Known globally as one of America’s most prominent and inspiring civil rights leaders, Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr twice ran for US president. He has died at 84.

Throughout his lifetime, he fought to promote social justice, economic equality and political empowerment for marginalised communities — and worked hard to encourage voter uptake from the disillusioned and excluded.

Little wonder he was outspoken against the South African apartheid regime and on Palestine. His six children described their father as a “servant leader”.

When I think of Jesse Jackson, I recall the iconic image of him standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in 1968, moments before his mentor Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated.

I visited the site over a year ago. Now transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum, it documents the Jim Crow era both men were born into; where segregation and racism was formally normalised.

The interactive display was both moving and disturbing. It was also hopeful; a reminder of people-power movements led by those shaped by a Baptist church culture that grew the most compelling orators.

I have a personal memory of meeting Jesse Jackson one special afternoon many years ago in New York, while travelling with Deirdre Nehua and Syd Jackson.

Fearless treaty activist
Syd, one of our most fearless unionists and treaty activists, passed away in 2007. Both men were intelligent, witty and passionately Kaupapa-driven; powerful speakers who used their gifts and life experience to build movements at home and beyond.

They marched and organised sit-ins. They spoke out when it wasn’t popular, put their hands up when others hesitated. They got off the fence and made a difference.

We were introduced by a mutual friend as “Māori activists from New Zealand”. A puzzled Jesse gazed at Uncle Syd.

“Where did you get that slave name from, my brother?”

Deirdre and I glanced at each other. Uncle Syd responded with a deft explanation that referred to his Welsh whakapapa and included the words both “rugby” and “colonisation”.

Afterwards, the three of us bounced around New York beaming. We’d met an inspirational leader and he now knew “Māori brothers and sisters at the bottom of the South Pacific” were in the same waka; fighting the good fight.

In the many tributes to Jesse Jackson, I noted the odd commentator described him as a “populist”. It’s a term that conjures up those who frame themselves as saviours by fomenting division and exploiting fear.

Inclusive and reformist
Yet Jesse was inclusive and a reformist. Their point was about how he built coalitions that brought African Americans, Latinos, unions, rainbow communities, poor whites and working class together to fight for basic human rights inside the existing system. It’s said he frequently used his platforms to highlight Native American and Indigenous-led causes.

This week The Washington Post noted how colleges in the US are dismantling affirmative action stategies designed to overcome restrictions on participation due to race or income. Back here, calls have been made for a referendum on electorates set up to specifically provide a voice for signatories to Te Tiriti, in a system not designed by or for them.

Next week, a champion who railed against inequality will be laid to rest in his beloved Chicago. For us in Aotearoa, it’s an opportunity to reflect on his coalition-building record in this era of division and truly look around; to understand who and what the real threat to our sense of nationhood truly is.

A man of faith and hope, Jesse Jackson’s words are as relevant now as they ever were. Words matter. So does his call to action.

“It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.”

Moe mai ra e te Rangatira.

Moana Maniapoto MNZM is an Aotearoa New Zealand singer, songwriter and documentary maker, and presenter of Te Ao With Moana. This article was first published on the Te Ao FB page and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The violence surrounding protests against the visit of Israel’s president was not an accident of crowd control. It reflects a deeper political failure – where authority suppresses dissent rather than confronting uncomfortable truths about Gaza, protest rights and democratic responsibility.

In official explanations of violence outside Sydney Town Hall on Monday evening, February  9, it sounds as though police were only trying to maintain public safety through various professional measures taken against the thousands outraged that President Isaac Herzog of Israel, charged with incitement to commit genocide, should be in the country.

Those explanations are false. Behind the extensive police powers to control and suppress protest lies a cancerous-like cowardice, facilitated by a cornered Prime Minister and by an Israeli sympathising, authoritarian NSW Premier.

Cowardice can be nurtured by pleasure in dominating, by fear of losing control, by being frightened to face truths, by deceits in pretending that all is well when it manifestly is not.

Restricting protests in order to stifle concern about slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank, or the PM asking the Australian public to “turn the temperature down” so that justifiable outrage about the Bondi massacres will deflect attention from an ongoing genocide in Palestine, is a cowardly technique.

And the PM is not the worst offender, even though government cowardice began when wedged by the Zionist Federation into supporting their invitation to the Israeli President.

Who runs the show you might ask?

Suppression-oriented Premier Chris Minns delegates responsibility for his anti-protest laws to the chief of NSW police who is happy to oblige. In and out of uniform, cowards appear as strong men, usually men, who like to manhandle or beat up people.

There is no manliness in the police thuggery witnessed in Sydney streets on Monday.

Facile Premier Minns – or is he just naive – with no recognition of his own hypocrisy, says on Tuesday’s news “NSW police are not punching bags”. His holier than thou stance is shown alongside a man held down by police who are punching him repeatedly in the kidneys.

We then switch to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, in Federal Parliament describing police action in general, “what the police were trying to do was sensible”.

As if thuggery on one man is insufficient, other police punch Greens MP Abigail Boyd in the head and shoulder, knock her over and are completely indifferent to her explanations of who she was and the civil and legal reasons for her presence at a legitimate, peaceful protest.

Cameras switch to police apparently unaware that their presence increases conflict, comprehending little, annoyed, then angry at the sight Moslem citizens in prayer on public pavements.

Then we witness no rationality, no civility, only the raw emotions of cowards not getting their way. The men kneeling in prayer are seen being picked up, removed and thrown aside. We’ll never know if deep-seated prejudice affected police conduct, but the question should be raised.

On Tuesday, the mood of thuggery on the streets moved to the House of Representatives when a Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown inquired of the Prime Minister whether the invitation to the President of Israel had undermined the unity of the country, whether the PM would condemn police violence and send Herzog home.

In response, before the Prime Minister could answer, the opposition benches found a unity which had eluded them for months.

United in their apparent support for Israeli slaughter in Gaza, wanting to be seen to be brave in their dislike of protest about Herzog, and apparently unable or unwilling to know much about genocide continuing during a ceasefire, one of the esteemed members of the newly reformed Coalition, was heard to advise colleagues as to how to deal with the Greens MP.

“Rip her apart,” he was reported as saying. It sounds as though this was exactly what he said. Asked by the Speaker to withdraw his comment, the offending MP did so.

But further support for cowardice camouflaged by thuggery was not far away. Keen to revive his image as macho man at large, former Prime Minister Tony Abbot recommended that police accused of punching protesters should receive a commendation and in future be armed with tear gas and be able fire rubber bullets.

Abbot would never regard himself as a coward but when denial of the existence of a genocide, a failure to face truths, is being multiplied by cowardice evident in acceptance of authoritarianism as the way to conduct politics, policing and even techniques for debate, there should be cross party and widespread public concern.

