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.

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.

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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 .

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.

These ‘tugs’ are nothing if not ironic as I’m no longer a part of ARD, per my resignation from it back in May.

But since it’s the day after and the ARD page isn’t linking to the coverage, I’ll link across to the two articles so far.

In other words, I suppose I’ve been reluctantly talked into doing what people apparently count on me to do. That said, though, I’ll likewise do what people also count on me to do, analysis. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Let’s be clear from the outset, I was not there, I have no firsthand knowledge. I do have some reports, but I’ll focus on the media pieces currently available:

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.

The ‘adoptee sound bytes’ sounded like this:

For Galliand Adams, Louisiana’s law makes the search for her biological history “incredibly frustrating.”

“I have no idea who I am, and there’s just a big void there,” she said.

Fortunately, Michelle Edmunds was on hand and managed to get at least a bare bones explanation of what open records really are, that made it through into the article:

Other protesters said the laws amount to discrimination.

“This isn’t about searching and reunion. This is about our rights,” said Michelle Edmunds, who came from Canada to join the march.

Unfortunately, this is still pretty bare. I don’t lay such at Michelle’s doorstep, instead, I view it as a lack of educating the reporters on the issues over a period of time leading into the event. Poor articles such as this could have been avoided.

Naturally, to counterweight even such bare bones adoptee demands, the reporter used a quote from the National Council For Adoption (NCFA) (an industry lobby made up of member adoption agencies in Virginia). Their soundbyte, as always co-opting the authentic voice of mothers sounded like this:

“We’re not opposed to open adoption or open records. We’re concerned about the right of privacy for the birth mother,” said Rodney Huey, spokesman for the National Council for Adoption.

“A birth mother, for whatever reason, decided at one point to have her own confidential adoption, and that (confidentiality is) what she was guaranteed,” he said.

For NCFA, which was founded in part to maintain the sealed records system to say they’re not opposed to open records is shall we say, pretty darn interesting. Perhaps we should remind them of this soundbyte the next time we find them lobbying against our open records bills in the states.

In short, a pretty lousy piece. Which is clearly a result of a lack of familiarity with even the basics of what we’re talking about. Use of the term “birth papers” makes it clear, this is turf the reporter clearly hasn’t learned even the basic lingo of. Again, all of which could have been avoided with some work in the run up to the event.

Supposedly there is some photography that went with the article, but it appears not to have made it through to the online edition.

Secondly, perhaps ever so slightly more in keeping with the original history of what was then called the Adoptee Rights Day, the State based focus, Adoptees in New York held their own small event piggybacking on the N’awlins event. This was no doubt to draw attention to the NY bill, still stuck in committee for the third year running.

This was covered in a July 22nd article (yesterday) entitled An emotional call for change there is also video that goes with this piece.

The article explains that they met in the local library:

Local adoptees and birth mothers joined together in the genealogy section of the main library in Downtown Rochester this morning. It’s a place many of them have done research to find their birth parents.

Which then visually tells the audience this is about search and reunion, the article goes on to mention medical records as a possible justification for opening the records:

“It’s strictly to find out your heritage, any birth concerns you might have, any medical problems you feel, (or) if you want to know your ancestry,” said Jeff Hancock, 43, who found out he was adopted just 15 months ago.

Search, reunion, and medical history are all interpersonal issues that are chronologically second (for some people, for others they simply want their papers and will never search, never enter reunion, and never ask parents for information about their medical histories, which of course adoptees would only ever get if the parents consent) to the initial demand that state confiscation of our records must end.

I’ve written extensively about this here on my blog, but this post from June 7th in particular, ARD- Another from the “I hate being right” category- the ‘messaging’ disaster, went into how I was concerned these types of nonsequitor arguments would take center stage in ARD. Again I really hate being right.

This is what happens when adoptees do not have open records 101. They find target settings that undermine the core of the message, that this is ultimately about equality under law.

Medical records simply are not an open records argument. The sooner everyone learns that, is the sooner we can start doing the real work.

They both call it a civil rights issue, and then place themselves into a search venue. A garbled message at best.

In the end, the search and reunion meme wins out and becomes the focus of the article.

Speaking from a purely pragmatic standpoint, our arguments need to be based on both the legal and legislative realities. We’re not going to withstand legal challenges to open records legislation on “But I want to meet my Mommie!” You withstand legal challenges based on how we as a class of people are receiving inequitable treatment under law. We are singled out, and systems created to treat us thusly must be dismantled.

All of which points out how in many ways, serious educational work to get even adoptees on message needs to take place long before an ‘action’ phase is initiated. After all, how the hell are adoptees going to get the media around to what the landscape looks like and what language is appropriate when half the time adoptees themselves don’t even know?

In closing, I am the only one who finds it incredibly ironic that the only print media coverage available online yesterday was about an ARD related event in New York?

<Shakes head, and sighs.>

***

Update

***

I finally got around to digging out the photos. You can find the Times Picayune’s photo gallery here.

Clearly my messaging disaster concerns about those Gladney-120th-anniversary-protest signs “State enforced genetic secrecy kills adoptees” were well founded. Sure enough, guess what was on hand.

