Bell, “Our Records Our Rights Rally in Philly” (which I was not present for) provides a particularly stark contrast. (Mind you, I’m not exactly a fan of invocations… .)

The very structure of that event was different, focusing on speakers, actions, and the strong visual of Bastard Nation having quite literally raised the flag.

The event took place within a broader context of fighting the states’ versions of the Uniform Adoption Act. Oregon had not opened records yet, and BN was in its early years.

Cindy Bertrand Holub – Pennsylvania Director, Bastard Nation – 1997 Bastards at the Bell / Our Records Our Rights Rally in Philly

Over a decade later, the ARD was to take place in the footsteps of Bastard Nation, the difference between the two couldn’t have been clearer. I strongly advise readers to look though the speeches, the actions, the fact that both Pennsylvania and New Jersey local groups (among others) were represented in 1997, and ultimately, the differences in attitude between the two. But then, I think Bastard Nation has come a long way in its politic since then as well.

Now a decade later? All I can say is that from my perspective, it’s a shame it’s devolved down to this.

While there will be analysis in this piece, much of the core of it is simply a matter of what it looked like to any bystander who was present and in the vicinity of the 2009 Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

The summary?

• They gathered at People’s Plaza over the course of an hour and a half and stood around talking to one another, with a few doing interviews.
• At roughly noon, 66 people (give or take one or two) spread out into a line and began chanting and walking along the sidewalks the 8 blocks or so over to the Convention Center.
• At the convention center they hung out and sign held briefly.
• By 12:40 most of the participants had already left the convention center, leaving a few stragglers behind.

The actual “doing” portion of the event was less than 45 minutes long.

Astounding.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Just as we had anticipated, it was drizzly overcast with the tops of buildings moving in and out of the low ceiling cloud cover.

There were some brief periods of light rain, but for the most part, it was a drizzly mist, letting up well before the noon step off.

The setting for the starting place for this year’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration was Independence National Historic Park, the grassy mall which includes Independence Hall, the visitor’s center, the National Constitution Center, and the Liberty Bell Center, among its many monuments and markers.

At the very heart of the park, surrounded by these icons sits the People’s Plaza, a designated site for protest, dissent, rabble rousing, complaint, and general soapbox standing for those with a cause of whatever persuasion. As the city virtual tour mentions,

“The Park receives over 300 requests each year for permits to hold public events or gatherings in the park.”

So long as a group first completes the permitting process their cause can be at the center of Independence Mall for the allotted period. (The designation of a specified site for expressions of dissent has been a definite point of contention.) None the less, there at the very heart of the Mall is a site where the grass won’t be trampled and the First Amendment stands alongside, carved in stone.

Picture courtesy of ushistory.org

With the first permit issued in January 2008, the People’s Plaza is a relatively recent addition to the Mall, paid for by the Friends of Independence Park who raised the funds for its construction.

The ARD scheduled their event to begin at the People’s Plaza at 10:30 Tuesday morning.

From across Market street, this is what the ARD looked like not long thereafter.

Here’s a nice long shot, the ARD folks have gathered to the left, Independence hall is at the back, and the Liberty Bell Center is to the right.

Over the next hour and a half, they stood in the on again off again drizzle and talked amongst themselves. While there are many things I could say about the ARD’s morning spent at People’s Plaza, the primary impression I left with was a feeling of wasted opportunity for money and time spent.

Seemingly, there was no strategy of ongoing intentional interaction with anyone else in the space, as there were no speeches, nor other central means of communication, they by and large, just hung out.

• There was no banner explaining who they were or why they were there
• No speakers or speeches, no use of sound equipment, not even a lousy ‘radio shack special’ bullhorn
• No flyers nor educational materials passed out to bystanders unless you count a small ARD business card, one of which was left behind as litter on the ground. (Yes, I did ‘litter patrol’, after they left the Plaza.) On the back it stated “End discrimination against adopted persons” without ever defining what possible “discrimination” we might endure.
• No chanting until later, when they got underway
• Not even so much a set of ‘burma shave’ style signs held along Market Street for the traffic stopped at the traffic light

Over the course of the hour and a half hundreds of cars passed, tour groups went by, tourists wandered the area, those who live and work in the area strolled past, there were even multiple TV trucks just around the corner (set up for a separate unrelated event just over a block away). Instead of interacting, they gathered and occupied the space, hardly speaking to anyone other than themselves and a reporter for most of the time they were there.

How this possibly justified the effort to gain a permit, when they could have just as easily (and more certainly in a more dry place) hung out anywhere in the city is beyond me.

As an activist who has been around a few genuine protests in my time, the silence was beyond comprehension. Why on earth would you get a permit to stand in the damp for an hour and a half holding signs upside down and chatting one anther up?

This is one of the few early pictures I have where some number of signs are held aloft.

As not much was going on, I strolled across the mall to take a few more pictures.

Here’s Independence Hall, and the Liberty Bell Center. Those gathering for the ARD are behind me here.

And facing the opposite direction, towards the National Constitution Center, those gathering for the ARD are to the right of the picture…

Having been there, and now, looking at these pictures, I can’t help but be reminded of the words from Ron’s initial articulation of what went on to become the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

Past marches on Washington by Open Records organizers were a bad idea, poorly executed. I think it’s fair to say that they had minimal effect in changing any laws. Worse, by bringing together a few dozen Open Records supporters in the largest possible venue, they create the perception that the Open Records movement is weak and small. Bad political actions discourage people from participating in further actions. Why should they follow leaders that waste their time and resources?

(Emphasis added.)

The venue chosen could not have made the ARD look more irrelevant and small. Coupled with the fact that all they did was stand around and talk amongst themselves, they could not have appeared more insular if they tried.

Note that the people in the middle of this shot are with the ARD, there is a small grassy patch between them and the walkway, then to the right on the walkway is a tour group, as large if not larger than the ARD at this point. No real effort was made to interact or educate.

Here’s another view with the visitor’s center at the left.

Bored, I wandered up into the Garden nearby, as it’s one of my favorite areas along the Mall.

Still not much going on, people hanging out, talking amongst themselves.

Directly across the Mall from the garden the line of tourists waiting to see the Liberty Bell had begun spill outside. The line goes off to the left along the side of the building for a ways, and as you can see, drizzle or no, clearly there were tourists in the area, essentially, a captive audience, had anyone bothered with a sound system, or had anything to say.

We wandered down closer along Market Street to get a few better pictures. By now the rain was letting up.

As you can see, mainly folks hung out in little knots, talking, finally meeting friends they knew from facebook, and otherwise doing what for the most part could have been done in any hotel lobby. Most of those gathered had their backs turned to both the street and any pedestrians walking past.

The signs, to adverage Joe bystander, would not have made a great deal of sense, for the most part, a bystander would have seen a jumble of bits: the word “denied” in red ink several times, terms like “OBC” and signs about “Moms” and “Daddys.”

Getting in closer they MIGHT have seen “adoptee” although it was sometimes written in a very ‘groovy’ 60’s style font often rendering it and similar terms illegible from any distance.

Some participants wore the family tree logoed ARD cafe press gear. Again, the family tree is a visual metaphor for search and reunion, not records restoration. Others had written in magic marker on t-shirts.

Here are a sampling of the signs that we were able to document, (keep in mind some of these are two opposite sides of the same signs.)

Some simply made no sense without a broader context.

• OBC Equal Rights
• We are opposed to state lies
• How would it feel if you were denied?
• You have yours (Denied) we want ours
• a piece of posterboard made to look like some kind of document with DENIED written in red lettering across it
• Original identity basic human right
• Original identity = human right
• We didn’t ask 4 confidentiality from our children
• This is a legalized lie. Give me my OBC
• Identity is a right
• My identity is a state secret
• (denied certificate) our civil right
• You have yours, mine is denied
• We never asked for promises of secrecy
• I did not sign up for the witness protection program
• Access Denied: Do you know your truth? Name? Birthdate? Birthplace? Mother? Father? Footprint? (Um, Footprint?!?)
• Our rights are a state secret

Others were search and reunion focused.

• Who’s my Daddy?
• Whose my Momma? (messaging issues aside for the moment that should at least be Who’s my Momma?)
• Searching for Identity
• Hi Mom!
• Are you my (heart shape)?
• (A drawing of a family tree with the words) Do you know… (written across it)

Additionally, there was the occasional incoherent rambling sign along the lines of this little gem

• I am a part of- not “apart from” – my birth parents’ privacy.

Perhaps winner for strangest and most obscure messaging ever – one with the sticker and ‘denied’ (certificate) with the single word “NOW!” in the middle (National Organization for Women perhaps? Unclear.)

There were at least a few that gave some context as to what all this was supposed to be about.

• Adoptees deserve equal rights
• Birth Moms support equal rights
• Why is access denied for adoptees? Unseal our birth certificates.
• I am (denied) my birth certificate (which unfortunately, since the “denied” certificate was mostly illegible from any distance, it appeared to read “I am my birth certificate”)
• Adoptee Rights. Do I look like a dirty little secret?

And even several Bastard Nation slogans appeared.

• Equal Rights for Adult Adoptees
• Are you adopted? Are you Sure?

A number of these signs were made together at the ARD sign making party the night before.

As I said, there was no main banner or signage for the ‘march’, so to those wandering the area there was no real explanation of quite what this little knot of people many wearing green or tree logoed things was, other than glimpses of signs often held upside down as they stood around in the plaza.

Finally, as noon approached, some people began to actually hold their signs up, even as others stood around, still talking.

Interestingly, they never so much as posed for a group shot in the space they had paid to get.

So I moved around in order to get at least one clear shot of participants with Independence Hall in the background.

As I said, there wasn’t a great deal of ‘going on’ going on on at the Plaza. Sadly, the shot looks far more active than what was actually going on at the time, but this is probably among the more flattering shots I got.

Ironically, the person holding the “Birth Moms Support Adoptee Rights” sign is a man. (Later along the ‘march’ it was held by a woman.)

