OK -- so let's see if that whole power-to-the-people thing is alive and well (as usual) on HuffPo.
I just received a mass email from a friend that begins like this:
Hi Everyone --
As all of you know, my wife and I are in the process of adopting a baby from Guatemala. Recently there have been some very disturbing things going on with adoptions in Guatemala. The Guatemalan Government has announced that all intercountry adoptions with the U.S. will be stopped as of January 1, 2008. This would mean that over 5000 babies would essentially be orphans, and have nowhere to go. Their birthparents have signed away their rights, and they are waiting to come home with their adoptive families.
As you can imagine, people are very upset by this, and have started contacting [others] to help this law be ammended, so that adoptions already in progress will be "grandfathered" in under the old law and will be able to be completed after January 1, 2008.
We are asking you to help us -- and other families in the same situation -- by going to the web page for the Guatemala 5000 Initiative and contacting one or more of the people they list. It states who to contact and what to write or say.
Unfortunately, the window of time to make a difference before these elections take place is small: We need you to contact these people on October 9, 10 and 11. This basically only leaves two days...
Ordinarily, I am wary of drives and petitions, especially in the age of the Internet, as one never really knows who is behind such causes, and what their motivation may be.
But this ruling by the Guatemalan Government seems so profoundly unjust -- these are children we're talking about -- that I can't imagine why anyone would choose to turn a deaf ear to their cries for help. According to the Initiative's web page (on the website for the Joint Council on International Children's Services), the U.S. State Department, the Hague Permanent Bureau and UNICEF are all behind the Guatemala 5000 Initiative -- and it seems to me that many members of the Huffington Post community would want to be behind it, as well. For reasons we discuss frequently on this website, we are living in a time in which America's relationship with its global neighbors has been severely compromised by our questionable leadership. Therefore, it is up to us to reclaim our place as a compassionate nation in whatever way we can, the best way we know how.
So please, visit the Guatemala 5000 Initiative web page as soon as you can. Time is running out.
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