What if you picked up your history books, or in the fifth grade you had been taught about "The Boston Protest"? Never heard of it? But have you ever considered what the difference would have been between the Boston Tea Party and a Boston Protest?
What if the Sons of Liberty had stood below the British ships in Boston Harbor carrying signs and yelling slogans but never boarded the ships and threw the tea in the water? How different would our history be? By engaging in the act of disposing of the tea, the American patriots deprived themselves of one of the colony's most loved imports and wantonly violated colonial law. At the same time, however, they deprived their oppressors of large sums of tax revenue - money that would have been used to further oppress the colonists - and set a tone for an American perspective on life that literally stated we will "live free or die".
Our ancestors were a people of great courage. They banded together, stared death, imprisonment and financial ruin squarely in the face and refused to yield to a power that would take away their basic rights and freedoms in providing for their families and managing their own affairs.
It is so rare to find that kind of courage today. In our movement, people's most fundamental rights in parenting their own children are routinely stepped on. These rights are or should be even more precious than the rights the colonials sought to protect. I have heard the saddest and most horrific reports of good moms and dads losing their ability to see and give love to their children at the hands of an uncaring system that largely exists to pump money into state and local treasuries. It is a complete travesty.
But how have we responded in the past? Typically, each one of us, including myself, spends whatever small fortune or resources we have to fight our own uphill battles and lose. We fight these fights by the rules, pleading the laws and facts that fit the system's requirements - only to be told we are wrong - what we are doing, we're often told, only prolongs the fight and hurts the children. Yes, that's what we're told by people who have never fed one meal to our kids, who have never put one bandage across a scrape on their knees, who rarely can remember their names, ages or sometimes even their sex, more than a few minutes after our hearings are concluded.
And what have we done to that? Seriously, what is our answer? Where do we go beyond that fight we make for our own case? For some, there is much more of an outreach to similarly aggrieved individuals. Yet, what measurable achievements can we show for all that effort? It's a good question, don't you think?
Reform Family Law Now was founded for a different purpose - it is an action organization. We are here to bring class based litigation into the federal courts to force an end to funding of the practices of violating individual rights by the states, local judges and other government agencies.
Toward that end, we have identified the first four potential classes of plaintiffs to be represented and bring suit in federal court against the violations we face. We're doing this to take actions that will truly reform the system.
We want to find at least one potential class representative from each of the approximately 91 districts of the federal judicial system, in every state across America. When we have sufficient representation for even one of the classes, and the funding is available to pursue the litigation, we will initiate the litigation that will bring an end to the funding of violations of parents' Constitutional rights in the family law system.
And if we are told no, we will keep moving forward. If we are told no again, we will keep moving forward. We will continue the fight until the broken system is prevented from doing further harm to our children. That means that the funding feeds the system must be held to account openly and publicly - and it almost certainly will require major, class victories to succeed.
Please come join us. Along with signing up for our updates on this page, you may also become a fan of our facebook group: Reform Family Law Now.
In the near future, you will be hearing about events that we hope to hold across America and very soon - to garner support, and identify new people who will join our movement and self-identify as potential class members. Our goal is to get at least one new class prospect for each potential class from every single rally that is held.
Check back later today for a new page that identifies the classes and the particular violations of rights that we are targeting. Stay tuned - change is about to come. It's at our doorstep - we just need to answer the call!
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