Well, I see ARD has finally gotten around to updating their page and acknowledging BN’s withdrawal publicly- (sort of, but not, see below.) Other than that, to read the ARD page, you’d never know a thing happened.

We continue to await Ron’s/BB Church’s statement, which he said he’d try to get out later this week. This:

But I won’t work with people that sandbag me.

may help illuminate his position a bit.

The ARD page still has Ron’s call for Volunteers April 26th. And on the “Who we are” page still contains the name Ronald Morgan.

Time will tell.

Last night I posted two comments on this Bastardette thread dealing with the lack of ARD webpage update.

1. From the first of the two, this one posted June 4th 6:29pm:

Lets be clear, many of those of us who were part of ARD/DAR are gone now.

ARD/DAR is very different now from the way it was before prior to the changes. It is now being filled out with a different set of organizers.

I would advise people think long and hard before joining up with the likes of such.

I personally, am withholding my own full take on what has gone forward until at bare minimum the ARD-DAR webepage is updated to reflect those changes and some form of statement is put up the current organizers.

You will note that while BN has put out a statement, and some of us who were organizers have written, there remains no official word from the ARD/DAR itself that anything has even happened publicly.

Once the page changes, I will make my own decisions and do my own writing on my own blog about what I make of the current state of ARD/DAR.

2. And from my second post, June 4 at 8:31pm:

I suppose the official page COULD just sit there with an April 26th date as their latest until after July 22nd.

That said, considering how many of those of us who were involved before the change have left, I just thought they might want to let people still planning on coming that BN was out, and that other organizers, not just me have also left and new people are going to be taking it from here.

It seems the bare minimum they owe their donors at this point.

While it would certainly be nice of them to post something related to how they plan to go forward from here, (and deal with the issues raised by the Abrazo/Amy involvement,) to date, Gershom has only posted any notice of what she intends to do on the aforementioned private board.

Of course, if all that’s left, are only people who are already on Adult Adoptees, then the external public official webpage could be treated as a public relic, left as is, and all organizing could take place in their little sandbox. That would be stupid, but considering the “caliber” of some of the people working on it now… .

Fortunately, what to do with their outdated webpage is ultimately not my problem.

While I’m sure the current crop of organizers would just love it if everyone just went on ahead as if nothing had happened, the rest of us feel they have at minimum, an obligation to let people who provided their information to ARD/DAR under one set of circumstances know that those circumstances have now changed dramatically.

Thus giving people the information they need to make up their own minds about whether or not they wish to attend.

Otherwise, though, it’s apparently all sunshine, excessive smiley faces, and ponies from here on in!

So yes, to their credit they have at least mentioned BN is off. SORT OF, because if you look to the right hand column of the page, you will see Bastard Nation is STILL listed in the right hand column as a “Sponsor” as of 6:53am this morning.

(Other “sponsors” listed are a cafe press page, and “The Adoption Show”.)

The real questions at this point are simple:

They call this an “Adoptee Rights Committee.” Fine, what is that, and who are the these people?

Who are the current organizers?

One of the key problems with the pre-Bastard Nation withdrawal Adoptee Rights Demonstration was the lack of ever publicly listing who was making it happen. This led to all kinds of assumptions about who was an organizer and who wasn’t. As I pointed out on a private board, there was never any public listing of who was organizing it and what areas of responsibility they had taken on.

And secondly, since they now have the booth, what does a post-Bastard Nation withdrawal Adoptee Rights Demonstration intend to do with it? I.E. what ‘messaging’ are they going to be taking to legislators and aides, in the name of the broader adoptee rights ‘movement’.

When BN was involved, they were always extremely clear on how search, medical records, etc were not directly related to open records, as such are interpersonal issues that adoptees deal with AFTER they have their own information from the State and without State interference, just like any other person.

See this from BN’s FAQ:

While we support those adoptees who wish to search for birth relatives and offer resources on our website, http://www.bastards.org/search/, we do not help people search. Our mission relates only to unconditional adoptee access to birth and adoption records. Our concern is the relationship of the adopted person to the state, not to his or her birth or adoptive parents. We believe it is a personal decision whether one wishes to reconnect with birth relatives, one which adoptees should be able to make freely without state interference.