Matthew Hinton / Times Picayune

So much for messaging.

<Sigh.>

They were posts written prior to my ARD resignation that I made private between my resignation last May and today, the event itself. Now that they are back up, I have added a disclaimer to each of them, but I sought to restore the history of my own writings about the event.

The five posts in question are:

ARD: See you in New Orleans! (originally posted Jan 10th, ‘08)

Activism- Volunteers needed for the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (originally posted April 30th, ‘08)

Activism- A New Bastard Nation blog for DAR/ARD (originally posted May 5th, ‘08)

Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD)/Day for Adoptee Rights (DAR) (originally posted May 27th, ‘08)

and

Adoptee Rights Demonstration Call for Volunteers, Seeking March and Protest Monitors ( originally posted May 28th, ‘08)

My reasoning for making them private at the time is explained in part by these portions of the text of the disclaimer (the full disclaimer is longer):

They were taken down as they reflected my original support for and work towards ARD/DAR prior to my resignation. In late May, I resigned, and I did not wish these pieces to be mistaken for active recruitment to the event in the period between late May and the event in July.

Part of my reasoning was due to a technical quirk of blogging itself; each post stands alone, decontextualized from the larger narrative. As these older pieces could be viewed via web searches etc. as distinct and apart from the context that I had since resigned, I made them private until after the event had passed.

My single post history of ARD/DAR and the events leading up to it can be found here. The post below should be viewed in the context of the events explained in it. Additional posts concerning ARD/DAR particularly from July 22nd forward can be found by utilizing the Adoptee Rights Demonstration tag (results will appear in reverse chronological order, from newest to oldest.) They too, should be understood within that larger context.

Consider this babystep towards writing Ron and Bastard Nation back into the ARD history as well, particularly in light of statements made by Gershom, the current organizer such as

I have done EVERYTHING. Not you, not bastard nation, not ron, ME.

from this Bastardette comment thread posted by Gershom at June 5, 2008 12:25:00 AM EDT.

Why would I start with such a quote in the prelude? Because it’s belies exactly how much history Gershom doesn’t know and precisely how vicious she became when those who had been around through it called her on her crap.

I’m not writing on behalf of anyone in this other than myself. And as I’ve said in my “about page” I consider myself, particularly in relation to the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration from which I’ve resigned,

far enough external to the industry, and the seats of power that it’s relatively ‘independent’ by comparison.

***

Long before the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (which will take place in New Orleans this week) was even a glimmer in the eye of those who eventually began down the path of starting work upon it, there was the original “ARD”, the “Adoptee Rights Day”.

The First Adoptee Rights Day was celebrated in 1998 to mark the one year anniversary of the passage of Oregon’s measure 58, the statewide referendum that eventually led to open records. Which means we need to go back even further still to understand how things came to the point of even having an Oregon victory to celebrate.

We have to go back to July 18-20th 1997, in Chicago, IL where Bastard Nation first held their initial conference, “Birth of a Bastard Nation.” I wasn’t there. I missed it entirely.

(Instead, I first met Marley staffing the BN table over Comfest in Columbus, Ohio that same summer. Having been a Queer Nation member, I took one look at Bastard Nation’s “spermburst” logo and I knew I where I had to be. You can see Marley’s write up of the tabling here, I was one of those “These are MY records” types.)

That was all back in those halcyon days of our youth before we learned just how ugly adoption politics really can be, what with entrenched industry interests demanding their own actions be covered by sealed records on the one side, and adoption ‘deformers’ willing so often to sell genuine open records down the river in exchange for a pittance on the other. (”Here I am, stuck in the middle with you,” I rather like the Bob Dylan version myself.)

But the Chicago conference was a watershed event.

One of the workshops, “Applying the Principles of Tactical Activism: Fostering the growth and political clout of Bastard Nation” given by “Activist/Attorney/Author Randy Shaw got some Bastards thinking. (Shaw: founder and Executive Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic and more recently BeyondChron named in part due to its criticism of the San Francisco Chronicle, importantly, he’s also the author of “The Activist’s Handbook: A Primer for the 1990’s and Beyond“, a book that got many Bastard Nationals thinking, and strategizing.) Ballot initiatives are one of the things Shaw views as an important tool in the activist’s toolbox.

Again, you would have to speak with those who were actually there at the time, but the ‘action path’ that came out of that first BN conference eventually became the statewide general election referendum in Oregon in 1998 that came to be known as “Measure 58.” (Unfortunately Bastards would have to wait until May 30th, 2000 at 5:01pm for Measure 58 to finally go into effect due to challenges winding their way through the courts.) You can read about the history of the initiative here.

Now I’m not saying Bastard Nation did it all by our lonesomes (speaking as a lifelong BN member, myself), but I am saying the spark that grew into measure 58, came from the rubbing of Bastard Nation members, specifically a few BN related individuals (steel) against early Bastard Activism and wanting to actually gain our records (flint).

