human rights, pl.n. The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled…

There’s that word in the middle: “all.” Human rights, if they are rights, apply to all people. A simple concept, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, when it comes to the world of adoption, various camps – primarily, the institutions that make up the adoption industry itself – have a lot to gain from complicating the simple things.

Let’s take Adam Pertman as today’s rather timely example. Pertman is the Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, which I’ll call “EBD” for short. What is this “Institute?” Take a look at their own website, and you’ll see what spawned it – an adoption agency, Spence-Chapin. Heck, the “Institute” is even named for the onetime president of this adoption agency:

The Adoption Institute was established in 1996 through the initiative of the Board of Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children, which saw a need for an independent and unbiased adoption research and policy organization. Evan B. Donaldson was a member of the Spence-Chapin Board of Directors continuously from 1977 on, serving as president from 1986 until her death in 1994.

I think it’s quite appropriate to laugh at those words, “independent and unbiased.” The EBD’s sole business is the promotion of adoption, providing backing for adoption agencies in general, while Spence-Chapin is still featured prominently on the front page of the EBD website as an “organizational partner.”

As for Adam Pertman, his book and his rhetoric hammer the same themes over and over, that the practice of adoption “for growing a family” must be somehow considered completely normal, societally normalized. His function is that of advocacy from the point of view of the satisfied customer. The problem with this is that such advocate-customers often seek to validate their past decisions by preserving and promoting the business that supplied them with a product or service. It is secondary to advocate-customers if the business is found to be doing harm in the process of providing that service, or is detrimental to the people who are integral to that product, only that the business continue to function to serve even more customers just like Pertman. Such advocate-customers can also be completely without a clue about details that are vitally important to others affected by such a business – in this case, Pertman ignores the actual details and history of the process of actually opening birth certificates to adoptees through legislation.

That the “product” here involves real live human children should in itself raise a few red flags. That Adam Pertman, an adopter and adoption promoter, is barging in and opportunistically seizing upon the language of adoptee rights that has historically been primarily the domain of adopted people themselves, crafted by the adoptee rights movement, should also raise some red flags, particularly among exactly those adoptees.

Adam Pertman has had a decade or so to appropriate the language of adoptee  rights for his own uses, making some inroads among some adoptees and adoption-related groups who are, inexplicably, supporting the latest spectacle created by Pertman and the EBD, including the AAC and CUB. Problem is, every time Pertman opens his mouth, he takes a simple issue – access to birth certificates for all adopted people, no exceptions – and complicates it beyond all recognition, subverting it so that, in practice adoptees end up being left behind. Pertman does not act as if he was concerned with a matter of gaining civil rights for each and every member of an affected group, which is not resolvable through legislation that makes that civil right conditional on the permission of others.

His lack of concern for actual rights is necessitated by his role as a marketer. His role is to promote the EBD and adoption through a number of methods. The promotional method that most clearly hampers adoptee rights is through EBD’s repeated practice of submitting and presenting testimony to state legislatures whenever legislation involving access to birth certificates is being considered.  Unfortunately, Pertman and EBD never address the merits or faults of the particular proposed legislation, but have merely carried and repeated from state to state the same canned presentation for the past five years or more. Testimony by Adam Pertman does not accomplish the actual work of convincing legislators to open birth certificates for all, but is primarily to raise his image and that of the EBD as “experts,” as providers of marketing-survey-based position papers that uniformly prop up adoption, which he repeatedly calls a “wondrous institution.”

The restoration of rights to adoptees is unrelated to this kind of glowing, and unwarranted, description of the adoption industry. Instead, it’s that kind of exaggerated language, the vague promise that adoptees might know the facts of their origins, and the outright confusion of birth certificates with seldom-specified “medical records” that complicate, if not sabotage, the relatively simple matter of restoring a basic civil right and equal protection under the law to adoptees. No one should be compelled to disclose personal medical information to others, even family members – in fact, it’s against the law – but the repeated, and completely irrelevant, pounding on the availability of medical histories is not germane to restoring the basic civil rights of all adoptees by restoring access to original birth certificates.