But now that BN is off, coupled with the recent death of Julia of Julia’s Jam and how the adoption community is dealing with that by conflating her death for lack of access to medical information into the fight for open records (medical records of parents remain confidential, even under open records. Yes, with open records she may have been able to connect with family and asked them to see if a match could be made, etc, but open records do not equate to access to ‘original’ parent’s medical information. Open records are merely about getting access to your own unaltered original birth certificate, or OBC- from the State, not a medical history) it raises concerns about whether or not the people who will be in that booth fully understand what open records are and are not, and whether they will have the skills needed to articulate such clearly.

This was why the Bastard Nation Bastard Boot camp teach-in that was supposed to take place over the events in New Orleans was so vital. The average adoptee simply has never learned the difference between restoring access to our OBCs from the State, and the need for medical information which must be obtained in a secondary step from family members themselves IF THEY CONSENT TO IT.

This is how you ended up with conflated, mismessaged, manglings of actual open records work like the Gladney 120th anniversary protest utilizing slogans such as “…Genetic secrecy kills adoptees.” If this becomes their version of “open records work” it means they don’t know.

And them not knowing is going to hurt all of us in the long run.

All of which is to say, the loss of BN on the ARD/DAR is going to have profound effects.

And it has the potential to really destroy some of the existing open records work that has been ongoing.

I, personally have grave concerns about what will and will not be said in said booth, now that many of the experienced political Bastards with a strong grounding in Bastard politic are out.

After Gershom attacked me on Bastardette’s comment thread, I replied with the following:

Baby Love Child said…

GershomLet’s be clear, Ron asked me to “be our volunteer trainer and head monitor at the protest” on March 9th ’08.

After several e-mails back and forth I accepted on March 14th ’08.

So I’ve been working on this formally since March.

Which I suppose just shows you don’t even know how ARD’s own organizing and volunteer coordination was going.

Simply put you have no idea how much work I did or didn’t put into this event, but even what you did see was certainly more than 2 days, and you know it.

The list came into existence VERY late in the game. Which in and of itself was insane. The list existed for less than a week before the withdrawals and resignations began.

How the hell anyone was supposed to be organizing any kind of event without the most basic of communications vehicles between the parties? It was just unfathomable.

People were exchanging personal e-mails, waiting for permission to forward things to third parties. To clean up that mess, I advocated on May 23rd, in personal e-mail to you, that a list desperately needed to be created:

“If nothing else, it wastes time to have to reiterate multiple times over some of the basic conversations.”

May 20th I wrote you in personal e-mail:

One of the ideas we had, (though for all I know such may already exist), was to create sort of a ‘working list’ e-mail-wise, to get all of us and anyone else who will sort of be doing organizing in the lead up to the event communicating directly and up to speed on what’s going on. I’m not talking about the main e-mail list for the event, but a much smaller invite only list for dealing with the details of pulling this off. We could set up a googlegroup in no time if that’s the kind of thing you might want. Just let me know.

You finally created a list on the 23rd, after admitting that the lack of communication was really messing things up. But prior to that, organizers, volunteers, etc had no communications vehicle other than direct e-mail and phone.

Ron’s suspension piece was a hell of a lot more than just a “request of insight into suspension.”

Ron was the person who had brought up the idea of going to the National Conference of State Legislators annual meeting in the first place. Ron is the one who contacted some of us about working with DAR.

When he posted his proposed suspension piece on the 29th, this was after you had come back to us the night before with the grand total of 4 hotel rooms booked in the Best Western.

The BN hotel had more, but ultimately let’s face it the numbers just weren’t there for any kind of ‘Mass action’ as the event had originally been proposed to be.

So Ron called for suspension, and later that night the first of the withdrawals began.

I stayed on until Friday evening.

You say you’ve been organizing since August, fine.

Let’s talk about where things stood. Me resigning as the person working the volunteers for the march was ultimately not particularly relevant because:

1. There was no permit for the March nor for the picket outside the convention center. Unless something has changed there still isn’t.