One of the few things that was taking place during all this were some interviews.

Sadly, this was about as close to the sidewalk and those passing by as I saw any ARD participant get. The large stone block in the lefthand side of the picture is where the First Amendment is inscribed.

Mostly, though, those gathered stayed in the plaza itself, huddled in little groups talking.

As the interview concluded we were treated to “Who’s my daddy?”

We went for another little walk towards Market Street and took some long view pictures just before noon to get a feel for how many were there. Along the sidewalk there were a number of unrelated pedestrians and tourists.

All told it had been nearly an hour and a half of standing around, by and large twiddling their thumbs.

In what amounts to perhaps the nearest thing this country has to a secular ‘hallowed ground’ dedicated to free speech, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration simply had nothing to say.

Stunning.

At this point, as they appeared to be preparing to move, we switched over to our video camera rather than the still.

As noon came around, they began chanting as they lined up and spread out, walking off down the sidewalk along Market street, chanting  as they went, according to the Philadelphia Enquirer:

“You got yours . . .” came the call from protest organizers.

“I want mine!” shouted the marchers.

It could not have been anything other than completely impenetrable to the tourists in the Mall. No explanation of what anyone “had” or what they “wanted,” let alone who they were nor why they were there.

I’ve seen flash mobs with more coherent messaging to the outside world. Those near us looked puzzled.

We now take a brief interlude to watch the video of perhaps the most “exciting” thing the ARD did in Independence National Historic Park, leave.

(This is me, shaking my head, completely puzzled)

Throughout the two minutes worth of footage they chanted. In an act of pure mercy to viewers, we’ve stripped off the broken record chanting, (well that, and I was on the phone nearby.)

So they lengthened out into a group and began walking down the sidewalk holding signs and chanting their bizarre chant and headed off to the convention center.

Their numbers had varied over the course of the morning at People’s Plaza, slowly building over time. But when the time finally came from them to step off and begin their sidewalk ‘march’ a total of 66 people (give or take one or two) set off towards the convention center.

Yes, that’s right, all this internet noise and hoopla over 66 people.

Just goes to show what a small pond and echo chamber adoptionland can be.

As I said in my first piece about this year’s ARD Philly (See my section on “Shifting event premise, conceptual, tactical, and strategic problems”),

The bottom line is, there is no adoptee rights mass movement waiting in the wings somewhere to show up for such an event.

For those of you interested in the demographics?

66 total:

• 51 Women
• 13 Men (adults)
• 2 teenage boys

Which means those ‘marching’ in the ARD this year were 77% female, 23% male.

Here in this last picture taken on the Mall, you can see what they looked like having crossed and now heading down the street.

Keep in mind, I said step off from the People’s Plaza was pretty much noon.

We decided to head down and see the other end. The convention center is a little under a mile away, roughly 8 blocks worth of a sidewalk ‘march’. So we headed over to take a look.

Fortunately, I missed at least some of the ‘festivities.’ One participant’s blogged account of the ‘march’ included this tidbit:

One adoptee occasionally yelled out, or asked women as they approached, “Are you my mommy?”

Not ‘merely’ a messaging problem, or a mental health problem, this unfortunately goes to the heart of the lack of sensitivity to context some of those making the ARD happen and responsible for the ARD have displayed over and over again.

Behavior such as this (particularly while claiming to represent “adoptee rights”) is beyond mere problematic, it’s unconscionable.

As if that weren’t bad enough all by itself, this year’s event in Philadelphia far from taking place in a vacuum, was unfortunately taking place in the context of a lawsuit in Camden, New Jersey, directly across the river, less than three miles away from where the ARD was taking place. It involved allegations of “undesired contact” with a surrendered adoptee: Distraught woman sues, alleging N.J. helped child of rape find her. (Obviously, I have a great deal to say about the case, but for the moment, let’s stay on track, saving such for another day.)

This particular article hit roughly a month before the ARD. At least some people involved in the ARD were well aware of the case, as it cluttered adoption venue after adoption related blog, press release, news story, etc.

Amy Adoptee, who was on last year’s committee, blathered delusionally and incoherently on her blog about the article, postulating the lawsuit’s entire existence was a direct response to, and retaliation against the work of open records activists and the ARD:

I do believe that this entire situation is in response to both the Adoptee Rights Demonstration and New Jersey’s bill

She’s convinced it’s all a BIG CONSPIRACY and can’t fathom why a Philly paper would cover a story from just across the river.

The placement of this story in the Philly newspaper is also suspicious as the Adoptee Rights Demonstration in Philadelphia is set to occur a month later. The information in this article is about constituents in New Jersey, not Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Lest anyone think my bringing up the broader context would be making a mountain out of a molehill, care to guess what the Philadelphia Inquirer’s ( don’t get me started) article, Adoption-records advocates to protest in Phila., published the day of the ARD included?

Privacy clearly is a concern.

In New Jersey, an Atlantic City woman is suing the state for $1 million after being approached by a daughter she surrendered 30 years ago, a child conceived by rape, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. She claims state authorities provided personal information that enabled her daughter to show up at her door.

Just a helpful hint, wandering up to total strangers on the street and pulling an

(for those unfamiliar, see the “plot summary” here) does not tend to make adopted people appear particularly trustworthy, able to conduct their own interfamily affairs, or for that matter stable, let alone sane.

But it does play perfectly into the larger narrative of “unwanted contact” and out of control adoptees. You know, that mythic archetype of the adoptee as always in a needly, reunion obsessed, consent and boundary violating, unable to cope, constantly in psychological dire need-to-find-Mommy state.

Pulling crap like that out on the public streets of Philadelphia, going up to women, total strangers, and demanding to know if they might be one’s long lost parent is a slap in the face to most Bastards’ reality, the sensitivity and delicacy with which MOST approach initial contact with potential kin. It’s a mockery, a mere cartoon of most of our reunion experiences or desires for such.

It plays into every expectation of the bad adoptee, and the picture so often painted of us by our opponents as out of control needy reunion obsessed nuts.

None of which has a damn thing to do with genuine records access, and equal treatment under law.

My complete disgust aside for the moment, back to the Convention Center.

When we first arrived roughly 12:25, there were a number of sign holding ARD supporters standing on the sidewalk along the convention center mostly clumped in small groups all over again. Participants were being interviewed, but by and large it entailed standing around.

Driving past, this is what it looked like by 12:32. The convention center is to the right, you can make out the first of the sign holders to the right of the tree, holding the sign, “How would it feel if you were denied?” (Denied what? Who knows.)

This was the initial thing those going past saw, not an arching statement building a narrative and providing any form of explanation of the next few sign holders further along. Nope, just another piece of completely decontextualized irrelevancy. Another missed opportunity.

d

Unfortunately the visual metaphor of a big red “denied” stamp, while close-ER, is still not it either.

Most Bastards will never have the absolutist clarity of a big red stamp on a piece a paper. Nope, we don’t even get the “gratification” of having a “DENIED” slip of paper to show for our troubles.

The more fitting visual metaphor would be an Empty Mailbox.

We fill out the request forms, we pay our money at Vital Statistics offices (only to be offered a state fabricated lie).

We re-apply, we write, we call, meet with those on Judge’s staffs, we contact legislators, we advocate, we do demonstrations, we ask politely, we write letters to the editor, and we fight for restored access, but each and every passing day of lack of access to our own authentic original unaltered birth certificates is another day of waiting, of checking, of finding nothing but an unresponsive government on the other end.

No mail today, none yesterday, and barring the unforeseen none tomorrow. We check methodically, every day, but the box is always empty.

No big red stamp, just silence, from those who feel they owe us nothing, and do not answer to us.

Outside the convention center?

Things were fizzling out.

There were still a few small clusters, but things had mostly broken up.

Signs were up against the convention center wall, often upside down. (Bear in mind that some in these pictures are uninvolved pedestrians.)

More of the stragglers, near an entrance an interview with a private camera (not news media) was ongoing.

Here’s what the ‘denied’ (birth certificate) sign looks like upside down and from a distance.

And the shot I could find with the most ARD participants in it from this time period.

The area they occupied was directly across from Reading Terminal market, an area with tons of ‘foot traffic’ on a market day like Tuesday. This was busy downtown Philly in the 12:30 lunch hour. Yet the Adoptee Rights Demonstration appears to have viewed the convention center as more of an end point than a key place to be for an extended period. Yet another missed opportunity.

We ‘circled’ the block to be certain we were not missing a larger group at another entrance, stunned that it could be this small this quickly, but by 12:38 there was little left.

The interview with the private camera continued near the entrance and a couple of people with their signs remained, but to the right of the ‘tunnel’ we found all of four ARD participants.

Here’s the “NOW!” sign.

By this point, the event was over and people were heading on in search of drinks at the Hard Rock, which was followed by a trip to a comedy club that evening.

RECAP

So let’s recap, step off from People’s Plaza was roughly noon and by 12:38 it was over.

I didn’t note precisely what time they arrived at the convention center, but clearly the bulk of the ARD participants spent less than 1/2 an hour sign holding there.

Which means they spent almost 3 times as much time standing around in the drizzle not doing much of anything at People’s Plaza than they did protesting at their target.

This is one of those rare moments that simply leaves me “holding my head like a stunned monkey.”

Yes, they will have the booth inside the convention and will be marketing as best they can alongside the other exhibitors over the next few days, but that task will be left to a small subset.

Most of those participating on the day of the ARD stood around waiting in the misty rainish morning, took a rather noisy walk, and then sign held for a few minutes outside a building.

In the final calculation, it amounted to this roughly 40 minutes worth of fewer than 70 people actually ‘marching’ down the sidewalk, signholding, being a “presence” etc.

The Adoptee Rights Committee behind the ARD laid out this rough “budget” of sorts, from their Donate page,

The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration has a base target goal of $2,000 for the protest. This money will be used to pay for permits, security, advertising and materials. For an additional $2,000, we will again be able to afford a booth inside the Convention Center.

