Feminist Justice--October 12, 1993
Dear People,
For any who are interested in watching how a court deals with the issues
we are considering in the class, if you have the time you might drop down
next Monday morning, October 18, at 10 in Judge Bridges's court at the end
of the third-floor hall in the Monroe County Justice Facility, 7th and
College. The hearing is scheduled to consider an evaluation of the best
interests of Debbie's children in matters of visitation. Interestingly,
as so many times before, no evaluation has been done.
What a wonderful bundle of visitors we had last night--among others the
couple who came from Indianapolis trying to save a child from abuse,
Jennifer Crum from Clark County, David Barker from Houston and his sister
Susie Hall, vice president of the Alliance for the Rights of Children,
ARCH, in Merrifield, Virginia, across from Washington. Susie held our
attention and talked with us for a full two hours without a break. She
became the child she had been, reenacting what it felt like when she was
told to keep her bedroom unlocked and dared not sleep, what she told when
she first told a friend what was happening, how she planned out with her
friend where to go from there, what happened when her friend and her
friend's mother took her to the police, where her mother and her abuser
were brought in, while she was hooked to a phony polygraph, and decided,
"What the hel do I have to lose now..." and at 15 told her story, and how
it felt to be taken away into foster placement as a consequence. She told
us how she had called in trying to find out more about Elizabeth Morgan
when Dr. Morgan was in jail for refusing to tell her daughter's
whereabouts, and how with an 800 number with a machine which kept changing
messages whom to call, and a little help from Ross Perot, Congress passed
emergency legislation cutting off contempt detention at 18 months, just
after Dr. Morgan had been released from 25 months of confinement. She
told us about the many activists in interlocking groups active in
releasing children from abusers' custody. She emphasized that the younger
bulk of us in class were pioneers just for taking the seminar, and help
the "gentle" revolution in their hands.
Susie, it has been the greatest pleasure for me to get to know you and to
have you bring us the outside and inside world of children's rights
activism. Thank you so much for being with us, and thanks too to the
other visitors who made last night's class be what it was.
Today Susie, Sandy, Debbie and I spent an hour-and-one-half with Indiana
Dep. Atty. Gen. Vicky Ransberger in Indianapolis. (The meeting had been
scheduled for half an hour. I am promised word back about the attorney
general's opinion which seemed to be ready for release last spring. It
hasn't yet appeared. Rep. Jerry Bales submitted the question for me last
December. The question asks whether it isn't unnecessary to prove other
abuse in order to show children require medical treatment, including out-
of-home placement where prescribed, which a custodian is not offering, and
hence that the children are in Indiana law "Children in Need of Services."
Vicky promised to call me back Nov. 1 on this, and on a follow-up meeting.
We invited Vicky, the attorney general or anyone from that office to meet
with us in the seminar to discuss what the ag's office was doing and could
be doing to help protect children from abuse. Thanks Vicky! Tomorrow,
Susie, Sandy and Debbie meet with a state rep. named Day who has been
active in children's issues.
I don't have much time this week to expound at length (thank goodness!),
but I do want to mention a phenomenon that my wife, Jill Bystydzienski
(whose first book is called Women Transforming Politics) and other
feminist peace activists had brought to my attention when I first offered
the feminist justice seminar, nearly seven years ago. While men are
prominent and visible in patriarchal politics, women in reality are the
moving force behind cultural revolution. They are the core strength and
source of peace movements, including the current U.S. movement for
children's rights and safety. Most numerous and crucial of these
activists are those simply occupied--alone and unsupported--in rescuing
their children as best they can, sometimes, sadly, in protective flight.
I have often assured Mary and Debbie that it is their strength and
persistence against all odds in pressing for their children's safety which
kept the issue at all alive for latecoming men like me to notice. Of
course there are fathers like Keith who display the same quiet strength of
purpose. But for the most part these steadfast child protectors are
women, who find most of all other women to help them, many caught in like
struggles. ARCH arose out of the personal struggle of Elizabeth Morgan
and her daughter Hillary. Now Susie tells us that she personally has
talked with 1,300 protective parents this past year alone.
Everyone I talk with in this movement agrees, as Susie admonished us last
night, that children are a gift to adults, not adult property. Jill and
other radical feminists I know would call this a women's political agenda,
manifested in women's leadership in getting the movement underway and in
just plain keeping it and children alive. Men can and do think this way
too, but women learn it hardest and deepest by being so typically
relegated to caring for children alone. They are aware of the issue
because they have to live with the pain and suffering it causes. Mothers
and grandmothers can least afford to deny abuse; when the buck gets to
them it all too often has nowhere else to go.
Saying children's rights and safety is a women's issue scarcely excludes
men from the movement. It is simply incumbent upon us to presume that
women have the larger share of direct experience of confronting and trying
to deal with the problem. Culturally, they are our leaders in the
movement.
Personally as a man, I find grassroots women's movements much less
threatening to join than male-style political movements. In women's
movements I find open personal disagreement over strategy and tactics,
over what to do with one's anger especially. We joke about our
differences, and often just ask and listen to what makes another person
believe what I do not. In fact, especially among survivors of abuse,
there is considerable emphasis on "truth telling"--confronting differences
or conflicts others pretend do not exist.
I think women's movements of this kind are the political antithesis of
cults. When a visit from someone living far away affirms to me that I am
part of such a movement, I feel more secure--both of my own worth as a
human being and that our efforts really can revolutionize childcare.
Thanks again, y'all. Love and peace, Hal