To meet the Prime Minister’s requests to lower the temperature, the country needs to replace the cowardice with sufficient courage to admit the truths about a genocide, the truths about the values of freedom of speech and the right to protest.

Cowardice may be disguised by violence but is demeaning.

Courage is a way to speak truths. Courageous action can be mentally and physically life enhancing, encourages justice, depicts what Bertolt Brecht called “the bread of the people” and in current Australian culture could infect almost everyone and lower the temperature. Try it.

Dr Stuart Rees AM is professor emeritus at the University of Sydney and recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize. This article was first published in Pearls and Irritations: John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In this the seventh episode of A View from Afar podcast for 2023 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning examine the strengths and weaknesses of democracy around the world.

In particular Paul and Selwyn consider how and why democracy in many countries around the world is on the slide.

They examine the causes of democratic backsliding and also test why the erosion of high democratic ideas have, in many cases, popular support.

First, Paul offers a context, and defines democratic backsliding. He identifies the countries that are decisively eroding their own democracies of principles that were once embraced by both power elites and citizenry.

The Questions include:

• Why are we seeing more democratic backsliding in recent times?
• Is it just a political phenomenon or does it extend beyond the political sphere?
• Where has democratic backsliding been most evident?
• What do Chile, Guatemala, Israel and Thailand have in common when it comes to backsliding?
• What is occurring in the United States?
• If a democracy “backslides,” what does it slide into?

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recordings of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

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The Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting has ended and what is intriguing is the deafening silence on declining standards of democracy, governance, human rights, media freedom and freedom of speech issues, despite the serious and arguably worsening situation in some regional countries.

The emphasis on climate change is necessary and welcome. However, to deal effectively with climate adaptation and build climate-resilient infrastructure, countries have to mobilise large amounts of resources.

Whether these resources are effectively used will depend on standards of governance, transparency and accountability. Without these, efforts to deal with the climate change emergency will be fraught with difficulties and wastage of resources.

In any case, not everything can be reduced to climate change, which too often becomes a convenient way of avoiding other hard issues and diverting attention from domestic issues. And we do have other important pressing issues, such as media rights and freedom of expression, that deserve a hearing at the highest levels of this august body, but these were conveniently swept under the “sensitive topic” carpet, or so it seems.

Human rights — including freedom of speech — underpin all other rights, and it is unfortunate that this Forum failed in its moral obligation to send out a strong message of its commitment to upholding these rights.

Australia and New Zealand are regarded as the doyens of human rights and media freedom in the region, and their leaders’ presence at the Forum presented an opportunity to send a strong signal to member countries about the sanctity of these values — but the moment passed without any statement.

Anthony Albanese and Jacinda Ardern could have taken the initiative and spoken out about these issues of their own accord, but they didn’t, thus giving some credence to voices that claim that when it comes to the Forum, Australia and New Zealand are preoccupied with their own strategic interests first, and the interests of Pacific Island countries second.

Avoiding ‘unpalatable topics’
Towards this end, the two leaders from the Western world seemed at pains to avoid topics deemed unpalatable to their Pacific Island counterparts, seemingly over fears of pushing them further into the arms of China.

This includes an apparent fear of upsetting Fiji, which has had a draconian and punitive Media Act in place since 2010. There are also concerns in Fiji about the independence of important offices, such as the Electoral Commission, which are especially pressing in an election year.

The Fiji government is also denying the rights of thousands of tertiary students to access good quality education by withholding more than FJ$80 million (NZ$50 million) in grants to the University of the South Pacific.

Reportedly, during the meetings last week only the Prime Minister of Samoa, Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, called on the Fiji government to release the grant.

Australia and New Zealand’s silence has given rise to criticism that they are practising the politics of convenience rather than principle and have lost moral ground in the Pacific region.

Appeasing autocratic leaders in our region as a strategy against China is not only unconscionable, it is also short-sighted and counterproductive.

A restrictive and undemocratic environment, where the media are suppressed and the people are denied a voice, is advantageous for China. It is thus in Australia and New Zealand’s best interests to fight against such trends by being vocal about them, instead of silent.

Appeasement not best strategy
The sooner Australia and New Zealand realise that appeasement is not the best strategy, the better it will be for them and for the region. If we are vuvale (one family) as Australia says, then we should look at our collective interest, rather than individual interests only.

Unfortunately, the Forum Secretariat chose not to invite the parliamentary opposition leaders in Fiji to any of the meeting’s events, even though they represent a sizable proportion of the country’s population.

This was another missed opportunity to get a fuller picture of the situation in Fiji instead of the official version only. It leads to a partial and poor understanding of what is happening, which is hardly the basis for sound decision-making.

As leaders of democracies, Australia and New Zealand need to move away from a self-centred approach, and adopt a more conscientious, long-term outlook in the region.

As it stands, in their preoccupation with and fear of China they seem to be losing sight of the goal. Australia and New Zealand should never compromise on governance and human rights and freedom of speech, the building blocks of democracy in the region.

Dr Biman Prasad is an adjunct professor at James Cook University and Punjabi University, and is currently a Member of Parliament and leader of the National Federation Party in Fiji. He is a former professor of economics and dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of the South Pacific. This article was first published by DevPolicy Blog and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Advocates warn that the the involvement of the Indonesian military (TNI) in a food estate programme initiated by the government last year may enable potential human rights violations.

“Military deployment will be followed by the act of securing land grabbing, for example,” said rights NGO Imparsial director Gufron Mabruri in an online discussion this week.

“There is the potential for human rights violations to occur, especially if the community resists and confronts the security forces.”

Such potential for human rights violations, Mabruri said, was confirmed by the absence of any accountable mechanism, Mabruri said.

The TNI has its own military court to prosecute members suspected of committing crimes.

However, the military court is closed to the public and is seen as a shield for impunity in many cases.

‘Separatist’ stigma a problem
Mabruri also warned that the stigma of Papuans as alleged “separatists” should be taken into consideration when putting the national soldiers on civil programmes.

“Moreover, armed groups in Papua are now labeled as terrorist organisations. This will make things escalate quickly when there is a conflict between the TNI and the community,” he said.

He suggested President Joko Widodo and the House of Representatives evaluate all military engagement practices in various sectors because it would weaken civil institutions.

Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher M. Haripin also said that the involvement of the military in the food estate project was very problematic, as seen in past involvement.

“Some might think that this is too presumptuous because the military situation has changed. However, for me even now, the military is still very problematic and we cannot put aside our past history and our present concerns,” Haripin said.

Indeed, ever since it was launched last year until now, the food estate programme has been under heavy criticism, especially with the involvement of the military in its implementation.

“There is the risk of creating ‘khaki capital’, or the political economy of the military, in the TNI-supported food estate,” he said.