They relied on the broader community of those who support restoration of records access to foot the bill and in two years have never had to account for the financial realities of the ARD.

Now that the “protest” portion of the event has taken place, perhaps it’s time for a some careful cost-benefit evaluation.

By way of ‘coverage,’ it’s been pretty slim pickings:

Here’s the ARD’s own sparse twitterstream from the event, and now in the aftermath from the booth inside the National Conference of State Legislators exhibitor’s hall.

Today in the aftermath, Philly.com, (also owned by the Philadelphia Inquirer) carried this piece by way of wrap up, Adoptees protest for access to original birth certificates. Once again, reunion focused messaging is portrayed as the prime motivator for why Adult Adoptees would seek access to their Original Birth Certificates.

None of those groups were present yesterday – nor did they need to be. They’re winning the argument, noted adoptee Dan Haines of Egg Harbor. That forces adoptees to mount a state- by- state appeal to lawmakers that could go on forever. And while that happens, he said, birth parents grow old and die.

That fact lends urgency to what adoptees call the nation’s last civil-rights battle.

( I’d HARDLY call us the “last civil rights battle!” There are still plenty of other frontiers…)

Still it’s not a terribly surprising ‘justification’ for the event/adoptee ‘activism’ considering much of the messaging coming from the ARD, such as the photo included with the article.

Photo: John Costello / The Philadelphia Inquirer

Finally, (only semi-amusingly) several people with, as well as the ARD homepage itself, appear to have mistaken Examiner.com for a newspaper or some other form of hard media.

In reality it is an online ‘content’ generator not dissimilar to about.com. (See this Examiner.com press release for an overview on their more than 4,000 “Examiners”/paid content generators. It’s out of date, they’re now up to well over 8,000. (Also see their Quality Writers Wanted: Join us page.) Space filling junk like this Live reports from today’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration pointing at ARD’s twitterstream hardly passes for “coverage.”

By way of blog coverage in the aftermath by those involved, from the ARD homepage: Greetings from Philadelphia (7-22-09, Day after the event)

(In which they bemoan what they perceived as the “miserable rain” and thanked those who showed up and to endure such.)

Kali’s “Anti-Adoption” blog: The Adoptee Rights Demonstration Philladelphia does it again!

In which she, as “founder” of the event, leads off with an interesting admission about last year in New Orleans and this year’s numbers.

Three times the amount of protestors there last year…

Just as I had suspected, I was being quite generous in my morning after recap of last year,

This New Orleans Times Picayune Article, poorly entitled Protesters seek to change laws sealing birth papers came out today, July 23rd.

It mentions “about 60 protesters” took part in the march from Lafayette Park to the Ernest N. Morial convention center.

This year’s numbers being what they are, again a mere 66 people, give or take one or two, marched out of the Park. If last year’s was 1/3 the size, that’s a rather startling admission.

She continues on, insisting that the ARD will go on and on, becoming an annual occurance (paid for by the broader community of those who support open records of course).

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration will never give up, it will continue year after year if it takes until I am one hundred I will be there at the convention, writing my leggies, introducing bills and voting those in office against adoptees equality OUT and getting people who support us in will happen if necessary!

An interesting insistence in light of my post she commented on the night before this year’s ARD, questioning the effectiveness of the tactic, the ARD’s finances, and the notion of becoming an annual habit.

Naturally, the “rain” has taken on a mythology all its own, becoming part of the ARD Philly narrative. Kali adds her notion of participants as dedicated to slog it out through the rains.

You know it means the heart and soul to someone when they’re willing to do it in the rain!

Sigh. Pretty much any “activist” who would even consider being dissuaded by the light misty drizzle that let up long before step off probably hasn’t earned the title street “activist… .”

I suppose for this reason alone it was worth the trip.

Someone had to be there to reality check whether it was torrential rains or merely the slight mistiness in the air that it had devolved down to by the time the ‘march’ began.

Emphasizing the rain as some kind of ‘oh see how dedicated’ or ‘look how much they suffered for the cause’ nonsense, is just a load of crap.

Finally, it’s important to look at what kind of media is internally produced by participants themselves using the footage gathered at the event and how participants are characterized in such:

“Forgotten Children”

Because apparently, there’s nothing like relabeling ADULT adoptees “forgotten children,” set to a ‘cheerful’ little tune, suitable for slitting one’s wrists to.

(Sarcasm kids, sarcasm.)

]]> http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/23/adoptee-rights-demonstration-photographs-and-video-missed-opportunities-abound/feed/ 23 http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/20/philadelphia-this-years-adoptee-rights-demonstration-adoptee-rights-day/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/20/philadelphia-this-years-adoptee-rights-demonstration-adoptee-rights-day/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:16:25 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/?p=739 So it’s been almost a year since this version of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration,” or ARD, held their initial event in New Orleans. This year, as their event centers around buying a booth inside the National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL) exhibit hall, they will be gathering in Philadelphia.

Once again, they still have yet to attract a single adoptee rights /open records membership organization as a co-sponsor. (This year, same as last year, their two sponsors include a cafepress shop and a podcast.)

The ARD itself lacks any form of structure beyond a central organizing “coalition” of individuals. It has donors, yet no rights, ability to vote, nor membership structure is implied by such. It lacks any form of formalized organization responsible for it.

When those speaking for the ARD in the booth or writing legislators do so, they speak for themselves, not any larger organization of the Adoptee Rights movement internationally.

(Speaking personally, obviously, I support individual actions. This blog and its independence are examples of that. That said however, it is important to differentiate when one is speaking as an individual from times one speaks for a broader organization or movement. The ARD cannot and does not speak for many of us long term adoptee rights advocates, nor any other formal organization.)

Unfortunately, the financial questions at the core of last year’s event still remain.

Those responsible for this Adoptee Rights Demonstration, the self described “Adoptee Rights Coalition,” to date have not provided any form of accounting for last year’s financial donations: those who gave, how many people donated, how much money, nor how it was spent. They’ve had a year, yet no financial report has been forthcoming.

Such an accounting is particularly important in light of the ARD’s lack of charitable donation status, lack of fiscal agent, and the fact that at least some of the donations from last year went directly into Kali Coultas’s personal account. As the date for last year’s ARD approached, they increasingly had problems with the Paypal account being shut down. There has never been visibility into nor accounting to the broader adoptee rights community as to where their money went.

In essence, those responsible for last year’s ARD asked the broader Adoptee Rights Community to trust them, yet provided no means by which to hold them accountable for either the financial aspects of the event, nor ultimately showing any form of political result. (Which I’ll address here in a minute.)

Monies were collected last year for a full page advertisement in the New Orleans Times Picayune that was to list names of individual supporters of the ARD event in NOLA. No disclaimer was placed on the collection of those monies stating that were not enough collected, or if the monies were needed for other purposes, they could be shifted to other projects. Yet when last year’s event took place, no advertisement was run and no monies were refunded. There was, in fact, no explanation offered.

Sadly the lack of promised advertisement was to be but one example of the complete lack of visibility into the finances of the ARD.

This year is no better. The Paypal donation page linked off the Adoptee Rights Demonstration homepage simply transfers funds to “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” (reference adopteerightsdotnet) an unverifed account.

Since I last wrote about the upcoming event in Philly, the “Adoptee Rights Coalition” (those responsible for the events) have added a few names. It now consists of:

Kali Coultas / Founder

Michelle Edmunds

Joy Madsen

Cathy Robishaw

Heather Holmes

Theresa Hood

Dory Martin

Diane Crossfield

and Jimm Mandenberg

(”Founder” is quite a stretch, considering the pre-existing history with the term “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” and the history of the way Kali ended up with it, but that’s a tale I’ve covered here before.)

Sadly, I think a number well intentioned and very serious about regaining records access people have ended up supporting the ARD. To my thinking at least, there is quite a difference between some of the folks who show up and some of those who can only be described as running the thing.

If you stumbled across it for the first time on facebook, or heard of it via a blog which has picked up the marketing, you may know nothing of the history, the many lingering issues from last year going into this year, or the personal viciousness that took place last year directed at longtime open records activists and Bastard Nation.

Further, as some number of people supporting or participating may be new to adoptee rights work itself, they may have little to measure the effectiveness or lack thereof of the ARD against.

As I mentioned previously on the history link above, clearly the vision for the event itself has changed greatly from Ron Morgan’s original inception. Clearly, by any measure, the current ARD is not the sort of mass action event originally envisioned.

Yet original vision aside, even judging it purely upon what last year’s event set out to do, its effectiveness even by that measure raises serious questions about whether or not the finances and efforts put into such ultimately make sense, or instead distract from the real work to be done.

Part of the disconnect appears to be structural.

Some of those donating do so in hopes of having people go to Philly to go essentially speak and work on their behalf. Meanwhile, those organizing the event are clearly viewing their presence as merely the prelude to what they want people back home to do. Each ends up staring at the other expecting SOMEONE else to do something. Donors want people to speak with their legislators via the purchased booth, those in the booth, apparently think they are collecting contacts for those back home to work on.

What measurable follow up has there been since last year? How many meetings in home districts? How many sponsors were gained? How many pieces of legislation were introduced as a direct result of buying exhibit space in New Orelans? What tangible milestones were marked as a direct result of having done so?

In short, what has been the cost benefit analysis of the strategy of having a few people “marching” on sidewalks without a permit, and buying a booth in the convention center?

While they can claim “contacts were made” has there been any genuine analysis on whether or not who they were talking to were ‘the right people’ or not? I.e. did they connect with people genuinely in a position to get legislation enacted (and did they then begin to work towards such?) or did they expend their time speaking with people with little to no genuine power to enact actual change? Do they even know?

Is this a strategy that actually makes sense? What has doing so done in terms of the goal, restoration of records access to the maximum number of people?

Oh, but wait, IS that their ultimate goal?

Let’s take a look.

As always, all we have are their own words and actions to go by.