2. I asked from the moment I came o board how volunteer recruitment was going. It took a long time to get an answer. When I finally did the number was first 3 people (to run a march of at the time an unspecified number of marchers- it could have been 5 or could have been 500.)

Once I was actually able to see the data, I found myself with ONE volunteer to help run the march.

So resigning at that point was practically superfluous to what Ron had asked me to do, there was no permitted march and there was only ONE volunteer.

Since you folks were clearly, shall we say, falling down in the volunteer recruitment arena, I stepped up, within 24 hours of the realization that I had one volunteer, I put out a release calling for volunteers. I specifically requested other organizers help me spread it far and wide.

Yet you never posted it to the ARD website and as far as I can tell, (since no one communicated any action to me) no one did anything with it other than me.

At the time people began to withdraw the booth had been paid for, but the additional costs for drape etc hadn’t, Lafayette square had been paid for. There was a block of rooms at the Best Western with 4 booked. The Country Inn and suites had other reservations. That was the state of things.

There was no ‘march’ other than the possibility of people walking single file to the convention center- until the point at which enough money had come together to get the permits.

I asked you on the phone about the permits, seeing as they were shall we say pretty damn fundamental to what I had signed on to do with DAR. You said you needed something from BN. So I called BN, they said they were still waiting for documentation from you. So I brought that back to you, you said it was your fault.

Hell yes there’s a lot not being said here, Gershom, I certainly agree with you on that.

Care to talk about how site traffic to use your word went “un-freakin-real” (as in wonderful) after you reorganized some aspects on the website per my suggestions?

Care to talk about how the many forms of support I gave you, personally?

Nah,that would cloud that black and white, good-guy bad guy thing certain people insist is in all this.

The truth is a hell of a lot more clouded and we ALL know it.

But from the moment I contacted you via e-mail offering to help (which you promptly forwarded to Ron without my consent) I’ve done everything I could to pull this ongoing disaster outta the crapper.

When I came on board you had gotten a redundant second hotel and signed the contract on if for as far as I can tell, no reason. That was the level of lack of miscommunication that was happening. ‘Oh but the Adult Adoptees wanted a hotel… .’

BASIC pieces of organizing were completely absent.

I do understand you’re new to this, if you remember, I gave you a hell of a lot of support about that.

Due to circumstances, some beyond everyone’s control. A lot got left to you.

Yet when we spoke on the 23rd, you admitted you had been “slacking”. So don’t sit here and tell me I have done EVERYTHING. Not you, not bastard nation, not ron, ME. that’s bullshit and you know better.

Over and over again, I kept discovering there was less there than even you thought.

I asked you how many people we had actually coming and what dates they were going to be in town for. You had no idea. That was where your idea of making the calls came from.

Fine, you can bitch about us not helping, but I was doing things like sitting in medical waiting rooms,while Marley was traveling. Both of which, you knew.

As I said even four days ago on my blog

Personally, my beef is not with Gershom.

and

This is not an attack on Gershom

My opinion of you in the last four days however, has changed greatly.

Thursday, June 5, 2008 3:14:00 AM EDT

Abrazo Adoption Associates have finally ceased their facebook fundraising (Titled “Open Adoption Rocks“) off of the (open records) Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD), which up until our discovery of the fundraising, had happened without the knowledge or consent of ARD.

(While Abrazo also claims to support open records, their fundraising on facebook- unbeknownst to us- conflated the two issues- open records and open adoption. I may write more on that at a later date.)

They have added a brief statement to the facebook page, (apparently this went up last night, June 4th:)

We regret to inform you…

Posted by Abrazo to Open Adoption Rocks! 7:19pm

that the support of adoption agencies. such as Abrazo, is not welcomed by certain adoptee rights groups such as Bastard Nation, former sponsor of the Adoption Rights Protest.

Therefore at the request of the Demonstration for Adoptee Rights, we are cancelling our plans to attend the Protest in New Orleans and disbanding our efforts to raise funds for the event. We will henceforth be returning all funds to the original donors or redirecting them to alternative organizations, at each donor’s request.