What, then, is Adam Pertman actually doing? Having been exposed to his empty rhetoric for years now, and his most recent endorsement of legislation (”we urge swift passage”) such as that now under consideration in New Jersey (A1406) which would permanently create sealed birth certificates for some individuals (link from June 2010), I’d say that Pertman isn’t interested in “rights” at all. What he’s pushing is what I’ve come to call openness™ in adoption, which is, first and foremost, a marketing position taken by the adoption industry, which is why I sarcastically add the italics and trademark to the word.

openness™ is not focused on individuals, so it actually doesn’t take the fact that individuals have rights that apply to everyone as a fundamental basis for policy. openness™ is, instead, primarily about preserving and growing the institution of adoption, through rehabilitating the public perception of adoption through marketing the idea that everyone involved in adoption will come to feel good about it, and about each other. It is about the relationships among the people involved with adoption, mediated, if not being the outright puppets of, the state and the institutions of adoption, including agencies and attorneys involved with adoption. All of this is to grease the rails so that more and “better” adoptions occur: parents, particularly mothers, must give up their children and their privacy of medical information, adopters get assurances that they’re receiving a quality product, and adoptees… well, if everyone else thinks it’s okay, they might get access to, perhaps, some portion of an official record of their origin, to which they have, under the openness™ model, no absolute right, merely the possibility of an arbitrary privilege of access.

It’s not surprising that self-described “Bastards,” with knowledge of history and experience with adoption politics, have a problem with this. Members of Bastard Nation, the adoptee rights organization, have successfully worked to open birth certificates to all adoptees in several states including Oregon in 2000. Recently BN helped hold the line against proposed legislation in Oregon that would have reversed that ten-year-old victory, limiting birth certificate access only to those adoptees “whose birth parent has filed a Consent to Release of Original Birth Certificate,” to quote from the proposed legislation. It is this kind of threat to the fundamental rights of adoptees that is enabled by the openness™ regime; when the right to access is not taken as absolute and inviolable, virtually any trivial objection by anyone else who was involved with or once participated in an adoption may be allowed to take precedence over that right.

This week, Adam Pertman and the EBD will be hosting an event in New York that they call “For The Records.” As with Pertman’s other activities, from reading the invitation on the EBD website, it’s not altogether clear how anything about this event will actually support advocacy of legislation that opens birth certificates for all adoptees. It’s more about the vague language of openness™, which is all about marketing the institution of adoption, not the reality of effective advocacy for open records legislation. And since it’s all about the marketing of openness™ and promotion of the institution of adoption as clean, wholesome and desirable, the event takes on the form of some kind of bizarre corporate promotion, complete with musical and comedic entertainment:

• Oprah Winfrey, who is not going to be present, nor, as far as I know, is in any way substantially connected with Pertman or EBD, is named on the invite through reference to an “Oprah Winfrey Reunion Story” that we’re all supposed to already be familiar with. Those of us who aren’t completely transfixed by celebrities or who consider following the details of Oprah Winfrey’s life a waste of time might find this reference a bit mystifying, but I suppose such contortions on the part of this event’s promoters are absolutely necessary, lest they miss the opportunity to associate their brand with a public figure loved and followed by millions.
• Appearances by two celebrities, rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and Zara Phillips
• The “world premier” [sic] of the two-year-old music video featuring McDaniels and Phillips that’s all about openness™ but that fails to convey the basic fact that opening birth certificates is a matter between adopted individuals and the state, not between them and their parents
• Book signings of allegedly “just published” books by Adam Pertman  and Zara Phillips. Pertman’s book is a “revised and updated” edition of his “Adoption Nation” from 2000, Phillips’ is the US edition of her 2008 UK release. Like any other marketing-focused event, there are books and videos to be promoted.
• A video by comedienne Alison Larkin, who likewise has a book to promote and a career to keep afloat.
• Video from, and appearance of, filmmaker Jean Strauss, who is best known among some for her involvement with California CARE, and an abortive effort to introduce a bill there that would have taken a bad situation for adoptees in California, and made it much worse.  Strauss, author of a “guide to search and reunion,” likewise has a  number of DVD’s and books for sale on her website.

So if you’re keeping score, you’d know by now that of all the announced guests, only one has been involved with spearheading an organized legislative effort: Jean Strauss. But Strauss, in the course of organizing that doomed effort, has explicitly denied that open birth certificates are a civil right of adoptees. Regarding the advocacy of her organization in California, she wrote,  “… this is not an effort to ‘right a wrong’ or a ‘fight for our Constitutional rights’.” This exactly matches the model of openness™ which likewise deliberately evades the fact that individuals have rights with respect to the state, that should apply to everyone. In the same letter, Strauss threw some unknown number of adoptees overboard, announcing that their goal was only “of providing access to original birth records for as many California adult adoptees 18 and older as possible.” From the looks of the proposed legislation, that would have been very few California adoptees indeed.

