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MARTYRS, THE MEDIA AND THE WEB: EXAMINING
A GRASSROOTS CHILDREN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT
THROUGH THE LENS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY
By Barbara Bennett Woodhouse and Sarah Rebecca Katz[1]
Prologue
On
August 2, 1993, millions of Americans witnessed the court-ordered removal of a
two and a half-year-old child known as "Baby Jessica" from the only family she
had ever known. The haunting image of a toddler being torn from the arms of
her adoptive family, screaming with terror as she was handed to her biological
father who was a stranger to her, was broadcast into millions of homes and
splashed across the front pages of newspapers and magazines throughout the
world. For the adoptive parents who lost their child and the biological
parents who won her back, it was the end of a long legal battle.
For
Jessica DeBoer, it was the end of everything familiar--the end of her life in
the little house on Peach Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She would never again
see her dog or her toys, her playmates or the people she knew as "Mommy and
Daddy." August 2, 1993, marked the start of Jessica's new life as "Anna
Schmidt," with new parents and a new baby sibling in a new home in Iowa. By
now, the toddler is a teenager. Like fifty percent of American teens, she has
experienced the dissolution of her parents' marriage. Her story was briefly
back in the headlines when both sets of parents who had fought so hard to keep
her announced that they were divorcing. How has Jessica/Anna managed the
traumatic transition from one identity to another?
All Americans wish her well and hope that she is happy. Experts in child
psychology continue to debate the long term effects of such a sharp break,
weighing the costs of the sudden loss of a child's bonded family against the
benefits of her reunification with her biological family. One fact, however,
is clear: for thousands of everyday Americans, August 2, 1993, was a beginning
and not an end. It marked the birth of a grassroots children's rights movement
known as "Hear My Voice."
I. INTRODUCTION
Where
do social movements come from and how can we describe their impact and chart
their future course? This article seeks to bring together the perspectives of
the academy with the street level advocate in understanding the emergence of a
new generation of children's rights advocates. Recent scholarship has
highlighted the importance of mobilization theory in understanding and
describing the growth of social movements.[2] In order to examine
the grassroots children's rights organization, Hear My Voice ("HMV"), both
mobilization theory[3] and social psychology perspectives[4] will be utilized to form the analytical framework.
HMV
is barely ten years old. It was initially formed in 1993 as "Justice for
Jessi," a loose coalition of neighbors and strangers seeking to help a
two-year-old girl who was at risk of removal from the only home she had ever
known.[5] It evolved
into a national grassroots effort claiming some 6,000 members throughout the
United States. While HMV has much in common with other organizations committed
to children's rights, its grassroots support base, strategies for resource
mobilization, and dynamics of its engagement in the movement are unique.
Particularly
interesting are the roles played by martyrs, the media, and the web in
mobilizing and retaining constituents. HMV's activism began with and remains
rooted in individual children's court cases, but its activists have become
increasingly engaged in reform at the legislative level and in coalitions with
other children's rights organizations in the emerging children's rights social
movement. HMV began with a "martyr"--Jessica DeBoer, a child placed at risk by
a failed adoption. Losing Jessica's case heightened HMV activists'
consciousness of the condition of all children at risk of losing safe and
permanent homes and families. Thereafter, HMV extended its goal of advocacy
for children in adoption cases to advocacy for those in foster care and
third-party custody cases as well.[6]
Consistently,
HMV members credit the tragedy of individual children's stories as the catalyst
that brought them into the movement. This is used as the tool to galvanize
public support for children's rights. HMV advocates consistently point to the
media, and increasingly, the web, as the most effective vehicles for bringing
these stories to the public's attention. They define the mission of HMV as
advocating for every child's right to a safe and permanent home.[7] Their
advocacy recognizes a child's right to a voice in any court proceeding that
determines a child's destiny. Even very young children, HMV argues, must be
appointed attorneys to represent their rights and interests in contested
adoption, custody, and foster care cases.[8] These arguments
reflect a new social construction of children and childhood that has motivated
much of the current children's rights movement.
Increasingly,
the American public sees children as active agents rather than passive objects,
as rights-bearing individuals with independent interests and psychological
lives, who must be recognized and protected, rather than as extensions or human
property of their parents.[9]
This
article will first place HMV in historical context with a brief introduction to
the history of the children's rights movement in America. Next, this article
will outline modern social movement theories and define the terms that are
their cornerstone. Third, HMV's emergence as a social movement organization
will be explored. In so doing, the voices of the activists to describe the genesis
of HMV and its evolution, mission, and strategies as well as their own
experiences as advocates for children will be heard.
Fourth, this article will analyze HMV using the analytical tools of social
movement theory to understand how it compares to social movement organizations.
Additionally, HMV's constituency, engagement in the formation of social
meaning through action, and methods of mobilization including technology and
the media, as well as the special challenges presented to any movement seeking
to advocate for children will be examined though social movement theory.[10] Finally, the
future of the children's rights movement will be discussed. This article will
argue that organizations such as HMV, armed with the new egalitarian tools of
the web, will become increasingly influential; thereby, restoring to the
children's rights movement the vitality which was lost when professionals
supplanted the armies of ordinary women who had won earlier battles to reform
laws on child protection, juvenile justice, and child custody.
II. History of the Children's Rights Movement
The
American children's rights movement dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.
It reflected the emergence of new social constructions of children and
childhood. Previously, children had been conceptualized as the quasi property
of their parents. They were economic assets of the family, to be put to work
for wages or educated to raise their family's station in life.[11] It was only natural that
children would be burdened by the hardships or benefit from the privileges that
went along with their family's race and social condition. In the mid- and late
nineteenth century, the paradigm of childhood began to shift. Childhood was
reconceptualized into a time of innocence when all children gained a right to
protection from harsh realities. According to this revised concept, in order
to play their adult role as citizens, children must be sheltered from abuse and
exploitation and provided with the necessary moral and material conditions for
their growth to autonomous citizenship.[12] Advocates of the period argued that children's
rights differ from those of adults. Children's rights grew out of children's essential
dependency and capacity for growth, especially their needs for nurture, protection,
and education.[13] Under this new paradigm of childhood, both parents and the community were
responsible for providing children's needs.
Also
during this period, child labor laws, state laws guaranteeing free public
education, and child-centered custody laws were championed by citizens who
often identified their work in terms of children's rights. Private charities,
such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the
Children's Aid Society, mobilized to intervene on behalf of poor and battered
children and to remove them from abusive homes.[14] Settlement houses, such as Jane Addams Hull House, took a different path,
focusing on meeting the needs of poor children within their own families and
communities.[15] While some of the leaders of the
early children's rights movement were male, the foot soldiers were drawn from
the ranks of middle class women who had the time, energy, and at least modest
resources to devote to assisting children and families in need.
The
impact of these activists was dramatic. Within a short time, they accomplished
sweeping reforms of existing laws and policies pertaining to children. A
system of special juvenile and family courts was created so that children would
be treated as children--no longer sent to poor houses or prisons with adults,
but cared for and educated in orphan asylums or juvenile correction centers
designed exclusively for children and youths.
This
grassroots movement reached its zenith in the early nineteen-twenties, but did
not then disappear. To the contrary, it continued to be successful in
institutionalizing many of its goals through the creation of government
programs, such as child protective services, juvenile courts, free public
education, and public health and recreation. The goals of the early children's
rights movement were also institutionalized in the form of private mainstream
organizations we now take for granted, such as the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA),
the Girl Scouts of America, and the Boys and Girls Clubs.[16]
After
World War II, children's rights again surfaced--this time as an important facet
of the movement for civil rights for people of color. Many forget that Brown
v. Board of Education[17] was a children's rights issue. It was also a landmark case because of the use
of constitutional arguments based on child development theories. In Brown, civil rights advocates used social science evidence
about children's psychological responses to segregation to persuade the U.S.
Supreme Court that segregation inflicted serious damage to children's
self-esteem, and persuaded the justices that, for children, separate schools
could never be equal.[18]
The
civil rights movement generated one of the key organizations of the modern
children's rights movement: the Children's Defense Fund (CDF).[19] Civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman realized that any agenda for social
and racial justice must address not only the civil rights of children and
families, but also their material needs. In 1968, Edelman founded a welfare
rights coalition, the Washington Research Project (WRP), as a watchdog
organization to ensure that federal civil rights and anti-poverty programs
actually benefited those individuals the programs were designed to help.[20] WRP spearheaded the effort to create Head Start, and in 1973 became the Children's Defense Fund,
explicitly focusing its efforts on children.[21]
However,
unlike the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Legal Defense Fund, the CDF is an offshoot from the Poor People's Campaign,
begun by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., focuses on broad policy reforms rather
than individual court cases.[22] The Children's Defense Fund,
reflecting the shift in King's thinking late in life, has continued to focus on
the intersection of race and poverty and to confront larger social issues such
as hunger, jobs, and education.[23]
Also
during the 1970's, advocates for the poor and for juveniles persuaded the
Warren and Burger Courts to recognize limited rights for children under the
federal Constitution. In cases like In re Gault,[24] Parham v. J.R.,[25] and Goss v. Lopez,[26] the U.S. Supreme Court recognized, in an attenuated and qualified fashion, the
due process rights of children subjected to state action in juvenile justice,
mental health, and public school settings.[27]
The
children's rights movement of the late twentieth century, however, seemed torn
between a social construction of children as needy and dependent, and a
construction of children as autonomous individuals--a construction which blurs
the distinction between the status of children and adults.[28] Additionally, the children's rights organizations of the sixties, seventies,
and eighties, while often working at the grassroots level, were primarily led
by public interest professionals, activist lawyers, and social welfare
activists.[29]
III. Defining Social Movements and the
Organizations that Guide Them
Social
movement scholar Bert Klandermans has stated, "[s]ocial movements . . . are
populated by individuals sharing collective goals and a collective identity who
engage in disruptive action."[30] Klandermans continues,
[E]ven
large social movements mobilize relatively small proportions of the population.
