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The last 18 months have seen a remarkable
development in the men's and father's
movement. For the first time in our era a
large group of men have come together with
discipline and courage and ingenuity to
fight for their rights as men.
So many activists, including many in this
room, have worked hard for years and decades
to address the many legitimate grievances
which men and particularly fathers face. Yet
in less than a week, with one bold and
courageous act, an uneducated,
unsophisticated window washer achieved
something which none of us has ever been
able to accomplish--to focus the attention
of a nation on the greatest social injustice
in the Anglo-American world today--the way
decent, loving fathers are driven out of the
lives of the children who love them and need
them.
I speak, of course, of Spiderman. David
Chick launched a world famous six day, one
man protest atop a 150 foot high crane near
the Tower Bridge in London last fall.
Dressed as Spiderman because he is his four
year-old daughter's favorite comic book
character, Chick had been to court 25 times
and spent the equivalent of $30,000 in
unsuccessful attempts to get English courts
to enforce his visitation rights.
The Mayor of London and the police vilified
Chick, but the mute agony of Spiderman, the
image of a man so desperate that he would
risk his life and risk prison to be with the
little girl he loves moved millions. Polls
show that Chick is wildly popular, and last
month he was acquitted by an English jury,
some of whom were reportedly moved to tears by his
testimony.
David Chick is not alone. Jolly Stansby,
another Fathers 4 Justice protestor, made
headlines when he spent seven freezing days
aloft Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, England, in
January. In Stansby's case the injustice is
perhaps the clearest--Stansby is a
registered child care provider, and is thus
allowed to care for any child in England
except his own, who he is barred from
calling, and is allowed to see only a few
days a month.
And of course, last month Powderman Ron
Davies, who hasn't seen his daughter in five
years, made headlines around the world when
he hit British Prime Minister Tony Blair
with a packet of purple flour as Blair
answered questions on the floor of the House
of Commons.
Chick eloquently described the plight of the
modern disenfranchised father. He said:
"[My daughter] is the most precious thing
in my world. I was there for the scans when
she was still in the womb, I was there for
her birth. I fed her, bathed her, got up in
the night with her, cuddled her when she
cried.
"Now I'm just another statistic--another
dad who has no part in his daughter's life.
For me, it is a living bereavement."
Many Fathers 4 Justice protestors know that
they will never get their own children back.
David Chick has told me that he doesn’t
believe he will ever be reunited with his
daughter, but that he continues to fight for
other fathers, so that they will not have to
endure what he has endured. When David Chick
talks about his little girl I think of the
millions of other fathers who have been
forced out of their children's lives and I
burn with anger. I think of my little girl,
and I burn with anger over the idea--the
idea!--that because I'm male my love for my
daughter and my son is somehow cheaper,
lesser, not as good, not up to par, not as
important. I burn with anger over the hatred
and vilification our society has poured on
fathers over the past three decades. I burn
with anger over the idea that my father is
somehow lesser than my mother, and not as
important. That it's OK to dismiss my
father, denigrate my father, disregard my
father, disrespect my father, hate my
father. Hate my father? Hate MY father?
(holds out hand waist high) From the time I
could walk I would have walked through the
gates of hell for my father, and I would
still do it today, I would still do it
today!
Fathers 4 Justice has been unbelievably
effective. Eighteen months ago Matt O'Connor
and his people looked like hopeless
dreamers. Today many prominent British
citizens, including Prince Charles, Nobel
Peace Prize nominee Sir Bob Geldof, and
actor Pierce Brosnan, have spoken out in
favor of the campaign for fathers' rights.
Last week Michael Howard, the leader of the
English Conservative Party, issued a
statement endorsing shared parenting. Judges
and lawyers and politicians who didn’t give
a damn about fathers a year ago are paying
attention to fathers' rights and voicing
their sympathies. Some of them genuinely
support fathers, while others feel the need
to give at least it lip service in the hope
they can make Fathers 4 Justice go away.
I have high hopes for this, because England
is probably the only foreign country that
Americans respect and pay attention to. If
shared parenting becomes the norm there, if
Fathers 4 Justice accomplishes its goals, it
will create a powerful argument for fathers
here at home. And we have so many injustices
to fight here at home. Of these I will
mention only a couple, both from my home
state of California.
As many of you know, move-aways have been a
hot issue in California, and we recently won
the LaMusga move-away case in the California
Supreme Court. The legislature has already
begun to hatch plans to destroy LaMusga and
return to the Dark Ages when mothers had
nearly unbridled right to move children
thousands of miles away from their fathers.