We genuinely appreciate the good intentions of all who had participated in this campaign, and hope that those who joined us in expressing support for open records and adoptee rights will continue to do so through other means.

Note that via examining the fundraising history page the initial date is May 9th. That would have been 20 days of fundraising before Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers first learned of Abrazo Adoption Associate’s fundraising (without our consent) before Amyadoptee finally brought it to our attention at 11:13am on May 29th.

On May 29th, Abrazo was contacted by a representative of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration, a second call was scheduled for the 30th. On the 30th Abrazo and the ARD organizer discussed the fundraising. Yet their fundraising continued until apparently last night June 4th at 7:19pm.

Their offer to return donations or redirect them with the donor’s consent to other organizations (some of whom do not have the uncompromising open records stance, that the Adoptee Rights Demonstration and Bastard Nation held dear) hardly ‘fixes’ what they have done.

The ethics of Abrazo having collecting monies off the work of another unrelated organization without our knowledge or consent into Abrazo’s own 501c3 non-profit is the core of the matter here.

These monies were originally collected without the knowledge or consent of ARD. Period.

Many unanswered questions remain. Was the Abrazo facebook fundraising the only form of fundraising Abrazo did off our event or did they do more in any other form?

As we DAR organizers only found out about the Abrazo fundraising at 11:13 on May 29th from Amyadoptee AFTER a call for the suspension of DAR which had occurred at 11am, see Marley’s post on this thread at June 4, 2008 2:25:00 AM EDT:

The lead organizer of the event called for a suspension of DAR this year so it could be done right next year.

(This, by the way is the first public mention of the organizer’s call for suspension, Marley was the first to say it.)

one can only wonder, were we ever supposed to know about the Abrazo fundraising at all?

To the best of my knowledge, Abrazo’s facebook funraising was not linked off the Abrazo page, it was not linked out of Abrazo’s most recent copy of Affinity (See the Affinity PDF here. I’d advise people interested in the ARD mess to follow the link, the front page story is Abrazo’s take on the ARD.)

To quote BB Church’s/Ron Morgan’s post on the same Bastardette comment thread June 2, 2008 11:59:00 PM EDT:

The organizers for a Day for Adoptee Rights had absolutely no idea that you were collecting monies for the event from your FaceBook page until Thursday, May 29th. As soon as we were made aware of this, I offered to call you for clarification. We spoke briefly and made an arrangement to speak on the 30th.

and, from the same post, speaking of previous contacts he had had with Abrazo:

You offered to discuss fiscal sponsorship under the aegis of your 501(c)3 status, I tried to reach you at your agency to explore your thinking, left a couple of messages and moved on. Kali and I made the decision that it would have been a bad idea on principle. The issue of you collecting money for us never came up and I am frankly astounded that you went ahead and did it without informing us. I have worked with non-profits and in politics for over twenty-five years and I have never seen anything so lacking in transparency. You could have easily channeled donations from your supporters to our donations page, but when I questioned you on this on Friday you offered the lame excuse that you couldn’t get the link to work. At that point it could have dawned on you to contact us, for all you know there might have been a technical problem that required our attention. Instead, you went your own way.

Bastardette/Marley Greiner on the same comment thread had this to say June 4, 2008 3:36:00 AM:

I/We/Nobody called you about your fund raising scheme, because nobody knew about it. I learned on May 29 with everybody else. Ron says he contacted your office 2-3 times, out of curiosity, after you contacted DAR several months ago, and never heard back from anyone. Naturally, he assumed whatever interest you had in the event was gone. I personally, had no idea that you had contacted DAR organizers at all–any time.

Like Ron, I have never heard of an instance where one group undertakes to raise funds for another group in their name without that group’s knowledge and consent. It is one thing to send potential donors to a direct link where funds are directly donated to the organization or event; it is quite another when money goes into your coffers for later redistribution.

and

First you solicit funds in DAR’s name without their knowledge and consent. Then you continue to do so knowing the problems this has caused DAR, BN, and the adoptee rights movement in general. You continue to raise funds against DAR’s wishes. Finally, you offer to send the collected funds to the AAC or ALMA, which have nothing to do with the DAR event…

and

There are much better and ethical ways to support adoptee rights. The first thing would be to return all funds you collected to their rightful donors.