You see, Helen Hill, the Chief Petitioner in Oregon, and Shea Grimm, both Bastard Nationals had been at the Chicago conference. They went home, rolled up their sleeves, and set about changing the world. You can read about how coming off the conference moved into measure 58 in E. Wayne Carp’s book “Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58.” (Page 32 is kind of a jump to starting point mentioning the conference.) I’m not saying the book is perfect, not by a long shot, but it does at least lay out some of that “spark” in published form.

BN itself of course was crucial to Oregon’s measure 58. It was certainly a real focus by the time of the second conference, Bastards by the Bay: The Convergence, in San Francisco. My partner, Sleeps with Bastard and I were both involved by then. Keynoters Christina Crawford, Ricki Solinger, and Anne Babb gave us lots to chew on, before folks headed out to do a sealed records protest.

Indeed a key piece of that (first ever) Birth of a Bastard Nation (Chicago) conference was moving from theory to practice. Randy’s session was Friday July 18th, 1997 from 10:30am to noon. From 12pm to 3pm was Bastard Nation’s “Sealed Records Protest” which you can see the now historic photos of here.

Many of the people who went on to form the backbone of BN were present, specifically, I’ll mention both Marley Greiner and Ron Morgan as they form perhaps the bridge from that moment in Chicago to what became the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration”.

Now the conference may have been titled “Birth of a Bastard Nation”, but BN activism was born long before Chicago. On the these BN pages (here and here as but two examples) you can explore bits and pieces of Bastard activism going back toward the mid nineties.

In any case, the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration’s roots lie in those events and those early Bastard activist friendships that formed in the early days of Bastard Nation.

Which brings us up to Adoptee Rights Day. As I said, the first was back in 1998, “Commemorating the Anniversary of Oregon’s Historic Adoptee Rights Initiative” (to use a particular turn of phrase the Adoptee Rights Day came to use.)

ARD has always been both an educational event and an activism event. Legislators were contacted, and many Bastards went to Vital Statistics, to request copies of their (sealed) records, to protest, and to pass out educational material. More than just a single day, ARD has also been envisioned as a week of actions, including educational events and street theater. You can see this How to ARD page leading into the third anniversary to help you get a better idea what ARD was all about. (you will note that it is on the BN site.) Also be sure to see Anita Field’s (she’s a current Bastard Nation ExecCom member) Editorial written for ARD.

There was also a NARD e-mail group on Yahoo. There was always a focus on tying ARD events to what was happening state by state legislatively. State legislators were contacted concerning upcoming open records legislation, but also sometimes contacted about the ARD event itself, particularly bill sponsors and cosponsors.

To anonymously quote one e-mail from a Bastard in the wake of holding their state’s ARD event:

…I want to thank BN for providing us the avenue of ARD.

Clearly, the original ARD was of mutual benefit, organizationally it was good for BN nationally, and those in their home states also found it a productive tool both individually and organizationally.

It’s important to note that even back of the days of the original ARD, there was participation by parents and adoptive parents alongside Bastards.

This is a press release from what was then called “NARD” or “National Adoptee Rights Day.” Note that it contains sentences such as this:

Bastard Nation, the leading national adoptee rights organization, is helping coordinate events at Vital Statistics offices nationwide to show solidarity with the adoptees of Oregon and to celebrate National Adoptee Rights Day: a day dedicated to supporting dignity and ending government-sanctioned shame in adoption.

And that Ron Morgan, himself a Bastard National, was the “National Leader” as well as the contact person for the protest in San Francisco:

Contact National Leader Ron Morgan

You may also want to note the leadership of other sites, Helen Hill, for example, in Oregon. Bastard Nation was an intrinsic part of (N)ARD, so much so that the NARD webpage was hosted by BN.

When all was said and done, the first “ARD event” had occurred at 20 sites spread across 16 states.

In 1999, Bastards were at it again. The second ARD encompassed 27 sites in 15 states.

Want to read some individual state reports, see pictures, and even read press related to those original ARDs? You guessed it, you’ll find several ARD archives on the Bastard Nation page; here and here. Also note the e-mail address on the second link:

To get involved in your neck of the woods email nardinfo@bastards.org

Here, out of Bastard Nation’s Bastard Quarterly, you’ll see a write up and many pictures from ARD ‘01.

Starting to see a pattern? That’s because BN and (N) ARD were absolutely interconnected. Without BN how much ARD do you suppose would have happened?

And yes, Ron Morgan was a huge part of all of that, his role in it can not be understated. As I said, he was the “National Leader” on the original ARD in addition to pulling the SF event together. ARD was in some very concrete ways, his ‘baby’ so to speak. It is also important to note that both he and other BN activists worked together on CA open (see the CA section out of Bastard Nation’s Bastard Quarterly, the June ‘99 LegWatch). As early as ‘99, perhaps even earlier, Ron was the contact person in the “CA open” efforts and was doing the legwork of building towards CA open 2000, this grew into CA open 2001, etc.)

In short, both on the state and national levels BN and BN activists like Ron were working in their home states, doing work legislative, educational, and yes in the streets.