This is not to say that only a few people sympathize with those social
movements, but . . . participating in a movement is not the same as
sympathizing with it. Acting according to one's principles is not always easy.
Many a participant will remember that it was with fear and trembling that he
or she made the first appearance at the front line.[31]
Klandermans
also explains, "[s]ocial problems are not objective phenomena . . . [and]
individuals behave according to perceived reality."[32] It is this shared identity and shared perception of injustice that motivates
collective action to force systems change.[33]
Klandermans'
description of social movements is reflected in the set of terms coined to
describe how social movement organizations pursue their goals. A social
movement organization must develop a set of target goals or preferred changes towards which it claims to be
working.[34] It must speak to an audience
composed of bystander publics (those who are neutral to its goals), adherents (those who share its goals), constituents (those who provide resources), and opponents (those who oppose its target goals).[35] Constituents can be described along a spectrum from mass to elite.[36] Elite constituents are those small groups or individuals who have access to
larger resources pools, while mass constituents are those masses of ordinary
people whose resources may be limited to their own time and labor.[37] In its task of resource mobilization, an organization seeks to convert its
bystanders into adherents, and its adherents into constituents.[38] It
may focus on converting either elites or mass constituents, or on winning the
hearts and pocketbooks of both.[39]
Traditionally,
constituents were presumed to be potential beneficiaries, drawn from the population that had a personal stake
in the proposed changes.[40] Modern movement theorists, however,
have recognized the important role played by conscience constituents, those persons who gain no economic or direct social
benefit from the organization's success in achieving its goals.[41]
The
concept of the conscience constituent is important to the racial justice and women's rights movements and is
especially important to the children's rights movement.[42] Since individual children and children as a group lack political power and
physical autonomy, their capacity to mobilize a social movement is severely
hampered.[43] Therefore, children's advocacy
occurs primarily through the actions of interested others—generally, the
children's parents.
However,
individuals and organizations of teachers, physicians, social workers, and
other professionals with a stake in children's welfare also advocate for
children's rights. Ordinarily, with the aid of conscience constituents, a
subordinated group will normally gain sufficient power to advocate for itself.[44] For example, splits in the civil rights movement occurred when
African-Americans, who had the most direct stake in racial justice and were
arguably the potential beneficiaries, began to bridle at efforts of conscience
constituents to control the movement agenda. However, unlike African-Americans
and women, many children are essentially dependent. The recognition of children's rights does not change
the fact of their dependency or compensate for their lack of capacity for
autonomous action. Consequently, to be successful, the children's rights
movement must be highly adept at mobilizing conscience constituents.
By
achieving target goals and converting bystanders into adherents and adherents
into constituents, social movements emerge.[45] According to social
movement scholars McCarthy and Zald, social movements are "a set of opinions and
beliefs in a population representing preferences for changing some elements of
the social structure or reward distribution, or both, of a society."[46] In their
analysis, social movements give rise to social movement organizations, which are complex or formal organizations that
identify their goals with the preferences of a particular social movement or
countermovement and that attempt to implement those goals.[47]
When
a number of social movement organizations emerge that share a common goal, they
form what McCarthy and Zald have termed a social movement industry. A social movement industry constitutes all social
movement organizations that assert as their goal the attainment of the broadest
preferences of a particular social movement.[48] Conceptualizing a set of social movement
organizations as an industry encourages examination of the interplay--including
competition and collaboration--of organizations advocating a common goal.[49] Finally, McCarthy and Zald designate the social movement sector as all the social movement industries, irrespective of
their attachment to a specific social movement, in a given society.[50] They hypothesize that, the greater the wealth and leisure enjoyed by a given
society, the larger the social movement sector.[51]
This
new taxonomy may seem daunting to lawyers and activists reading this article,
but it is easily recognized in familiar examples. An example from American
social movement history is the civil rights movement, which was re-energized by
the defeat of Fascism and was a social movement that advocated racial justice for African-Americans.[52] It mobilized resources through social movement organizations such as the NAACP. The NAACP, together with other
organizations, including the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which differed in certain respects but
shared common goals, constituted what modern scholars would call the civil
rights social movement industry.[53] And, it emerged at a time of prosperity and increasing leisure when a large social
movement sector, including middle
class African-Americans, Jews and political liberals, provided rich
opportunities for fueling social change.[54] Social movement
theorists use this taxonomy of movements, organizations, industries, and
sectors to better describe how a social movement organization is situated in
the larger context of society.[55]
IV. Genesis of HMV: Viewing the Birth of a Social Movement
Organization Through Grassroots Activists' Eyes[56]
A. Baby Jessica and the
Birth of a Movement
Like
the civil rights movement of the 1960's, HMV is fighting for the rights of a
group of people who would be powerless without the assistance of a social
movement. While individual HMV advocates hardly consider themselves disruptive,
a disruption of "business as usual" is precisely the point of their protest and
mobilization tactics.
Most
HMV advocates credited their involvement to an individual child's case--for
many, the Jessica DeBoer case.[57] HMV's first case, ended on August
2, 1993.[58] This was the day on which the two
and a half-year-old child, known to the nation as Baby Jessica, was taken from
her adoptive family and the only home she had every known, and handed over to
her biological father.[59] During the preceding year, the case had attracted national attention as a
result of widespread media coverage.[60] Placed by her biological mother at
birth, Jessica was raised by a loving family in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and
recognized her would-be adoptive parents, Robby and Jan DeBoer, as Mommy and Daddy.[61] Shortly after her placement, her biological father, Dan Schmidt, whose rights
had not been terminated, sought custody and permission to take her back to
Iowa.[62] While it was certainly not the
first such contested custody case, it was one of the first that attracted such
intense media attention.
Advocates
experienced it as a shocking eye-opener. As HMV advocate Ms. Jini Clare
explained, "confidentiality laws kept the nation from knowing about this and
fixing the problems. This was not the first time something like this had
happened but it was the first time we were really getting to know about it."[63] Laura Hurtado, an
activist from California, recalled the moment of emotional engagement vividly:
I was in
the supermarket one day and saw an article titled "whose child is this?" [about
Jessica DeBoer]. I thought, that's not going to happen [separation of a child
from the people she knows as Mommy and Daddy]. They could never do that. But I
watched the case unfold on TV and was appalled and felt very betrayed by our
system of government that would allow such a thing to happen to a child.[64]
What
so captured the attention of the public and these advocates was the fact that
the legal system seemed to give no weight to Jessica's attachment to her adoptive
parents.[65] By
placing the rights of the child's biological parents above the child's best
interest, and forcing the return of the child to her biological parents without
considering what trauma this might cause a small child, the courts treated
Jessica as if she were property.
The
shock experienced by these advocates is a measure of the success of the earlier
generation of grassroots women advocates. As described above, children
traditionally were treated as the quasi-property of their fathers.[66] The children's rights movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries saw the wholesale adoption of a child-centered test--"the best
interest test"--for resolving disputes over custody of children.[67] The best interest test requires that courts resolve disputes involving a child
by looking at the child's needs and not at the rights and wrongs of the adults
involved.[68] In many jurisdictions, however, the
parent's rights still trump the child's best interest in custody disputes
between a parent and a person who is not the biological parent – often
termed a "third party custodian".[69]
As
the DeBoer case played out, activists began to see that the legal system did
not care if Jessica knew her biological parents, nor whether removing the
young child from the only family she had ever known would have a damaging
effect on her upbringing. The system's blindness to the child's psychological
attachments seemed outrageous and impossible to square with the best interests
of the child. HMV advocate Stella Slattery recounted; she "remember[ed]
thinking that it would work out in the best interest of the child and then
realized that was not necessarily how it was going to go."[70]
The
first group of activists to coalesce around Jessica's case were people in the immediate
community.[71] They formed the "Baby DeBoer
Defense Fund" to raise money for the legal battle.[72] They later renamed themselves "Justice for Jessi" as their activities expanded
beyond fund-raising and into protest and direct action.[73] The
DeBoers, who had already lost to Schmidt in an Iowa court, tried to get a
Michigan court to intervene.[74] They sought assistance from
University of Michigan's law clinic, located in their hometown of Ann Arbor,
Michigan. Michigan law professor Suellyn Scarnecchia (now Dean of the University
of New Mexico Law School) and her students took on the task of representing the
DeBoers in their Michigan court battles.[75] The Michigan trial
judge appointed an attorney to represent Jessica's interests.[76] Both the child's attorney and Scarnecchia pushed the Michigan trial court to
hold a hearing on the child's best interest.[77] They argued that
Schmidt, the biological father who sought custody, had shown little commitment
to or understanding of parenting responsibilities.[78] He
had fathered and abandoned several children.[79] It seems as though
he was unable to comprehend the trauma Jessica would suffer from losing contact
with the parents who had raised her. The trial judge held a "best interest"
hearing and found, based on the testimony of psychological experts, that
Jessica would suffer emotional trauma if her custody was transferred to
biological parents who were psychological strangers.[80]
Meanwhile,
Justice for Jessi had attracted a diverse group of activists who came to the cause
for different reasons. While some of them were foster or adoptive parents
themselves, Ms. Clare recalled that many were simply mothers of children
roughly the same age as Jessica.[81] As the media continued to cover the story, more and more people wrote or
called Justice for Jessi and offered their help.[82]
Ms.