To say that DAR or BN doesn’t want to work with natural parents, adoptive aparents, etc. is simply not true. We have plenty of both in our membership. But, we are not interested in helping adoption agencies position themselves and market their products and services in OUR movement. And that, is what your fundraising looks like to a helluva lot of people right now. Do you think for one minute that most activists would be interested in supporting an event which the adoption industry has funded? You wonder why adoptees don’t like the adoption industry This is a perfect example.A Day for Adoptee Rights, whether BN participates in it or not, is about adopted persons, not the industry.

(Just a micro post.)

For those following the ARD/DAR mess, this comment thread on Bastardette may help provide some further insight.

It’s one of the few public places where former organizers with with ARD/DAR are interacting with both Abrazo and those currently involved.

This is all on a days old comment thread on Bastard Nation’s withdrawal announcement, yet the thread is still definitely alive as it scrolls down Bastardette’s page.

There are new revelations in these comments and I think it’s important people see them.

I’ve spent the last few days doing shall we say, important real life stuff, (I’m still firmly in the midst of such) while trying to work in time to do things such as a BASIC timeline of how all this went down even from my own limited perspective. Putting that together may ultimately help others put together their own timelines of what they did and what they knew when.

In the midst of that, I’ve been working on the Abrazo Adoption Associates angle, and trying to write my own piece about my own past involvement in the Demonstration for Adoptee Rights, my work to make it a success prior to my resignation, my own deep sadness over it, and the many factors that led to my final decision to resign.

Many people fail to understand that for those of us who faced the excruciating decision to withdraw or to make the decision to resign, we’ve been going through our own ‘mourning’ process over what we signed on for, vs. where things finally ended up. We hurt because we too, wanted for this to be a success. Being almost any active part of the way this unfolded was deeply painful. (More to come on that, as more becomes public.)

I myself, I was backed into a corner, where to stay true to my own ethical parameters I was essentially ‘forced’ into the position of resigning. Amyadoptee’s entanglement with Abrazo, which she did not disclose until well after her initial announcement of Abrazo’s fundraising, and her staying on with the event made it impossible for me for me to work with her, and thus continue working with whatever version of ARD-DAR was going to go forward. This alone was enough.

It was still a distinct issue for me from whether or not Abrazo money was ultimately going to go into the event. Something Amyadoptee pleaded for, something I balked at, and something Bastard Nation had (to my understanding) a standing policy against.

And as a third distinct issue, even worse still, Abrazo money apparently may ALREADY be in the ARD/DAR something I first saw posted publicly on Amyadoptee’s blog:

I know that is not the truth because this agency already contributed to the protest previously…

(dated Monday June 2, 08, 12:42am)

But this was not an issue I was aware of at the time of my resignation. I resigned Friday evening. This was posted publicly Monday.

I had ZERO knowledge of any Abrazo money in ARD/DAR during my time as an organizer. This apparent donation only came to light afterwards. If this is true a whole new set of questions arise.

Suffice it to say, the Abrazo issue from where I sit is ANYTHING BUT resolved.

Friday night, I resigned.

People having not heard from the event in some time, (no website center column update since the tail end of April etc), they were like coiled springs, suspecting something had happened, and yet not hearing any news. When my resignation hit, particularly in not publicly available forums, I got the full blast of people’s fury, which so often didn’t even seem related to the words I was writing, even as I worked to clarify.

You can’t explain to people who won’t listen.

But ultimately the facts have borne me out. I said statements would be forthcoming, they have been. They will continue to.

Those of us who have personally resigned represent decades of political experience, and organizing.

‘Sure’ you argue, ‘all you big ole activist types, and this is all you have to show for it?’ Well folks, real life intervenes:

* health issues arise,

* doing the day to day work on legislation- you know like fighting multiple bills at once?- while fighting in multiple states comes to mind- I was certainly working both Ohio bills this time around,

* the fact that I was only asked to work on ARD/DAR in March,

* the list goes on and on.