From here:

All proceeds go to The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration to help pay for permits, security, advertising and our ultimate goal, a booth inside the Annual Summit of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

from here:

Our goal is to maintain a presence at the Annual Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

and from here:

We believe an annual presence at the NCSL Summit demonstrates the importance of this issue, and awakens those impacted by secrecy laws and subsequent treatment by states withholding personal information at various vital information offices across the country. A presence inside the booth is crucial to prove the seriousness of our intent to those who need to hear the message.

Let’s be realistic here, what they are discussing is a booth, one of many, all vying for attention and moments of time with staffers and some state legislators in the exhibition hall alongside plenty of other booths attempting exactly the same.

If the people attempting to market open records don’t even understand the difference between their nonsensical term “vital information offices” and state’s vital statistics offices, no amount of paying their entrance fees is going to help gain genuine open records.

Yes, alongside their stated “goal” of being a “presence,” there are other statements about records restoration, but since when did “maintaining a presence” become any kind “goal?”

See, for me? Even back when I was a member of the committee for last year’s ARD (before I and others resigned) a booth at the event was a TACTIC, never a goal.

It was a tactic being utilized towards the goal of records access restoration.

It was never an ends in and of itself. The idea of listing the upcoming cities the NCSL will take place in for the next three years down the side of the webpage under the heading

“Future Adoptee Rights Demonstrations at the NCSL”

means that for those running the ARD, they view this as a habit to get into, an annual vacation to plan on, and an annual event they expect to be able to count on the broader records access community to fund.

Not planned obsolescence.

I was working hard towards the idea of looking forward to the day of not having to booth such an event ever again. I was working towards the day when records access was restored and attending such an event would become unnecessary.

Furthermore, had I participated last year, in the aftermath, there would have been a careful assessment of whether or not the tactic had been successful, what the cost/benefit ratio was, and whether or not repeating such even still made sense. IF going forward, the tactic was to be repeated, there would have to be some very tangible (and marketable to the broader community) results justifying doing so again.

Taking up space at the NCSL as some kind of theraputic annual gathering for online buddies to finally meet one another and drink together, and (for example) listen to jazz musicians that they cannot even bother to get the names of is not genuine activism. It may be a working out of personal issues, and need for friends, but it doesn’t justify an ongoing utilization of the goodwill and pocketbooks of the broader adoptee community.

Vacations and parties and raffles can all be nice things, but if doing so means losing track of the real goal, such that an annual “presence” is suddenly on the list of “goals,” then genuine accomplishment has fallen by the wayside. It’s about keeping one’s eye on the ball, and failure to do so.

Basic messaging seems to be an ongoing problem for the ARD, starting with statements such as this from their demonstration details page:

All Americans, adopted or not, have a right to access government records about their own lives.

which they then immediately contradict:

Adult adoptees in most of the advanced, industrialized nations of the world have unrestricted access to their original birth records as a matter of right. In contrast, adult adoptees in all but six states in the U.S. are forbidden unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates, due to archaic laws that are a legacy of a culture of shame that stigmatized infertility, out-of-wedlock birth and adoption.

Obviously if we ALREADY HAD the right to full access there would be no need to hold an event such as ARD. Adult Adoptees would not have to organize, march, nor lobby for restored records access.

Clearly in our day to day lives we do not experience that equitable treatment that would put us on equal footing with all others.

That would be the entire premise for the ARD itself, yet how do they begin the page describing their event? By essentially saying there is no need for the event (except there is.)

Such self contradictory messaging is hardly the kind of ‘voice’ I would want representing my needs to legislators.

The messaging problems that a number of us brought up prior to our resignation last year still persist, such as the insistence upon utilizing a (family) tree based logo more indicative of search and reunion and personal quest to ‘know one’s roots’ than a rights based or records restoration based visual.

The ongoing conflation of restored records access with search and reunion is front and center in this year’s ARD page via their searchers page, on which they state,

The purpose of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration is to serve as an annual rally for those who care deeply about restoring unconditional access to all Americans. However, we realize that search is an important topic to many involved. To that end, we have compiled the following list of state specific search and reunion links and information.

When several of us pointed out last year that this only served to increase confusion and the tangling of open records with search and reunion, Kali’s excuse was that most of the people coming into the webpage were looking for search and reunion resources.

She wanted to use the provision of “search resources” as a hook to draw people into the page and increase web traffic.

Never mind the fact that genuine records restoration is not about the personal quest to reunite. It is about restoring equitable treatment to a class of people who have been wronged by the State.

Such intentional conflations of the two: records access and search and reunion, only leads to additional conflated legislation such as reunion registries, etc which bypass genuine restored access, and are attempts at placating those enduring inequitable treatment under law.

Worse, the ARD page markets itself towards legislative visitors as well. How they expect legislators unfamiliar with our issues to decipher search and reunion as distinct from records restoration when the supposed advocates thereof place them side by side is beyond me. It’s a ‘what the hell were they thinking?’ visual.

Finally, let’s take a moment to revisit the ongoing issue of the finances.

Lest last year’s troubling pattern of financial decisions not be enough to raise eyebrows, this year’s event features a new troubling twist: a payback for participating for one lucky winner.

This one falls under the heading of things I simply could not make up if I tried. I attended my first large scale national protest event in Washington DC back in 1986. In the 23 years I’ve been ‘doing activism’ I have to say, I’ve never quite run across a one of these:

Prizes to be won in Philly

The Adoptee Rights Committee is pleased to announce a draw to be held *July 22, 2009 *following the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

First prize is a *$100 VISA gift certificate* – always useful for travelers! Second and third prizes will also be awarded. The prizes have been donated by the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers as a way to thank protesters for their much-appreciated participation.

Protesters will be asked to enter their names either at the sign-making party the evening before, or immediately after the demonstration. The drawing will take place at a local restaurant (TBD) following the demonstration, where we will gather for rest, hydration, conversation and camaraderie.

Yup, it’s the ‘please come to Philly, you could win a Visa gift certificate’ pitch! Errrr, ‘come to Philly and fill out our database’ pitch.

Prizes for ‘protesting.’ Bribes for bodies?

As advertised on their Twitterstream:

100 reasons to come to the Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration! http://tr.im/jJB6

That’s bad enough in and off itself, after all, usually, protesters show up all on their own, without any expectation of a potential payoff for having done so, but the real question, once again, lies in the donations.

Are we talking about monies donated out of the ‘coalition’ members own pockets, or are we talking about the ‘coalition’ committee setting aside a portion of the event donations for this purpose?

If the latter, then the question becomes, did those donating to the event understand at the time that a portion of their donation could be used as reward “prize money” for demonstrators?

Usually, when people donate to a cause, they expect the funds to actually be used for the cause itself, not as a form of kickback to participants.

Again, having no explanation of the finances of the ARD, the answer to whether the money came out of donations or personal pockets remains simply unknown.

We can, however look at the few items they list as what donations should be designated towards in their fundraising to date.

The ARD cafepress page for example, lists some of the items the proceeds were to go to (although note that no specific line item budget has ever been released by those responsible for the ARD):

Adoptee Rights Day – July 21, 2009 – Philadelphia

http://www.cafepress.com/AdopteeRightsPA

20% is added to the base price of every item. All proceeds go to The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration to help pay for permits, security, advertising and our ultimate goal, a booth inside the Annual Summit of The National Conference of State Legislatures. Your purchase is deeply appreciated!

Nothing in that about monetary prizes to participants.

Likewise, nothing on the Donate page,

The Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration has a base target goal of $2,000 for the protest. This money will be used to pay for permits, security, advertising and materials. For an additional $2,000, we will again be able to afford a booth inside the Convention Center.

Nor their sponsors page.

As “Adoptees Unite “is listed as one of the ARD sponsors, it’s likewise interesting to take a quick visit across to Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change’s cafe press shop:

http://www.cafepress.com/adopteesunite

100% of the profits of sales will be donated to help fund the 2009 Adoptee Rights Protest in Philadelphia.

Despite there being no accounting of where the funding is actually going, they make a final pitch to every individual “protester,”

We are asking protesters to consider supporting the demonstration by making a small $5.00 donation towards expenses. Please note that this donation is not mandatory, and no one will be excluded from the event if they do not donate.

That’s right up there with some of the ‘not required, but suggested’ pay to march ‘activist’ parades.

Again, most events I’ve been supportive of over the years welcome participants and don’t offer up “suggested donation” amounts. If participants chose to give a donation, it tends to come of deep personal conviction, not expectation.

Yes, I am what some of you seem to insist upon calling a “longtime” Bastard rights/open records activist. But based on my experience last year, I will not be involved.My reasons are pretty straightforward.

Keep in mind, this is purely my personal take on it. (Your mileage may vary.)

I’ll mention my primary areas of concern with a few details under each. Bear in mind this is not an exhaustive list, it simply lays out some of the more important areas of ongoing concern.

Unanswered financial questions in the wake of last year and questions going into this year:

• Last year, as the Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee rights was not a legally incorporated organization, and as they had no fiscal agent collecting funds for them, donations to the event went into Kali Coultas’ personal paypal account. To the best of my knowledge, to date there has never been a public disclosure of what happened to those donated funds.There has been no public accounting of how much money was collected, nor where it went. As there has been no organizational requirement to report to the IRS what happened, and no independent auditing has occurred, the finances of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” are (again, to the best of my knowledge) not available for any form of public scrutiny.
• As a portion of last year’s fundraising, donors were promised by the Adoptee Rights Demonstration that their names would appear in a Time Picayune full page newspaper advertisement the day of the protest. To the best of my knowledge no newspaper ad was run. Funds were not refunded, nor was any explanation forthcoming from the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers.
• This year it appears the Adoptee Rights Demonstration still does not have a designated tax status. Unless they are able to find a willing fiscal agent for their activities, the financial black hole of last year may be repeated.