Clare recalled that she watched the accounts in the news and realized she could
not sit on the sidelines. She commented that she "had grown up in Ann Arbor,
went to [the] University of Michigan during the Civil Rights era and sat on the
sidelines . . . [and] didn't want to do that again."[83] She went to a Justice for Jessi
rally, introduced herself, and explained that she had a public relations
background and that she could help.[84] She was quickly put to work using her talents to raise both money and
consciousness.
Ms.
Slattery described her response to the media coverage as highly emotional.[85] She remembered watching a Justice for Jessi rally on CNN and recording the
coverage so she could replay the tape to copy the phone number for Justice for
Jessi displayed on a
t-shirt worn by a marcher.[86] HMV Executive
Director, Janet Snyder, also recalled being touched by the case on a very
fundamental level. She explained, "[I am] not an adoptive parent, [nor] an
adult adoptee. [I got involved] because of what I personally felt to be social
injustice that this child was not having her needs addressed."[87]
When
Schmidt appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the lower
court's ruling in favor of the DeBoers, Justice for Jessi organized rallies,
protests, and media campaigns.[88] A local music teacher, Annie Rose,
wrote a song with the refrain, "Hear my voice; children have voices too."[89] This song became the anthem of the Justice for Jessi campaign and the title
for its newsletter and later for the national group.[90] Veteran civil rights attorney
Lewis Pitts recalls attending a rally in Ann Arbor at which Connecticut Judge
James Gill and Florida attorney George Russ, both well-known activists for
children's rights, as well as prominent Michigan politicians, were speakers.[91] But the involvement of professionals was tangential--the driving energy was at
the grassroots level.
Despite
this furor, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against Jessi, ordering that she
be transferred immediately to the custody of her biological father. [92] Jessi's supporters looked to the United States Supreme Court to right this
wrong.[93] Their
hopes were dashed when the Court, over a moving dissent by Justice Blackmun, joined
by Justice O'Connor, refused to stay the transfer order.[94] While seasoned lawyers knew the
case was lost at that point, grassroots activists continued the fight. Laura
Hurtado of California stated, "I remember the night before they took Jessica writing
a letter to the President. My daughter was tucked in bed. I'm not an adoptive
parent, I was just thinking this couldn't happen."[95]
On
August 2, 1993, the world watched as attorney Scarnecchia handed a screaming
Jessi over to her biological parents in a harrowing scene that made the TV news
across the country and abroad.[96] Janet Snyder, who is now the
Executive Director of HMV, described how she felt as she stood in the DeBoer
family driveway watching Jessica being taken away: "I remember the look of
terror on her face. I knew at that time that I wanted to try to help to make
things different for other children so they wouldn't have to go through the
same sort of process."[97]
Jessica's
very public trauma and the movement's loss seemed to fuel support for the
cause, rather than dampen it. Thousands and thousands of letters and phone
calls, urging the activists to continue their work, poured into Justice for
Jessi. At one point the Ann Arbor Post Office called saying there were 54,000
letters there for Justice for Jessi.[98] The organizers of Justice for Jessi decided that their efforts would not end
with this defeat. The organization changed its name to the DeBoer Committee
for Children's Rights (DCCR) to signal its new mission to fight for other children
like Jessi.[99] Its first newsletter explained,
"since we can no longer help Jessi, the purpose of the committee is to help
other children by focusing national attention on the best interest of the
child."[100]
At
this pivotal moment, the activists did not replace Jessica's image in the
movement's culture and literature with some vague and general concept of
children as a group. Instead, the activists utilized the stories and images of
other individual children with equally compelling cases. In the tide of support
for Baby Jessica, Justice for Jessi had been deluged with information about
similar cases. A glossy blue fund-raising and recruitment folder from that
time illustrates the movement's transition from advocacy for one child to
advocacy for many children: "We lost Jessica" is emblazoned on the cover in
stark white script. Inside, the text continues, "There's still time to fight
for Cameron, Brandon, Rachel, Tony, Becca, Stephanie and Kassen."[101] Color
photographs introduce stories of children of various ages and racial or ethnic
backgrounds all facing a similar threat--removal from foster parents,
relatives, or de facto parents to whom they had become deeply attached.[102] Many of these children faced a risk of abuse or neglect by the parents with whom
they were being reunified.[103] A message from Jan and Robby
DeBoer concludes, "[T]hrough Jessica's loss, the nation has become aware of the
problem which faces thousands of children every day. It is our greatest hope
that with the work of the DCCR this loss will not be in vain. We ask you now
to help us fight for other children."[104]
A
martyr and her portrayal in the media had mobilized these activists, and
instead of disbanding after their defeat, they had embraced the cause of other
children. A movement had begun.[105] In 1995, the organization changed its name to Hear My Voice--the refrain from
the movement's anthem--to further emphasize that an organization that had begun
with a single child was now refocusing on the voicelessness of all children at
risk of losing their bonded parents.[106]
In
1995, HMV refined its mission statement to make clear its focus: "The mission
of HEAR MY VOICE is to promote the right of children to have safe, permanent
families."[107] Using similar terms, HMV advocates defined the organization's mission as
"see[ing] that children are recognized as rights-bearing persons and that they
have safe permanent homes,"[108] and insuring "[a] safe permanent home for every child. Children are people who
are hurt when they are taken away from people that they are bonded with.
Children are People not Property,"[109] and "guarantee[ing that] all children [have] the security and safety of a
family that nurtures."[110]
As
part of its mission, the organization has pressed judges to recognize children
as rights-bearing citizens with legal standing in their own court cases and to
provide a best interest hearing for every at-risk child.[111] HMV pursues its mission through a combined strategy of direct case advocacy for
specific children, legislative advocacy, and grassroots organizing/public
awareness.[112] It held its first annual training
conference in September 1994.[113] The attendees included 150
grassroots members and the psychological family members[114] of twelve "children at risk." I
attended the conference as an invited speaker and was struck by the galvanizing
effect of the children's stories, particularly the moving accounts of children
pleading for help from caretakers who were powerless to help them.[115] These stories
seemed capable of mobilizing the same passion and sense of injustice that had
mobilized Baby Jessica's supporters. They seemed to tap into the shared
identities of the largely female activists as caretakers and protectors of
vulnerable children.
B. HMV's Structure and
Strategy
It
is not unusual that an individual case of social injustice can galvanize a
movement. History has shown this is often the way the fire of a social
movement is lighted. From Sacco and Vanzetti to Rosa Parks, individual cases
have drawn together already percolating outrage at injustice into collective
action. Individual cases also have served to draw attention to injustices
previously unknown to the general public, but it is generally difficult to
sustain the energy of a movement once the individual case at hand is resolved,
regardless of a positive or negative outcome. HMV has overcome this obstacle.[116] Almost a decade after its founding, children's stories and engagement with
specific children's cases remain the central facet of HMV advocacy.
HMV's
role in these cases is multi-faceted. At the individual case level, HMV draws
on its widespread network of national experts to help strategize about the
case, submit amicus briefs, and provide other professional support and
referrals.[117] The real power of HMV, however, lies
elsewhere.
From
an organizing standpoint, by publicizing the pending case HMV draws in
individuals to write and call legislators, protest outside the courthouse, and
otherwise support HMV's legislative advocacy. On a policy level, by putting a
young human face to a policy problem, the individual cases serve to underscore
the necessity for the legal reforms HMV advocates. An HMV newsletter explained
the rationale behind this strategy:
While statistics and dry reports leave most people feeling powerless,
meeting individual children and witnessing the injustice[s] they face motivates
concerned citizens into action. Looking into the eyes of an individual child
at risk speaks to our deepest desire to make a difference, to help at least this
one child. But every time we help
one child, we are helping many more. The outcome of every child's struggle for
justice can affect the struggles of countless other children in the same
situations. In working for one child, therefore we work for many.[118]
According
to HMV leaders, what makes this comprehensive strategy possible is the
strategic use of the media. HMV activists know that they owe their existence
to the widespread national media attention to the Jessica DeBoer case, and
because of media coverage, a small local Justice for Jessi committee became a
national organization of thousands of people.[119]
C. How HMV Is Organized
HMV
is a national network of advocates working in their own states on a collective
agenda.[120] Compared to other national
movements like the Sierra Club, HMV is a relatively small organization with
about 6,000 names on its mailing list.[121] The organization has had a Board of Directors
since 1993 and a National Advisory Council since 1994.[122] The national headquarters is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is the site
of the original Baby Jessica case.[123] Much of the HMV leadership has
direct links to the original case. As Executive Director Janet Snyder
explained, the Board sets case review criteria and reviews cases to decide
which HMV will support.[124] Snyder explained HMV's work:
We get a
lot of calls from people who are in tough custody cases; we don't generally get
involved with divorce custody but try to do referrals; we try to make sure
people don't go away empty-handed. But outside of divorce, we have a set of
criteria [to review] contested custody cases. We ask that people fill out some
paperwork and send supporting documents. A case is reviewed from legal and
mental health standpoints, and then we get advice on what direction we should
go. Typically [the decision] comes down to the case review committee, made up
of Board or Advisory Board members.[125]
HMV
keeps in contact with its membership through a monthly newsletter, e-mail, and
continual updates to its webpage.[126] In addition to calls to action
around the individual cases, HMV mobilizes around its legislative advocacy
agenda.[127] At the state level, advocates
pursue the nationally-defined agenda in ways that make sense for their state.[128] In some states, there are organized state chapters; in other states, advocates
are more loosely organized.[129] Executive Director Janet Snyder
explained that:
there is
a core group of the entire membership who are the active participants, [and]
for those people we have an annual training meeting and conference [where] we
bring folks together and concentrate on topics of interest, as well as training
on how to better utilize resources in their communities, how to work with
legislatures.[130]
Ms.