Yet keep in mind, no matter how much effort was put into it, ultimately I have no control over whether or not people respond, i.e. do things like register for a hotel room. That’s just outta my hands.

Bottom line is before you jump to conclusions, you might just want to wait a moment and get the whole story.

So yes, we were living our day to day lives, (we are after all human, believe it or not,) and doing this on an all volunteer basis, and in the end (of that phase of ARD/DAR, the period when we were on it, not the now) we spent a few days of sheer hell getting through to where we are now. And yes, those of us who left are if anything, trying to get a grasp on the exact details of how this all came down.

And yet in the midst of all that, yes, there still needs to be at least some form of public explanation of what happened, because we’re certainly not the only ones shocked, hurt, and left feeling betrayed.

What I haven’t had time to even start on is the bare facts of the low enrollment and how critical that was to much of the decision making for many of us.

To once again quote the Bastard Nation Statement on their Organizational Withdrawal:

While many people exhibited an interest in attending all or part of the event, the number of people who actually registered or made a serious commitment to attend was minimal.

That’s putting it damn politely.

Fortunately, my partner, Sleeps with Bastard has a new post up on his blog which I will quote in full:

Stating the Obvious

I commented over on The Daily Bastardette on the circumstances of Bastard Nation’s withdrawal from the “Day for Adoptee Rights.”

I am merely a lifetime member of Bastard Nation and have no formal role with the organization.

–

When an event planner books a block of hotel rooms, and about a month and a half before the event (that’s been talked about for most of a year) a minuscule number of people have made the most minimal effort to pick up the phone and make a fully cancelable hotel reservation – thus signing their name to their intended participation in a way that matters – it is time to decide whether or not the event is viable.

Bastard Nation’s leadership, as far as I can tell, has evaluated the situation and made what I think is the only sane decision.

The actions of Abrazo, while critically important and disturbing in their own way, are distinct from the fact that, at the time the decision was made, nearly nobody was attending, and that’s what the decision had to be based on.

A mailing list of people who may be casually interested in the event, and even a verbal statement that someone hopes to come (which included some organizers of the event but not me/us), is not sufficient to gauge interest. Since there’s no formal registration involving paying a fee as there would be with a conventional conference, this is a reasonable alternative to measure how many people are seriously considering coming, even if some were planning to stay with relatives or friends.

I think it’s obvious that if you’re coming to a conference or other event like this, you first register for the event, and then you book your hotel room. This shows the organizers your intent to do something, because if you don’t you’re going to have to make another call and cancel that hotel room.

I do this all the time. It’s not rocket science.

As he said, and as I blogged here, previously, we had our reservations. We felt it was absolutely crucial to do so.

Ron has said on that same Bastardette comment thread that he would be…

…posting a personal statement on the Day for Adoptee Rights later this week…

Many more details will become public at this point, so once again, I urge the impatient (and the loudmouths flying off the handle) to chill, before speculating further.

Finally, I would point readers to my two comments on my post here for further reading of posts written by the full spectrum, from clueful people, from ARD/DAR organizers, from Abrazo, and from aforementioned loudmouths.

And how did the Barretos end up with them?

What part of the adoption industry was involved in the two actual adoptions?

For new readers, allow me to refer you back to my original post, “Enna, oh Enna! aka When animals outweigh a dead Guatemalan ‘adoptee’.” But for my regular readers, the below is merely an update with a few new details coming out.

Here’s an Enna -centric (and her fellow “adopteed” “siblings”) as opposed to puppy-centric bit of reporting, Marshals, Homeland Security probe Union case, from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, (6/3/08).

Apparently, even homeland security is now looking into the case.

Garner said the Marshals Service wants to determine the immigration status of individuals under investigation or related to the case.

And where these children came from, how they got to the U.S. and their legal status also is the focus of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Barretos themselves are still in Jail.

Ramon Barreto, 29, and Janet Killough Barreto, 36, described as Enna’s adoptive parents, are still in the Union County Jail on seven counts of child endangerment. In addition to Enna, they are parents to Mrs. Barreto’s 17-year-old daughter Marina Torres, a young child of their own and six other “adopted” children from kindergarten-age to 2.