Which brings us up to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration. As I’ve said here on my blog before, Ron had been strategizing the idea of targeting the National Conference of State Legislators annual meeting for some time. He was interested in putting together a “mass action,” a large national (or even international?) event in which Bastards brought pressure on state legislators.

Note that I said “pressure,” as what Ron envisioned was an event or series of interconnected events that could be used together to essentially force the issue. This was going to take people fully versed in what the issues were, what language to use (and not to use), people who were thinking and strategically, and ultimately, the bottom line, an awful lot of them. Not just a few. Not ’some’, or even ‘many’, PRESSURE LOTS!

Which brings us up to last year. No doubt there are many other bits and pieces I should have included in the Original ARD (O-ARD) history, but I’ll leave that for those who experienced it directly to help fill out if they so chose. For the sake of brevity, I leave this portion at that. So last year… .

(First I’m going to have to do some adoption related blog introductions, please bear with me.)

Ron aka B.B. Church (who blogs Are you adopted? Are you sure? A Blog About Late Discovery Adoptees and B.B. Church’s Funhouse.)

and

Gershom (who blogs (Without a Tribe)/The Adoptee Rights Demonstration July 22, 2008, CALOpen, Anti-Adoption, and the Adoptee Rights Demonstration page itself. )

The two ran across one another and decided to move on Ron’s idea of an Adoptee Rights Demonstration outside the National Conference of State Legislators annual meeting.

Ron had written about the strategic importance of their annual meeting back in March of ‘07 in this post where he took on previous attempts at open records “marches” (on Washington in particular), his post is perhaps the articulation of his earlier vision for the Adoptee Rights Demonstration as requiring a mass movement kind of effort willing to utilize pressure tactics:

If Open Records leaders wanted to get the loudest bang for their buck, they would take a pass on WDC and go to Boston this August, for the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislators. These are the guys and gals that hold the keys to our records. We should be dogging their steps. We should be camped outside their hotels. We should be glad-handing at their receptions. We should be demanding that our so-called and self-styled leaders organize a march to the real heart of the matter or get out of the way…

Out of this and other such seeds, Ron and Gershom agreed to turn such ideas into an actual event slated for this July in New Orleans, as that was where the annual conference was being held this year.

Gershom, apparently completely unaware of the pre-existing Original ARD (O-ARD) history described from her perspective, how that coming together took place on her blog (on a piece from many months later, after Ron had left the Adoptee Rights Demonstration he had helped build.)

Last year I was an active poster on Soul Of Adoption, and there was this other quirky, yet intelligent, to the point, man there who went by the name of Late Discovery. His avatar had this man who looked like he’d been playing the blues and I liked what he had to say.

So on April 20, 2007 I declared my “passion” for the movement:

I think it would be powerful to have at LEAST one person from every closed record state across our country to enter their counties birth and record department at the exact same time, on the exact same day with media coverage behind them. We will be requesting our ORIGINAL birth records ( which will be denied ) and at the moment they are denied we can begin to have a non violent protest. I am willing to be arrested for this. And i am looking for other like minded adoptees who are willing to do the same. HOPEFULLY we wouldn’t be arrested but that COULD happen.

Sure my vision was a little “blurry” i didn’t understand the politics of adoption and open records, it not being a vital records department issue, but a state issue that had to be taken to the legislatures. That, is where Ron came in. That is when he told me about the NCSL.

By Gershom’s own admission, she’s new to all this. At the dawning of the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights”, as New Orleans protest came to be called Ron was going to be the voice of experience, essentially the lead organizer. Gershom was inexperienced, but learning many new skills from him. Again to quote Gershom’s piece:

Over the next few months he taught me a lot, about politics, about people, about utilizing opportunities to their greatest potential. He taught me so much in those first few months I felt like a student. Most of all, he believed in me.

May 25th, 2007 They put out an announcement entitled A Day for Adoptee Rights, July 2008, New Orleans LA! a copy of which can be found on his B.B.Church’s Funhouse blog. To the best of my knowledge this is the inital announcement of the event. Note that, it is was named “Day for Adoptee Rights,” which to many of us, not just Ron, had a pre-existing history attached.

This time instead of acting in our individual states, they proposed bringing Bastards from all 50 states to the legislators in one place and time, essentially a national action under the DAR name. Basically, as the announcement put it, a PROTEST FOR ADOPTEE RIGHTS (PAR?) which over time evolved to the event in N’awlins being called any number of variations along those lines, the “Adoptee Rights Demonstration”, the “Adoptee Rights Protest”, “Day for Adoptee Rights”, (among others, shall we say.)

Clearly, from the start what was being proposed was not anything on the scale of what Open Records related protests had resembled in the past.

We propose a mass action of adoptees representing all fifty states, a one-day rally that will be an opportunity for adoptees demonstrate their commitment to adoptee rights and to meet their state delegation.

We’re back to Ron’s use of the mass action concept- go big or go home. Anything less, again, going back to Ron’s March 7th 2007 blog entry was only a means by which to ultimately shoot ourselves in the foot to his thinking:

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?

So the effort was begun, the parameters of what they were setting out to achieve were laid out, and they were to be honest, pretty damn ambitious.