Blair explained that this core group will mobilize others "from their
community, their church or wherever else they can round up help" if there is a
pressing issue.[131]
At
the national level, HMV has mobilized support for legislation that places high
priorities on safety and permanency for children.[132] HMV played a significant role in lobbying for and passing the Adoption and Safe
Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), which was the most sweeping rewriting of child
welfare law in seventeen years.[133] At the state level, HMV has worked for laws creating offices of ombudsmen or
advocates for children.[134] HMV encourages its members to educate and lobby judicial candidates, thereby
informing the candidates that their voting record on children's rights may
affect HMV members' votes.[135] It now is not unusual for lobbyists and NGO's to ask "Where is Hear My Voice
on this proposed bill?"[136]
D. Recruitment--Who Is a
Typical HMV Constituent?
Most
HMV activists, or "constituents" in social movement theory parlance, are
surprised to find themselves engaged in a social movement. As social movement
scholar Klandermans suggests, they approached their involvement on the front
lines with "fear and trembling."[137] Ms. Blair stated that her desire
"to stay at home and rock babies" initially motivated her to become involved
with the foster care system, and then later to join HMV.[138] She explained that legislative
advocacy was not her first choice of activities, she just wanted to be a foster
parent:
I didn't
even want to call the pizza delivery guy. I was scared of my own shadow, but
my outrage [at] what happened to my second foster child drove me to do other
things. Law is dry and boring and I had to read for a whole summer to [learn
how to] write a proposal, plus be a sales person. It was a lot to overcome for
me personally.[139]
Ms.
Blair's activism has transformed her and others. She now serves on the Board
of the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, and regularly testifies before the
state legislature.[140] Similarly, advocate Janice Mink
did not have a professional background that prepared her for her child advocacy
work--she is a CPA.[141] She explained that when she was in
college she wanted to go into social work or law but was discouraged from doing
so because she would not make money. She remarked wryly, "I did exactly what
[I had] intended but [I don't] get paid [at all]."[142]
Others
got involved because of their professional background, although not necessarily
a legal background. Attorney Lewis Pitts explained that he already had a
career as a civil rights attorney and, because of "the parallels between [the
children's rights movement] and the struggles for civil rights for
African-Americans and women, it made sense that the same strategies would work
for children."[143] Pitts, an experienced civil rights attorney, highlighted the lack of racial and
class diversity in those who responded to the cases in the media.[144] He described the HMV constituents as "a lot of white middle class women who
have time [and] have some money. Blue collar is not who has galvanized this
movement."[145] While Pitts does not feel this undermines the strength or importance of HMV's
work, he does feel it has resulted in a "lack of appreciation [for] the
disproportionate number of minority kids in the system."[146] Pitts believes that these
middle class constituents have a characteristic often missing in poor and
minority communities; namely, "[t]he middle class oriented person tends to have
greater expectations or illusions that justice will come out of the system."[147] Pitts sees
their responses of shock and outrage as integral to those individuals' role as
child advocates.[148] He believes that "[u]sually what
drew them to the meeting is going to court and seeing what a numskull the judge
was. That shock and outrage translate into credibility to speak out."[149]
Ms.
Clare, who had offered her public relations skills during the Baby Jessica
case, made the initial suggestion that the organization have a newsletter when
it reorganized as the DeBoer Committee for Children's Rights.[150] She recalled that she "designed and wrote the first newsletter and ha[s] been
newsletter editor ever since."[151]
One
factor links HMV's diverse advocates; they all got involved because of a very
personal and emotional response to an individual child or group of children at
risk of removal from a stable adoptive or foster home for "reunification" with
strangers, who may even be dangerous. Ms. Slattery in New York describes that
state's seven-hundred members as:
[M]ostly
those who have children, not necessarily adoptive; average families with
children of similar ages of those in the cases that get national attention.
[They] just learn what goes on in the foster care system, and become upset,
outraged; most are under the impression that Child Protective Services means
just that. The average family is astonished how defective those labels such as
Child Protective Services really are.[152]
This
grassroots aspect of HMV's strategy, drawing on the outrage and the street
level work of ordinary people, marks its overall efforts. Advocates relate to
families on a very personal level, and families in crisis report that HMV
provides an emotional, as well as a practical, "lifeline."[153]
Compared
to organizations such as the ACLU and the NAACP, involvement of children's
rights professionals in HMV has been relatively cautious. There are no
attorneys on staff or in management positions.[154] Scholars, psychiatrists, and lawyers have served primarily as advisors or board
members.[155] This cautious approach was
signaled by the first statement of the Advisory Council of "experts" who " 'recognize
the need for a grass-roots action on behalf of children . . . and contribute to
the projects they undertake in ways we hold appropriate and reasonable.' "[156] This cautious
note reflects the fact that academicians and legal and medical professionals
must be more restrained in their expressions of partisanship, and often face
constraints in the use of tactics that grassroots activists can and do deploy
such as picketing, writing letters to judges, and feeding tips to friendly
media connections.[157]
Heather's
case, in Alabama, illustrates HMV's no-holds-barred advocacy. Heather was a
nine-year-old child who had drifted in foster care limbo for years after she
had been abandoned by her biological parents.[158] Her plight aroused the sympathy of her Sunday school teacher, who called the
local HMV chapter leader for advice about how to help Heather find a permanent
adoptive home.[159] The chapter leader contacted the
child welfare agency and was told that Heather was not available for adoption.[160] Astonishingly, the state agency claimed that no process existed to free a
child for adoption if the whereabouts of the parents were unknown.[161] When HMV began a letter writing and media campaign to free Heather, and
mobilized rallies to demand action, the agency threatened the chapter leader
with a $10,000 fine for breaching confidentiality laws prohibiting disclosure
of the identities of children in foster care.[162] The Sunday school teacher, now converted to grassroots activism, broke the
story to a local reporter whose front page Birmingham News article inspired an
adoptive family to come forward.[163] This case ultimately resulted in unanimous
passage of "The Abandoned Child Act,"[164] by the Alabama
legislature and drafted by HMV activists.[165]
E. Looking Back at HMV's
Victories and Defeats
HMV's
use of individual case advocacy as its primary focus, with a combined strategy
of public awareness and legislative advocacy, makes it a powerful voice for
children.[166] Attorney Lewis Pitts sees this strategy as the core of constitutional
democracy--simultaneously litigating, organizing, and educating.[167] Indeed, rarely
do children's rights advocacy organizations succeed in pursuing all three as a
coordinated strategy. HMV's newsletter states: "If political change is
motivated by, and is ultimately reliant upon, the will of the people, how can
we best reach the people--average citizens who have no other way of learning
about the hundreds of thousands of children in our country who face lives
without permanent families?"[168]
The
strategy of focusing on individual children's cases is extremely effective in
recruiting new members. HMV puts remarkably little effort into recruitment.
Executive Director Janet Snyder indicated that they do not conduct an organized
membership drive.[169] Most of the advocates explained that new members generally call or write to
get involved after they hear about a current child's case in the news, or they
locate the Hear My Voice website.[170] Indeed, all of the advocates with whom we spoke indicated that their initial
involvement was a result of media coverage.[171]
However,
even if individuals initially become involved because of media coverage or the
website, the advocates were quick to explain that such cursory contact is not
what keeps them involved. Ms. Slattery explained that "the biggest response
[from individuals] comes from a case in [their] own state. On a routine level,
what works best is smaller gatherings, almost more like Tupperware
[parties]--kinds of get-togethers to pass on information [via] word of mouth."[172] HMV in New
York tries to speak to as many small groups of parents as possible, at
gatherings such as PTA meetings or adoption and foster care parent groups.[173]
Indeed,
advocates acknowledged that the individual case advocacy model might make it difficult
to keep people involved, particularly if the case is lost.[174] Janice Mink feels that there are two
kinds of responses to HMV's advocacy which keep individuals committed:
The
first is 'boy did I make a difference and I can do it again.' Some people will
understand that even if this child lost, others can win; it has to come from
[with]in oneself. The second way is that something in their lives touches this
field. [I]f they are still foster parents or adoptive parents, [the issue]
stays in their li[ves], if not for the original child than for the ones that
they care about.[175]
HMV
lost two of the first high profile cases in which it participated, first Baby
Jessica in 1993, and then Baby Richard in 1995.[176] The Baby Richard case was in many respects a replay of the Jessica DeBoer
case--a four-year-old child was being forcibly removed from the adoptive family
in which he had lived since birth to be reunified with a father and mother who
were strangers to him.[177] This time, however, the courts
were on the defensive. The adoptive parents had made contact with HMV, and the
new children's rights organization had mobilized its constituency.[178] The public outcry generated by HMV activists and friends in the media, and
strong backing by the Governor of Illinois, resulted in enactment of a law
requiring that the child's best interest be weighed before removing a child
from a long term placement.[179]
Because
the law was not retroactive, however, it came too late to help Baby Richard.
When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay the Illinois court's transfer
order, Baby Richard's adoptive parents decided to end their fight and cooperate
with the transfer.[180] Again, the image of a terrified child torn from his adoptive mother's arms was
broadcast on TV networks and printed on front pages all over the country and
abroad.