Their attorney, Tony Farese of Ashland, said last week he expected to request a hearing to reduce their bail, set at $50,000 per count each. That hearing has not yet been set. He insisted his clients had nothing to do with the child’s death.

Farese also said he expected charges to be brought against the 17-year-old. Union County Investigator Roger Garner said Monday it’s possible the scope of the case may expand, but how that may occur and who it will involve hasn’t been determined yet.

District Attorney Ben Creekmore has said there’s still a lot of work to do before the direction of the case becomes clearer.

As for the other children, the article goes on to state:

Monday, DHS spokesman Julia Bryan said the children are doing very well in safe environments, although privacy restrictions prevent her from saying any more or whether they are together. Garner confirmed they are doing well.

There was also a New AP piece on the case out today, Couple charged with child endangerment, (6/3/08) though it contains few new details in light of the DJ piece.

Since some people are alleging I didn’t care about the agency involvement, only the low number of potential attendees, I wanted to set the record straight.

(All times in the below are Eastern Standard time)

I told other Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers at 7:38pm Thursday May 29th:

Point blank had I known about the Abrazo aspect to all this I would have resigned.

This deserves a LOT more discussion than it’s going to get in light of it being overshadowed by everything else.

This was mere hours after Amy revealed at 11:13am to us that Abrazo had been fundraising (off our event without our knowledge). She saw nothing wrong with the fundraising, if anything she appeared to think it was wonderful.

My words above are basically my first response after reading the e-mail from Amy, the time delay is real life folks.

At 6:48pm Ron had also said he had made arrangements to talk with Abrazo the following day (Friday May 30th.)

(The below are SOME of my posts about my concerns about Abrazo, others may make it into another blog post at a later date.)

At 11:14pm on the 29th I said:

I will be holding off on my personal decision on involvement until after we hear back from Ron about tomorrow’s phone call with Abrazo.

At 12:06am On Friday May 30th, I said:

Well, I think the agency aspect needs to be addressed. Obviously tomorrow will be the day that happens but I think it’s pretty damn important.

(I also think there are many other issues as well.)

Tonight anyway, I just see people barging ahead as if nothing happened and not addressing what the agency aspect really means.

At 9:30pm Friday May 30th news about the call reached me

At 9:51pm and 10:07 pm I stated my opinion of what I thought we should do.

Then at 11:23pm I resigned.

At 1:43 am May 31, 2008, I placed the following on the adult adoptees forum:

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.

And not long thereafter placed my resignation here on my blog)

Amyadoptee remains proud of her support of Abrazo Adoption Associates and apparently does not believe she did anything wrong despite her own blog post directing people into Abrazo’s facebook fundraising.

Yes, this means a person subscribed to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizer mailing list was simultaneously (See the May 29th 2:33pm date on her post) encouraging donors to give money to the adoption agency itself. (An agency, who was collecting the funds into their own 501c3, using our event without our knowledge or consent at the time.)

This was vastly problematic to some of us.

See her two blog entries:

Regarding Bastard Nation’s Withdrawal

Onto Other Things

To the best of my knowledge she is still currently an organizer with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration.

Abrazo continues to fundraise on facebook. As I am no longer with the Adoptee Rights Demonstration I am not ‘in the know’ to know whether this is now with explicit permission from the current organizers of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration or not.

But even if they now have consent, that most certainly doesn’t change the history nor the circumstances much of that was collected under.

Bastard Nation, my partner Mike/Sleeps with Bastard and I (who were not acting on behalf of any organization in our DAR work, I described myself as a “God Damn Independent” or GDI) as well as others have stepped away from the event in no small part due to the Abrazo involvement.

Once again, quoting the Bastard Nation Withdrawal Statement:

BN has a long-standing, hard-line policy of accepting no support from the adoption industry. Bastard Nation specifically, and the adoptee rights movement in general, cannot and should not be co-opted or used by the adoption industry to promote its own agenda. We disavow all industry involvement in our work. Any entanglement with the adoption industry endangers the integrity and credibility of the adoptee rights movement.