“Corporations earn profits while soldiers ensure that everything goes according to plan,” he said.

Arjuna Pademme is a Tabloid Jubi reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The criminalisation of activists — including those in West Papua — in 2019 and 2020 has been cited as one of the factors for the decline in the quality of democracy in Indonesia.

Based on a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), democracy in Indonesia scored its worst figure ever with a score of 6.3 and was placed 64th out of 167 countries.

Advocacy Team for Democracy (TAUD) member Teo Reffelsen said that the criminalisation of activists contributed to Indonesia’s poor record on civil freedoms.

“It has been marked by the criminalisation of expression and public opinion, through to repressive actions ridden with violence,” said Reffelsen in a media release, reports CNN Indonesia.

Between 2019 and 2020, said Reffelsen, TAUD recorded at last 10 incidents of the criminalisation of activists in Indonesia.

This included six Papuan activists — Watchdoc founder and senor journalist Dandhy Dwi Laksono, Jakarta State University (UNJ) sociologist Robertus Robet, musician Ananda Badudu, Papua Student Alliance (AMP) lawyer and human rights activist Veronica Koman and public policy activist Ravio Patra.

Also, 5198 demonstrators were arrested during the protests against the Omnibus Law on Job Creation in September and October 2019, Save Indonesia Action Coalition (KAMI) activists Syahganda Nainggolan and Jumhur Hidayat along with Banda Aceh Syiah Kuala University lecturer Saiful Mahdi.

12 cases in 2021
In 2021, TAUD recorded at last 12 cases of criminalisation of activists. Two of these cases were related to senior state officials, namely Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko and Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

“The criminalisation of two Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) researchers, Egi [Primayogha] and Miftah, threats of criminalisation against [rights activist] Haris Azhar from the Lokataru [Foundation] and Fatia Maulidiyanti from Kontras [Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence],” wrote Reffelsen.

Reffelsen also said they found several cases of attacks on civil freedoms in the form of doxing or attacks in digital space against people who were critical of the government such as those suffered by Ravio Patra and critical online media Tempo.co and Tirto.id.

“The [police] cyber patrols which were legitimised by an instruction by the Indonesian police chief is another example,” said Reffelsen.

Apart from civil freedoms, another factor was that it appeared as if the government lacked the involvement of public participation in policy formulation.

The enactment to revisions to the Corruption Eradication Commission Law, the Omnibus Law and other legislation were examples.

Another aspect was actions by law enforcement agencies such as the judiciary which were seen as corrupt and the lack of seriousness on the part of the government to resolve human rights violations.

“The decline in Indonesia’s democratic index is in keeping with TAUD’s findings on the ground, primarily in relation to civil freedoms which have shrunk,” said Reffelsen.

Translated by James Balowski for Indoleft News. The original title of the article was “Kriminalisasi Aktivis Disebut Buat Indeks Demokrasi Menurun”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Three Citizenships

The concept of ‘citizenship’ has both general and specific meanings.

The most specific and familiar I call passport citizenship. A passport citizen of a country is a person holding a passport for that country, or with unambiguous entitlement to hold such a passport. More than anything a passport is a travel document, so passport citizenship largely defines a person’s travel rights.

A child can be a passport citizen. And it is possible for a person to hold multiple passport citizenships.

The second concept is political citizenship, which is essentially suffrage, the right to vote. Thus, political citizenship is a democratic concept. A ‘dependent child’ cannot be a political citizen, though the definition of ‘dependent child’ may differ in different countries. (For this discussion, a child is a non-adult; a person can only be an adult or a dependent child.) It is possible for a person to hold multiple political citizenship, even if a person holds just one passport citizenship. For example, an Australian-born adult resident in New Zealand – as a ‘permanent resident’ of New Zealand – is a political citizen of both Australia and New Zealand; many such people only carry Australian passports.

An ordinary adult resident of a non-democratic country is a passport citizen, but not a political citizen. In New Zealand, a person in prison for more than three years is not a current political citizen, but is a passport citizen (albeit with highly constrained travel rights!). Political citizenship confers political rights.

The third concept is economic citizenship. At present, while economic citizenship has no formal definition, it is a very important concept. In summary, economic citizenship confers economic rights; and an adult person without economic rights is either a slave or an Orwellian unperson. Economic citizenship is not a new phrase; the term was used, for example, during the later years (1933 to 1935) of the Great Depression in New Zealand. (Refer, Malcolm McKinnon, The Broken Decade, p.291.)

As with political rights, economic rights are held by adults. In New Zealand at present, different economic rights come at different ages: 16 the right to own property and to marry; 18 the right to a normal benefit and to drink alcoholic beverages; 20 the right to inherit property; 24 the right to a student allowance. 18 is probably the most important age determining adulthood, because that’s when a parent ceases to be able to claim Family Tax Credits, Child Support, or Sole Parent Support. While, for sometime in the future I am comfortable with 16 being the age that defines adulthood, overall 18 would appear to be the age that in New Zealand best defines adulthood at present. In particular, the age of adulthood represents the commencement of both political and economic rights, and personal responsibility.

The appropriate definition of economic citizenship is firstly that an economic citizen is an adult. Secondly, every adult in the world is by definition a current economic citizen of one and only one country.

Thus, once a person is determined to be an adult, the only matter of interest to a country’s bureaucracy is which country that person is an economic citizen of. Thus, an adult born in Paraguay but living in New Zealand would have either ‘Paraguay’ or ‘New Zealand’ listed in their economic citizenship box; not ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Economic Citizenship

The concept of economic citizenship works best when all countries are on the same page. Thus, all adults in the world would have defined economic rights associated with the country of their economic citizenship. Of course, in a transitional world where the concept is new, it is inevitable that some countries will develop their economic rights ahead of other countries, just as some countries lagged in granting political rights. For example, Switzerland only granted women political citizenship in the 1970s.

Any adult living and working in New Zealand and only paying taxes in New Zealand clearly qualifies as an economic citizen of New Zealand. And they can only cease to be an economic citizen of New Zealand when they become an economic citizen of another country; thus, they do not cease to be economic citizens if they become unemployed. Further, adults who come to reside in New Zealand because their partners or ‘adult children’ are New Zealand economic residents become economic residents of New Zealand when they relinquish economic rights in their country of origin.

This means that many people who are passport citizens or political citizens of other countries are nevertheless economic citizens of New Zealand. And these people continue to be economic citizens of New Zealand, even when they visit their country of origin or any other country. Further, all economic citizens of New Zealand should have an equal and unqualified right to enter New Zealand. Any denial of the right of an economic citizen to be in New Zealand is the equivalent of deportation. (And we note that nobody should ever be deported to a country which is experiencing war, pestilence, or famine.) Any adult who has an agreed time limit on their economic citizenship – eg a term or condition on their visa – reverts to being an economic citizen of their country of origin, but only so long as they are able to re-acquire economic rights in their country of origin. (Inability to transfer economic rights could be a lack of transportation to that country, or pestilence in that country.)