Adoptee rights activists who have successfully organized legislative efforts in states like Alabama, New Hampshire, and Oregon – where birth certificates are open without conditions – are nowhere to be found on this stage. That is as it should be, because what this event is about is marketing of everything else about adoption, particularly the mystique – to those who aren’t adopted –  of search and reunion necessitated by sealed records. The substance of equal rights for adoptees cannot be found amidst all the pontificating about how wonderful adoption is, and the selling of products. The language of equal rights may appear there, but only in service to the industry, and to the marketing: of videos, of books, of celebrities and their careers, of the position papers and testimony offered by Adam Pertman and his organization.

There’s a hint of where this leads, right there in the description of the event on EBD’s page, where they claim the event is about “the need for states to restore adult adoptees’ access to their original birth certificates” (my emphasis). This language is disingenuous with respect to human rights, as it points out a need for justice, but is not attached to an exact definition, a concrete plan,  demonstrated actions, or an organizational history that shows how those rights might uniformly be gained for all people. A perpetual need, never fulfilled, for such access may well fill a particular marketing niche among the promoters of the institution of adoption; it provides a subject to talk about, to gain entry into the halls of legislatures as well as the media, through a never-ending series of search-and-possibly-reunion stories made possible by the inaccessibility of birth certificates that document the historical fact of one’s birth. openness™, and its cousin, conditional access legislation, might grant birth certificate access to only a very privileged few adoptees. The passage of conditional access legislation is the legacy of EBD’s vague, unfocused advocacy and self-promotion.

A genuine initiative that actually worked to grant open birth certificates to all adoptees, across the board, would speak with clarity to act as a civil rights movement for adoptees. (Such a movement has long existed, but it won’t be participating in EBD’s spectacles.)  The vagueness and ineffectiveness of openness™, with much obfuscating talk of search, reunion and medical histories, builds upon ongoing, continued injustice, and mere talk of rectification, as a framework for perpetual marketing of the institution of adoption.  That is why Adam Pertman’s adoption marketing poses an ongoing threat to human rights.

Some readers stop by from time to time, or are very specific about what they seek and take from my blog. If they’re finding what they’re after I’m happy and grateful for their readership.

Others read along and sometimes some actually incorporate aspects of what I’ve written into their own thinking and actions (and that has been a really amazing process to watch unfold.)

Seeing individual and even small scale social change come of something that I was never altogether certain I was willing to do in the first place, write, has shown me the value in giving voice to things even when it seems completely overwhelming and the words don’t come.

It’s too large to write.

And I’m small.

But encouragement comes when you least expect it.

I’ve met so many new friends and staunch supporters, some where I sometimes least expected.

I’ve corresponded with people, a number of whom I gladly call friend, or ally from around the world simply for having put words and a translate button to a page.

It never ceases to amaze me, and I am always in awe of their own tenacity, dedication, and work.

Many of the conversations that have come out of those interactions have challenged me, solidified things for me, and deeply affected me. All the more so in that if learning from other Bastards or those in this strange field teaches you just one thing, it’s that there’s always more, the rabbit hole always goes deeper.

Through that connecting with others enduring these injustices, I have found friends, allies, and those so dear to me as to consider them my family.

Tonight is about saying thanks to those who read, or who have influenced my own Bastardly thinking, or supported me, and encouraged me through these past 3 plus years of blogging now.

I didn’t really mark the blog-o-versary back in October, but somehow more than three years have gone by.

There’s an odd little collection of work here now that wouldn’t exist but for those around me who have been core to my support system.

My gratitude goes out to all those I chose to consider family for the many years of  both supporting me, and helping me think through bits and pieces of this out loud, and providing their insights and their wisdom. Some over endless cups of coffee, others in mere passing comments or email.

They know who they are, and they know I wouldn’t be the person I am today without each and every one of them.

Most of all, though, my deepest most heartfelt thanks go out to my life partner, Mike.