That is close enough to my personal stance. I don’t knowing consent to work with industry money as a matter of personal policy. Particularly an agency the likes of Abrazo Adoption Associates.

Bastard Nation’s statement about their withdrawal from the Adoptee Rights Demonstration is up on the BN Day for Adoptee Rights blog page.

Please read the entire statement.

For those following the details of the involvement of the Abrazo Adoption Agency in San Antonio, Texas, the BN statement includes the following:

Unknown to DAR and BN until just a few days ago, Abrazo has been raising funds for the event in DAR’s name.

LINK

These funds went and continue to go directly to the agency, raising huge ethical issues for Bastard Nation and the equal access movement. Records and identity access is about our rights and has no connection with the marketing schemes of adoption agencies. BN has a long-standing, hard-line policy of accepting no support from the adoption industry. Bastard Nation specifically, and the adoptee rights movement in generally cannot and should not be co-opted or used by the adoption industry to promote its own agenda. We disavow all industry involvement in our work. Any entanglement with the adoption industry endangers the integrity and credibility of the adoptee rights movement.

Although BN solicited funds for our specific DAR activities, the only official fundraising site for DAR is on the DAR site. Do not send funds to any other solicitor.

This speaks very specifically to some of the concerns I had which led in part to my resignation.

For further backgrounder, be sure to see these two links, and in particular the characterizations of the links, that my partner, Sleeps with Bastard, included on his blog entry, a very brief comment concerning adoption:

This is an adoption agency collecting money through a website that makes reference to an “adoptee rights demonstration.” Note on the top of the page that “donations to the cause benefit ABRAZO ADOPTION ASSOCIATES,” the agency itself.

This is a person who is subscribed to an organizer’s mailing list for that same “adoptee rights demonstration,” a list that was set up by the primary organizer of the demonstration. Here she is encouraging donors to give money to that same adoption agency.

As of the time of my resignation “amyadoptee” was still on the invite only Day for Adoptee Rights (DAR) organizers list. I am unaware of her current status/current involvement or lack thereof with DAR.

(This is really only relevant to those on Adult Adoptees, it being a private forum, they have access to my original post reply # 69 at 5:52pm)

After posting to the “adult” adoptees forum in the thread about my resignation from the Adoptee Rights Demonstration, a post in which I included the text from My partner’s Sleeps with Bastard’s post A very brief comment concerning adoption
by way of explanation for some of the factors leading to my resignation, at 6:15 I was given a warning for “attacking members” and my posting privileges were cut.

I responded to the warning (From Joy, an administrator) at 6:33 asking:

I would like to formally request you explain precisely where in the message I “attacked” a member.

If this board has a dispute process, I would like to formally contest this warning.

At 6:39 Joy, the administrator responded:

You linked Amy’s blog in a disparaging way, you are attacking Kali’s work, AND we love them here, we love them. That includes Me, Dory, Addie, Lillie and Stewie. You are disparaging and insulting the reputations of our loved ones. You are spreading nasty rumors about them. This is not acceptable

I can’t believe you don’t get this. You go on about your 2 sentences but 2 sentences are enough.

You claim you are so much better than the rest of us, so why are you slumming?

Honestly, the warning stands.

Personally, my beef is not with Gershom. Let’s make that clear from the start.

As for Amy, all I’ve ever done is link to information she herself put out on her own blog. Is it “disparaging” to show her own work on behalf of Abrazo’s fundraising, when she herself is proud of it? I think not.

Much as there are certainly more details involved here about the Abrazo fundraising, they are not public knowledge and you would have to talk with both current and former Adoptee Rights Demonstration organizers to get the full story. My partner and I have only pointed to what information is publicly available.

This is not an attack on Gershom, this is about the involvement of the agency’s (Abrazo’s) fundraising and the involvement of Amy with the agency and its fundraising, something she proudly trumpets on her on blog.

I have resigned as the Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights March/Protest Volunteer Trainer and Head Monitor.

My partner and I will not be in New Orleans this July.