Sadly what happened next was the unforeseen, quoting Gershom again:

When his family needed him however, he knew that he couldn’t “be” here for the protest. He withdrew his leadership immediately to myself and a few others on a private board. He would be here for guidance, but his primary concern, like any good man ( and I say that with extra bitterness because I currently can’t STAND my childrens father ) was his family.

The event to which Gershom alludes to is elaborated upon here on Ron’s post announcing his no longer being involved in the Adoptee Rights Demonstration and his

retirement from “adoptee politics”, such as it is

As Ron says in the post:

When I first advocated an action at the National
Conference of State Legislatures lat year I knew how
much hard work it would take to be successful. I knew
it was possible for a small team to organize such an
event, but that the burdens would be great. Then, late
last summer, my wife was diagnosed with a malignant
brain tumor and my entire life focused on her
wellbeing and care.

Unfortunately, this unimaginably sad and difficult set of events changed the entire dynamic of how the Adoptee Rights Demonstration went forward from there on. With Ron unavailable, and later not overseeing the day to day of the preparations many things fell to Gershom. And thus many of the preparations ended up in her name.

As Ron said:

In retrospect it was a serious mistake on my part not to call for a suspension of planning for the ARD event at that time.

Which is not to say, Ron at the time of his stepping away from the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration wanted the idea to die, rather, he advocated a suspension, working towards ‘doing it right’ so to speak, at some future date.

My original vision for the ARD protest was that it
would be a mass action, that it would create an
impact, as opposed to the small-scale adoption reform
actions of the recent past. As the low numbers of
committed attendees attest, this is not happening. I
would like to call for a suspension of the New Orleans
ARD protest. I say suspension rather than cancellation
because I still believe that a protest at an NCSL
annual meeting at some point in the future is a viable
and effective action if executed properly. A
suspension, rather than a cancellation, would allow
the committed attendees to meet in NOLA face to face
and plan next steps.

Now that Ron has “retired,” I would not expect him to be back working for some other year’s event (though I suppose to whatever degree, anything is possible.) Point being, when he initially called for a suspension he had not yet retired and clearly those circumstances have changed now.

But the call for suspension of the N’awlins protest from Ron came many months later. Allow me to back up yet again.

Once Ron was in many ways simply out of the picture the day to day making things happen fell to Gershom. A website was up, donations were being collected, but there was no structure to the “Adoptee Rights 2008 Committee” that had announced the action (as you can see on Ron’s May 25th 2007 post.) There was no non-profit status, there was no fiscal agent, and the webpage never clearly delineated precisely WHO that full committee was. Later, who was and was not an organizer with the event would become an issue, and because there was no publicly available listing of who was responsible for what, it ended up making a bad situation worse.

To this day, the current ARD organizers have never publicly listed exactly who was organizing the event, nor into quite what people were making donations. I am not alleging any fiscal misconduct, I am merely saying one of the reasons I chose not to donate directly to ARD was that there was no visibility into the process and thus it was in some significant ways ultimately ‘accountable’ to no one.

Bastard Nation was a cosponsoring organization, as was “the adoption show” and internet broadcast, along with “Adoptees Unite” a cafepress page selling various logoware.

(The logo is based on a tree with roots which has gone on to become the Adoptee Rights Demonstration’s logo, something many of us objected to as ‘family trees’ are about search and reunion, which are interpersonal issues, not a civil rights issue, and not inherently about restoration of the records confiscated by the State. See Bastard Nations’s FAQ page section entitled “Is Bastard Nation a search organization?” to get a clearer understanding of the issues involved.)

Various individuals were picking up bits and pieces taking on tasks, and preparing to come to N’awlins in July. Well some of us anyway. Speaking for my partner and myself, we certainly had hotel reservations reserved in the Bastard Nation block.

In some ways I felt very ‘late to the party’ when I first blogged about the Adoptee Rights Demonstration back in January ‘08. I contacted Gershom about where things stood and what needed doing, offering to help back in February. She passed my e-mail on to Ron. Later, in March, Ron contacted me and asked if I would be willing to take on a position as the “March/Protest Volunteer Trainer and Head Monitor.” While I had concerns (among others, about coming on what I felt to be so late,) I ultimately agreed to help however I could.

Then we enter a period I’ve already blogged a fair amount about (see my “Adoptee Rights Demonstration” tag for my writings on this matter, the tag will them up in reverse order, newest to oldest), but I’ll draw out a quick sketch for new readers,

May 28th, Gershom coming back to organizers with what quite honestly were pathetic numbers of people who had bothered reserving hotel rooms in the non-BN hotel block (BN’s numbers were likewise, unimpressive) Neither of which amounted to ANYTHING on the scale of the event proposed.

May 29th Ron called for a suspension, which again, you can see the full text of here. AND ARD organizers learned an adoption agency, Abrazo Adoption Associates out of San Antonio Texas, had set up a facebook fundraising page collecting monies off our event, without our knowledge or consent. (At the time, I was still involved, hence my use of “our”.)