Where a working visa expires and there is disagreement – eg a New Zealand economic citizen is stranded overseas, or where economic citizens in New Zealand are unable to undertake economic citizenship elsewhere – then they continue to be New Zealand economic citizens.

Where a person runs a business in another country but has residential rights in New Zealand (indeed may have a family resident in New Zealand), that person would normally be an economic citizen of the other country. That person’s partner, however, may be an economic citizen of New Zealand. A person can only be an economic citizen of one country at a time. Further, all dependent children of New Zealand economic citizens have the same residential rights as their parent(s).

There is a special case of ‘swallows’, or seasonal workers who regularly work in one country for a part of each year, and live in another country for the other part. Such people – and there are many Pacific-born people in New Zealand who are swallows – should be able to arrange seasonal transfers of economic citizenship. Thus, Tongan-born seasonal workers stranded in New Zealand should be classed as New Zealand economic citizens until they are able to resume Tongan economic citizenship.

The key principle of economic citizenship is that a person can only cease to be an economic citizen of one country if they can practically become an economic citizen of another country.

Economic citizenship gives a person economic rights in one country. Thus, in a civilised world, no adult human being can have no economic rights. (The economic rights of dependent children are implicit, through their parents’ duty of care to their children.) Economic rights can be transferred, but not extinguished.

Denizens

We may note that any person who is an economic citizen of the country they live in, but is not a political citizen, is thus a denizen. For example, most New Zealand born economic residents of Australia are denizens of Australia, and political citizens of New Zealand. While they pay taxes in Australia, they vote for parliamentarians in New Zealand.

Economic Rights – Duty of Care

The essential economic right is ‘duty of care’, including the right to a return on shared equity. I will formalise the latter right as the conceptual right to an economic dividend as a public property right. Economic citizens hold collective ownership of a country’s collective economic resources, including a share of their country’s share of global collective resources.

Thus, the most important economic right is one that no country has yet granted in a formal sense, but most countries do in an informal sense. This is the right to an economic dividend.

The most practical way to think through this is to note that all countries currently pay their economic citizens a formal weekly dividend of $0.00. Thus, we create the concept of a formal dividend as a conceptual placeholder. Next, we can think about how different countries exercise their duty of care towards their citizens and denizens.

On this, I will note the concept of ‘social security’ as synonymous with ‘duty of care’. There is an accepted understanding that all people who belong in a community have a right to some share of that community’s benefits. We may extend the word ‘community’ to society, where ‘society’ can be understood as a national community. We expect that an unemployed person in Norway has a higher material standard of living than an unemployed person in Ukraine, even though neither has a job. And we expect that a minimum wage worker in Norway has a higher standard of living than a minimum wage worker in Ukraine, despite the fact that both may be doing much the same job. In both cases, the Norwegians are receiving higher social dividends than the Ukrainians; even if in neither case their dividends are called ‘dividends’.

What happens is that unemployed Norwegians receive bigger welfare ‘transfers’ than unemployed Ukrainians. And Norwegian Workers receive higher wages (and income tax concessions that come with their wages) than do Ukrainian workers. Part of each Norwegian’s wage is in reality a payment that reflects productivity rather than effort. The main source of higher productivity in Norway is more capital – public capital and private capital – per person resident in Norway. Part of the wage of the Norwegian worker and the benefit of the Norwegian beneficiary is in reality a ‘public equity dividend’, reflecting the public capital contribution to productivity. Likewise, the Ukrainian worker and the Ukrainian beneficiary; it’s just that the Ukrainian dividend is much less than the Norwegian dividend.

In each country there may be people who miss out on these implicit dividends, because they have ‘fallen through the cracks’. A formal non-zero public equity dividend means that no economic citizen falls through the cracks. It’s mainly an accounting matter to formalise the public equity dividend, noting that for most people they already receive it as a part of something else. The reform process may be called ‘account and fill’ – properly accounting for those who do get it, and filling in the cracks for those who don’t.

Presently – in New Zealand and elsewhere – the formal weekly dividend is $0.00. Following an ‘account and fill’ reform, the formal weekly dividend will rise above $0.00. Once that is done, the important discussion about how big or small the dividend should be can then take place. I have suggested elsewhere that the most practical starting level in New Zealand is $175 per week, payable as an economic right to all economic citizens of New Zealand. (Refer to my Universal Income Flat Tax: the Mechanism that Makes the Necessary Possible.)

Addendum: Foreign Lives Matter

In modern political discourse, the biggest taboo of all is to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin, or any other identity attribute. That is, so long as the person is a political or passport citizen of a country.

But it is open season to discriminate against economic citizens based on their immigration status. Governing attitudes make it a requirement to think of people who are not political citizens as foreigners, and that foreign lives are inconsequential. There is an ugly new nationalism building around the world, and I sadly note that New Zealand’s political leadership is contributing to that new nationalism. The message going out to economic citizens of New Zealand who are political citizens of South American nations is that they should ‘go home’ to countries that are currently the continental epicentre of a hugely consequential pandemic. (It is no better than the President of a foreign country a few years ago telling political citizens of African descent that they could ‘go back to where they came from’.)

New Zealand – like any other country – has a duty towards its economic citizens. It is not appropriate to narrow the definition of those to whom New Zealand has a duty of care towards, cynically allowing people to fall through the cracks. The cost of abstaining from that duty is much greater than the cost of meeting it. The cost is not in money; after all, money is a social technology. The cost is in lost care, in lost employment opportunities, in lives adrift. So long as New Zealand has access to food and labour, New Zealanders do not give up anything of substance in order to provide for all of those economic citizens ‘who are us’.

Further, New Zealand can provide support to others that might not be us, but who are close to us. What are we doing for our Pacific neighbours? Samoan lives matter. Fijian Lives matter. Tongan lives matter.

While New Zealand has no special obligation towards other countries – other than neighbours such as these – New Zealanders should not be asked to not care about foreign lives.

1960 was a big year for my adopting parents. First came the infertility diagnosis. Then a new baby arrived with little warning and no fanfare. Followed within days by a new refrigerator.

I was one of over 103,000 New Zealand babies forcibly removed from my single mother. Her dying mother sent her to the doctor’s house with a couple of months to spare. The generous Dr Gerald Gleeson put her to work cleaning and scrubbing. Weeks before I was born he promised me away to the “an attractive young couple who belong to the Church of England.”

It was a typical story. The same thing happened in Canada. They describe it as one of their “most agonising scandals and one which for decades was covered up – the forced adoption of hundreds of thousands of babies born to unmarried mothers.” A full-scale inquiry is ongoing.