Lack of communications from last year’s organizers:

• I’ve already covered the lack of communication with donors above, but the lack of communication was unfortunately part of a broader pattern.
• Last year, as the protest itself took place, people contacted me (I had resigned by then) asking whether or not the protest had even taken place. Eventually the protest organizers did put up a little information, a few blog posts (some on blogs that have now been made private) etc, but for some who donated but did not attend, they were frustrated by the lack of basic communications from the organizers.One donor commented she was grateful I had put up the newspaper article in that at least she was able to see the organizers hadn’t “run off to Cancun” on the donations. That was the level of frustration I was hearing at the time. (This year they’ve decided to Twitter.)
• Last year’s “Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights” web-page never listed who the people responsible for the event actually were. Thus due to the lack of publicly available role designations, most people never knew who was responsible for the event itself. (That has changed this year, see below.)

Shifting event premise, conceptual, tactical, and strategic problems (not “mission creep,” mission losing focus and devolving):

• For starters, last year not even one national or international adoptee rights membership organization endorsed the event that finally ended up taking place in New Orleans. While what happened there may have represented the interests of the individuals involved (gathered from message boards etc), it did not represent nor speak on behalf of any segment of the broader pre-existing movement for adoptee rights and open records.
• The initial vision laid out for the Adoptee Rights Demonstration was that it be a mass action event. As Ron pointed out, there have been many small demonstrations through the years, ultimately they often serve to work at cross purposes with activists’ own organizational goals. They drain already scarce time and resources and often end up making support for your cause look weak.This was precisely one of the key problems last year’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration suffered from. Turnout was marginal (the Times Picayune reported “about 60 protesters,” though people who attended reported that was more like over the course of the day, not all at once).The bottom line is, there is no adoptee rights mass movement waiting in the wings somewhere to show up for such an event. Instead of learning from that, and focusing energy and resources on what those already working for open records do best, work state by state precisely the way we have to build relationships with Legislators (not brief encounters at an event conference booth) and local coalitions towards gaining open records, the idea of a non-mass action demonstration/sign holding by however many show up outside coupled with “hit and run” brief encounters with legislators booth inside an exhibit hall is offered up as a panacea. Working locally, with those who know the lay of the land in their own states is in my opinion a much more efficient use of resources at this point.I was willing to sign on last year based on the mass-action model. Clearly the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers have abandoned that, as no such vision has been put forward.
• One of the core components Ron articulated in envisioning last year’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration was the concept of putting “pressure” on legislators and utilizing “pressure tactics.” Pressure enough to force the issue was always fully interconnected with the concept of both mass actions and “mass movement” sized participation. “Pressure” meant making the open records demand unavoidable, something that would have to be addressed.By the time what was left of the organizing committee made it to New Orleans last year, any concept of “pressure” was no longer a component of the event, it had devolved to a few individuals sign holding, spacing themselves apart in front of the convention hall in a vain attempt to appear larger than their small numbers betrayed.The idea of the booth inside the event was always strategized in tandem with mass action events staged over the course of the week outside the hall.Strategically, it’s important then, to evaluate whether the expenditure and effort to continue still makes sense in the absence of the ability to apply pressure. (Letter writing and “pressure” are altogether different things.)
• Supposedly part of the entire purpose for the many donors to raise the money it took to get a booth inside the National Conference of State Legislators annual meeting staffed by the few people who were going to be inside the event was to gauge the potential support of legislators and and construct a list of potential contacts to follow up with after the event itself. If there has been ANY follow up on the heels of last years event, Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers have failed to communicate that to the outside world.This year’s organizers apparently want to outsource that follow up back out to ARD supporters: “a live Twitter feed of state representatives that we spoke with, providing on the spot reporting.* Protesters and supporters will be able to follow up with the representatives who met with us, to remind them how important you view this issue.” Which begs the question, if follow-up contact to the legislators is going to be done by folks back home anyway, then why should they spend the big bucks to send people to staff a booth in Philly to Twitter back who to contact? People back home ALREADY know who to contact and can schedule actual meetings with their representatives to gauge their support.Why on earth would “protesters and supporters” actually need to lay out the expenditures to do the Philly event, where those staffing the booth will have perhaps at best mere minutes to talk with legislators? How does this make any economic sense at all? (Other than for those who want a nice little vacation in Philly anyway, where they can hang out with their online message board adoptee friends, that is.)
• The real bottom line is, for both last year’s event and this year’s what is the real cost/benefit analysis in relation to stated goals?Now admittedly if all your goals are to sign hold and twitter, and write letters, and have a designated booth sitter spend maybe two minutes talking with your home state representative, then if you can get past all the other issues with the event then maybe this is just the thing for you.On the other hand, if you think sign holding only makes sense under conditions, when it strategically can be used to greatest advantage, you don’t need a twitter feed to tell you about contacting your rep (where they stand can usually be determined by a phone call to their aide,) you don’t need an event to tell you to write letters, and you find raising money for the purposes of being one of many booths in an exhibition hall is not the most effective use of such, and you find the other issues with the proposed event and those proposing it that give you pause, then maybe this is not where you want to be. It’s all about measuring outcomes in relation to stated goals.Last year, what happened in New Orleans by the time it finally occurred bore little resemblance to what the Day for Adoptee Rights/Adoptee Rights Demonstration had set out to be. By any measure, it had aspects of outright wasted resources, such as the park permit for a mass movement that never materialized. (And no, much as some over there would like to blame Bastard Nation for such, that’s merely scapegoating.)

Lingering ethical issues:

• Last year without organizers’ knowledge or consent, Abrazo Adoption Associates set up a facebook fundraising page that fundraised utilizing the name of our event into Abrazo’s own account.When the facebook fundraising was revealed to the organizing committee working on the Adoptee Rights Demonstration by one of the organizers who not only had a pre-exisiting relationships with Abrazo, but then defended Abrazo’s actions from her position within the organizing committee itself, the Abrazo fundraising became one of several factors that led to more than half of the organizing committee resigning. The minority that remained went ahead with last year’s protest in New Orleans which Abrazo related personnel attended, socializing with the remaining organizers over the course of the event.For those of us who left, industry co-optation of and (non-disclosed) fundraising off of the event made our continued involvement impossible. At least some of us who resigned have come to the conclusion that we are unwilling to work with last years organizers again, not merely due to the ethical issues raised by industry co-optation, but also for having been blindsided by an organizer within the committee itself. (Blogposts from the time concerning the Abrazo fundraising can be accessed via my Abrazo Adoption Associates tag.)This year, they appear to have learned from the Abrazo fiasco and have added a new line to their “Donate” page: “The Adoptee Rights Demonstration does not accept donations from adoption agencies or their employees.”
• While I have barely blogged about it, many of the blog comments and message board comments by those that remained as the organizing committee after we left, directed back at us were not merely vicious, they were potentially defamatory. While last year’s remaining organizers are welcome to hold political disagreements with those of us who left, personal attacks and petty vindictive behaviours move beyond the realm of political differences. The treatment I myself experienced and saw directed at some of those who stepped back from the event was well, in a word ugly. Much of it took place far from the public eye on private message boards and private emails.Other such writings, once publicly available on blogs etc have been revised or removed altogether by those that posted them. I have watched as “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” organizers have attacked longstanding open records activists and spewed invective at Bastard Nation organizationally. Bear in mind, BN has had a longstanding policy against taking industry funding, once it became clear Abrazo money was apparently ALREADY in last year’s Adoptee Rights Demonstration, unbeknownst to some of us then organizers, BN had little choice but to withdraw; and yes this decision also dealt with the simultaneous issue of projected minimal turnout for the event itself.

All that said, credit where credit is due, which is to say, they actually decided to do some of the things we advised last year:

• After the complete mess last year, this year’s organizers have finally taken our advice and decided not to take donations from adoption agencies or their employees. That said, this year’s committee is not a VAST personnel revamp from last year. I guess they just finally came to understand that being industry co-opted wasn’t going to fly.
• Unlike last year, this year they have decided to utilize twitter as their communications vehicle from the event itself.
• And finally, this year, unlike last year, the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration Committee” will no longer be anonymous. They have at least learned from that mistake. This year’s committee consists of:

1. Kali Coultas / Founder
2. Michelle Edmunds
3. Joy Madsen
4. Cathy Robishaw
5. Theresa Hood

I urge readers to carefully research the proposed event in Philadelphia and history of those organizing it before participating or promoting it, and to make up their own minds.

Between the financial, ethical, and strategic questions in the wake of last year, and the viciousness directed at me personally and others I care about, suffice it to say, I have no interest in participating.

Undoubtedly, the predictable response of those currently using the name “adoptee rights demonstration” would come down to (putting it far more politely than they’re likely to) “GOOD, you weren’t invited.”Why “currently using the name… ?” Because it wasn’t always so. I wrote *a* (not “the” by any stretch) history of what the words “Adoptee Rights Demonstration had meant previously, and what the original strategizing for the Adoptee Rights Demonstration had been here: Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Day for Adoptee Rights some history and Gershom’s “storm”.

Originally, the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” had been associated with both Ron Morgan and Bastard Nation. After the events that unfolded last time around, however, both withdrew their participation.

My personal blogging of what happened in relation to last July’s protest can be found on my Adoptee Rights Demonstration tag.

Why write this? Honestly, why dredge through all this? Particularly when I’d rather just go on about the work I’m already doing?

Well, if for no other reason than a lot of good people put money towards something last year, and were not in any way shape or form given so much as an accounting of where their money went.

As for others of us who put our time and effort into such?Speaking purely for myself here, knowing what I know now? I’ll never do that again.

Will I work towards something effective and strategically thought through? Hell yes, but as to what has become of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration?”

Not on your life.

Specifically, this post deals with comments made by an ARD organizer in the aftermath of the event.

***

Gershom’s over on Adopted Jane’s blog rewriting history.

Gerhom’s comment is on Jane’s own blog post about her being banned from the adult adoptees forum as well. I am not going to muck up Jane’s blog with this crap, so I’ll be pointing folks here to this response.

