Category Archives: International Adoption

Adoptees: The new sleeping giant

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AdoptionLand is a strange place. By statute, Koreans become Americans and Swiss, Americans Guatemalans become Irish, Cambodians become Brits, Brits become Swedes, Ethiopians become Norwegians, Congolese become Belgian, Oklahoma Indians become South Carolina Italilans, Jews become Catholics, Catholics become Nazarenes, Buddhists become Presbyterians at the flick of the Bic in the judge’s hand Let’ snot even start on race. We’re the original post moderns. Fluid, rootless, and without a context of our own, though we fit into other people’s contexts as neat as a Victorian parlor.. The product of 100 years of Progressive social engineering. And we still don’t get no respect.

And the really bizarre part of this is that nobody but us finds this identity shift on demand strange but us.

What I find exciting though, is that we are a worldwide movement of the :displaced, deidentified, disenfranchised, dismembered, undocumented, and colonized. We are everywhere. We must be dangerous. Continue Reading →

Gladney: Coincidence or Disaster Adoptionism?

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Let’ see, five days ago Typhoon Hayian, one of the biggest storms on record, hit the Philippines .The Philippine government estimated initially that 10,000 people died Today, President Benigno Aquino, downgraded the number to around 2500, but aid workers are skeptical. I heard on the news a little while ago that about a half million people are homeless. The area has little food, water, and shelter. There is cirtually no police or security. Looting is rampant.

Now the tweet shows up with a link to Gladney’s Philippines program. Continue Reading →

International Adoption: The White Woman’s Burden. Agency staff picture is worth a thousand words

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Just a morning thought on International  Adoption and American foreign policy, such as it is. I had never heard of  MLJ Adoptions before this morning, until I ran across it on a re-Tweet 30 Things to  do During Adoption Month. Since I’m lazy and didn’t make a list of things to do for NAAM I’m ready to take on an assignment. Not content with telling people to set up book displays or make a “life book” for their kid, MLJ   busy-ness is more specific and time-consuming.  If I’m not promoting Orphan Sunday, subjecting my friends and neighbors to Stuck, raising $$$ for other people’s adoptions or setting up an adoption booth at a local high school’s Friday night football game to  drum up producers and consumers, I’m not doing my fair share  to spread the Good News of Adoption. Why NMJ has even created a handy-dandy selection of  MLJ adoption banners and pictures for my FB page. Aimed at the crunchy social justice crowd  the selections include the consumerist: Adopt Globallly — Love Locally By globally  MLJ  means adopt from our program.  MLJ’s grabby fingers reach into Bulgaria, Congo (oh! oh! just closed!), Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Samoa, and Ukraine. It Continue Reading →

Joint Council on International Children’s Services: Racist ad draw ire of adoptees and adoptive parents

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Taking time off from its white man’s burden of scooping  kids from developing countries into the arms of America’s desperate and middle class (lately through the CHIFF Act), the Joint Council on International Children’s Services   (JCICS)  will hold a benefit Tuesday to raise money for itself. Just in time for Trick or Treat, JCICS has  invited us to the fun.   All we need to do is hop a train or plane to The Big Apple and drop ourselves and our spare change off at Battery Park’s  PJ Clark’s. We’ll get free treats for our trouble. Until this moment I was unaware that trick or treaters  pay for their free candy. Note to self: stock up on Snickers. The idea of JCICS panhandling  kinda creeps me out.  Last year JCICS’s 990 says the non-profit was bringing in solid cash. I assume not by spare changing on K Street.  At least not with a tin can. I’d not be writing about this kinda-creepy event, or even know about it,  if JCICS  hadn’t jumped the shark and decided to promote its dollar-harvesting op on Facebook  with a picture of some of its fresh produce– international adoptees– dressed up in racial and Continue Reading →

Both Ends Burning Redux: BEB’s plan for international adoption

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The other day I wrote that Both Ends Burning was closing down its Scottsdale office and moving to Washington DC to play with the big boys. It’s true. I don’t know if I missed this when I was researching BEB’s  future or it wasn’t up yet,  but the game plan is now on BEB’s webpage under Our Next Steps Forward: International Adoption Futurama • Open our Washington, DC office, hire full-time staff and build necessary infrastructure. • Establish 50 BEB state organizations and plan UN-STUCK marches in each state for May 2014. • Plan and organize the Summit of Nations meeting to take place in Fall 2014. • Launch iAdopt International Advisory Services and begin to facilitate cross-border knowledge sharing. • Produce success story series as a revolving weekly feature on our web site. To facilitate on-going communication we will have an regularly scheduled UN-STUCK MOVEMENT Stakeholder conference call the first Tuesday of every month at 4 PM EST. Our next call will be June 4th. An email will be sent in advance with call-in information. To ensure the success of this movement, we encourage open communication. Please feel free to contact us at [email protected] at any time, for any reason. This outline has got to be the most ambitious and dangerous blueprint  to up-end Continue Reading →

Both Ends Burning: International Adoption = Functioning Global Society or Welcome to Cultural Trotskyism

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Both Ends Burning’s  Craig Juntunen  wrote a truly clueless blog the other day.  I don’t have the time tonight to go into it in great detail.  I’ll post part of it below, however,  with some comments. Certain transnational and transracial adoptees I know could have a field day with this, and I hope they do. Juntunen writes:: We have developed a distinctive arrogance of what is right and wrong for a child seemingly based on borders and geography. Many argue taking a child out of one culture to join a family in another culture is robbing a child of the birth heritage and should never happen. We have a hard time accepting cross-pollinating race and heritage as a cultural asset, and view it instead as a personal liability. Think of the many friends you know who were born in one country and during their childhood moved to another country. Ask them if moving to another country was traumatizing and damaging to their human condition, or ultimately  an experience that allowed them to expand their human condition.  Better yet, ask any child living in an orphanage whether they would prefer to have culture and heritage or a permanent family. If we are really going Continue Reading →

CHIFF Blocks Bastardette from Following Its Twitter Feed

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Oh the shame!

Whoever runs the Children and Families First 2013 (CHIFF ) Twitter account has blocked Bastardette from following their tweets.. Earlier I and an array of adoptee right advocates and adoption reformers were blocked from posting on the CHIFF FB page when one-by-one we posted simple polite statements that we opposed the bill and, were working to defeat it. Continue Reading →