Even
more traumatic, although receiving less national coverage, was the murder in
April 1995 of two-year-old Lance Helms.[181] HMV advocates had
been powerless to prevent his removal from the aunt who had raised him, and he
was killed after being placed in the custody of his biological father despite
reports of family violence abuse.[182]
How
did HMV survive such crushing defeats? As Lewis Pitts noted, "[there is a]
paradox to people power--if you believe you have power, you do. The minute you
doubt it, it goes away."[183] HMV has worked to sustain its advocates' sense of
power, even in the face of defeat, and to channel the public's outrage at
negative outcomes into an ongoing constructive agenda. Tangible symbols of
this are practices such as candlelight vigils for lost cases and designated
donations to HMV. HMV's Fall 2000 newsletter carries over twenty donations in
honor of Jessica DeBoer (1993), seven in honor of Baby Richard (1995), and four
in memory of Lance Helms (1995).[184] The movement's young martyrs
continue to generate support many years after their cases have been closed.
When
asked what strategy is most effective in winning individual cases, HMV
advocates point first to the media.[185] Lewis Pitts, however, spoke of the
importance of a combined public awareness, individual case, and legislative
advocacy strategy.[186] He emphasized the challenges of a
media-fueled public awareness strategy and the importance of old-fashioned
grassroots organizing:
The
target constituency is the average citizen who won't know about [the case] in
the courthouse but will see it on the news. These things tend to stick in the
media--that's how people are going to know about it. But they won't get an 800
number [to call] on the news. There has to be direct outreach to involve
people.[187]
Advocates
also saw victories in individual cases as inextricably linked to overall policy
reform. Ms. Slattery spoke of the case of Eliza Izquierdo, a child who died at
the hands of her mother, despite being under the watch of a social worker from
New York City's Child Protective Services.[188] According to Ms. Slattery, "[t]he [New York]
Daily News had a story on it every day [and] as a result the Administration for
Children's Services was created. Had it not been for the Daily News constantly
highlighting how bad the system was, we would not have had as much reform."[189] She also
pointed to the Baby Richard case in Chicago and the Chicago Tribune's coverage
of it as another example of this phenomenon.[190] Executive Director Janet Snyder identified
public awareness as a "key item for a culture shift."[191] She pointed out that "judges
aren't supposed to be influenced by outside factors, but when public awareness
changes, then [the judges'] awareness changes; they are people too."[192]
The
HMV Delaware chapter, later renamed Grassroots Citizens for Children (GCC),
used aggressive media tactics and a child's active engagement to achieve an
important victory when it assisted Samantha Frazier, a nine-year-old child, in
petitioning the Delaware State Supreme Court directly in her own case.[193] Samantha had
been in foster care for four years and wished to be adopted; but when her
drug-involved mother opposed the state's petition for termination, Samantha's
court-appointed special advocate (CASA) sided with the mother.[194] She never presented Samantha's views to the court and allowed the time for
appeal to expire.[195] While bemoaning this injustice,
lawyers were unanimous that Samantha had no right to appeal and no standing to
dispute the CASA's position; the case was hopeless. Lewis Pitts and HMV lay
advocates helped Samantha file her own appeal pro se.[196] HMV activists in Delaware tipped
CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather that papers were about to be filed by a
child, and he covered the story on national TV and the story headlined in local
and even national newspapers.[197] The next day, Samantha was
interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America.[198]
Instead
of summarily dismissing the appeal, as the experts had predicted it would, the
Delaware Court ordered the trial record and in an astonishing seventeen days
ruled on Samantha's case.[199] While the Delaware Court did not
accord Samantha full standing, it chastised the CASA for failing to advocate
zealously for Samantha and to give her views a voice in court.[200] The case was remanded and Samantha was given an opportunity to be heard.[201] This case illustrates the cumulative effects of grassroots advocacy on a
variety of children's issues, ranging from their due process rights to
consideration of their interests and wishes. The strategies developed in Baby
Jessica's and Baby Richard's cases paid off in Samantha's case. While she did
not win the right to appear without a guardian or next friend, the public furor
over her case forced the courts to give her a fair hearing.[202] Ultimately, Samantha decided for herself that she wanted to maintain ties with
her biological mother.[203]
Other
high profile cases in which HMV has achieved significant results include those
of Bridget and Lucy Rost, Baby Cornilous, Baby Emily, and Justin Assente, all
of which received enormous media attention and were covered on television
programs such as Good Morning America, Dateline, and 20/20.[204]
F. Splits and Schisms:
Working Inside or Outside?
Like
other social movements and social movement organizations, HMV's work for
children's rights has not been immune to splits and schisms--some involving
strategies and others involving constituencies. About three years ago, a group
of HMV advocates broke off to form GCC. The organization is based in Delaware
and has its own independent board, a 600-person mailing list and 50 paid
members.[205] Their mission, like that of HMV,
is to advocate for the recognition of all children as rights-bearing citizens
entitled to safe, permanent families.[206] Attorney Lewis Pitts made a point of not
discussing the internal politics which led GCC to break off from HMV.[207] He said that he did not see a purpose in organizations working for the same
goals undercutting each other.[208] One difference, however, appears to be a shift in emphasis away from
individual cases that pit activists against the system (courts and child
welfare agencies) and toward systemic reform that involves working within the
system. Co-chair Janice Mink outlined the group's remarkable array of
activity,[209] stating that rather than individual case advocacy, she sees GCC's major
accomplishment as the 1999 legislation which created the State's Office of the
Child Advocate. She explained:
[T]hey
all blow you off if you talk about an individual case. For example I worked
with an individual child in foster care in my kids' school who was in awful
foster home. I called DFS and they blew me off. They said I was too
emotionally involved. The child hadn't had any counseling. If you back up,
you can get them to focus on the broader issues. You shouldn't use individual
stories because they can easily say that's just one case.[210]
GCC
activists Janice Mink and Lewis Pitts both talked about GCC's successes in
terms of legislative advocacy.[211] Both mentioned the need to play
"the inside-outside game"--to be able to work legitimately with officials
inside the system, while retaining the outside capacity to mobilize and/or
bring an issue to the attention of the media when necessary.[212] This strategy has allowed GCC activists to play a key role because they are
able "to say things the government officials aren't able to say themselves, as
a result of politics; [GCC] is well-respected but the state agency can't pull
[their] strings because [they] don't get paid and [they are] not affiliated
with anyone. [GCC activists] do this because [they] care."[213] The real testament to this
unique role, Janice Mink explained is, "[t]he Department for Children's
Services used to hate us, now they call us for help."[214]
HMV,
like GCC, apparently recognizes this same need to be both an outsider, in
conflict with the system, and an insider, seeking to build consensus with those
affected by and controlling the system. While increasing energy has been
devoted to law reform and participation in other insider activities, like
drafting of regulations and testifying before Congress and state legislatures,
HMV's advocacy continues to be driven by individual cases.
Another
potential split that has attracted comment is along racial and class lines.
Both HMV and GCC share a common trait in their largely white, middle class
constituencies.[215] There is always a danger that a
movement powered by white, middle class constituents will fail to appreciate
the threat to poor families of color when activists' voices are raised "in
defense of the rights of children to safe permanent homes."[216] Specifically,
there are some in the child advocacy community who argue that advocating in
favor of maintaining children's ties with psychological parents and against
reunification with abusive parents may distract from a focus on the material
needs of poor families and children's rights to be raised within their families
of origin.[217] Parents of color who lose their children to "the system" often face barriers
such as community disinvestment, drug problems, lack of effective counsel, and
economic stresses which they must survive without any social supports.[218] The work of civilian activists can further tip the balance of power so that
poor parents face opposition not only from a hostile government seeking to
destroy their families, but also from an outraged middle class responding to
horror stories in the media.[219] HMV must walk a fine line by
advocating for children's safety and permanency in a manner that is sensitive
to class and to color.
However,
the assumption that every case pits rich against poor or white against black is
often simplistic. While some of HMV's cases pit middle class advocates against
poor parents, in many others, like those of Lance Helms or the Baldanza
brothers,[220] HMV supports kin care-givers[221] who seek to protect children from abuse by drug-involved relatives. In many
adoption cases, like those of Baby Jessica and Baby Richard, the gap in
socio-economic status between the adoptive and biological parents has been
exaggerated in the media.[222] The adoption of Bridget and Lucy Rost, which was opposed by Native American
tribes, highlights how differences in race or culture may lead to splits along
political and cultural fault lines.[223]
G. Comparisons with Other
Child Advocacy Organizations
HMV's
combined strategy of individual case advocacy, buttressed by grassroots public
awareness, and legislative advocacy makes the organization a unique voice for
children. Executive Director Janet Snyder clarified this role when she stated:
Hear My
Voice does not believe that we invented the wheel in terms of child advocacy.
[T]here are so many people and entities that are working hard for kids and have
been doing so for years. Perhaps one of the differences, whether because we
didn't know any better or because of the nature of the people involved, [is] we
have been a little more assertive in a different way about bringing these
things to the forefront. Attorneys involved in these cases are reluctant to
involve the media so as not to anger judges. Hear My Voice won't involve the
media if we really think it will negatively impact a case, but rarely is the
use of media detrimental.[224]
A
quick search of Internet sites focusing on children's rights turned up more
than five million hits.[225] This level of action on behalf of
children is remarkable in and of itself, and worthy of an article of its own.