I suppose it’s time to pull out the data, let people read it for themselves, and make up their own minds.

Let’s address some of Gershom’s accusations first:

As an ORIGINAL organizer, BLC hasn’t done anything BUT cry about it and me since I was in New Orleans, and have returned from New Orleans.

Well let’s see, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) in New Orleans was held July 22nd.

Anyone looking at my blog can see I did a piece on the 21st, Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Day for Adoptee Rights some history and Gershom’s “storm”. In it, I discussed some background history of the terminology and the event. I also wrote a political criticism of some of the language Gershom was using in the lead up to the event.

IF media decided to do any kind of piece on the event in New Orleans scheduled for the next day, or if other bystanders or even participants were interested, I felt it was important to make some background history available. It was also important to point out that no (inter) national open records or adoptee rights organization had endorsed nor sponsored the event taking place in NOLA.

I also felt it was important that people understand that what had originally been called for was a mass event, not what would come to be 60 (or fewer) people. It was important to judge the ’success’ of the event against the call that had gone out for the event.

On the 22nd itself, after the march and protest portions of the ARD had taken place, I restored posts I had previously written prior to my resignation from the ARD calling for participation in the ARD. See ARD- Baby Love Child earlier ARD posts, history restoration.

On the 23rd, at the urging of my readers, who were searching for information on what happened in New Orleans and finding mere crumbs, I wrote ARD- Morning after media coverage , Afternoon Photo UPDATE. ARD organizers had not put anything out and people we genuinely wondering whether or not the event had even taken place.

On the 24th, I pointed my readers at the ARD page update, (so that they could get it ’straight from the horses….’ well, whereever,) Adoptee Rights Demonstration updates their page, now that it’s mostly over so they could read Gershom’s (and others’) perspectives as well. I didn’t have to agree with their perspective, but I thought it important that my readers read about it from multiple angles and get information directly from those who put it on rather than only second hand sources. Again, I trust my readers to be intelligent enough to make up their own minds about these things.

On the 25th, after the personal attack thread aimed at me on adult adoptees by ARD related individuals, including Gershom, I removed my writings from their ’support’ based board, and posted a brief note to my own blog about what happened to the writings before anyone assumed adult adoptees board administrators had done anything to them. See ARD related – my ‘Adult’ Adoptees posts are no longer available. I only wrote about such on my own blog. The last post I had made to adult adoptees was June 1rst.

I removed my posts from the adult adoptees forum for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being, it was clearly open season on me personally over there. For a ’support’ forum, it was hardly a welcoming, let alone supportive space. I wanted to protect my own work that I had once posted over there, and did not want board administrators, such as Joy who were clearly acting in an antagonistic manner towards me to have an opportunity to in any way delete, alter, or lock down any more of my posts on the forum. I did however, maintain my account there, after removing my own work.

On the 26th Joy ‘releived’ me of my adult adoptees account. I explained to my readers what had happened on my own blog, ARD, Adult Adoptees “relieves” me of my membership.

Gershom attempted to comment on my blog, and I moderated it at the time, saying that yes, I had received her comment would get to it as time allowed. (Later, after Gershom responded to a later post of mine on my blog with the YouTube video and song lyrics to “pepsi anyone” on her personal blog, the gist of which can of course be summed up by the line “I’m gonna keep on I’m a do my own thing”. I ‘reprioritized’ getting back to her comment in light of how pointless such clearly was. You can find a copy of how her blog appeared at the time via google’s cache.)

Her comment, which remains moderated, (as ARD organizers such as Gershom have the rest of net to spew their bile all over, I needn’t add my blog to such real estate) was filled with ‘gems’ such as these:

What does it feel like to be someone who just makes things up in order to prove a point? Do you ever feel concrete at all? Do you wobble when you walk? Do you roll right out of bed when you are sleeping? You must have no solid ground beneath you

and, referring to the thread targeting me on adult adoptees:

I posted in that thread last night, it was long over due and it felt great. I posted a picture of an Attention Whore in honor of you.

While I won’t post details of what was in the adult adoptees thread entitled “Comments to Baby Love Child’s blog that’ll never see the true light of day” as adult adoptees is a private forum, Gershom’s comment above should certainly give readers a feel for the ‘tone’ of the thread before it came down. It was petty, childish, and yes, ARD organizers lashing out and name calling in what was billed as an ‘adoptee support’ forum.

Nor was this the first such instance aimed at me personally there. After I posted my two sentence resignation back at the end of May, Joy and others proceeded to ream me for having done so. Joy (acting as the moderator) eventually went so far as to slap me with a warning, saying:

You go on about your 2 sentences but 2 sentences are enough

(You can read the full text concerning such in my eariler post, My brief statement on what happened on the Adult Adoptees forum.)

The two sentences in question, the ones I posted as the beginning of a thread to the adult adoptees forum (May 31, 2008, at 1:43:44 AM) were:

I and my partner Sleeps with Bastard will not be in N’awlins this July.

I have resigned as the Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights March/Protest Volunteer Trainer and Head Monitor.

Remarkable, isn’t it? That simply posting those two sentences was enough to kick off a firestorm.

To quote Marley/Bastardette’s comment on my blog post:

Absolutely, BLC. I have no idea where this hatred is spewing from from and why. If one reads the actual thread, the question that pops out immediately is why are they so mad? What in the world did you do that was so wrong? Why would your simple statement of resignation set off one of the worse, if not THE worst trashing of an activist I’ve seen in my 15 years online? Why you are the target of this hate-a-thon is beyond me. This is a perfect example of why the records access has not gotten farther than it has.

July 28th, I posted, again, this time, in response to readers wondering whether or not Abrazo Adoption Associates had actually been present in New Orleans considering the splintering of the ARD organizing committee Abrazo’s fundraising activities (without organizer’s knowledge or consent) had been one cause of. This is the post I wrote, *UPDATED* Abrazo revised fundraising dates, Abrazo related personnel were at the ARD, and Gershom’s comment on such.

All of which is to say, far from “crying” about any of it, I’ve been providing strategic political and tactical analysis, information into the vacuum left by ARD organizers themselves, (as the ARD page certainly wasn’t answering these questions for my readers), and historical perspective.

But back to Gershom’s comment on Jane’s blog, Gershom then goes on to get her chronology ‘tangled’ (to put it as charitably as possible):

In fact, one of the major reasons she was on moderation at AAAFC is her tantrum she tried to throw on AAAFC after she was booted ( before she “resigned” )from the protest organizers list.

(AAAFC, “Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change” is the full title of “Adult Adoptees” AAAFC’s Forum is the venue in question herein.)

The actual chronology was that I resigned from the ARD organizer’s list (no one ‘booted’ me, my partner and I posted our resignations and unsubscribed ourselves the night of May 30th, no one ever asked us to leave, and if anything, we stayed on roughly an extra day after Bastard Nation had withdrawn.), then I posted my two sentence resignation on my blog, Baby Love Child’s resignation and on the adult adoptees forum.

As a result of those two sentences, and that multiple page long thread on adult adoptees, Joy slapped me with the ‘warning’. In part II readers will be able to see the exact post she tagged, keeping in mind, Joy claims my “two sentences are enough.”

Which then leads me to my original posts on the adult adoptees forum in the resignation thread, the ones Gershom just characterized as a “tantrum”. As they are no longer available online, I will continue with my ongoing process of ‘history restoration’ by making them available again in part II.

I’ll leave to to my intelligent readers (as opposed to my delusional readers) to decide for themselves whether or not said comments constitute a “tantrum.” Unfortunately, as adult adoptees is a private forum, I will only be posting my own writings, not the rantings directed at me which were also originally part of the thread.

Suffice it to say, I find Gershom’s characterization disingenuous at best.

(Part II will be posted when I have some time to clean out and reformat the text, it won’t be immediate. It will likely be a few days as this is a busy week for me.)

Sometimes actions speak louder than words.

The Adoptee Rights Demonstration had a “group” of Abrazo related personnel at it according to Gershom. She has written about how they shared a meal together after the demonstration at the convention center. In her post The Protest part 2, Gerhsom stated the following:

I was at the other table with some other protesters including a group from Abrazo Adoption Agency who came to support our cause. Interesting that an adoption agency was there, and the nations so called leading adoptee rights organization….wasn’t?

Well hint!

ONE of the very reason Bastard Nation wasn’t there was sitting right at your own table.

(Yes, obviously, there were simultaneous pre-existing organizing related issues as the Bastard Nation withdrawal statement pointed out:

We have concluded that this is not the time or place for Bastard Nation to take part in a Day for Adoptee Rights. The cost of the event this year spiraled and did not balance with the number of participants coming forward to show our strength to the politicians who hold the keys to the records cabinets.

notably the number of likely attendees when held against the DAR original concept of “mass movement”.)

But ONE of the reasons, BN, wasn’t in New Orleans?

Abrazo Adoption Associates, out of San Antonio, TX was the agency that fundraised off our event (yes, “our” because at the time, Bastard Nation, of which I am a lifetime member, nothing more, and I were also part of the event.)

As always I cannot speak for Bastard Nation, being nothing more than a lifetime member myself, (anymore than I can speak on behalf of other national organizations I’m a part of) but I can point at reasons in both the single statement Bastard Nation has released since withdrawing, and quote some of the personal thinking explained via a personal blog.

To again quote the BN statement:

Moreover, we are concerned with participation of Abrazo Adoption Agency in San Antonio, Texas. Unknown to DAR and BN until just a few days ago, Abrazo has been raising funds for the event in DAR’s name.

and

These funds went and continue to go directly to the agency, raising huge ethical issues for Bastard Nation and the equal access movement. Records and identity access is about our rights and has no connection with the marketing schemes of adoption agencies. BN has a long-standing, hard-line policy of accepting no support from the adoption industry. Bastard Nation specifically, and the adoptee rights movement in general, cannot and should not be co-opted or used by the adoption industry to promote its own agenda. We disavow all industry involvement in our work. Any entanglement with the adoption industry endangers the integrity and credibility of the adoptee rights movement.