The Abrazo fundraising was going into their own 501c3, and had come to over $900. This led to the dual problems of whether the money which was unbeknownst to us up until this point was ultimately supposed to end up in their own agency coffers or whether such would be transfered from their account (now that we knew about the money) into ARD. Which raised it’s own issues.

BN has a policy against entanglement with agency money, I personally take a similar stance.

No matter where the money was going to end up (and actions spoke far louder than words, they money was already in their agency’s 501c3 and they had never told us of it’s existence, despite them utilizing our event to raise it in the first place) the circumstances under which it was raised were to say the least highly questionable.

The two simultaneous issues, that of the projected minimal attendance AND the Abrazo fundraising along with the previous history many of us ‘long timers’ had with both Ron and and the Day for Adoptee Rights in its previous incarnation led us to take Ron’s call for suspension very seriously.

However, as I pointed out above much of the preparations were in Gershom’s name, so even had the rest of us decided to ‘turn it off’, she still could have gone ahead. This was problematic, not merely in terms of the event itself, but in terms of what it meant to the entire legacy of what DAR had originally been. Some of us were not aware things were in Gershom’s name until we were well into this process. When I was contacted to work with DAR, for example I was under the impression the Adoptee Rights Demonstration was also Ron’s ‘baby’ with Gershom working as an assistant, and learning from him. Instead, we found ourselves in the situation where it was not under Ron’s control. The ‘buck stops here’ had shifted.

Simply put, Ron’s (and BN’s) ‘babies’ had been ‘adopted’.

And so the Adoptee Rights Demonstration essentially lost all the people with Day for Adoptee Rights institutional memory; Bastard Nation organizationally looked at the numbers and the ethical issues raised by the Abrazo fundraising and came to the conclusion that they organizationally had to withdraw their support from the event. The evening of the 29th, Bastard Nation (which to some of us was synonymous with what ARD had always meant in the past) withdrew. Early the next week, Bastard Nation posted their statement on the withdrawal.

This left the Adoptee Rights Demonstration with no national open records membership organization supporting it.

Two webpages and the people behind them as your sponsors along with numerous individuals simply cannot equate to what losing BN meant. When current DAR representatives speak with state legislators over the course of this event, they speak for themselves, not the broader adoptee civil rights/open records movement.

Going ahead with plans to continue the event with such non-mass movement numbers when that was part of what had been at the heart of the event signaled a fundamental change in the very nature of the event. It was no longer true to the original articulation of what people had signed on for, nor the vision of the event they had originally donated to.

The previous history Bastard Nationals and others had working under the name Adoptee Rights Day was likely an important part of why donations were given to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration, in essence, it was building on a foundation laid by Ron, and with Ron’s name on the ARDemonstration, no doubt many people took his and Bastard Nation’s presences as an indicator of a good thing, worthy of donations.

My partner and I stayed on for an additional 24 hours, waiting to see if the Abrazo mess had any hope of being straightened out before we made our final decision of whether to stay or go.

The following evening, (the 30th) Ron reported back the results of his phone call with the executive director of Abrazo, Elizabeth Jurnovich, she refused to acknowledge Abrazo had done anything wrong.

My partner and I resigned that evening, and I posted my two sentence statement.

Later, we would find one of the ARD organizers, Amyadoptee was pointing readers of her blog into the Abrazo fundraising, which was still ongoing and Abrazo continued on until what appears to have been June 4th, despite Abrazo being contacted by Ron on the 30th.

This was how the post originally appeared back when it was originally posted on May 31rst-

OPEN ADOPTION ROCKS

I have only been in avid support for one agency in my time of writing this blog. They are the only agency that puts their money where their mouth is. Abrazos Adoptions Services have began a fundraiser for the Adoptee Rights Protest. If you can join them on facebook, please do. Introducing OPEN ADOPTION ROCKS. Thank you so much for doing this for us adoptees. We really appreciate all the hard work that your agency does for adoptees and their families.

Amy has since changed the text, obliterating her link into Abrazo’s “open adoption rocks” fundraising page, which has also undergone dramatic changes since we first discovered it as well.

To the best of my knowledge Amy continues on as an ARD organizer to this day.

On June 5th Ron posted his statement.

Also on the 5th, Bastard Nation’s Executive Committee unanimously voted Amy off the Bastard Nation Legislative Committee. Amy posted BN’s letter on her blog (she has since removed her post):

June 5, 2008

Dear Amy:

The Executive Committee of Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization has voted unanimously to remove you from the Legislative Committee effective immediately.

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 Executive Committee
Anita Walker Field
Patricia Marler
Marley Greiner, Executive Chair

As I mentioned above, Amy, to the best of my knowledge is still working with nuDAR.

These withdrawals, Bastard Nation, my partner and I, and Ron represented more than half of the original organizing committee for the event.

Gershom had by now announced she was going ahead with the event. Those who were left from the original organizing committee, and other people organizing on adultadoptees.org’s forum decided to try to make an orders of magnitude scaled down Adoptee Rights Demonstration go forward.

