This post relates to events and personalities surrounding the Adoptee Rights Demonstration held in New Orleans last month. I’ve written extensively about the ARD, readers unfamilar with such can visit my adoptee rights demonstration tag. (As posts are in reverse chronological order, just read 3rd page to 1rst to get the full background.)

Specifically, this post deals with comments made by an ARD organizer in the aftermath of the event.

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Gershom’s over on Adopted Jane’s blog rewriting history.

Gerhom’s comment is on Jane’s own blog post about her being banned from the adult adoptees forum as well. I am not going to muck up Jane’s blog with this crap, so I’ll be pointing folks here to this response.

I suppose it’s time to pull out the data, let people read it for themselves, and make up their own minds.

Let’s address some of Gershom’s accusations first:

As an ORIGINAL organizer, BLC hasn’t done anything BUT cry about it and me since I was in New Orleans, and have returned from New Orleans.

Well let’s see, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) in New Orleans was held July 22nd.

Anyone looking at my blog can see I did a piece on the 21st, Adoptee Rights Demonstration / Day for Adoptee Rights some history and Gershom’s “storm”. In it, I discussed some background history of the terminology and the event. I also wrote a political criticism of some of the language Gershom was using in the lead up to the event.

IF media decided to do any kind of piece on the event in New Orleans scheduled for the next day, or if other bystanders or even participants were interested, I felt it was important to make some background history available. It was also important to point out that no (inter) national open records or adoptee rights organization had endorsed nor sponsored the event taking place in NOLA.

I also felt it was important that people understand that what had originally been called for was a mass event, not what would come to be 60 (or fewer) people. It was important to judge the ‘success’ of the event against the call that had gone out for the event.

On the 22nd itself, after the march and protest portions of the ARD had taken place, I restored posts I had previously written prior to my resignation from the ARD calling for participation in the ARD. See ARD- Baby Love Child earlier ARD posts, history restoration.

On the 23rd, at the urging of my readers, who were searching for information on what happened in New Orleans and finding mere crumbs, I wrote ARD- Morning after media coverage , Afternoon Photo UPDATE. ARD organizers had not put anything out and people we genuinely wondering whether or not the event had even taken place.

On the 24th, I pointed my readers at the ARD page update, (so that they could get it ‘straight from the horses….’ well, whereever,) Adoptee Rights Demonstration updates their page, now that it’s mostly over so they could read Gershom’s (and others’) perspectives as well. I didn’t have to agree with their perspective, but I thought it important that my readers read about it from multiple angles and get information directly from those who put it on rather than only second hand sources. Again, I trust my readers to be intelligent enough to make up their own minds about these things.

On the 25th, after the personal attack thread aimed at me on adult adoptees by ARD related individuals, including Gershom, I removed my writings from their ‘support’ based board, and posted a brief note to my own blog about what happened to the writings before anyone assumed adult adoptees board administrators had done anything to them. See ARD related – my ‘Adult’ Adoptees posts are no longer available. I only wrote about such on my own blog. The last post I had made to adult adoptees was June 1rst.

I removed my posts from the adult adoptees forum for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being, it was clearly open season on me personally over there. For a ‘support’ forum, it was hardly a welcoming, let alone supportive space. I wanted to protect my own work that I had once posted over there, and did not want board administrators, such as Joy who were clearly acting in an antagonistic manner towards me to have an opportunity to in any way delete, alter, or lock down any more of my posts on the forum. I did however, maintain my account there, after removing my own work.

On the 26th Joy ‘releived’ me of my adult adoptees account. I explained to my readers what had happened on my own blog, ARD, Adult Adoptees “relieves” me of my membership.

Gershom attempted to comment on my blog, and I moderated it at the time, saying that yes, I had received her comment would get to it as time allowed. (Later, after Gershom responded to a later post of mine on my blog with the YouTube video and song lyrics to “pepsi anyone” on her personal blog, the gist of which can of course be summed up by the line “I’m gonna keep on I’m a do my own thing”. I ‘reprioritized’ getting back to her comment in light of how pointless such clearly was. You can find a copy of how her blog appeared at the time via google’s cache.)