Most of HMV's website is devoted to tracking the stories of individual
children's cases. Other child advocacy organizations focus on policy issues,
engaging readers to take a stand in very specific ways. While HMV's calls to
action read "Nicole Has Won!, Sam Prepares for a Loss,"[226] other organizations urge "Make the Child Tax Credit Available to All Families!,
Ensure all Legal Immigrant Children Receive Health Care."[227] Notably, HMV's "How to Help"
webpage urges individuals to "[call] officials [and let them] know you want the
courts to make the best interest of the child the paramount consideration and
get involved in your local community."[228] What makes this unique is the actual steps to be
taken are not pre-designated. While the national organization outlines its
framework and overall goals, individual advocates seem free to choose from a
menu of possible involvements. Annual training sessions are aimed at turning
individual constituents into front-line activists.[229]
While
there is no one best way to advocate, HMV's strategies are especially effective
at amplifying the voices of children who previously had not been heard or
adequately represented. Other advocacy groups use statistics to make their
point, drawing attention to a problem by saying "Look what's happening to
millions of children in the United States, who lack education or food or
shelter or medical care." Traditional children's rights groups also know how to
utilize the power of a compelling story. CDF, for example, often uses
individual stories to support broader policy recommendations. However, these
cases are simply the means to the end of persuading readers of the importance
of joining in the battle to secure economic and social justice for children as
a group. Rights violations in individual cases are not the central agenda.
V. Examining HMV through the Lens of Social
Movement Theory
In
the preceding sections, we have told the story of HMV, with minimal commentary,
as the grassroots advocates experienced it. On its surface, it is a story of
lay advocates and grassroots activists banding together on an ad hoc basis and
emerging as a collective voice for children. Now, let us examine it from
another perspective that reveals the complex structures and strategic processes
these lay advocates have developed. Social movement theory supplies law reform
scholars with a new language for talking about social movement organizations
such as HMV and their impact on law and policy. The language adopted by social
movement scholars McCarthy and Zald is especially well adapted to this
discussion.[230] Applying
their framework, HMV can be identified as a social movement organization in the
children's rights social movement industry.[231] HMV is well
situated to draw on the resources of a large social movement sector in which
middle class women have historically been highly active around children's
issues.[232]
How
has HMV approached this task of resource mobilization? In examining HMV's
resource mobilization, we can turn for insights to the work of social
psychologists who study social movements. These scholars identify the
reconstruction of collective beliefs as a key step in the process by which
social movement organizations mobilize their constituents.[233] Collective beliefs, we are told, are formed in interaction with other people.
Collective action occurs when people "redefine[ ] their situation so that they
experience injustice, feel solidarity with other people who share the same
feelings of injustice, blame some authority for not taking its responsibility,
and feel that collective action could make a difference."[234] This phrase captures the
stories told by the HMV activists. They commonly described an abrupt awakening
to the injustices suffered by children like Jessica, Richard, and Samantha, who
were at risk of forcible removal from their bonded families.[235] They experienced these injustices vicariously, but powerfully through empathy
with the children.[236] Many HMV activists identified an
especially powerful empathy for children of the same age as their own children.
The community of activists forming around HMV provide a community in which to
share these feelings of injustice and to identify a locus of blame (the
judicial system, the child welfare system). People who had previously sat on
the sidelines joined in protests and grassroots activism because they had begun
to believe that collective action might make a difference in the outcomes for
these children.
HMV
has also been engaged in what scholars call the social construction of
collective action frames.[237] This process involves a change in existing collective beliefs.[238] In the case of the children's rights movement, the change in collective
beliefs is a change from conceptualizing children as property to treating
children as people--a change from viewing children as passive objects to
viewing children as sentient beings actively engaged in shaping their own
identities and their own realities.[239] This change has been driven by new
understandings of children's capacities for growth and agency[240] and new beliefs about the
importance of psychological attachment as opposed to biological connection. In
challenging existing beliefs, HMV has purposefully engaged in all three realms
identified by Klandermans: (a) public discourse, defined as the interface of
media discourse and interpersonal interaction; (b) persuasive communication
(with opponents and adherents) during mobilization campaigns; and (c)
consciousness raising (among constituents) during episodes of collective
action.[241] HMV advocates intuitively
understand how to communicate with an audience that is largely female, middle
class, and inherently family-centered.[242] It is no accident
that the Tupperware party analogy serves so well to describe HMV's strategy for
transforming adherents into constituents.[243] HMV must find its adherents (in social movement
parlance, those who sympathize with its goals) among persons who are familiar
with children's lives, are attuned to children's voices, and have the time and
resources to engage in social action on behalf of children. As during the turn
of the last century, the majority of this constituency are middle class mothers
and part-time or full-time homemakers.[244] In recruiting these
women into active roles as constituents, the soft personalized appeal in the
intimate surroundings of home is far more effective than the billboard or the
soapbox hard sell.
Likewise,
the prime audiences for media activity are the homemakers and middle class
households who watch morning and day-time television.[245] Television is a medium that, for better or worse, reaches deep into the home.
Each time a heartbreaking case, enacted before the cameras by distraught
parents and real children, airs on the Today Show or Good Morning America, HMV
gains new constituents. These constituents are then drawn into local action
outside the home through what social movement theorists would identify as a
federated structure of state chapters.[246] While HMV advocates may begin as isolated
constituents attracted to the movement from a distance--New Yorkers responding
to a Michigan case, for example--they seldom remain so. As members of local
chapters, they interact face-to-face with other HMV advocates in settings that
provide opportunities for consciousness-raising within the existing social
groups of coffee klatches, churches, PTAs and neighborhood associations.[247] Drawing on strategies popularized in these settings, HMV raises money through
selling greeting cards drawn by HMV child clients, cookbooks filled with
constituents' family recipes, fashion shows, and the like.[248] These collective projects have
a value far beyond the money they raise. Although less dramatic than picketing
or protests, they bind constituents to the group and to the movement's goals.
HMV's
structure also illustrates the crucial role played by what movement theorists
call cadre and transitory teams.[249] Such teams are assembled for specific projects of short duration.[250] They are usually led by cadre, i.e. constituents, who have been highly active
in the past and hold leadership roles.[251] Lay cadre often
transition into roles as professional cadre.[252] According to these
scholars, "[w]hat distinguishes these constituents from others is that they are
directly linked to the organization through tasks they are involved directly in
the affairs of the [social movement organization.] Since involvement of this
sort occurs in small, face-to-face groups, workers, whether through transitory
teams or through continuous task involvement, can be expected to receive
solidarity incentives from such involvement selective benefits of a nonmaterial
sort."[253] In
other words, team members derive special satisfaction from their active
involvement with other constituents in a common cause.
VI. Grassroots Advocacy and the Future of
Children's Rights
The
children's rights movement has its roots in the law reforms of the progressive
era. As we have seen, activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries succeeded in radically reshaping the legal treatment of children. In
the modern era, law reform has become increasingly professionalized. Inside the
Beltway and inside state legislatures, lobbyists, academic experts, NGOs
staffed by professionals and, of course, professional politicians and their
staffs play the primary roles in shaping legal policies.
The
balance of power may now be changing. The world-wide web has brought
revolutions in information and in communication, leveling the playing field for
grassroots activists. Any citizen with a computer has the capacity to educate
herself and to educate and influence others. We predict that organizations
such as HMV, armed with the new egalitarian tools of the web, will become
increasingly influential. While their influence will not be an unalloyed good,
it can provide a special vitality and democratic authenticity that was lost
when professionals supplanted the armies of ordinary women who won earlier
battles to reform laws on labor, juvenile justice, and child custody.
In
sum, grassroots organizations like HMV hold out the promise of restoring to the
children's rights movement the powerful voice and street level activism that
make a movement successful. These middle class homemakers, teachers,
secretaries and their sisters are a force to be reckoned with. Women very much
like them were largely responsible for the successes of the nineteenth and
early twentieth century children's rights movement.
Anecdotal
evidence as well as theory supports our optimism on this score. Laval
Miller-Wilson, of the Juvenile Law Center, in commenting on this article, noted
both the impressive accomplishments of our grandmothers' generation and the
crucial importance of women's street level activism on behalf of children.[254] A trained attorney, he states that he has learned never to underestimate the
power of a band of women from the judge's or mayor's own community marching
with signs and banners in front of the executive mansion or the courthouse.[255] Miller-Wilson described cases from his own practice in which judges,
prosecutors, and legislators changed their minds when women who learned about
the case from neighbors or in the media marched and wrote letters on the
child's behalf.[256] The activists that Miller-Wilson
was describing were predominantly women of color from an urban community. If
organizations such as HMV can expand their ranks to include persons from all
communities and of all colors, linking activists all over the country, in
suburbs and cities, the potential for actually improving the lives of America's
children will be enormous.
VIII. Conclusion
In
this article, we have only scratched the surface of social movement theory, in
applying it to the examination of the grassroots children's rights organization
known as Hear My Voice. As a part of a larger social movement for children's
rights, HMV has contributed to law and policy reforms through direct action and
protest, forcing change where more conventional channels had failed to produce
results. Rhonda Copelon captured the essence of HMV's contribution in the
following remark: "Social movements have the power to force changes that
lawyers do not think are possible."[257] HMV has mobilized lay advocates,
who bring the zeal and the grassroots tactics of community activism to
individual case advocacy and law reform. In so doing, they have often
succeeded where the experts told them the cause was hopeless.
HMV's
strengths lie in its grassroots style and strong lay constituency. Its success
is the product of a combination of factors unique to the last decade of the twentieth
century. From a social movement perspective, the crucial elements appear to
be: (1) a new frame for collective action against outmoded laws, grounded in a
belief that children's psychological attachments are more important in defining
family than their genetic attachments; (2) the existence of a group of
potential adherents in the social movement sector, mostly middle class women,
acculturated to take children's emotional suffering seriously; (3) the power of
media to create compelling images of child martyrs, like Jessica and Richard,
whose stories mobilize ordinary people to action; (4) the development of the
world-wide Web as a tool for recruitment, mobilization and instantaneous,
low-cost dissemination of information; and (5) the use of a federated structure
that can deploy lay advocates in transitory teams to respond to specific calls
for case advocacy and to build solidarity among constituents.