Apparently, far from filing the streets, the current Adoptee Rights Demonstration does not even have a permit for the march from Layfayette Square to the convention center. So they, and their attempts at mandated signage will be ‘marching’ on the sidewalk.

For clarity’s sake, some of us ‘old’ DAR organizers have taken to calling this new incarnation, nuDAR. So you have O-DAR, DAR, and nuDAR, or O-ARD, ARD and nuARD.

O- meaning Original, pre-Gershom

just plain ARD or DAR being the period where the two overlap,

and nu, meaning those pretty much without the benefit of history.

Unfortunately nuDAR is not the only thing being built upon the bones of the pre-existing history, thereby leading to confusion. As Gershom has set up her Calopen that too, will no doubt be confused with pre-existing history, not only in that state, but more broadly with other states’ “open” efforts. One can only hope Gershom’s Calopen is with the knowledge and consent of the previously existing CAopen activists, else, well, I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.

The sad part is how much of original Day for Adoptee Rights information is still available publicly on the web, and yet the nuDAR organizers often appear oblivious.

And with that lack of history and experience at least on the part of Gershom have come other problems.

Not the least of which being perhaps the single worst example of ‘activist’ tone-deaf insensitivity I have seen in my going on way too many decades of activism (not merely Bastard activism, but my years as an activist period!)

I had been speaking for some time now, both on my blog and behind the scenes about my love for N’awlins itself and how working in the city in this post-Katrina aftermath was going to take sensitivity and cluefulness. As recently as July 10th, I tried to make this abundantly clear in my post ARD- For those going to N’awlins:

Those still going would do well not be ‘tone deaf’ to the realities of N’awlins.

Unfortunately, Gershom, here on the eve of the event has managed to do the unthinkable.

In her July 19th blog post she likened the (nu) Adoptee Rights Demonstration to a “storm”:

The calm before the storm has come and past and the storm is here, WE ARE THE STORM, and we are NOT going away.

Girl, trust you me, the last thing N’awlins needs right now is another “storm.” Let alone one that won’t leave. (Natural impossibility, but truly a nightmare prospect for those who have already had to endure too much!)

Are you daft?

Likening those working to regain our basic rights and restore the records that were taken from us, (i.e. rebuilding what was lost, hoping to regain what we once had that is now gone) to the destructive power of a “Storm” heading towards NEW ORLEANS is in a word unforgivable. Period.

As I said, perhaps the single worst example of ‘activist’ tone-deaf insensitivity I have seen.

So that’s it. A last straw if you will. Any benefit of the doubt accorded to inexperience, gone.

My disgust runneth over.

By all means, go ahead, tell someone who’s living on the street, having lost everything in the last storm, that there’s ANOTHER storm headed their way.

Think they can’t wait for you to get there? Think again.

On this one, my heart is with my friends, still living in the city.

Not with at least one self professed ‘activist’ who even after reading this may still not understand she did anything wrong.

Unfortunately the legacy of what once was Adoptee Rights Day has fallen into the hands of a least a ‘leader’ the very opposite of what the Adoptee Rights Demonstration was intended to be: politically savy, clueful, streetsmart, mass enough to create political pressure, and most importantly, effective, creating measurable tangible results.

Instead she brags of having people coming from around the world to:

SCREAM WITH US

Effective that’s not.

If you want to throw a little party in New Orleans for yourself and your friends from adultadoptees, knock yourselves out, doesn’t have much to do with the realities of the New Orleans you’ll be sitting in the middle of, but hey, they could use the tourist bucks, as I said, tip well. But right this moment? Words like ‘political activist’ aren’t exactly what come to mind.

(Just a hint, utilizing phrases such as “our discrimination” when what one means is “the discrimination we endure” leads preexisting Adoptee Rights Day folks, not just me to cringe. (Oh, and “eyes roll in disgust”, a late breaking addition from across the room. He’s entitled.)

So folks, bring your sunscreen, pack a hat, drink tons of water, and don’t feel like a wuss for recognizing your limits in the N’awlins heat. The ARD you’re about to get is unrecognizable to the ARD that was originally planned.

And me? I’m just disgusted. Not with youth and inexperience, but with the narcissistic insensitivity.

See, you’re visiting someone else’s home, and while there, it’s best not to put your muddy boots on the antique heirloom coffee table.

So let’s be real clear, Gershom and by extension the Adoptee Rights Demonstration do not and cannot speak for me this week in New Orleans. Further they do not speak for any National or International adoptee rights membership organization.

Individuals from adoptee organizations, and for that matter, individuals related to adoption agencies may be present, but even T-shirts with adoptee rights groups logos such should not be mistaken for any organizational involvement.

On a more personal note? In light of the blatant lack of empathy on display?

Far as I’m concerned, Tuesday is the anniversary of one of my blogs.

This is not about dissuading anyone. This is about being aware and showing some respect for where it is you’re headed.

One of the components of the events that I cared deeply about back when I was still working on the event (I am not now) was the fact that this was going to be taking place in N’awlins, a city I care passionately about and yes, a city that even today is still far from ‘back together’.

