The Adoptee Rights Demonstration

From the hotel to the park, from both outside and inside the convention center, there were no lack of cameras in beautiful Philadelphia last week, as evidenced by the ever growing collections of photos being posted online.

There are collections on multiple Facebook profiles, as well as the Philadelphia Adoptee Rights Demonstration fanpage.

There are pictures on Myspace….

… and on Flickr too.

The slide shows have started to appear on YouTube.

An upbeat Rocky ensemble by Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy:

And a slide show that deserves respect by a 13 year old girl named Reanna. I won’t embed this here because the essay she wrote in the description needs to be read in it’s entirety. A brief quote:

Right now, adoptees have raised-seal birth certificates stating that the information give is true. In fact, the information can be very wrong. The parents given on the birth certificate are the adopted parents names. The birthdate can also be amended and be given as true on the birth certificate. Could you imagine celebrating your birthday on the wrong day for all your life?

There were state legislators in Philadelphia last week who were not aware of this, yet a 13 year old is able to articulate it.  You can visit Reanna’s slide show here.

The blog posts have started to appear:  at Musings of the Lame and Surviving Adoption Loss.

Notes on Facebook contain people’s memories of the day. Mary Anne Parker-Hancock of New York reports:

In spite of the rain, about 75 people met up with signs (made during an exhausting fun sign-making party last night) and marched several blocks to the convention center, where legislators from all states are having their annual convention.

We had many honks from drivers along the way, lots of thumbs-up signals from passers-by, and lots of people stopping us to ask questions. Diane and Matt led us with “You’ve got yours,” to which we responded, “We want ours!” Okay, technically I shouldn’t have replied, because I wasn’t adopted, which means I DO have my birth certificate.

The highlight of the morning was a group of about 50 high school students waiting outside a building for their tour bus to pick them up. I stopped and told them why we were marching: “Adults who were adopted when they were kids don’t have access to their birth certificates. They’re sealed. Adoptees are issued false birth certificates instead, so they don’t know who they really are — they don’t know the first chapter of their lives.” My explanation was met with an explosion of “WHAT?!” and “You’re kiddin’ me!” and “That totally sucks” and “That’s bogus!” and one little “I’m adopted!” As we continued on, several shouted, “You go, miss!”

A few minutes later, as we were headed back up the street, the group had moved toward the bus, which had just arrived to pick them up. They cheered for us, and then one young guy shouted, “Hey, wait a minute — ONE, TWO, THREE–” and the others responded, “O-B-C!!” (“OBC” means “original birth certificate.”) We felt very cheered and emboldened by this, of course! It was wonderful to hear. They did it two more times and we all cheered together. I loved it.

Thank you again to everyone who came and all who supported over the past eight months! Please keep an eye on www.AdopteeRights.net over the next few weeks for updates, reports from inside the convention center and further details from Philly. More to come!

Tags:   adoptee rights · Adoptee Rights Demonstration · Adoptee Rights Protest · philadelphia · philly · protest · the adoptee rights demonstration4 Comments