What’s in a NAAM?

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National Adoptee Atonement Month names what we want. Taking that name turns the “original NAAM “on its head. It reflects the deeper process of reclaiming our histories. original identities, and names. It is the rejection of the celebration of a mismanaged, money-grubbing. discriminatory harmful public policy created by adoption industrialists, their trade associations and hangers-on, and the state. that crosses party lines and ideologies.  Adoptee resistance is a revolutionary act.  National Adoptee Atonement Month is not a publicity stunt or ego massager. We will not be adoption’s poster child. Continue Reading →

Safe Haven Baby Boxes Coming to Florida Soon

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During Tuesday’s broadcast Kelsey and Kevin Albin, an SHBB activist in Delaware, Ohio said that Florida has had 20 unsafe abandonments since 2017. Kelsey said “deaths;” Albin said “unsafe abandonments.“ I don’t know where SHBB got its figures, but whether dead or alive, the numbers don’t jibe with statistics posted on the SHN website. According to Silverio’s numbers, there have been 8 known unsafe abandonments in that timeframe. Cases aren’t broken down by live and deceased,.but the total indicates that since 2000 there have been 64 known discards—30 alive and 34 dead. This year 12 Safe Haven events have occurred with no known unsafe discards. I don’t know whose figures are correct (if either) but the discrepancy is too wide not to be questioned The numbers need to be documented. Continue Reading →

Of Ballots, Birth Certificates, and Bastards: A Short Discourse

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Perhaps it’s about being adopted. The birth certificate is the breeder document for all other “official” government and quasi-government paperwork you may be hounded to obtain Without that certificate, you don’t exist as far as the state and its subsidiaries are concerned. The birth certificate acts as a deed of identity. Of course, in the case of adoptees, we don’t exist as our born, natural selves. We have government-approved identities and government-issued amended birth certificates that are full of lies to prove it. I once ran across the ABC of someone who was adopted as a teen by a young couple. According to the document he was born to parents who were 8 and 6 at the time. Precious! 8 million fraudulent birth certificates. Call Homeland Security! Continue Reading →

Adoptee Deportation: State-sponsored Adoptee Abuse

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The vigil brought one thing home to me: Adoption is how adoptees live abstracted lives without context, beginnings, endings, or agency. The rules are made and played by patriarchy, church, and state with all their subsidiary isms, ideologies, and agendas. For the first time, viewing the vigil performances, I seriously considered–felt–what it is really like to be sent away, first via shuttling us down the adoption chute—then through a second shuttle through the state. Adoption is analogous to deportation. To exile. No matter what happens later, we never really have a home we can go home to–and certainly not by state force. No home is ever forever. Continue Reading →

National Adoption Awareness Month 2020: Using NAAM as an Instrument of Subversion

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A lot of people complain that adoptee voices are stifled, especially during NAAM, but I think that’s a big mistake. I believe that since NAAM was established, the month has slowly become ours—despite the refusal of lawmakers, “pro-choicers,” and entitleds  to grasp that we are hijacking their celebration. Sure, there is definitely a happy-dappy overlay, including National Adoption Day, but over a 20 year period, I’ve seen a lot of change. Class Bastard has stepped forward and grabbed the narrative. Continue Reading →

Bethany Pimp-a-Thon, Part One: Money Changes Everything

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Does anyone really believe that Bethany has switched out its 70+ year history of coerced birth and relinquishment, promotion of secret adoption, sealed birth certificates and adoption records lobbying, and overt adopteephobia for a beefed-up “global family care” mission? The “global mission” simply tugs at heartstrings of prayer warriors and the pursestrings of donors while it keeps the agency’s raison d’ etre–adoption and child profiteering– running in the background. Continue Reading →

Pro-lifer: Adoptees are terrorists

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Adoptees are terrorists.  Adoptees are also a (Satanic?) cult, insane, ungodly, and bullies. Posts I didn’t include here refer to us as “dark” and “doom” fill-in-the-blank….Adoption is the queen of intersectionality.  I talked about that for years before I ever heard the actual term “intersectionality,”  which is, of course much more detailed and diverse than what I was talking about.  That said, race, class, sex, gender, abortion,  misogyny, economics, consumerism, social welfare, reproductive rights, reproductive justice, public policy, religious wars, culture wars, colonialism, neo-imperialism, immigration and citizenship, Real ID, neo-liberalism. taxes, natural disasters, redistribution of wealth (especially children), narcissism, Supreme Court nominees. Class Basrtard is embedded in them all. Continue Reading →

Eliminating Illegal Adoptions the Baby Box Way or Today’s WTF Moment in AdoptionLand

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I have no idea where this comes from. I have never heard any traditional Safe Haven advocate make such a crazy claim. Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue–or better yet–a Freudian slip. Or maybe Znachko was echoing the conspiracy theory developed by SHBB’s sister organization, Hope Box in Marietta, Georgia that pushes the idea that baby boxes will save newborns of sex workers and trafficked women from being sold into sex slavery at birth. (SHBB has never used this argument.).Or maybe she’s suggesting that dissatisfied adopters need to stick their forever adoptees into a box rather than re-homing her or him on Craig’s List. Continue Reading →

Get ‘Cher Rocks Off. A Writer’s Remembrance of Paid My Dues

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I was told later that I was breaking new ground. with “Get ‘cher Rocks Off.“I doubt I was the first to write about sexism in rock by a long shot, but who knows—and who knew? A reference to it even occurred in (I think) The Whole Earth Catalog or at least a related big-book publication. Continue Reading →