HMV
has been able to influence the development of the law on several planes: first,
by advocating for individual children to have a voice in the court systems;
second, by pushing courts to create precedents more favorable to children's
rights to safety and permanency; and third, by lobbying for state and federal
laws, such as ASFA and Offices of Ombudsmen for Children, that further these
goals at a systemic level.258
It
is important to remember that HMV is only one social movement organization in a
very large social movement industry presently coalescing around children's
rights. Recall the millions of hits in our web search on children's rights. A
symptom of the scope of this movement is the adoption of the U.N. Convention on
the Rights of the Child. [258] It has been called the swiftest
and most universal acceptance of a human rights convention in history.
HMV's
relationship to other children's rights organizations, both national and
international, both organizations that support and organizations that oppose
rights for children, is beyond the scope of this article.[259] It is sufficient to note that
HMV need not be all things to all children, nor is it. Whatever gaps may exist
in its strategy, or shortfalls in its representation of poor families or
unexplored avenues of advocacy will be addressed by other organizations
participating in what scholars have aptly termed "an industry" characterized by
competition, specialization, and other complex attributes.
It
is also important to remember that while scholars can describe and study a
social movement, only the People have the grassroots power, legitimacy, and creativity to create and sustain.
Scholars who work with social movement organizations and their constituents
must take special care to honor their autonomy, celebrate their diversity, and
applaud their accomplishments from a respectful distance. The use of technical
terms and scholarly analysis must never obscure the real story of social
movements--the story of lay advocates passionate about a cause and capable of
forcing changes that the so-called experts told them were impossible.
Epilogue[260]
September
7, 2001
Timmie
Needs Your Help! 12 1/2-year-old Timmie Meldrum was torn from his long-term
bonded family July 29, 2001. Timmie was taken against his will. There has
been some monitored phone contact made between Timmie and his family in South
Dakota. Chuck Novotny [Timmie's stepfather] reports that the calls are
time-limited. An oral argument request is pending in the South Dakota Supreme
Court in an appeal to overturn Judge Max A. Gors' order to have Timmie torn
from his long-term bonded family that includes his 8-year-old biological
brother. We will update this site with all incoming information regarding the
appeal on Timmie's case. For now, we would like you to write to the Office of
the Governor of the state of South Dakota. Please urge Governor Janklow to
realize the importance of Timmie's case. Justices of the Supreme Court in
South Dakota are governor-appointed. Governor Janklow needs to implore the
justices to review Timmie's case holding his best interest of paramount
consideration above all other considerations including the issue of bloodline.
Timmie and his brother Zac have a constitutional right to maintain their
life-long bonded relationship. Please send your letters immediately. This
case cannot wait for resolution. Please mail to:
Office
of the Governor
William
J. Janklow
500
East Capitol
Pierre,
SD 57501-5070
(605)
773-3212
or
email to sdgov@state.sd.us
Please
cc your letters via mail or email to headquarters for our files. Please also
cc your letters to Argus Leader News at www.argusleader.co.
[1]Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, J.D., Columbia 1983,
Professor of Law, David H. Levin Chair in Family Law and Director of the Center
on Children and the Law, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, University of
Florida. Sarah Rebecca Katz, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 2003. We
dedicate this article to Laura Hurtado, a committed advocate for children who
gave her time to be interviewed for this piece despite the ravages of
chemotherapy. She passed away on August 2001 and will be greatly missed,
especially by the children of California.
[3] Id.
[4] Bert Klandermans, The Social Psychology of Protest 2 (Blackwell Publishers 1997).
[5] See Lynn
Smith, Rally's Cry for Adoptive Parents' Rights: A Grassroots Committee
Wants to Reform Adoption Laws to Avoid Another Baby Jessica Dispute but Some
Say Birth Parents Could Lose Out, L.A. Times E1 (Oct. 20, 1993).
[6] A third-party custody case refers to a case in which
a person who is not the biological parent of the child (i.e., a grandparent,
stepparent or de facto parent) seeks custody of that child against the wishes
of the biological parent.
[10] See generally Sidney Tarrow, Mentalities, Political Cultures and Collective
Action Frames: Constructing Meanings through Action, in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory 174 (Aldon D. Morris & Carol McClurg Mueller,
eds. 1992) [hereinafter Frontiers];
Pamela E. Oliver & Gerald Maxwell, Mobilizing Technologies for
Collective Action, in Frontiers in
Social Movement Theory 251 (Aldon D.
Morris & Carol McClurg Mueller, eds. 1992) .
[11] See Mary
Ann Mason, From Father's Property to Children's Rights: The History of Child
Custody in the United States 4
(Columbia U. Press 1994); Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, Who Owns the Child?
Meyer and Pierce and the Child as Property, 33 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 995, 1041-1046 (1992) [hereinafter Who
Owns the Child]; Barbara Bennett
Woodhouse, The Status of Children: A Story of Emerging Rights, in Cross
Currents: Family Law and Policy in the US and England 423 (Sanford N. Katz et al., eds, Oxford U. Press
2000) [hereinafter The Status of Children].
[12] Who Owns the Child, supra n. 11, at 1091.
[13] See Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, Out of Children's Needs, Children's Rights: The
Child's Voice in Defining the Family,
8 B.Y.U. J. Pub. L. 321, 329 (1994).
[16] Websites for these organizations trace their origins
to turn of the century reformers. See PTA, http://www.pta.org/apta/mile1890 (accessed Oct. 31, 2005) (PTA
began with founding of National Congress of Mothers in 1890); Girl Scouts of
the USA, http://www.girlscouting.net/gshistory.html (accessed Oct. 31, 2005)
(tracing founding of Girls Scouts to 1913); Boys and Girls Clubs,
http://www.bgca.org/whoweare/history.asp (accessed Oct. 31, 2005) (Boys and
Girls Clubs originated in 1860 as Connecticut women's outreach to street
children).
[17] 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
[18] See Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education
and Black America's Struggle for Equality 708 (Alfred A. Knopf 1987); The Status of Children, supra n. 11, at 427.
[23] Id.
[24] 387 U.S. 1 (1967) (establishing a minor's right to
counsel in criminal and juvenile justice proceedings).
[25] 442 U.S. 584 (1979) (acknowledging children's due
process rights in commitments to mental institutions, but holding that the
opinion of parents and doctors trumps the rights of the child).
[26] 419 U.S. 565 (1975) (recognizing due process rights
of students subjected to corporal punishment in schools).
[27] See Barbara
Bennett Woodhouse, Children's Rights,
in Handbook of Youth and Justice 377, 383-387 (Susan O. White ed., Publisher 2001) (reviewing the Supreme
Court's jurisprudence on children's rights).
[29]See Robert H. Mnookin, In The Interest of Children: Advocacy, Law Reform and
Public Policy (Robert H. Mnookin ed.,
W.H. Freeman 1985) (providing a fascinating description of the work of
children's advocates who brought these seminal test cases before the Supreme
Court).
[30] Klandermans, supra n. 4, at 2.
[31] Id.
[32] Bert Klandermans, The Social Construction of
Protest and Multiorganizational Fields,
in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory 77 (Aldon D. Morrris
& Carol McClurg Mueller, eds. 1992) [hereinafter Social Construction].
[46] See McCarthy & Zald, supra n. 2,
at 20-21.
[47] Id. at
21.
[48] Id.
[56] Recognizing that a movement is made of individuals
situated in a particular social context, our description of HMV will be consciously
subjective. Our description draws upon news accounts and other sources, but
also relies most heavily on the words and writings of the activists themselves.
In addition to consulting HMV publications, telephone interviews were
conducted with a group of HMV activists in February and March of 2001. In each
interview, the same basic questions were asked which covered six areas:
movement dynamics, emotional engagement, mission definition, structure,
mobilization, and strategies of choice. The following discussion synthesizes
the interview information and the data in newsletters, and presents the
advocates subjectively, as they see themselves.
[59] CNN,
"Jessica DeBoer Returned to Biological Parents" (CNN Aug. 2, 1993) (TV
broadcast) (transcr. available on LEXIS).
[63] Clare, supra n. 57.
[65] Smith, supra n. 5. Because the case involved an interstate adoption, it was
complicated by conflict of laws jurisdictional issues. Unless Michigan could
assume jurisdiction under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, it must
defer to the decision of the Iowa courts that, absent a showing of unfitness of
the biological parent, there could be no hearing on Jessica's best interests. Id.
[69] See generally Mason, supra n. 11; The
Status of Children, supra n. 11.
[70] Slattery, supra n. 57.
[81] Clare, supra n. 57.
[82] See Cathy Scott, An Escondido Woman is in Michigan Today to Rally on Behalf of a
Family She's Never Met, San Diego
Union Times (April 17, 1993) (describing how an adoptive mother started San
Diego hotline and traveled to Ann Arbor).
[83] Clare, supra n. 57.
[84] Id.
[86] Id.
[87] Snyder, supra n. 57.
[90] Id.; see
e.g. A New Name Reflects our Past
and Future, 8 Hear My Voice
(newsletter) 3 (Winter 1995).