In every way imaginable he has been there for me through all of it, both the writing and the living adoption. He has been a true partner to me and a friend beyond measure.

His willingness to jump in with both feet, and not only be by my side, but in bringing his own unique perspective, skills, and voice to the Bastard rights movement (as with all our work) leaves me almost speechless.

This past year has run the gamut of adoption related almost everything imaginable for us, but through it all, he has been not only someone solid that I can count on, but also wise counsel, my support system, a fierce advocate, and a one man tech department.

He has always urged me on, helped me not give up, and always, ALWAYS not merely made room for my writing, but actively supported my writing in every way.

We sometimes half jokingly state that “he makes it all possible,” but it’s true.

He tends to be a very behind the scenes kind of guy when it comes to much of this, but he’s an all too often unsung hero of sorts.

Both personally and politically, he has been rock solid. “Dependable” doesn’t begin to cover it.

He is the primary person I turn to to parse these odds and ends apart with and I learn from him constantly.

It should also be noted that he is the writer in the family.

I don’t celebrate thanksgiving, but I do spend this part of the year marking the final harvest, noting the bounty that surrounds me, taking stock before the cold and dark of the year, taking the time to see who my family is, and offer gratitude for all those who feed me, both physically and metaphorically.

To all of you who have in any way supported me or my work, thank you.

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.

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 .

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.

In the following, I am basing this timeline on events from the organizer’s list, no doubt many things were happening simultaneously, and individual people may or may not have been aware of each one, further many other details were happening via phone calls and interpersonal e-mails. This is merely the information all ARD/DAR organizers had access to. (Which does not mean each individual organizer was aware of each of the following at the time.)

Also everything in the following is/or has been either already out in public or is paraphrased after first gaining permission to share the details, except the exact times.

Amy’s mention of the Abrazo fundraising to organizers which she had mentioned on her own blog in her piece “Regarding Bastard Nation’s Withdrawal” (originally posted June 2nd) has now been been removed and replaced with a new entry. Originally, the entry detailed her “history” with Abrazo.

Originally, it read in part:

I said that there were people raising money to come to the Adoption Rights Protest. I mentioned Abrazos…

As for the times, they are details I have brought to this because they are essential to explaining what happened; the times relate to what was know-able when.

When the list was presented to individual organizers, it was not explained to be ‘private’ or ‘confidential’ in any way (common sense would say such SHOULD have been, but it wasn’t.) Others have also moved many other details from onlist into a variety of spaces both public and private.

All that said, I don’t speak for Bastard Nation. I’m writing merely as myself, based on some of what my perspective was an organizer within ARD/DAR. Actual Executive Committee members with BN no doubt have a far more detailed timeline.

The following is just was what was onlist, available to any of us from the times they were posted. Essentially, this forms the backbone of a lowest common denominator of information available to ARD/DAR original organizers.

To fully understand the impact of Ron’s proposed postponement to try again another year on many ARD/DAR organizers, readers would have to first understand that even going to the National Conference of State Legislators annual meeting had been Ron’s idea in the first place.

It was Ron who contacted some of us to work with ARD/DAR, and it was my understanding (speaking only for myself here) that he was to have been the lead organizer on ARD/DAR, yet due to his wife’s illness (among other factors) he had been unable to fully take that on. Many things got left to a less experienced organizer who initially was to been helping him. He was the seasoned activist who wanted to make this happen, further, (again speaking only for myself) he was the activist I knew. So naturally when he assessed the situation and said in essence, let’s try it again at a later date, his words carried great weight.

May 29th 2008

(all times are Eastern)

11am BB Church/Ron proposed a postponement of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration /Day for Adoptee Rights (ARD/DAR) You can see his writing from the 29th included in his June 5th blog entry.

11:13am Amyadoptee mentioned Abrazo Adoption (Associates) had a website up to raise money (around ARD/DAR)

9:41pm I requested a very basic, statement from BN for the organizers list only, as to whether BN was going forward or not, purely so other organizers could base their own decisions on whether they wanted to stay on or not with as many facts as possible. BN being on or off might be a deciding factor for some, and so I thought it was important that in light of Ron’s proposed postponement from that morning, that we hear something from BN (as they were a co-sponsor) about what Bastard Nation intended to do organizationally. I asked for such in part because knowing who was in or out would help all organizers with their own evaluation/assessment process of whether or not it made sense to go forward.