Read this comment thread from June 2, ‘08 on Marley’s (the Executive Chair of Bastard Nation) personal blog, The Daily Bastardette, concerning the BN statement. Keep in mind that her personal comments there must be taken in light of her blog’s disclaimer:

The Daily Bastardette is an independent blog and not connected to any organization.

The discussion between Abrazo’s Executive Director, Elizabeth Jurnovich, b.b.Church/Ron and Marley is quite revealing. Marley makes it clear:

There were two issues: (1) fiscal responsibility/committed attendance. (2) Abrazo piggybacked on it–I think that would be the way to say it. The lead organizer of the event called for a suspension of DAR this year so it could be done right next year. We concurred. A few people disagreed, and went their own way. Some of them are genuinely dedicated to DAR coming off. Others, who had nothing to do with the planning or decision making prefer to spread rumors and gossip and blame Bastard Nation for God knows what, for doing what any responsible organization does–protect its members interests and investments.

Later in the thread Marley addresses Ms. Jurnovich directly about the Abrazo fundraising:

First you solicit funds in DAR’s name without their knowledge and consent. Then you continue to do so knowing the problems this has caused DAR, BN, and the adoptee rights movement in general. You continue to raise funds against DAR’s wishes.

and

To say that DAR or BN doesn’t want to work with natural parents, adoptive aparents, etc. is simply not true. We have plenty of both in our membership. But, we are not interested in helping adoption agencies position themselves and market their products and services in OUR movement. And that, is what your fundraising looks like to a helluva lot of people right now. Do you think for one minute that most activists would be interested in supporting an event which the adoption industry has funded? You wonder why adoptees don’t like the adoption industry This is a perfect example.A Day for Adoptee Rights, whether BN participates in it or not, is about adopted persons, not the industry.

According to a comment Ms. Jurnovich, (the executive director of Abrazo), attempted to post to my partner, Sleeps with Bastard’s moderated blog on June 6th (which he has not approved) the Abrazo fundraising in relation to the ARD event began in February ‘08, not May 9th, as the Facebook fundraising history page had led me to originally believe.

Which means that between February and May 29th Abrazo was fundraising off our event and we had no knowledge of it whatsoever. When we did discover it, by way of Amy, I explored the Abrazo webpage, I could find no link from off the Abrazo webpage into their facebook fundraising.

On May 30th Ron spoke with Ms. Jurnovich on the phone. According to Ron’s report back to the DAR organizers, she refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with Abrazo utilizing our name in their fundraising without our knowledge or consent.

In fact, even after we found out about the fundraising, and had by then contacted Ms. Jurnovich about it, they continued their fundraising into their own agency 501c3 until approximately June 4th, 08.

That means approximately 4 months worth of fundraising, never once so much as mentioning it to Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers. Then close to a week of continuing on even after being spoken with.

It doesn’t matter whether money came in by the bucketload or drips and drabs, the bottom line is Abrazo was doing it without ARD organizers knowledge or consent.

Nor does it matter whether the nuDAR orgnaizers, those left after others withdrew, consented. The monies as originally collected, were collected under shall we say, ‘highly questionable circumstances’ at best.

According to this 12:17am comment by Elizabeth Jurnovich, made to this blog post written by Amy, she claims the contributions were returned to the individuals, but the agency encouraged them to resend the contributions directly into the ARD as individual contributions made by Abrazo related individuals rather than as a single agency contribution.

Please be assured that every dime raised was returned to each donor, with a full explanation of why Abrazo was unable to forward it to Protest organizers as intended.

Abrazo did encourage all donors to subsequently mail contributions directly to the adoptee rights protest (or other groups), but we have no way of knowing whether any did so, given the ill will aroused by Bastard Nation’s attack.

Ms. Jurnovich, (as well as the usual cast of DAR related individuals) also tries to tar Bastard Nation for having integrity and pulling out of the event, in light of Abrazo’s fundraising falsely equating such to an ‘attack’.

So come the actual event, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration in New Orleans, there was Gershom, dining with Abrazo and the group they brought to participate in the ARD.

More than half of the ARD organizers had left in part over the issue of Abrazo’s fundraising off our event/use of our event without ever informing us, much less asking event organizers’ permission to utilize our event in this way. During my time as an ARD organizer Abrazo was certainly not acting as an authorized fiscal agent.

The Abrazo fundraising was one of several reasons, clearly the lack of “mass movement” participation being a critically important SIMULTANEOUS factor.

Ron/b.b.Church, on this Bastardette comment thread, addressing Ms. Jurnovich, made his reasons clear, he has been willing to work with industry in the past,

But I won’t work with people that sandbag me. And that’s what you did.

He elaborated further in his June 5th statement:

In a series of remarkable posts one of the volunteer organizers revealed that Abrazos, a Texas adoption agency, had been fundraising under DAR’s name and had raised over 800 dollars for the event. This volunteer organizer stated she did not know whether this money was intended for DAR or if it was being raised to fund attendance by Abrazos staff and supporters to the event. This information was like a hand grenade thrown into the mix.

The volunteer organizer in question was of course Amy, who had revealed on May 29th to other organizers Abrazo was raising the money on a facebook page AFTER Ron’s call for suspension. (The two events, the call for suspension and Amy’s revelation of the Abrazo fundraising happened within 13 minutes of one another on the organizer’s list, no doubt most organizers reading such got the two one right after the other.)

The Bastard Nation June 1rst withdrawal statement also makes mention of the Abrazo fundraising as one of the simultaneous reasons they had chosen to withdraw:

Moreover, we are concerned with participation of Abrazo Adoption Agency in San Antonio, Texas. Unknown to DAR and BN until just a few days ago, Abrazo has been raising funds for the event in DAR’s name. http://apps.facebook.com/causes/85456?recruiter_id=15092383

Note that the Abrazo facebook page linked above “open adoption rocks” has changed considerably from the time of DAR organizers realization of it’s existence through Abrazo closing it down, on through to today. For historical purposes, you can see at least the statement they appear to have posted June 4th when the fundraising on facebook appears to have finally ended here in my post ARD- Abrazo finally ends their “open adoption rocks” facebook fundraising. I have yet to go back and pull the wording on the site from the time period when ARD organizers were first discovering it.

My partner, Sleeps with Bastard was even more specific about his take on Abrazo’s actions in his May 31rst post, A very brief comment concerning adoption:

I am not here to promote adoption. I am not here to create events or other means that others coopt so they can continue strip mining pregnant women for product.

This is about getting information out of the state, without compromise. This is not about teaming up with the industry’s marketing efforts that are not about getting information out of the state, but about continuing and growing their business, and nothing else. They will compromise and bargain away unconditional access to OBC’s because they have no stake in those OBC’s, only their business of selling kids on their own terms independent of the state.

The contents of [an adoption agency’s] websites are about the terms by which they move product, not about how bastards everywhere are going to gain their OBC’s.

Be sure to see the full post for related links that detail precisely what he is talking about in the above.

And finally, there’s me, the other organizer who resigned, particularly in light of the Abrazo fundraising. I have had grave concerns about industry co-optation of any form of Bastard organizing to regain our state confiscated materials.

The landscape is such that with international adoption becoming an ever more ’sticky’ proposition what with so many abuses coming to light as of late and ’sending countries’ closing their doors on U.S. Prospective Adopters, many are instead turning to domestic adoption.

And not merely domestic, ‘open adoptions’ so often legally unenforceable, but great for the marketing.

Abrazo is one of the agencies that has focused upon finding a niche market for itself, selling ‘openness’, be that ‘open’ adoption or open records. So much the better if they can find self professed ‘activist’ adoptees, such as Amy to give their ringing endorsements. (see in particular my Amy related portions of this post, Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Day for Adoptee Rights some history and Gershom’s “storm” to see her personal endorsement of Abrazo, it too has since been removed from her blogsite.)

Similar to what my partner said, I am not here to work to create events that agencies such as Abrazo can utilize in their own marketing, specifically see pieces such as Abrazo’s Affinity volume XIV number 1 newsletter (pdf) front page. This is what industry co-optation of Bastard voice looks like in practice. This is ARD in use by Abrazo.

They do not define the meaning of Bastard rights, nor what our issues (political, legal or otherwise), nor feelings are. They are at a separate position in the adoption pentagon (Bastards, parents, adoptive parents, agencies/lawyers/intermediaries/lobbyists/industry, and finally the State.) Abrazo occupies the space of agencies/lawyers/intermediaries/lobbyists/industry. Their interests are not our interests.

They cannot speak for us.

I’ve been writing about my concerns with such since for some time now, see my tags, Adoptee Rights Demonstration, and Abrazo Adoption Associates.

And so when nuDAR organizers such as Gershom EMBRACE those who fundraised off us into their own agency 501c3 for months without our knowledge or consent, yes, just as you might reasonably expect, some of us were absolutely not in New Orleans, (with good reason).

Bastard Nation represents a non-industry co-opted Bastard created and Bastard run organization. One where Bastards speak with their own voice, not as photo-op ’set design’ for agency propaganda. (’Cause I think we can all guess what’s gonna run in upcoming Abrazo materials, pretty pictures of them “supporting” adoptees in New Orleans, never mind what they themselves stand to gain by such.)

One is about us working for ourselves, the other is about how adoptees can be used to further the marketing goals of the industry.

When it mattered, BN stood by their principles, that of “accepting no support from the adoption industry,” so much so that when Amy from within the DAR organizers list was advocating for Abrazo and sharing information with them, Bastard Nation executive committee members took the drastic step of unanimously voting Amy off BN’s Legislative Committee. You can find the full text of BN’s letter to Amy, which she first posted on her blog then took down, in my post here. Quoting the most pertinent part:

Bastard Nation has a long time policy of not accepting support from the adoption industry. Without saying, we do not advocate for the adoption industry or any adoption agency or professional within it. You have done both. As an private individual you have the perfect right to do so, but as a member of BN’s Legislative Committee your duty is to uphold BN principles, practices, and integrity.