I advised fellow Bastards going to N’awlins to get up to speed about what peoples’ lives are like there now, in part by reading at bare minimum local ‘mainstream’ media such as the Times Picayne and the Gambit in the run up to the ARD.

More importantly, though, listen to those fighting to retain N’awlins for it’s residents, not just developers.

The city has been changed profoundly in the almost three years since the storm and the flooded aftermath. It’s been used as a hothouse for neocon notions of how to restructure American society (Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” has a useful framework explaining such, and utilizes New Orleans as one case study), in an attempt to shake the city out into a subset of “haves”; tourism built around the French Quarter and St. Charles Ave./parts of uptown neighborhoods, and “have-nots;” not ‘built’ much at all, but everywhere else.

The city is at this very moment a place where matters of survival are still paramount to so many.

A protracted battle where the future of the city is being decided in many cases, not by the neighborhoods, but by those who can tear them down, as part of building their vision of what they think the next New Orleans should be played out against the backdrop of many factors not merely wealth and poverty, nor even a binary notion of “race” (N’awlins has never been merely some matter of “Black and White” it’s a complex gumbo of French and Spanish, Haitians, Free men and former slaves, Cubans, First Nations peoples, and now post-Katrina, particularly Hispanics. All in that Creole, Cajun/Acadian mix. )

And that makes it one hell of a distinct place for adoptees to be trying to do their own efforts on behalf of our own equality.

As I wrote back on January 10th:

How do we do what we need to do in New Orleans while not overlooking or in anyway downplaying the magnitude of the realities New Orleans itself currently faces? On that one, I have no real answer yet. Yeah, it’s going to be strange protesting for open records in a place where day to day fighting for SURVIVAL is a genuine reality. I’m still trying to figure this one out, but the bottom line is we’re there because they’re there- the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Annual Meeting.)

Those still going would do well not be ‘tone deaf’ to the realities of N’awlins.

Don’t be a fly in,-eat only international fast food chains,- do the adoptee hokey pokey- and then fly back out again.

For some of us, going to N’awlins was ALSO about helping N’awlins itself.

If you’ve never been before, sure explore the French Quarter, it is unlike anywhere else in America, BUT also get off the beaten path and find a po-boy at a neighborhood grocery.

Hit a local coffeehouse instead of questing for wherever the nearest Starfucks might be, get out into the neighborhoods and find yourself a corner market, or a PJ’s, a CC’s, Fair Grinds, or go to Neutral Ground among others.

Eat local. Do what you can to help ensure the dollars you spend in N’awlins stay in N’awlins- with those who need it most. And who needs it most may not be readily apparent. Those in need may be, for example in a your waiter in a tuxedo in a fine restaurant in town (who is the third generation in his family to have done so, and is now facing a way of life endangered. See Antoine’s below.)

For that matter, if you can, eat the extraordinary. Tuck in some nice clothes (a good dress, a jacket for the gents) make reservations, and spend an evening doing what for many will be a once in a lifetime meal to remember. There are many restaurants, all of which rely on business like yours to stay alive, each with their own tale of what it took to reopen, but somewhere such as Antoine’s is N’awlins embodied. One will not be coming to your town, or anywhere else for that matter soon. It is an institution woven through the history of the city in ways most visitors never imagine. Every restaurant in N’awlins has its own story of what the storm and the flooded aftermath meant as well as what life was like before the storm. For Antoines, you can catch a mere glimpse of such in articles such as this.

Spend your tourism dollars locally. Tip well. Be kind.

Learn from your time in the city. N’awlins continues to be one of America’s most unique and interesting cities. Take time to listen.

Be respectful of the fact that there are neighbors, family members, and friends who are now spread far and wide, and are missed constantly by those who have chosen to stay and fight for the heart and soul of the city. Some may have left permanently, others are alluded to as ‘visiting a spell’ somewhere else, with hopes that perhaps they may eventually return. While the most immediate areas ARD protesters are going to be in may appear ‘just fine’, there is plenty of the Gulf Coast that has simply been swept away.

This is a place unlike any other.

And then there’s the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center itself. (The Washington Post’s take on the post Katrina history of it has it’s own problems, but does lay out some of the core of it.) and the attempted change of name controversy.

In all, I suppose I’m saying be clueful. Realize that where you’re going to be; speaking about the demand that adoptees receive equal treatment under law in a place where law and even treatment as human beings broke apart.

I’ve never known how to do such under those conditions. But if you’re going to go, do yourself a favour and be aware that for many, it’s about the closest thing to ’sacred ground’ some of us are willing to recognize. It’s not merely a matter of people died there, it’s a matter of people were left to die there, murdered by a complete lack of empathy (and no, I’m not speaking of average people, as but one example the bravery of the ‘Cajun navy’ boat rescuers can attest.)

The city, and its people that still survive today deserve nothing less than your best.

If you haven’t thought about some of that, perhaps you should.

Because ARD, wasn’t only about sign holding and marching, it takes place in a context not a vacuum, it’s going to be in particular places which have pre-existing histories, some both horrific and infuriating, and most of all, it’s in N’awlins.

Be good to my friends down along the River and the Bayous.