10:36pm Marley (the Executive Chair of Bastard Nation) dictated a very brief (two sentence) private statement for the ARD/DAR organizer list by phone, informing us that BN had voted to withdraw organizational support from the event.

11:14pm I said I would be holding off on my personal decision about whether or not I would continue on with ARD/DAR until after Ron’s call with Abrazo the next day.

May 30th

2:36am and again at 3:42am Marley got her first access to e-mail and sent e-mails to me, which I passed along to the list as she was unable to post to the list directly. (The times represent when the e-mails arrived on list.) The two e-mails she sent out were further clarifications of BN’s organizational decision to the organizers’ list.

11:23pm (After Ron’s call with Abrazo) I resigned and my partner, Sleeps with Bastard, and I removed ourselves from the organizers list.

June 1rst

(late Sunday night/Monday morning)

Bastard Nation’s public announcement on their withdrawal from ARD/DAR went out.

June 5th

I am unaware of when Ron ceased working the the current set of ARD/DAR organizers, but his blog statement went up on the 5th.

Between BN, myself and my partner, and Ron’s withdrawals, that represents more than half of the original organizers on the list leaving.

So yes folks, BOTH Ron’s call for postponement (based on low numbers etc) and Abrazo’s fundraising were definitely ‘in play’ BEFORE Bastard Nation withdrew.

In the midst of that, I’ve been working on the Abrazo Adoption Associates angle, and trying to write my own piece about my own past involvement in the Demonstration for Adoptee Rights, my work to make it a success prior to my resignation, my own deep sadness over it, and the many factors that led to my final decision to resign.

Many people fail to understand that for those of us who faced the excruciating decision to withdraw or to make the decision to resign, we’ve been going through our own ‘mourning’ process over what we signed on for, vs. where things finally ended up. We hurt because we too, wanted for this to be a success. Being almost any active part of the way this unfolded was deeply painful. (More to come on that, as more becomes public.)

I myself, I was backed into a corner, where to stay true to my own ethical parameters I was essentially ‘forced’ into the position of resigning. Amyadoptee’s entanglement with Abrazo, which she did not disclose until well after her initial announcement of Abrazo’s fundraising, and her staying on with the event made it impossible for me for me to work with her, and thus continue working with whatever version of ARD-DAR was going to go forward. This alone was enough.

It was still a distinct issue for me from whether or not Abrazo money was ultimately going to go into the event. Something Amyadoptee pleaded for, something I balked at, and something Bastard Nation had (to my understanding) a standing policy against.

And as a third distinct issue, even worse still, Abrazo money apparently may ALREADY be in the ARD/DAR something I first saw posted publicly on Amyadoptee’s blog:

I know that is not the truth because this agency already contributed to the protest previously…

(dated Monday June 2, 08, 12:42am)

But this was not an issue I was aware of at the time of my resignation. I resigned Friday evening. This was posted publicly Monday.

I had ZERO knowledge of any Abrazo money in ARD/DAR during my time as an organizer. This apparent donation only came to light afterwards. If this is true a whole new set of questions arise.

Suffice it to say, the Abrazo issue from where I sit is ANYTHING BUT resolved.

Friday night, I resigned.

People having not heard from the event in some time, (no website center column update since the tail end of April etc), they were like coiled springs, suspecting something had happened, and yet not hearing any news. When my resignation hit, particularly in not publicly available forums, I got the full blast of people’s fury, which so often didn’t even seem related to the words I was writing, even as I worked to clarify.

You can’t explain to people who won’t listen.

But ultimately the facts have borne me out. I said statements would be forthcoming, they have been. They will continue to.

Those of us who have personally resigned represent decades of political experience, and organizing.

‘Sure’ you argue, ‘all you big ole activist types, and this is all you have to show for it?’ Well folks, real life intervenes:

* health issues arise,

* doing the day to day work on legislation- you know like fighting multiple bills at once?- while fighting in multiple states comes to mind- I was certainly working both Ohio bills this time around,

* the fact that I was only asked to work on ARD/DAR in March,

* the list goes on and on.

Yet keep in mind, no matter how much effort was put into it, ultimately I have no control over whether or not people respond, i.e. do things like register for a hotel room. That’s just outta my hands.

Bottom line is before you jump to conclusions, you might just want to wait a moment and get the whole story.