Given the pathetic performance of the
fathers' movement in trying to block a
move-away bill last year, it's going to take
a real fight to win this year.
In the case of
DeBrenes v. Traub, a divorced
custodial mother remarried and seeks to move
with her 13 year-old daughter. Get
this--first mom moved, and dad uprooted
himself and moved to be with his daughter.
Then mom moved again, and dad uprooted
himself and moved again to be with his
daughter. And now mom wants to move
again--to Costa Rica! Yes you heard right,
Costa Rica! They have no ties in Costa Rica,
the girl doesn’t speak Spanish and
doesn’t want to go, but mom remarried
recently and her new husband lived in Costa
Rica 58 years ago--yes, 58 years ago--and he
wants to go back.
In any rational country the judge would have
laughed the mother out of the courtroom,
told her she must be joking, or suggested she
put the wine bottle down and go sleep it
off. Instead the court GRANTED her request,
only stipulating that the girl, who is
learning disabled, be allowed to finish in
her studies at her special school. In other
words, Eric Traub's 13 years of loving
fatherhood are to be bundled up and thrown away
the moment the strong, loving bond he shares
with his daughter became inconvenient for
mom.
Kim Robinson, the anti-male feminist
attorney who represented the selfish
move-away mom in LaMusga, represents the
mother in Traub. She actually had the
goddmaned gall to protest this ridiculous
anti-father ruling and appeal it, saying the
move should be allowed to go through
immediately!
One more injustice--as many of you know, in
ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance case this
week, the US Supreme Court spat on all
noncustodial parents, and on fathers, and on
men. I don’t care about the pledge issue,
what I care about is the noncustodial parent
issue. Michael Newdow spends 10 days a month
with his daughter, and doesn’t spend more
only because the child's mother won’t let
him. In fact, Newdow has had to pay hundreds
of thousands of dollars in legal fees for
her attorneys--in other words, he has to pay
for her lawyers to work to drive him out of his
daughter's life.
According to the US Supreme Court, Newdow's
bond with his little daughter, and Newdow's
time with his daughter mean nothing. I
co-authored a column on this which came out
in a couple of newspapers this week. In it
we wrote:
"In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in
the Dred Scott decision that Scott had no
standing to bring the case and that 'a black
man has no rights a white man need respect.'
On Monday, in deciding Elk Grove Unified
School District v. Newdow, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that noncustodial parent Michael
Newdow has no standing, and that a
noncustodial parent has no rights a court
need respect.
"Since most of America's 14 million
noncustodial parents are fathers, the
court's decision represents an exceptionally
bitter Father's Day 'gift'……
"The court's ruling also highlights the
hypocrisy of the current public policy and
discourse on fatherhood, wherein men are
lectured to take responsibility for their
children while at the same time courts and
lawmakers disregard their right to play a
meaningful role in their children's lives.
"…the court used the issue of standing as a
way to sidestep making a decision on the
thorny issue of the 'one nation, under God'
passage in the Pledge of Allegiance. In
other words, noncustodial parents are of
such little concern that the court found it
more expedient to undercut their rights than
to decide the Pledge case."
Despite these outrages, I am very encouraged
by the developments in the men's movement.
Fathers 4 Justice has shown that men CAN
fight for themselves as men and men CAN win.
It takes a strategy, it takes discipline,
and it takes unity. Matt O'Connor is
sometimes criticized for being too demanding
and too strong-fisted. I've told Matt that an
intelligent leadership that is demanding and
strong-fisted is EXACTLY what the men's and
fathers' movement needs.
I want to see us take the fight here, and I
want us to fight with the same courage, the
same discipline, the same humanity, the same
humor, and the same conviction our brothers
in England have employed.
"Part of our
problem is that we've waited for large numbers, and felt that if
we don’t have them we can’t fight. What Fathers 4 Justice has
shown us is that you don’t need large numbers of people--what
you need is a cause which resonates with a lot of people--and
God knows the mistreatment of fathers certainly does--and you
need a small, disciplined group willing to take dramatic action
to fight. I want to see
David Chicks
and Jolly
Stansby and
Ron Davises and
Spidermen and
Powdermen in every American city and in every legislature
and family court in the country. We can fight, we should fight,
we must fight, and the men in this room right now should form
the core leadership of that fight."
Thank you.
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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