In New Zealand, we pretend it never happened.

In the total absence of government action, apology or investigation, I’ve been unraveling New Zealand’s history of forced adoption.

We’ve wrapped adoption in secrecy, tied it up with clichés and obfuscated the truth at every turn. We’ve conflated orphans with the illegitimate. We’ve never once paused to inquire about outcomes.

With so much around adoption shrouded in legal black holes and social expectation, most adopted people struggle to talk about it. Not only their own but the practice itself.

If you experience a difficult time in your natural born family, people understand. A violent father? A cold mother? There’s plenty of support for that trauma. .

But if you’re adopted that toxic family story takes on another element. When you try to speak about it, someone will ask the ‘what-ifs’. What if you’d been aborted? What if your natural family were worse? You could have grown up in an orphanage? In care? On the streets?

This is often followed by the, “I know a happy adoptee,” narrative. As if that one person’s experience is more significant than everything you’ve lost. And all the wrongs of being taken from your mother and stripped of your identity are irrelevant.

But what if you do grow up in a loving adopted family? And you really are that ‘happy adopted person?’

In many ways, this makes it more difficult. If you feel even the slightest bit ‘not right’ in your happy family there’s nowhere to place those feelings. To express doubts, to acknowledge a yearning for blood in the face of good parenting is almost impossible. Even to yourself.

And so the fog descends. The disconnect between your inner life and external expectations is vast. Often the fog is preferable.

Whether you recognise it or not, adoption is trauma. In truth both the idyllic and the unfit family is invested in being better than the mother they took you from. The person you might have been, the life you would have lived, if not for them, is rarely acknowledged. But no matter the quality of your upbringing, we all live with a sense of a yearning for blood connections.

For me, as young teen all I wanted was someone who looked like me. I had to wait until I gave birth to my first daughter. She arrived with fine hair and delicate features. But then I realised there were no photos of me until I was three months old. I had no idea if I looked like her as a new baby. No reason, my adopting mother said, casually, when asked. “I was too busy to take photos.”

Except for that camera-worthy new refrigerator. It was either me or the fridge. It’s obvious who won. I have the photo to prove it.

– ref. The baby or the fridge – https://www.barbarasumner.nz/blog/2019/2/13/the-baby-or-the-fridge

As a child, my family saw the musical Oliver. For days after, my adopting mother hummed and sang the theme tune:

Consider yourself one of us
Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself one of the family ….etc etc

The song is a bit of an earworm. I’d forgotten it and the memory until recently when I heard it on the radio.

If you’ve seen the film (or read Dickens), you’ll know that being ‘one of us in Oliver was conditional on acting the part. You had to abide by their code of thievery and obey Fagin, the orphan master.

It makes sense. Like Fagin’s gang, we humans are tribal.

We gather with those who share our values. We’re always on the lookout for casual signifiers of belonging.

When we have kids, family and friends scan the scrunched face of your newborn for resemblance. His father’s nose, her mother’s eyes. When we pull out baby photos of close family and compare them, we recognise the child as one of us.

But does it work the other way?

For a pre-verbal baby, it’s all about smell and sounds. Studies reveal that the basis of bonding is the mothers scent..

Familiar odours wired into a babies brain affect nerve pathways and brain development. One researcher found that in the first few hours after birth, a baby identifies her mother by her smell.

In another study, day-old babies recognised their mother’s voice. They connected pacifiers to tape recorders. One sucking pattern turned on their mother’s voice, while another activated a strangers voice. Guess which sucking pattern the babies used?

So how does this all work for a person removed from their mother for adoption?

In The Primal Wound, Nancy Verrier says there’s an assumption a baby knows nothing. Any deprivation can be overcome by the adoptive parents. But for the infant, absence of her mother is the same as death. She goes through a withdrawal process as her most basic need for connection goes unmet. The loss of the original mother becomes imprinted in the child’s psyche and cells.

Growing up adopted in a stranger family I’ve experienced first hand how deep that loss and grief runs. How everything from smell to sport was wrong. And how the things we ignored, such as lack of family resemblance were the unspoken arrows of daily life.

It’s not easy for the adopting mother either. They also are grieving the child they could not have. They lack hormone bonding. They miss out on that recognition and satisfaction a new mother feels, despite the trials and exhaustion of birth? No one comments on how her baby looks like her. No one expects her child to be like her in any natural way. Instead, she must work extra hard to imprint her culture on the little stranger. While convincing herself that her experience is no different than for a biological mother.

This is the dirty secret of stranger adoption. Adoption is rarely a first choice. It’s not the same as biological parenting. No matter your parenting skills or commitment, this is not the child you would have had if you could have your own.

You won’t read that in pro-adoption literature. You cannot expect the adopted person to become the child you could not have.

I believe it does something to the adopting mother, creating an atmosphere of rote caring. The mother working hard to be seen to love the child she has no connection to.

In “Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are,” Robert Plomin, concludes that babies are not balls of clay. Plomin is a behavioural geneticist. He says babies are not shaped by their parents after birth.  You arrive with imprinted traits from your biological parents.

His research proves that nurturing has little effect on the person you become. Children take after their first parents, not their adoptive parents. From cognitive skills and interests to personality traits. They even resemble their first parents in non-genetic traits. Television watching for instance and likelihood of getting divorced. “This comes as no surprise to first parents who meet their lost offspring. But it’s heartening and reassuring to have our impressions supported by scientific research.”  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nature-not-nurture-after-all-genetics-robert-plomin-polygenic-testing

So how does an adopted person cope with this? They fake it.

The fantasy of the happy adoptee is ingrained in our society. It becomes the job of the adopted person to prove this story true. To salve the wounds of the adopting parent’s infertility. To act as if they are the missing child, to bend and fold and adjust themselves to fit into the adoptor’s family. As if they have no other mother. As if they are indeed one of them.

Of course, someone will jump up and say “I had good adoption. That was not my experience.’

I’m happy they got lucky. But that’s the point. They were fortunate not to experience abuse in addition to what every adoptee already endures.

Because adoption itself is inherently abusive. To say I had a good adoption is like saying I had a good car accident or a good mugging. Of course, some are worse than others. But they’re all bad things. Every adopted person has experienced separation trauma and had their rights violated. Even if they are not ready to acknowledge it. Adoption itself is the trauma.”

I’d describe stranger adoption as a state of suspended animation. You learn early that your inner need for authenticity will never be met. So you split that part of yourself of. And go through the motions. In adoption circles, this is the ‘good adoptee syndrome’. Your real self packed down tight while you smile and wave at the world.

The idea of being a stranger within your family is not limited to children and parents. In my experience, the wider family feels it too. You are a cuckoo in their extended family nest, treated with suspicion, your provenance a mystery.