So yes, we were living our day to day lives, (we are after all human, believe it or not,) and doing this on an all volunteer basis, and in the end (of that phase of ARD/DAR, the period when we were on it, not the now) we spent a few days of sheer hell getting through to where we are now. And yes, those of us who left are if anything, trying to get a grasp on the exact details of how this all came down.

And yet in the midst of all that, yes, there still needs to be at least some form of public explanation of what happened, because we’re certainly not the only ones shocked, hurt, and left feeling betrayed.

What I haven’t had time to even start on is the bare facts of the low enrollment and how critical that was to much of the decision making for many of us.

To once again quote the Bastard Nation Statement on their Organizational Withdrawal:

While many people exhibited an interest in attending all or part of the event, the number of people who actually registered or made a serious commitment to attend was minimal.

That’s putting it damn politely.

Fortunately, my partner, Sleeps with Bastard has a new post up on his blog which I will quote in full:

Stating the Obvious

I commented over on The Daily Bastardette on the circumstances of Bastard Nation’s withdrawal from the “Day for Adoptee Rights.”

I am merely a lifetime member of Bastard Nation and have no formal role with the organization.

-

When an event planner books a block of hotel rooms, and about a month and a half before the event (that’s been talked about for most of a year) a minuscule number of people have made the most minimal effort to pick up the phone and make a fully cancelable hotel reservation – thus signing their name to their intended participation in a way that matters – it is time to decide whether or not the event is viable.

Bastard Nation’s leadership, as far as I can tell, has evaluated the situation and made what I think is the only sane decision.

The actions of Abrazo, while critically important and disturbing in their own way, are distinct from the fact that, at the time the decision was made, nearly nobody was attending, and that’s what the decision had to be based on.

A mailing list of people who may be casually interested in the event, and even a verbal statement that someone hopes to come (which included some organizers of the event but not me/us), is not sufficient to gauge interest. Since there’s no formal registration involving paying a fee as there would be with a conventional conference, this is a reasonable alternative to measure how many people are seriously considering coming, even if some were planning to stay with relatives or friends.

I think it’s obvious that if you’re coming to a conference or other event like this, you first register for the event, and then you book your hotel room. This shows the organizers your intent to do something, because if you don’t you’re going to have to make another call and cancel that hotel room.

I do this all the time. It’s not rocket science.

As he said, and as I blogged here, previously, we had our reservations. We felt it was absolutely crucial to do so.

Ron has said on that same Bastardette comment thread that he would be…

…posting a personal statement on the Day for Adoptee Rights later this week…

Many more details will become public at this point, so once again, I urge the impatient (and the loudmouths flying off the handle) to chill, before speculating further.

Finally, I would point readers to my two comments on my post here for further reading of posts written by the full spectrum, from clueful people, from ARD/DAR organizers, from Abrazo, and from aforementioned loudmouths.

(All times in the below are Eastern Standard time)

I told other Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers at 7:38pm Thursday May 29th:

Point blank had I known about the Abrazo aspect to all this I would have resigned.

This deserves a LOT more discussion than it’s going to get in light of it being overshadowed by everything else.

This was mere hours after Amy revealed at 11:13am to us that Abrazo had been fundraising (off our event without our knowledge). She saw nothing wrong with the fundraising, if anything she appeared to think it was wonderful.

My words above are basically my first response after reading the e-mail from Amy, the time delay is real life folks.

At 6:48pm Ron had also said he had made arrangements to talk with Abrazo the following day (Friday May 30th.)

(The below are SOME of my posts about my concerns about Abrazo, others may make it into another blog post at a later date.)

At 11:14pm on the 29th I said:

I will be holding off on my personal decision on involvement until after we hear back from Ron about tomorrow’s phone call with Abrazo.

At 12:06am On Friday May 30th, I said:

Well, I think the agency aspect needs to be addressed. Obviously tomorrow will be the day that happens but I think it’s pretty damn important.

(I also think there are many other issues as well.)

Tonight anyway, I just see people barging ahead as if nothing happened and not addressing what the agency aspect really means.

At 9:30pm Friday May 30th news about the call reached me

At 9:51pm and 10:07 pm I stated my opinion of what I thought we should do.

Then at 11:23pm I resigned.

At 1:43 am May 31, 2008, I placed the following on the adult adoptees forum:

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.

