Shut Down the Machine!

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There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious–makes you so sick at heart–that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all….
Mario Savio, Sproul Hall steps, Deccember 2, 1964 Continue Reading →

NAAM Day 4: Lost Adoptee History: The Great Pamplona Adoption Records Robbery

The news story reported that a man in Pamplona had been sentenced to prison for breaking into a Catholic orphanage and stealing 200 (or maybe it was 400?) adoption files and then sending them to the now adults to whom they pertained. Unfortunately, the article was only a couple of paragraphs long and did not go beyond that basic information. Continue Reading →

NAAM Day 2: Woman Says Selling Her Baby is a “different kind of adoption.”

According to the  Houston Chronicle, several months ago a pregnant Juniper Bryson, 21, attempted to sell her up-and-coming-baby for $150, allegedly to keep him out of fostercare. This paltry amount, she said would enable her to “move into an apartment so I can work a job and get (my daughter) back, or a cheap down payment, or [sic] any car to get to different places to DoorDash. Nothing crazy at all,” Even though the baby was due in a few days, she said she was willing to travel to meet potential adopters.  Continue Reading →

NAAM Day 1: Welcome to the Worst Month of the Year: November 2024. National Adoption Awareness Month

It seems like only yesterday that we put this baby to bed, and already it’s National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM) again.  In the past, I’ve included the additional/redundant name National Adoption Month (NAM), but I’ve pretty much scrapped that one. Whatever it’s called, it’s that very special month when the adoption industry cranks its noisemakers and marches its brass band across the country to share the good news of family displacement, identity erasure, and kicking adopted people to the curb. Continue Reading →

NAM./NAAM Day 30: The Wicked Witch is Dead Redux

I hope this is a sign that Class Bastard is being treated with more respect than in the past, but I won’t count on it. Christian Nationalists, Christo-fascists, Southern Baptist bullies, baby-entitled simpletons, and forced birthers want to march us back in their fetid closet gagged and hobbled, so remain aware. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 29: Crazy Claim: Safe Haven Baby Boxes Lower Infant Mortality Rates. Stats Show Differently

According to this report, Znachko made the most astounding claim during the ceremony:

“I believe that it is the number one initiative that we have to battle infant mortality in the state of Indiana and across our country. Even though it’s a privately funded device, it is the private sector and the public sector coming together to battle this really important issue,” Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 28: Stop Erasing the Adoptee Lived Experience. We Know Our Stories. You Don’t.

ike Annette, this is what riles me:  the troll that decides to “interpret” and re-write –in public no less!–someone else’s lived experience to fit their own mythology or own lived experience, which one would dare not ever question. Of course, this trollery isn’t limited to chasing down adopted people. This institutionalized trollery extends to every possible group and experience of everybody who isn’t them. Not a day goes by when I don’t read on Twitter the I-know-better-than-you-do-about-yourself crowd lectures to people of color, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Catholics, Protestants (SBCs love to correct other Protestants they deem doctrinally errant); the poor, alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, immigrants, queers, feminists, women who have had abortions, the childfree by choice, rape survivors, abuse survivors, Europeans, Democrats, academics, the under- and unemployed. and women in general. Not surprisingly, most of these trolls come from the dominant class who don’t want to share their American apple pie with us. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 27: Fun at Safe Haven Baby Boxes

Now, I believe that SHBB Inc founder and CEO Monica Kelsey actually cares about these babies. She may love them. It’s not an act. She sometimes refers to them as “my babies.” She fantasizes occasionally that someday one of these (grateful) kids will grow up and take over the baby box company when she retires. Frankly, I don’t see her ever retiring because it’s much more fun and easier than her former job of firefighter/EMT, and there’s lots of free travel thanks to other people’s dimes. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 26: Black Friday Adoption $$$ Grubbing

It’s probably a coincidence that National Adoption (Awareness) Month and Thanksgiving both fall in November. It is also fortuitous since it gives the adoption industry and its ancillaries the opportunity, like every other business, to cash in on Black Friday, that strangely named day-after-Thanksgiving Big Sale Day that has overtaken George Day (Washington’s birthday)  in popularity and spending and prole consumer riots on the floors of Walmart and Best Buy. Is there anything more American? Not according to the US baby acquisition folks. Continue Reading →

NAD/NAAD Day 25: Students for Life Continues to Co-opt, Appropriate Celebrity Adoptees

The point is that SFL took Cheoweth’s words, produced a meme of sorts, with them and her picture, and posted it around the internet. The world. It actually stamped a SFL © in the upper right-hand corner…It also implies that Chenoweth agrees the Christian Nationalist ideology of SFL president, Kristan Hawkins. The organization, in effect, linked Chenoweth with SFL’s organization and agenda… Continue Reading →