Throughout history, humans have distrusted outsiders. We’ve always had city walls and borders and the need to identify ourselves. We’ve always had this innate sense of the good us versus the untrustworthy them. Just as Charles Dickens characters understood.

In the absence of blood ties, the only signifier of being one of us is your behaviour. So be a good adoptee, play your part and all will be well with the world.

– ref. Consider youself one of us – https://www.barbarasumner.nz/blog/2019/1/15/consider-youself-one-of-us

There have always been inconsistencies in my birth story. The dates, the people involved, the actual circumstances. All missing, suspect or manufactured.

As an adopted person I have no legal right to know anything other than the story my adopting parents chose to tell. So I decided to challenge that.

I started with govt.nz, the guide to finding and using government services. Could it really be as simple as requesting a copy of my ‘pre-adoption birth certificate?’

A pre-adoption birth certificate? As if the adoption itself is my starting point. Anything else must fit into the nebulous ‘pre’ where anything before is a priori – based on a theory.

After all, I already have a birth certificate. It records my adopting parents as my natural parents. As if I am the natural child of my adopters. As if I am no different than anyone else.

Except, I came into this world with a background as dark as deep space. My adopting father’s workmate nailed it. “Why would you (adopt), you don’t know what you’ll get?” This story was told as a way to explain what a generous thing my adopting father had done.

His workmate was right. I was an unknown quantity. Not quite natural, not entirely trusted in the way we trust blood. You are, as a relative of my adopting family once described me – strange fruit.

So I requested my pre-adoption birth certificate. That “may contain details of your birth mother and birth father.”

Except mine had my mother only, even though I now know my father’s name is in my file. I’ve yet to meet an adopted person with their father’s name on the original birth certificate. Which makes you wonder if pre-adoption certificates are not designed to document birth. But rather, to further social agendas. Like protecting men from the consequences of their sexual activity.

Next, there’s an age limit. You have to be 20 or older to apply for your pre-adoption birth certificate.

Why 20, you ask. You can have sex at 16, enlist in the defence force at 17, drink, vote and get married at 18.

The New Zealand Law Commission says it was to assuage the fears of adoptive parents. Natural mothers might try to intervene.

Crazy mothers showing up to claim back their babies! That would never do. But hidden beneath that reasoning is the notion of lifetime infantilising.

Because, you will always be an adopted child. Never an adopted adult. A judge nailed it when he described us as “adopted children of any age.”

Luckily I met the over 20 criteria. But instead of receiving my birth certificate in the mail like any other citizen I must see a counsellor. At 58. The counsellor gets to decide if I am balanced enough to receive this information. (I passed the test)

Next step. Govt.nz tells me to contact Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children. “An adoption social worker will find your adoption records and give you details recorded at the time of your placement.”

I’m not sure what an adoption social worker actually does. But Oranga Tamariki’s website says, “It may be possible to find information about your birth parent. We can help you with this process.”

And right there we jump from infantilising to farce.

My adoption social worker found my records. With the file sitting on her desk she informed me there was a problem. The law did not allow her to reveal the contents to me.

So she passed me over to a new recruit. A young man, fresh out of social worker school, with no understanding of adoption issues.

I complained. My adoption social worker promised to provide a file number (not the file itself) by the next day. That was months ago.

I complained. She passed me onto the Supervisor at the Caregiver Contact Team. This person sighed and directed me back to my adoption social worker.

I complained. My adoption social worker said she would seek advice from her Regional Advisor.

I followed up. She was now seeking advice from her Supervisor. I let the usual ten working days elapse and followed up. “I need to seek advice from my Regional Executive Manager,” she said.

That person referred me back to the Adoptions Services team. And you guessed it, they referred me back to the social worker.

Weeks turned into months. Then my adoption social worker came up with the answer. I needed to make a request for my file through the Privacy and Official Information Services.

I filled out the paperwork. They missed the statutory deadline to answer my query. I followed up. They’d forgotten to send my request to the correct person. I waited. 20 days later they directed me back to my adoption social worker. Who missed her deadline to reply. I followed up. And she referred me to her advisor at the National Office.

And that’s where we’ve left it, with my file on any number of anonymous desks. My information denied to me.

Such paternalism and control litter the history of adoption in New Zealand. Single mothers suffered unconscionable cruelty. Child trafficking and medical and social experiments were par for the course. Today, in service to those ideologies government departments peddle disinformation. While the staff delay, deny and deflect anyone who questions the official story.

I’m told the reasons revolve around privacy. Given anyone who might be affected is dead, I suspect the real goal is to preserve secrecy. To continue to hide our recent and most shameful past.

As a baby, I was the object of a transaction, a contract I was not a party to. I’d like to know when will my rights as an adult transcend the rights of people involved in that contract? And what will it take for the government to give up those secrets, apologise and make amends?

– ref. Strange fruit – https://www.sadiesumnerbooks.com/blog/2018/11/22/strange-fruit

The Gallows Bird is a historical trilogy I have coming out next year. There, we meet Mr Fingleston, a silk merchant and tailor.

The character of Mr Fingleston visited me in the early hours, over 20 years ago. I described him as an ivy bush of a man, small and messy with a moustache drooping below his chin.

The timing is important.

For most of my adult life I’ve been on a shadow journey to find my biological family. In 1983 after an overheard comment and some pre-internet sleuthing I found my mother. Shortly after she died in a fiery plane crash on her way to meet me.

From that point on I searched for my father. There were many wrong turns, false information, raised hopes and deep disappointments.

I found him, finally in 2017. Five years too late.

In finding my father, I discovered a new sister, a genealogist cousin and a very detailed family tree.

Including my great-grandfather, Alfred Fingleston.

And yes, he has the same name as my invented character. Yes, he was a master tailor. And yes, he lived where my novel is set. Then I find I look just like my father. I share a skill set with one of my sisters and have the same passions as another. Our children echo one another.

It makes you wonder to what extent our behaviour is predicated on the long-ago past? On DNA and genetic determinism.

25 years ago, proponents of the Human Genome Project said DNA would change everything. It would lead to ‘a new understanding of what it means to be a human being.‘

“Genetics and the Sociology of Identity”, a social sciences publication, studies genetics’ penetration into social life. How we negotiate the space between self, others and institutions in light of DNA. They worry about genetic determinism. The idea that genes control your behaviour.

Reading the science (as a non-scientist) I am struck by how nervous the writers seem.

And so they should.

Because it’s stepping back in history. Way back. To Plato and Aristotle. To Essentialism and Determinism. To the idea that every entity has a predetermined, genetic set of essential attributes necessary to its identity.

That belief held sway through history all the way until  Charles Darwin and Karl Marx changed the world by theorizing that external material conditions create identity.