Her comment, which remains moderated, (as ARD organizers such as Gershom have the rest of net to spew their bile all over, I needn’t add my blog to such real estate) was filled with ‘gems’ such as these:

What does it feel like to be someone who just makes things up in order to prove a point? Do you ever feel concrete at all? Do you wobble when you walk? Do you roll right out of bed when you are sleeping? You must have no solid ground beneath you

and, referring to the thread targeting me on adult adoptees:

I posted in that thread last night, it was long over due and it felt great. I posted a picture of an Attention Whore in honor of you.

While I won’t post details of what was in the adult adoptees thread entitled “Comments to Baby Love Child’s blog that’ll never see the true light of day” as adult adoptees is a private forum, Gershom’s comment above should certainly give readers a feel for the ‘tone’ of the thread before it came down. It was petty, childish, and yes, ARD organizers lashing out and name calling in what was billed as an ‘adoptee support’ forum.

Nor was this the first such instance aimed at me personally there. After I posted my two sentence resignation back at the end of May, Joy and others proceeded to ream me for having done so. Joy (acting as the moderator) eventually went so far as to slap me with a warning, saying:

You go on about your 2 sentences but 2 sentences are enough

(You can read the full text concerning such in my eariler post, My brief statement on what happened on the Adult Adoptees forum.)

The two sentences in question, the ones I posted as the beginning of a thread to the adult adoptees forum (May 31, 2008, at 1:43:44 AM) were:

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.

Remarkable, isn’t it? That simply posting those two sentences was enough to kick off a firestorm.

To quote Marley/Bastardette’s comment on my blog post:

Absolutely, BLC. I have no idea where this hatred is spewing from from and why. If one reads the actual thread, the question that pops out immediately is why are they so mad? What in the world did you do that was so wrong? Why would your simple statement of resignation set off one of the worse, if not THE worst trashing of an activist I’ve seen in my 15 years online? Why you are the target of this hate-a-thon is beyond me. This is a perfect example of why the records access has not gotten farther than it has.

July 28th, I posted, again, this time, in response to readers wondering whether or not Abrazo Adoption Associates had actually been present in New Orleans considering the splintering of the ARD organizing committee Abrazo’s fundraising activities (without organizer’s knowledge or consent) had been one cause of. This is the post I wrote, *UPDATED* Abrazo revised fundraising dates, Abrazo related personnel were at the ARD, and Gershom’s comment on such.

All of which is to say, far from “crying” about any of it, I’ve been providing strategic political and tactical analysis, information into the vacuum left by ARD organizers themselves, (as the ARD page certainly wasn’t answering these questions for my readers), and historical perspective.

But back to Gershom’s comment on Jane’s blog, Gershom then goes on to get her chronology ‘tangled’ (to put it as charitably as possible):

In fact, one of the major reasons she was on moderation at AAAFC is her tantrum she tried to throw on AAAFC after she was booted ( before she “resigned” )from the protest organizers list.

(AAAFC, “Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change” is the full title of “Adult Adoptees” AAAFC’s Forum is the venue in question herein.)

The actual chronology was that I resigned from the ARD organizer’s list (no one ‘booted’ me, my partner and I posted our resignations and unsubscribed ourselves the night of May 30th, no one ever asked us to leave, and if anything, we stayed on roughly an extra day after Bastard Nation had withdrawn.), then I posted my two sentence resignation on my blog, Baby Love Child’s resignation and on the adult adoptees forum.

As a result of those two sentences, and that multiple page long thread on adult adoptees, Joy slapped me with the ‘warning’. In part II readers will be able to see the exact post she tagged, keeping in mind, Joy claims my “two sentences are enough.”

Which then leads me to my original posts on the adult adoptees forum in the resignation thread, the ones Gershom just characterized as a “tantrum”. As they are no longer available online, I will continue with my ongoing process of ‘history restoration’ by making them available again in part II.

I’ll leave to to my intelligent readers (as opposed to my delusional readers) to decide for themselves whether or not said comments constitute a “tantrum.” Unfortunately, as adult adoptees is a private forum, I will only be posting my own writings, not the rantings directed at me which were also originally part of the thread.

Suffice it to say, I find Gershom’s characterization disingenuous at best.

(Part II will be posted when I have some time to clean out and reformat the text, it won’t be immediate. It will likely be a few days as this is a busy week for me.)