From the Back Cover
From the pathbreaking historian of adoption secrecy and disclosure, Adoption Politics provides a gripping account of local politics in the Internet age and a perceptive analysis of how a new kind of grassroots initiative transformed adoption law.--Barbara Melosh, author of Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption A rich, detailed, and fascinating account. The voices of activists on both sides of the issue, framed by Carp's keen analysis and elegant prose, make this book essential reading for all those touched by adoption, as well as anyone interested in the politics of private life.--Elaine Tyler May, author of Barren in the Promised Land A timely, balanced, and thought-provoking book that raises questions about adoption, citizen initiatives, and privacy rights that we cannot afford to ignore.--Steven Mintz, author of Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of Family Life

About the Author
E. Wayne Carp is professor of history and chair at Pacific Lutheran University. His other books include Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption and Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives.

Book Description
The passage of Measure 58 in Oregon in 1998 was a milestone in adoption reform. For the first time in U.S. history a grassroots initiative restored the legal right of adopted adults to request and receive their original birth certificates. Within a day after the law went into effect, nearly 2,400 adoptees had applied for these previously sealed records, elevating their right to know over a birth mother's right to privacy. E. Wayne Carp, a nationally respected authority on adoption history, now reveals the efforts of the radical adoptee rights organization Bastard Nation to pass this milestone initiative. He has written an intimate history of a passionately proposed and opposed initiative that has the potential to revolutionize the adoption reform movement nationwide.

Carp follows the campaign from its inception through the hard-fought signature drives of proponents Helen Hill and Shea Grimm to the electoral campaign and ensuing court battles. The opposition was formidable: government officials, adoption agencies, news media, the ACLU, religious organizations, and ad-hoc citizen political groups. Using correspondence and his own candid interviews with all the key players, Carp shows how both sides mobilized their constituencies and formed their strategies. In describing challenges to Measure 58's constitutionality, Carp reveals legal arguments that were never publicized by the Oregon media and remained unknown to the American public until now--issues centering on privacy rights that are crucial to understanding both sides of the controversy and the hazards of initiative politics.

As Carp shows, Measure 58 was important because it framed the issue of adoption reform in terms of civil rights and equal protection of the law rather than in terms of psychological needs or medical necessity. The resulting law now gives adult adoptees access to birth certificates but it also allows birth mothers to indicate whether or not they wish to be contacted. Carp not only chronicles a milestone initiative and a model piece of legislation for other states to emulate, he also proposes a sensible way to cut the Gordian Knot that bedevils adoption reform today.

The Adoption Mystique
Author: Joanne Wolf Small
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: 1stBooks Library; (February 2004)
ISBN: 1410740943
In-Print Editions: Hardcover | All Editions

From the Author
Much of what's been written and said about adoption-the definitions, myths, interpretations, and so on-was generated by non-adopted persons, and often without benefit of adopted person's input. No wonder we know so little about adoption's aftermath. That adoption holds sway over millions of people is testimony to its effect. The issues have lain buried, and most of the affected have kept silent beneath the weight of adoption's power. The framework that surrounds adoption law, policies, and practice, the beliefs, myths and attitudes that endow it with enhanced and profound meaning, value, and mystery are what I call The Adoption Mystique." J.W. Small

From the Inside Flap
These essays, that began to materialize as a book about two and a half years ago, look at adoption from a psychosocial or environmental perspective. They outline the history and background of American adoption culture; explore the hidden but powerful religious, social, and economic factors that affect adoption's collective image, and are often critical of child welfare's adoption premises, policies, and practices. Adoption is an industry that has gained power from the desperation,...

Book Description
Desperation, neediness, and the powerlessness of birthparents, infertile couples and adopted persons fuel the powerful adoption monolith. Too often "adoption" and "adoptee" imply different, separate, and outside the norm. Propaganda, research, and theories fail to tell the whole story. To help readers understand the paradigm of adoption, the author explores how the fantasy that has been carefully crafted to protect adoption's institutional image contrasts with the harsher reality experienced by those the institution was meant to serve.

The Activist's Handbook
Author: Randy Shaw
Paperback: 326 pages Publisher: University of California Press; Updated edition (February 5, 2001)
ISBN: 0520229282

Book Description
The Activist's Handbook is a hard-hitting guide to making social change happen. Shaw, a longtime activist for urban issues, shows how positive change can still be accomplished- despite an increasingly grim political order-if activists employ the strategies set forth in this desperately needed primer. In a new preface, Shaw describes how the power of grassroots activism has won newfound respect. Mass protests against globalization and in favor of stricter gun controls have led once-invulnerable targets like the World Bank and the National Rifle Association to take citizen action more seriously.

Inspiring "fear and loathing" in politicians, building diverse coalitions, and harnessing the media, the courts, and the electoral process to one's cause are only some of the key tactics Shaw advocates and explains. Central to all social-change activism, Shaw shows, is being proactive: rather than simply reacting to right-wing proposals, activists must develop an agenda and focus their resources on achieving it.

The Activist's Handbook details the impact of specific strategies on campaigns across the country: battles over homelessness, the environment, AIDS policies, neighborhood preservation, and school reform among others. Though activist groups can have widely different aims, similar tactics are shown to produce success.

Further, the book offers a sophisticated analysis of the American power structure by someone on the front lines. In showing how people can and must make a difference at both local and national levels, this is an indispensable guide not only for activists, but for everyone interested in the future of progressive politics in America.

From the Back Cover
"Anybody researching or writing anything about contemporary U.S. political life should be familiar with The Activist's Handbook. Anybody attempting to influence local, state, or national political decisions needs it desperately. Politicians may read it and tremble a bit. For that matter, the rich and powerful will probably read it to see how smart some of their enemies are becoming."-Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia

"Provides rare insight into the strategies and tactics environmentalists must use if they are to succeed in today's political climate. A must read."-Barbara Dudley, Executive Director, Greenpeace

"This is a unique book, wise, realistic, and enormously valuable for anyone interested in social change. It is practical in its advice, and inspiring in its stories of ordinary people successfully confronting powerful interests."-Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"The Activist's Handbook could not have come at a more opportune time. In an era when poverty is growing and national social programs are threatened, the Handbook is an invaluable tool for community groups wishing to mobilize efforts in the service of escalating human needs."-Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly and Double Vision

"Randy Shaw gives us a serious and respectful treatment of the strategic problems and opportunities that confront grassroots activists. This is a dimension of contemporary politics that is rarely treated, and welcome for that reason. Moreover, in developing his analysis, Shaw draws on numerous cases of local struggles to remind us of what the media has come to ignore, the persistent and insuppressible popular activism that is part of American political life."-Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York

"The Activist's Handbook lives up to its title and will likely join the company of organizing classics. It is the kind of book that should be on every activist's reading list."-Chris Ney, Nonviolent activist