[93] DeBoer v. DeBoer, 509 U.S. 1301 (1993). At this point, Ms. Woodhouse first became
involved with HMV. A colleague, Kent Syverud, who was preparing the brief to
the Supreme Court seeking a stay of the transfer order and Ms. Woodhouse,
co-authored an amicus brief with adoption expert Joan Hollinger, that was
signed by experts from many prominent universities. The brief focused on the
psychological development of the child and her right to a hearing as to harm
she might suffer at transfer. The brief also dealt with complex jurisdictional
issues which ultimately were dispositive of the case.
[94] Id.
[95] Hurtado, supra n. 57.
[97] Snyder, supra n. 57.
[98] Clare, supra n. 57.
[100] Id.
[101] Hear My Voice, Hear My Voice: Protecting Our
Nation's Children Pamphlet (Hear My
Voice: Protecting Our Nation's Children) (available at www.hearmyvoice.org)
[105] See Klandermans, supra n. 4, at 2 (Klandermans
describes this as a key point: solidarity is created through collective action,
but it is through sustaining collective action that contention turns into a
movement).
[107] Reflecting Our Growth in Our Revised Mission
Statement, 10 Hear My Voice
(newsletter) 2 (Fall 1995).
[108] Grassroots Citizens for Children (brochure) 8 (Fall
2000).
[109] Interview with Adoree Blair, HMV Advoc. (Feb. 19,
2001).
[110] Slattery, supra n. 57.
[114] See Goldstein, supra n. 9 (arguing that each
child needs one adult to whom he or she can turn for nurture, assistance and
support and that laws must be structured to minimize any interference in the
child's relationship with this "psychological parent."). Id. A unifying constant in the HMV cases is the threat
that a child will be removed from the psychological parent, who may be a foster
parent, a grandparent, an adoptive or would-be adoptive parent, a stepparent or
any other person who has filled the psychological role of parent. Id.
[115] See Jim
Mulvaney, I Want to Stay with
Mommy, Newsday A3 (Aug. 8, 1994) (describing
Cameron Baldanza case).
[118] Case Advocacy: The Heart of HEAR MY VOICE, 5 Hear My Voice (newsletter) 1 (1997).
[121] Id.
[125] Id.
[130] Snyder, supra n. 57.
[131] Blair, supra n. 109.
[133] Working for Every Child's Right to a Safe and
Permanent Home, 13 Hear My Voice
(newsletter) 1 (Summer 1996).
[134] Eighth Annual Meeting, Hear My Voice Notes (July – Aug. 2000).
[135] Election Provides Key Opportunity to Educate
Legislators & Judges, 8 Hear My
Voice (newsletter) 1 (Fall 2000).
[136] Woodhouse has been on the receiving end of this
question numerous times, most recently in connection with the Religious Liberty
Protection Act which poses potential risks to child abuse victims.
[138] Blair, supra n. 109.
[139] Id.
[142] Mink, supra n. 57.
[143] Pitts, supra n. 57.
[145] Id.
[146] Id.
[147] Id.
[149] Id.
[151] Id.
[152] Slattery, supra n. 57.
[153] See e.g. A Letter from Kyle Smith's Parents,
10 Hear My Voice (newsletter) 3 (Fall 1995); An Interview with Jack Meade, 11 Hear My Voice (newsletter) 3 (Winter 1995); David
Smith Shares Important Advice, 14
Hear My Voice (newsletter) 6 (1996); Letters from Children and Families We
Have Come to Know, 7 Hear My Voice 2
(Dec. 1999).
[154] Case Advocacy: The Heart of HEAR MY VOICE, supra n. 118, at 1, 8.
[156] Powerful Children's Rights Conference Strengthens
DCCR, supra n. 113.
[165] Hear My Voice Makes a Difference in Alabama, supra n. 158, at 2.
[166] Case Advocacy: The Heart of HEAR MY VOICE, supra n. 118, at 1 (identifying no fewer than 21 children for whom HMV is advocating
its case load is distinguished from that of attorneys representing children by
the grassroots techniques it uses to further these children's cases).
[167] Pitts, supra n. 57.
[168] Case Advocacy: The Heart of HEAR MY VOICE, supra n. 118.
[169] Snyder, supra n. 57.
[170] See Hear
My Voice, supra n. 116.
[172] Slattery, supra n. 57.
[175] Blair, supra n. 109.
[179] Id.; Bob
Greene, Who Will Hear the Child's Cry?, Chicago Trib. C1, (Aug. 22, 1993); Illinois Legislature, Governor
Acts Decisively to Help "Baby Richard",
5 Hear My Voice (newsletter) 1 (July – Aug. 1994); CBS Evening News, "Baby Richard Outcry Generates Support for Adoptive
Parents and for Children's Rights" (CBS May 21, 1995) (TV broadcast).
[180] O'Connell v. Kirchner, 513 U.S. 1303 (1995). Ms. Woodhouse co-authored the
brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the adoptive parents arguing that
due process required a hearing to consider the child's liberty interest in the
relationship with his de facto family. Again, O'Connor, joined by Breyer,
dissented from the denial of a stay. O'Connell v. Kirchner, 513 U.S. 1138 (1995).
[182] Id.; Emi
Endo, Toddler's Death Brings Network Into Being, L.A. Times B2 (Apr. 16, 1996); Updates on Our
Children at Risk, 9 Hear My Voice
(newsletter) 3 (Spr. – Summer 1995).
[188] Slattery, supra n. 57; see also Bob Port, Reform After Tragedy: Girl's Death Shook Up City, Daily News (N.Y.) 9 (Nov. 20, 2000) (detailing how
Izquierdo's death lead to the creation of new Administration for Children's
Services).
[189] Slattery, supra n. 57.
[190] Id.
[191] Pitts, supra n. 57.
[192] Id.
[193] Lewis Pitts, Beyond Rhetoric to Due Process
Protective Rights for Children: A Civil Right Approach is Imperative, in Marcia Robinson Lowry et al., Perspectives on
Child Advocacy Law in the Early 21st Century, 31, 34-35 (ABA Fund for Justice and Education, June 2000) (describing
Samantha's case).
[198] Id.
[203] Todd Spangler, Girl Won't Divorce Her Mother, Chattanooga Free Press A1 (June 30, 1998).
[204] See Letters from Children and Families We Have
Come to Know, supra n. 153, at 4, 6 (publishing letters from grateful
families, including those of Emily Welsh and Bridget and Lucy Rost); see
also Mark Hansen, Fears of the
Heart, 80 ABA J. 58 (Nov. 1994)
(discussing Baby Emily, Jessica and Richard); Commentary, The Battle Over
Cornilous, Wash. Times A18 (Jan. 14, 2000); Kristina Goetz, Dozens Support
Adoption of Justin, Cincinnati
Enquirer C2 (Mar. 14, 1999); Two Rallies to Support Rost Adoption Rights, Columbus Dispatch 1C (June 21, 1995), Good
Morning America, "The Battle Over
Baby Justin" (ABC Mar. 8, 1999) (TV broadcast).
[206] Grassroots Citizens for Children, supra n.
111.
[208] Id.
[209] Mink, supra n. 57.
[210] Id.
[213] Id.
[214] Id.
[217] Dorothy E. Roberts, Existing and Emerging
Constitutional Rights of Children, 2 Pa.
J. Con. L. 112, 128-129,139 (1998).
[222] See DeBoer v. DeBoer, 509 U.S. 1301 (1993); O'Connell v. Kirchner, 513 U.S. 1303 (1995).
[223] CBS This Morning (CBS June, 1995) (TV broadcast).
[224] Pitts, supra n. 57.
[227] See Children Defense Fund, Legislative Action Center, http://www.childrensdefense.org (accessed Nov. 5, 2005); Children Now, http://www.childrennow.org (accessed Nov. 5, 2005).
[228] Hear My Voice, How You Can Help, http://www.hearmyvoice.org/youhelp.htm (accessed Nov. 10, 2005).
[230] See generally McCarthy & Zald, supra n. 2.
[232] Id.
[234] Klandermans, supra n. 4 at 43.
[237] Klandermans, supra n. 4, at 45.
[240] See generally Rethinking Childhood (Peter B. Pufall & Richard P.
Unsworth eds., Rutgers University Press 2004).
[243] See Slattery, supra n. 57. For the uninitiated,
Tupperware, founded in 1948, markets its line of plastic containers by
recruiting women to host Tupperware parties in their homes. The parties serve
social, relational and marketing functions, bringing women and their children
together in a setting that makes purchasing plastic containers a social and
relational as well as a consumer activity. Invitees understand the unspoken
rule that a purchase is the price of admission, with profits going to the hostess
(who may be dependent on a male breadwinner) or to a charitable cause. The
strategy was so successful that many women became passionate collectors of
Tupperware and developed a strong loyalty to the product, recruiting others to
the activity of hosting Tupperware parties. See http://www.tupperware.com (accessed Nov 6, 2005).
[246] See McCarthy & Zald, supra n. 2, at 29.
[248] See Fashion Show Helps Kids, Sun Sentinel 3B (May 29, 1997).
[249] See McCarthy & Zald, supra n. 2,
at 29.
[253] Id.
[258] United Nations, Convention on the Rights of the Child, http://www.unicef.org/crc/crc.htm (accessed Nov. 6, 2005).
[259] Id.; see generally Symposium, The United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child: Benefits to American Children, Effects on American Law, 5 Geo. J. Fighting Pov. 123 (1998).
[260] Hear My Voice Hotline Alert, www.hmv.org (Sept. 7,
2001). As the HMV case history explains, Timmie's mother died recently and his
biological father, with whom he had virtually no contact, won a custody order
removing him from the home in which he had grown up with his stepfather and
little brother. See Timmie Meldrum Wins Victory For All Children, 8 Hear My Voice (newsletter) 3 (Fall 2000).
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