This philosophy had to be if they were to end the inequities created by birth. (For men anyway. Women were still expected to behave in a gender deterministic way)

Nurture over nature.

Except DNA came along. Is DNA the elephant in the room of social sciences and social determinism?

Because DNA delivers a high degree of certainty about who we are. Race, ethnic origin, kinship, propensity to hereditary diseases and other traits.

But NZ law says otherwise. Under the Adoption Act 1955, I have no heredity rights. The act says I am ‘as if’ born to the people who adopted me.

I am a social experiment. My whole life It has been concomitant on me to play the part of the happy(ish) adoptee. To prove that social determinism is indeed a valid way to run society. While behind closed doors my behaviours and actions are still discussed as aberrations. A flaw in my genes.

It was not Karl Marx’s fault. It was my fault I did not fit the family deemed more socially acceptable than my unmarried birth mother.

Meanwhile, the Adoption Act 1955 remains firmly in place. Propped up by unthinking judges and social workers. And by successive governments.

Between 1955 and 1990 the government took over 103,000 children from their mothers. They did it in the name of social engineering. Not one of us has ever had our rights restored.

Yes, DNA has given me some freedom. But my files remain locked away, my legal right to my history is still denied.

The Adoption Act 1955 remains able to separate children from their parents.

Thanks to DNA, Plato’s idea of essential nature is again a determinant of identity. Science, medicine, insurance companies, employers, government departments, policing and childcare services all seek to ascribe status and identity using DNA.

Except in New Zealand legislation. which still believes nurture can cure nature.

And The Gallows Bird? Thank you for asking. It should be available in about six months. Send me an email if you’d like to join either my author newsletter or the Like a Stranger newsletter. hello@sadiesumnerbooks.comT

There’s a cartoon doing the Internet rounds. A mum and a dad look down at their little girl: “Sarah, I’m afraid we’re not your real parents. You were made with sperm from Germany and an egg from Denmark from an Italian man and a Swedish woman, born to an English surrogate, rejected because you were a girl, adopted by Californian lesbians, looked after by a Cuban nanny and found by Derek here in a skip when you were three”.

Little Sarah looks bewildered. She’s in good company. Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have created thousands of people.

It’s a genomic revolution.

But like stranger adoption, there has been next to no public conversation on the outcomes.

Back then they framed stranger adoption within the historical shame of illegitimacy. This was a failed experiment in social engineering. But our collective amnesia ensures we never talk about it.

Now, within that silence, a new generation of disinherited people is being born.

The genomic revolution is replete with social, scientific and human complexity. But the ramifications are hardly touched on.

Instead of engaging with this we stick to the idea of a couple struggling with infertility. Our couple visits a specialist to have their gametes extracted. They create an embryo that is then implanted in the intending mother. It’s a private medical issue, only a few steps removed from natural conception.

There’s nothing wrong with this picture. Except, like the myth of successful stranger adoption it doesn’t match reality.

Inside the ART industry, there’s little distinction between the two types of children. One, conceived with medical help from its parent’s gametes is born to its natural mother. The other curated, from an anonymous gamete lookbook, a surrogate and its parent’s bank account.

Rather than make those distinctions we look to Hollywood to define the issues for us. In the movie, The Switch Jennifer Aniston’s character is looking for a sperm donor. Her friend played by Jason Bateman’s asks: “What sort of qualities would you be shopping for? It’s a throwaway line in a rom-com with a twist. In The Kids are Alright the sperm daddy enters the lives of a lesbian couple and their twins. They make a mess of the consequences, tune it for bittersweet comedy, and ignore the real issues.

Films like these reveal how normal it has become to acquire a family in these ways.

In Los Angeles, so many are ART conceived. There, teenage cryokids check their donor numbers to make sure they’re not ‘hooking up with a syb.’

Many of us are unaware of how far science has advanced and how unprepared New Zealand is.

Currently, in New Zealand, we are looking to loosen regulation to allow the creation of a market to import and export gametes and embryos. England is assessing bio-prospecting and has allowed three-biological-parent IVF. Germany has debated pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and the spectre of eugenics. In India, they colonise the wombs of the poor and reproductive tourism is a hot-button issue. In Spain, a shortage of donor eggs has given rise to research into the creation of children from eggs gathered from aborted fetuses. In the US where anything goes if you can afford it, the production of twiblings is on the rise. While saviour siblings are no longer rare. Clinics author traits such as hair, eye colour, height, muscle strength and skin colour. In Australia, a leading fertility clinic is listed on the stock exchange. They run a chain of cut-price clinics. Another Australian clinic sidesteps local laws on PGD by owning a clinic in Thailand. While also in Thailand an illegal surrogacy slave ring was recently uncovered.

In New Zealand, the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ACART) assesses these technologies. It was set up to plan policy and advice specific to New Zealand and is open to public submissions.

But in reality, since the disbanding of The Bioethics Council in 2008, we do not have a public forum. (one of the National Party’s first actions on coming into power.) So very little public discourse takes place on any of these issues.

Instead, we have the fertility industry working as an active advisor to the ministry. They insist they are trust-worthy to lead all fertility regulation and decision-making.

Just as the church did back in the 50’s as they helped frame up adoption legislation.

Then it was the Anglican and Catholic churches and the Salvation Army. They played up the sin of illegitimacy and the sanctity of marriage. They created the fantasy of mothers happily giving up their babies to save them from shame.

In the end, it does not matter if you use science or morality to seperate people from their heritage. The result will always be the same – disenfranchised people, turned into commodities to satisfy a religious, social or financial agenda. Try being fully human when that is your legacy.

– ref. We’re not your real parents – https://www.sadiesumnerbooks.com/blog/2018/10/30/were-not-your-real-parents

