As Activists and Fighters in the US for Adoption Justice

As the oldest country, the “Gold Standard” of International Adoptions, Korea also has the largest and oldest population of international adult adoptees as Koreans have been coming over since John Holt brought in the first batch in the 1950’s.

In 1999, the Gathering of the First Generation of Adult Korean Adoptees occurred. This followed by organizations of adoptee groups; Global Overseas Adoptee’ Link (GOA’L), Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK) and then reunited birthparents formed Dandelions; Adoptees Families of Origin.  In 2007, Jane Jeong Trenka formed Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK) while my good Friend Richard Boas formed Korean Unwed Mother’s Support Network ( KUMSN). This was followed by a forum for the Korean unwed mothers called Miss Mama Mia in 2009 which became Korean Unwed Mother’s Family Association (KUMFA). And then sometime in there was also KoRoot, the guest house for returning Korean Adoptees,  and the KoRoot fund.

Got it? Me neither.

In fact, I hadn’t been paying as much attention as I should have. Again, I am tahnkful that I read ThE Child Catchers and learned about what is happening right now.

That’s not the point; whether you or I were aware of what is happening in Korea. Now we are. The point is that like the USA, there are whole slew of different adoption groups with different goals, run by different people; adoptees, adoptive parents, birthmothers… Very much like the US groups today: Bastard Nation ( BN) , Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA), Adoptee Rights Coalition (ARC), ALARM Network, American Adoption Congress(AAC), Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), Origins USA(OUSA),  Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative (BSERI), Origins America…and then the MANY smaller regional groups..

So What’s the Difference Between the Korean Adoption Groups and the US Adoption Groups?

They work TOGETHER! We fight EACH OTHER.

Does it matter? Yes.

In 2008, TRACK set it’s sites on the single goal of reforming the 1961 Special Adoption law and they PARTNERED with KUMFA, KoRoot, ASK and the Dandelions.

And guess what happened?

They called for revisions to the bill, fought to have members of the COALITION be part of the group drafting revisions. The bill was introduced in 2010, passed in 2011 and was in 2012. Another bill was introduced in 2011 that gives MORE protection to unwed Korean mothers. Are you ready for this?

By 2015, adoption agencies in Korea will NO LONGER be allowed to run unwed mothers facilities, mothers MUST have one week AFTER giving birth before they relinquish and single mothers get additional support to parent.

In contrast, almost every single one of the US adoption groups supports OBC access for adult adoptees and has, for the most part, since they were begun..some in the 1970’s.  They made more progress in 5 years in Korean than we have managed to do in the past 40 plus years in the USA.

Because they worked together.

Can I say that again? They work together. And now, I shall rant.

WTF is WRONG with the Adoption Advocacy and Support Groups in the USA?

I drives me out of my mind that we can’t stop the infighting long enough to make a freaking change.  It’s like every group wants to be THE ONE to make something happen. No one seems to want to WORK TOGETHER, but sees the other groups as competition somehow.  There are these, I don’t know, pissing wars and territorial haggling. And mistrust because everyone is just so fucked up by adoption.  Or we fight about terminology use. Or then there are these decades old feuds between strong voices, who waste their energy fighting each other.  Or some other moral line in the sand that people won’t cross.

And the thing is….every group HAS a function and the functions are actually different. Yet the goals are still the same overall.

Instead of everyone trying to do their own thing completely, we would so much better be able to get things done if it was acknowledged that each group has its own unique purpose and way of doing so and they all work as they need be.

• Like ARC DOES focus on the public demonstration and state lobbing as an educational awareness for the state legislators that gets followed up by the state groups.
• ALRAM’s focuses on a national awareness.
• BN CAN be the alert system, veto watchdog, news source.
• EBD IS the provider of research.
• ACC IS THE big adoption conclave of a conference where ALL come together; plus unifies the state groups.
• Origins America & the BSERI ARE working on the apology for the forced adoption mother’s.
• OUSA is trying to be the place where mothers who want to be activists do something.
• CUB is providing a support system and local groups, plus the mother’s retreat

…..but the same final belief, the same final goal.. open records. And that’s good because adoption is super complex and we are all doing this on nothing and no one group CAN be EVERYTHING TO EVERYBODY.

Which is good, because if there is one other thing that we ALL should be able to agree on is that people come to adoption education, searches and truth at different points in their lives and with different skill sets. Not every person affected by adoption is going to find that they are comfortable in every group, so it is good that different voices band together. Still, we can all share the knowledge and support each other.

We don’t need all the groups to conform to the same standards. We don’t need to all use the SAME EXACT language. We don’t need all the groups to use the SAME methods.

And Now I Shame Us All

But we can’t even LINK  to each other. Seriously.  When I was on the BOD of OUSA, we would NOT link to other sites. The thought there was that “we don’t want other people to go to other places, we want to provide everything to them”.  And then there is this “web policy” from the AAC. Guys, I have your logo all over the place and I am NOT asking to use it. BN seems to link to NO ONE. And NO one links to the ARC.  I can go on and on.

Does that keep people from knowing about each group? It sure does. It also says to the person looking for help that perhaps this site is NOT the end and all be all one, since they don’t seem to know the other groups. So much for being a resource. Which is silly because I know for a fact that for the longest time the most used page on my blog was the lists for other blogs.  So what if they came to me to find more. They came to me and used the lists. It was there to HELP them. And isn’t that what all the groups are for??

Or are we here to make ourselves feel important? Is it ego? Who is the adoption King or Queen. Or just ONE of us gets to say “I opened the records!!” and the rest of us will bow down and lick the shoes you walk on?  Coz I know we are not in it for the big bucks!

I just keep seeing a world where instead of competing for attention we all help channel the right people toward the right events at the right times together. Instead we fight over members like mothers fighting over who gets called mom.

And Korea will surpass the United states in ten years in adoption reform while we sit for 50 years fighting over terminology.

Yes, On My High Horse

I’m sorry. It just makes me crazy.  I see so much potential. I see so much possibility.  And then I see great ideas and wonderful intentions fall apart, sometimes on a large scale, sometimes on a small scale, but over and over.. disagreements get emotional because sometimes it seems that everyone is so triggered, so guarded, so untrusting, so polarized. We get hurt, we lose the wind out of our sails, we lick our wounds and go home. And things don’t change on the scale that we need them to.

And I’m not saying I don’t GET it. I do. I really do. I am just as guilty as the next person of getting discouraged, or dropping the ball, of avoiding conflicts and, at times, walking away and taking a break. My feelings have gotten hurt. My ideas dismissed or my intentions taken the wrong way.  I am sure that there are people about there that will think that I am in this for something I’m not: attention, recognition, glory?  I won’t hesitate to say that there are folks who would accuse me of the very same egotistical needs or something. I don’t know. The thing is I don’t look for drama. And I am not going to care what people do not care to say to my face. I am just going to try to continue doing my best to help anyone I can.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

And I don’t expect this to be some rally cry that creates a miracle. I know I am not organized enough to demand that an adoption consensus comes together and make that happen.  What I am good at is that: making noise, making the connections. I know how to use the internet to market us.

Sometimes, I just have to rant about that frustration. Reading The Child Catchers, seeing what the Churches are doing in adoption, making my mind bubble with ideas, hit this brick wall of this frustration. For years now, I keep on saying that we could do so much more, reach so many more, be so much more, if only we helped and supported each other.

Worked together. Like Korea. Because then change happens.

This is a four part series of blog posts inspired by reading Kathryn Joyce’s adoption book “The  Child Catchers- Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption”.