Your relationship with Abrazo as documented in your own blog, “Regarding Bastard Nation’s Withdrawal” posted on June 2, 2008 at 3:51 pm and your actions on the original DAR Action List clearly demonstrate a lack of understanding of and concern for Bastard Nation’s mission, activities, and ethics, as well as the security and integrity of the original DAR. We are astounded that you failed to grasp the ethics and motives of an adoption agency funding the DAR protest, much less their procedure of funneling funds sent to them into their own 501(3)(c) account. This funding was done without the knowledge DAR sponsors and leaders, and would never have been approved had they been informed of the scheme.

We take this step to insure the security of Bastard Nation correspondence and the upholding of our principles and rules.

Bastard Nation has had to make some difficult choices surrounding the ARD trainwreck, but in the end, they stood by their own core values as well as the long term interests of the far broader non-industry co-opted adoptee rights work.

It is vitally important that whether lobbying or doing educational work, the genuine adoptee-centric open records movement be disentangled from industry interests and finances. To do otherwise is not only a conflict of interest, it is to abdicate authentic Bastard voice and the ability to speak genuinely for those in our position of the adoption pentagon.

At the end of the day it’s really a question of whose narrative is it in; them participating in an adoptee narrative or adoptees reduced to props in their narrative? It’s a question of influence, societal privilege, control, political access, and power, and ultimately who has more, adoptees or industry?

Bastards must control their own narratives, else they become typecast actors who may as well be in from central casting, playing out roles predetermined for them, for the use and purposes of others. Not unlike the roles Bastards are so often photographically reduced to be that in online photolistings or in industry marketing materials.

I am not saying that Bastards must ‘go it alone’, we certainly have other potential allies; others who are also in their own distinct ways disempowered, de-voiced, and used. Manufactured iconography has been created of them, things have been done to them, and things are ‘done on behalf of them.’ Likewise, they too, often have little access to political power, or mediums in which their authentic voices and their own narratives can be autonomously controlled. I am speaking of course, of others both within and without adoptionland. Most of all though, Bastards stand with those fighting the abuses and abusers, the corruption and the corrupt within the industry that had such effect upon so many of our lives, (Bastard or otherwise.)

I am talking about addressing systemic structures, and understanding who in those relationships ultimately has power and who doesn’t. Those with the power are those who are in positions to actually utilize a given event, regardless of any other attempted narrative or intent.

It’s not a question of what happened, it’s a question of who is more in position to utilize such; adoptees, or industry? Are adoptees there for themselves, or just to be used yet again, by the likes of Abrazo, whom Gershom has clearly welcomed, even in the aftermath of their actions.

That’s the difference. And that’s a big piece of why I at least, was not in NOLA.

****************

Update July 29th

****************

This evening Abrazo Adoption Associates’ executive director Elizabeth Jurnovich attempted to comment on this post, I have moderated her comment, but will address the pertinent points. In her comment this evening she said:

The February fundraising reference regarded Abrazo’s contribution to the Protest’s newspaper ad, for which Ron sent us his thanks, ;a donation which was openly listed, along with Bastard Nation, for MONTHS before any of you took offense to the Facebook fundraising effort we later launched in May.

So let’s be clear, in this, she is now saying that the February reference which she had made in the attempted comment to Sleeps with Bastard’s blog (back on June 6th) was in relation to a specific contribution for the newspaper ad. (What Ron or did not in regard to contributions was unknown to me at least.)

If the Abrazo donation was listed, it would have been listed on the page only visible to donors. As I was not a donor directly to the event, I never had any way of seeing such. (I’ve already explained, I was unwilling to give money into Gershom’s personal account with no organizational oversight.) So I at least never saw such a listing. I was unaware of any agency money in the event at the time I was an organizer.

Finally Ms. Jurnovich says in this evening’s attempted comment that as I had noted earlier, from the facebook fundraising history page, it appears to have been created May 9th.

Then there is the explanation of the fundraising she offered in her attempted comment to Sleeps with Bastard’s blog which was also moderated. It was this eariler June 6th attempted comment from Ms. Jurnovich that I based the above post on. Allow me to again, quote the pertinent portions:

The Facebook Causes application required us to identify a 501c3 to which donations could be directed and the Adoptee Rights March was not an IRS-recognized non-profit (which was why our efforts to encourage our agency clientele to donate via links posted on our website since 2/08 had been largely unsuccessful.) Our agency had already made a donation to the March eariler in the year, as was clearly denoted on the donors’ grid shown on the March’s website,…

The “links” portion in the above was unclear as she was speaking of the facebook fundraising, was she by “links” referring to links (to the ARD website?) or links (to their facebook fundraising?). I believe it’s now clear what she probably intended was links to into the ARD website. The Facebook page would have created months later in May.

Perhaps Ms. Jurnovich could clarify, this then is one question:

Is she saying that 1.Abrazo had made the newspaper ad related donation, 2.AND that Abrazo had links off their website since February encouraging their “agency clientele to donate via links” to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration page, (which was not a nonprofit) and 3. and thus in May they stopped trying to get their members to go over to the ARD page to donate and instead set up their own Facebook fundrainsing page to collect donations into their own agency 501c3?

If so, the facebook fundraising, which apparently began May 9th, still utilized our event without our knowledge or consent.To the best of my knowledge, Abrazo never contacted Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers to mention them having set up the Facebook fundraising without our permission until apparently Ms. Jurnovich first mentioned it to Amy, which Amy then passed along to the rest of us.

Between the two attempted comments Ms. Jurnovich’s own words, lead to a second question:

Is the February fundraising mention in relation to the newspaper ad as Ms. Jurnovich said tonight, or a reference to earlier supposed links off the Abrazo page as she said in the June 6th attempted comment to Sleeps with Bastard’s blog?

Again, the actual dates of when the Facebook fundraising began are still far less important than the fact that for whatever reason, without ARD organizer’s knowledge or consent at some point, (apparently May 9th) Abrazo set up their own form of fundraising into their own agency 501c3 off our event and it was done without ever once notifying, much less asking permission from Adopee Rights Demonstration organizers.

Even if Ron had been aware of agency money in the ARD, something others of us were not aware of, that hardly granted permission for Abrazo to set up their own fundraising off our event into their agency 501c3 .

joy Says:

July 26th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

good news, you don’t have to delete your account, you have been relieved of your membership.

to my earlier blog post from last night about me removing my own work from the adult adoptees forum, yet retaining my account there (in which I explained my reasoning for doing so thusly:)

In light of the recent trashing of Bastard Nation, Marley/Bastardette, and myself in the wake of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration

The “adult” adoptees thread in question, entitled “Comments to Baby Love Child’s blog that’ll never see the true light of day”, based around a comment Catherine Robishaw (obcforme.org) had attempted to post to my blog last night that I had not let through YET:

Catherine Robishaw | obcforme.org

Unfortunately for everyone, you’ll never post this comment.
Honestly, you have no idea what you are talking about. But you’re just like Marley, with your hands over your ears saying “Lalalalala I can’t hear you!”.

You guys are so on the outside looking in, and you don’t even know it.

You just look pitiful, posting these entries in your blog. You are your ilk are a dying breed. Thank God.

See ya next year in Philly! Oh then again, probably not! *snicker*

Jul 25, 7:39 PM — to Adoptee Rights Demonstration updates their page, now that it’s mostly over

has apparently been removed as well.

After all, the “adult adoptees” folks wouldn’t want Bastard Nation members to be able to register at adult adoptees and actually see the way they talk about us behind our back in their forum space, now would they?

But fear not, you can certainly find Joy’s and others’ trashings of Bastard Nation other publicly available places such as this thread she started on alt.adoption, HEY THANKS BN from the protest, as but one example. (Naturally, there are many responses that could be given to such, but it’s not going to happen in this post.)

Let’s just say “adult adoptees” is anything but a “support forum” for adoptees despite claiming to be just that:

Our main feature is our support forum where our members can come together and talk about whatever they desire; whether it be adoption related or not.

Despite the flowery language in their home page:

Here at AdultAdoptees.org, our second, and equally important issue is adoptee rights. We believe in equal rights for all people. We believe that everyone should have access to their original unaltered birth certificate.

WE BELIEVE IN OPEN RECORDS!

nor are they about ‘political activism’ as they have locked threads about such, claiming to not be about activism, but instead about getting back to their real mission, “support.”

With support like this… .

They are however many of the same people behind nuARD/DAR.

That said, I’m hardly the only person who has felt the petty vindictive ugliness of the admins of the “adult” adoptees board. Here, on a page entitled “Joy is our admin” for example, is a pre-existing earlier website about Joy’s tactics, complete with a filk of her petty antics.

Finally, as a special present for those of you collecting such, a screen shot of my personalized insult on the login page, geared to my IP:

(Click to see a larger sized version.)

The text itself beneath the ironic “support” message reads:

Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!

ByeBye Loser Child

Considering the “adult” adoptees (lack of) appeals process, I detailed here, My brief statement on what happened on the Adult Adoptees forum, let’s just say I won’t be bothering to appeal the banning.

Yup, meet the real face of certain ARD/DAR organizers. Petty, vicious, and anything but “adoptee support.” You’re either part of their dysfunctional clique or you’re banned.

In light of the recent trashing of Bastard Nation, Marley/Bastardette, and myself in the wake of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration on the Adult Adoptees forum, I have removed the over 40 posts there that were under my control (locked topics are of course not under the author’s control.) Essentially, I have removed my body of work from that site. Posts that started threads cannot be fully removed, but I have removed the text thereof.

I have not deleted my account.

Apparently Gershom, speaking personally, found  it “healing.”

Fortunately, she’ll be the first to tell everyone what a ‘great’ job she’s doing:

Many of us are activists and doing one hell of a job.