While browsing Instagram, an image jumped out at me. A woman and her husband stand beside the bed of an exhausted mother who has given birth to twins. The woman, identified as the #IP (intending parent) has her hands clasped in prayer or gratitude. Her husband is leaning over looking as exhausted as the new mother.
Posted by a surrogacy agency, the photo features the photographer’s comments. (Yes, the IPs hired a photographer to cover the event.)
The photographer says: “Previous to witnessing this surrogate birth I found myself wondering – isn’t it hard to give up the babies you grew from nine months? Isn’t it hard to recover from birth without the end reward of a sweet baby to care for and love? What about your milk production? And so on. But now I understand. Surrogacy is a selfless act, and the definition of selfless is to be concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s own. That’s a beautiful thing to witness.”
A selfless act is the bugle call of surrogacy.
Framing the work of one woman growing children for another as selfless is essential. Because if it’s not altruistic or selfless, then it’s paid work.
But when we discuss the ethics of paying surrogates, we balk.
The Creative Love Agency who posted the image does pay. But it’s like a peppercorn rental: That exhausted woman will get $1000 for clothes and $5000 for the babies, and maybe a few other costs covered.
It’s hard enough carrying a single baby for nine months, let alone twins, but $555 a month must not be enough to break the selfless ceiling. You have to ask why we value this work so low and why we need to frame it as altruism and selflessness.
The reason is simple. Society believes if you were to pay real money for growing a baby that would turn the child into a commodity.
I disagree.
The child is already a commodity. The ethical issue of paying or not paying is a smokescreen.
Because it is the demand for a child that turns it into a commodity. Not the payment of fees.
In economics, they use the equation ‘demand = desire + ability to pay + will to spend’ to quantify if something is a commodity.
The demand for babies is ancient. In Genesis 30:1 Rachel pleads with Jacob, “give me a baby or I will die.” She instructs him to bed her maid. Bilhah is forced to carry two sons for Rachel. After that Bilhah disappears from history, her sex and surrogate work forgotten.
Not much has changed in the idealogy of entitlement,
It’s the same as when they took me from my single mother and placed me with a married couple mid last century. Their infertility and desire for a child created the demand.
That demand saw an entire group of young, single, pregnant women turned into suppliers.
They used the same words the back then too. It was an act of altruism and selflessness to ‘give away’ your child. People still say to me “but your mother gave you away.”
But ask one of those mothers today and you’re likely to hear a different story. How they were shamed, pressured and coerced into providing the cure for infertility.
Now that we have science to create our babies to meet that demand we imagine things are different.
Unless you ask someone like Gracie Crane, a woman conceived from a donor embryo. Interviewed by a newspaper in 2014, Gracie was one of the first donor conceived babies in the UK.
Now, annoyingly, she is no longer a baby. And she is not happy.
Like adopted people in New Zealand, she also has no right to her biological history.
Gracie says “If I cannot be looked after by somebody I am genetically part of then I don’t feel I’m part of a family. Families are like packs, they look alike, but I don’t resemble anybody I know. I brought a friend home from school recently and I’d never told her how I came to be born, so when she saw my parents, I think she was quite shocked. I tried to explain, but it’s not like adoption, so people find it really hard to understand.”
As an adopted person I know precisely how Gracie feels because it is like adoption.
We were both procured to resolve a couple’s infertility.
I am not one to downplay the power of desire for a child. After all, Rachel in Genesis believed she would die without one.
But many things in life are unattainable. Stuff we want but know we do not have an inalienable right to. Except, it seems, children.
In my perfect world, where the needs of children are paramount, here are the questions the photographer should have been asking:
Isn’t it hard to give up the mother you’ve known for nine months? Isn’t it hard to recover from your birth without the reward of your mother’s skin? Her heartbeat, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hands, the safety of her care and love? What about her milk? Your perfect food that changes daily depending on your needs?
In all that gushing about a selfless act, the photographer apparently forgot about the most import people in the room – the ones being born.

– ref. A selfless act? – https://www.sadiesumnerbooks.com/blog/2018/10/22/a-selfless-act

How special do you feel? What factors make up your sense of special – or otherwise?

Many adopted people remember being told they were ‘special.’  “We chose you,” is a standard phrase for adopted people.

At the same time, it is implied there is no difference between you and the non-adopted.

The law backs this up, stating the child is “as if” born to the adopters.

But with adoption, there’s only one way to make ‘no difference’ work. You must deny all nature in favour of nurture. Where that leaves being ‘special’ is uncertain. Because, how can you be special for being adopted and no different than non-adopted at the same time? (see below for comment on open adoption.)

In my case, there was no place to acknowledge or accept difference. But still, you’re special. You must be. Your friends weren’t chosen as you were. You arrived by unknown means. You are like the mystery prize at the fun fair.

Psychologist Edward Dreyfus says the need to feel special is common to human beings. He posits that we are all hoping for special treatment. The issue, he says, is how we deal with the reality of when we are not. And whether we can distinguish between being special and being treated specially.

And that’s where it gets murky for adopted people. Because legally we are anything but special. With no legal right to access the files held on us, we are the opposite of special.

But, if you want to try to access those files we must convince a judge that you have a ‘special reason’.

In my recent application Judge P J Callinicos denied my request. But he did throw me a bone. He said: “I invite her to state all reasons, preferably special ones, why otherwise restricted records should be made available to her.”

But that’s a trick. Because ‘special grounds or reasons,’ is not defined in law.

This has tripped others up in the past.

In one application, the anonymous ‘B’ asked to inspect files to “meet her natural mother.” She wanted to ‘ascertain Jewish blood,’ because she was ‘undergoing an identity crisis.’ The judge held that these did not constitute special grounds.

When ‘P’ applied, the judge ruled the “psychological comfort” of the adopted person was not considered special enough.

In another case, an adopted woman discovered her mother had died of a heart-related illness. She wanted to know if they ran in the family. The judge said heart issues are common in Western civilisation, so that did not constitute special grounds. He advised her to get a check-up.

It’s not only adopted people. In another case, a mother who lost her child to adoption was terminally ill. She begged the judge to open her file so she could find her child. He refused.

In their refusals, judges say things like this: “While it may be reasonable and justifiable to want to know family background, this does not constitute a special ground.” Or, “It is natural and certainly not peculiar or special that the applicant should wonder about her mother.”

One of the most stunning comments I found came from Judge G F Ellis. In attempting to define special grounds he said that an adopted person wanting to know family members meant the breaking of confidential records to which they were not party.

Think about that for a minute: Records to which they were not party.

In essence, the judge is saying that adopted people are non-persons.

But mothers and their babies were routinely denied independent legal representation when their lives were signed away. On the other hand, adopters did have a lawyer. In truth, the mother and her baby were considered expendable once their role in resolving infertility in a married couple was completed.

This turns us, the people who were adopted into objects, something I find as painful as it is absurd.

Dreyfus says feeling special is all about receiving that extra bit of attention to let us know that we matter in this very impersonal world; we want to be seen as a person, to be validated as unique.

In New Zealand, the law says adopted people are only special in the way they are denied their most basic human rights.

We shall see if my re-submission before Judge PC Callinicos will succeed or follow almost all the others in the last 60 years. Will my grounds (the anomalous birthdates held in the files) be found special enough?

Of course, now I’m worried. Was I too demanding? Did I make too much of my right to know? Did I show too much emotion? Are my reasons special enough? Am I special enough?

Given the law is clear, what do you think my chances are?

Watch this space.

*There is no open adoption in NZ. The idea is little more than adoption industry PR. A legal judgment states that while the process of adoption now often proceeds on an open basis, what still remains not open is the wish of a child (at any age) to understand more about their background.

*All quotes and comments are taken from the case notes of specific legal judgments handed down by the NZ courts.

*All italics are mine.