And not long thereafter placed my resignation here on my blog)

Amyadoptee remains proud of her support of Abrazo Adoption Associates and apparently does not believe she did anything wrong despite her own blog post directing people into Abrazo’s facebook fundraising.

Yes, this means a person subscribed to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizer mailing list was simultaneously (See the May 29th 2:33pm date on her post) encouraging donors to give money to the adoption agency itself. (An agency, who was collecting the funds into their own 501c3, using our event without our knowledge or consent at the time.)

This was vastly problematic to some of us.

See her two blog entries:

Regarding Bastard Nation’s Withdrawal

Onto Other Things

To the best of my knowledge she is still currently an organizer with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

Abrazo continues to fundraise on facebook. As I am no longer with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration I am not ‘in the know’ to know whether this is now with explicit permission from the current organizers of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration or not.

But even if they now have consent, that most certainly doesn’t change the history nor the circumstances much of that was collected under.

Bastard Nation, my partner Mike/Sleeps with Bastard and I (who were not acting on behalf of any organization in our DAR work, I described myself as a “God Damn Independent” or GDI) as well as others have stepped away from the event in no small part due to the Abrazo involvement.

Once again, quoting the Bastard Nation Withdrawal Statement:

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.

That is close enough to my personal stance. I don’t knowing consent to work with industry money as a matter of personal policy. Particularly an agency the likes of Abrazo Adoption Associates.

Please read the entire statement.

For those following the details of the involvement of the Abrazo Adoption Agency in San Antonio, Texas, the BN statement includes the following:

Unknown to DAR and BN until just a few days ago, Abrazo has been raising funds for the event in DAR’s name.

LINK

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 generally 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.

Although BN solicited funds for our specific DAR activities, the only official fundraising site for DAR is on the DAR site. Do not send funds to any other solicitor.

This speaks very specifically to some of the concerns I had which led in part to my resignation.

For further backgrounder, be sure to see these two links, and in particular the characterizations of the links, that my partner, Sleeps with Bastard, included on his blog entry, a very brief comment concerning adoption:

This is an adoption agency collecting money through a website that makes reference to an “adoptee rights demonstration.” Note on the top of the page that “donations to the cause benefit ABRAZO ADOPTION ASSOCIATES,” the agency itself.

This is a person who is subscribed to an organizer’s mailing list for that same “adoptee rights demonstration,” a list that was set up by the primary organizer of the demonstration. Here she is encouraging donors to give money to that same adoption agency.

As of the time of my resignation “amyadoptee” was still on the invite only Day for Adoptee Rights (DAR) organizers list. I am unaware of her current status/current involvement or lack thereof with DAR.

After posting to the “adult” adoptees forum in the thread about my resignation from the Adoptee Rights Demonstration, a post in which I included the text from My partner’s Sleeps with Bastard’s post A very brief comment concerning adoption
by way of explanation for some of the factors leading to my resignation, at 6:15 I was given a warning for “attacking members” and my posting privileges were cut.

I responded to the warning (From Joy, an administrator) at 6:33 asking:

I would like to formally request you explain precisely where in the message I “attacked” a member.

If this board has a dispute process, I would like to formally contest this warning.

At 6:39 Joy, the administrator responded:

You linked Amy’s blog in a disparaging way, you are attacking Kali’s work, AND we love them here, we love them. That includes Me, Dory, Addie, Lillie and Stewie. You are disparaging and insulting the reputations of our loved ones. You are spreading nasty rumors about them. This is not acceptable

I can’t believe you don’t get this. You go on about your 2 sentences but 2 sentences are enough.

You claim you are so much better than the rest of us, so why are you slumming?

Honestly, the warning stands.

Personally, my beef is not with Gershom. Let’s make that clear from the start.

As for Amy, all I’ve ever done is link to information she herself put out on her own blog. Is it “disparaging” to show her own work on behalf of Abrazo’s fundraising, when she herself is proud of it? I think not.

Much as there are certainly more details involved here about the Abrazo fundraising, they are not public knowledge and you would have to talk with both current and former Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers to get the full story. My partner and I have only pointed to what information is publicly available.

This is not an attack on Gershom, this is about the involvement of the agency’s (Abrazo’s) fundraising and the involvement of Amy with the agency and its fundraising, something she proudly trumpets on her on blog.