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 →

James Lane for NYC Public Advocate: Vote for one of us. This is how we win

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I don’t live in NYC, but if I did I’d vote for James Lane on Tuesday. James is the Green  Party candidate for New York Public Advocate,  He is also an LDA (Late Discovery Adoptee) who learned in his early 20s that he was adopted, but  that under New York law, he was  prohibited from getting information about his biological family or his adoption. Being barred from accessing his own birth records propelled James into  lifelong social justice activism  for adoptees and others; From James’ campaign webpage: From that moment, his fight for justice through political activism formally began, with the hope that laws such as denying a person’s right to know about their origins will be removed from our society forever. James has been active in adoptee rights movement for years. I can vouche for that! He won’t remember this, but we ran into each twice, once at an AAC conference a few years ago and again in 2011 at  the Times Square  Hard Rock Cafe.  Ramping up activism to electoral politics, James has made  the restoration of OBC access  the centerpiece of his Public Advocate campaign (with election reform especially involving third parties and re-allocation of tax money “back Continue Reading →

Hard Rock Manifesto: Whose side are you on?

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We have proven that focused, energized civil rights campaigns can win. Yet, today we are sitting in the midst of corporate America–the Hard Rock Cafe– amongst a sea of adoption tweakers, self-defeaters, self- promoters, and neocons, who have never passed a “clean bill,” having a bizarre discussion over what we can learn about adoption (or open records?) from Oprah Winfrey–or so it was billed. This is the most bizarre adopta meeting since Ron Morgan, Bill Pierce, and Troy Dunn hooked up in LA to go on the Dr. Laura Show. We know how to restore adoptee access to our OBCs.. The only question now should be: why isn’t everybody following the model? Continue Reading →

Why is Adoptee Rights Still an Issue? the 20/20 question

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National Adoption Month 2013 opened with a bang today.  Clicked on a link to “Bethany Christian Services” and “NAM” and got a live sex site. (No, I won’t put up the link) Then there’s the real porn.  ABC/s 20/20 Facebook question: Do you think all adoptive children should have access to their biological parents? Excuse me?   Some production intern, without much thought or grammatical skills, must have posted the question. I’m not even sure what the question even means: Does it refer to actual children, open adoption, the right of adult adoptees to their own original birth certificates? Or what? For the last 80 years, for their own specific  and sometimes unrelated reasons,  the state and its  politicians, along with social engineers, private industry, therapists, churches, and social do-gooders across the political spectrum have moderated the public and private lives of adoptees and their families.  Nowhere is the entwining of the personal and the political so grotesquely practiced as in adoption in the United States today.  Nowhere is the conflation of adults with children in public policy and public imagination so blatant.. Hence, even those deeply involved in bastard rights, don’t know for sure what the clumsy 20/20– post even Continue Reading →

Adoption Books

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I’m working on making fixes on the new Bastardette format, and i’ts taking much longer than I thought.  Too much racket at home, so I packed up everything and came down to Subway on campus since there’s free WiFi here..  It’s open 24/7 and nobody cares how long you stay as long as you at least by a small drink.. It’s quiet (more or less but what a strange mixture of music–dance and country) with plenty of room. AA  mouse keeps running across the floor.  I’m not snitching. I’m trying  to do one “page” a day. Today I’ve listed my favorite adoption books.  Look under “Media”.  Keep in mind that these are books that I like, not necessarily what you like. They range from adoption history to policy to memoir to novel.  No Primal Wound! There’s more to add, but it’s enough for tonight. BTW, I don’t know why last nights blog on the anti-ICWA folks decided to format different from the rest.  I’ll work on that later.  

No Joke: Capobianco supporter, Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare, sends out prayer request for “child’s best interest”

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prayer_requestA couple weeks ago I wrote about an ICWA  law  forum  being held  today in St. Paul.  (I’m posting this early Tuesday morning/.)

Sunday, the misnamed  anti-ICWA Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare. (CAICW) operated by non-Indian Lisa Morris, sent up a tizzyful prayer on Facebook:  Ms Morris, in case you’re you’re not familiar with her, is a graduate of Bible College (unnamed), has “dabbled as a registered nurse” (her words)  and is an active member of the Minnesota Tea Party. She believes (at least on paper) that prayer is the greatest weapon against ICWA, If the US were a sane country, Ms. Morris would be left standing on a street corner passing out tracts to the unsaved and unwashed. Instead she’s running an anti-civil rights organization.

CAICW (or Ms. Morris)  urges us: Continue reading →

Original Birth Certificates aren’t the only thing they lock up in New York

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Nice guerrilla action in New York this weekend.  Not about adoption  but close. The National Women’s Liberation Army hit five pharmacies in the Union Square area Saturday  in search of Plan B (emergency contraception).   According to Reality Check, some drug stores not only hide the Morning After Pill behind the counter, but keep it in a locked box! From Realitly Check: (emphasis (mine) During the action, group leaders would loudly announce to the store that the brigade was looking for the morning-after pill. Group members then would disperse, asking where the emergency contraception was and handing shoppers a letter to the pharmacy’s CEO. “The morning-after pill is locked in a box? You have to carry the box around the store?” protesters would say to each other. “Sure, so the whole store knows you had sex last night. That’s like wearing a dunce cap!” Indeed, many stores either keep Plan B behind the pharmacy counter, don’t stock more than two pills at a time, or keep the pill in a locked box that has to be opened by a store employee at the counter. Furthermore, employees are often confused about who has permission to open the box. NWL’s letter to pharmacy CEOs 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 →

Ohio’s Dan Chaon hits the road to Starz

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Nice news from Ohio for once! Ohio adoptee  memorist and author  (and one of the best writers’ in the country today) Dan Chaon has a new gig. Dan  sent  a note  via FB and Twitter on Thursday that he’ll be working on a new  dramatic project for Starz titled Most Wanted.  The production team includes writer Chris Collins, co-producer of  Sons of Anarchy  and director Ken Fink (CSI, Oz, Homicide. Dan will serve as co-executive producer of the new series.. The show takes place in the in the Plains States in the 1970s and traces the career of fictional  prolific bank robber Nate Daniels “as he finds himself on a collision course with his family and crew as he becomes one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.” My kinda show! I’ve written about Dan here, here, and here.   Dan lives in Cleveland and teaches at my old hangout, Oberlin College where he’s the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing and Literature   Twitter fried my account and I was forced to start a new one.  Besides tweeting The Daily Bastardette I tweet  (and retweet) about adoption issues, civil rights, freedom of the press,  the corporate state,  Depeche Mode, literature and books, plus some Continue Reading →