Organizational infighting, no organizational cooperation towards a specific goal, and a lack of individual support are killing the men’s rights/fathers rights/parental rights movement. Now that I have 25 years of activism under my belt with a multitude of organizations (many of which have come and gone) I can offer up my personal experience as an example of individuals not supporting the cause and worse, individuals undermining the cause.
It’s 1995 and I got whacked with the standard triple order, a “Temporary Order of Protection (TOP) restricting access to my children, a “Temporary” Custody Order for my (soon to be) ex wife, and the “Temporary” Child Support Order. Sound familiar? This when the internet hadn’t yet been invented and email was a new thing which most didn’t have. I found a newspaper notice of a meeting for the “Fathers Rights Association NYS” (FRANYS) and attended my first meeting of the local Capital District chapter (FRA-CD).
The first meeting was attended by the President of the local chapter and me. That’s it. I did get a load of good information from him to help me individually as a pro se litigant. Subsequent meetings would have at most 3 or 4 people and for the most part consisted of people relaying their personal injustices suffered, each story worse than the one before. The statewide meeting was to be in our area in a couple of month’s and I attended that, about 10 people at that one. I sat down and when attendance was taken of the chapter delegates voting on the state board there was none from my chapter so I was sat as the voting member. I’m 4 months into the process and sitting on a policy board.
The organization, a 501c3 non profit, lacked any consistent lobbying of government for change and had NO political action committee or lobbyist. The monthly meetings consisted of people looking for help on their individual cases and upon hearing the system was so bad that they would end up with the “Standard NY Order” of every other weekend visits which weren’t enforced and payment of excessive child support which would leave them personally at the poverty level most attended 2 or 3 meetings and never joined to organization as a member. But every month a group of new initiates to injustice would show up looking for help.
The organization held a lobby day at the NYS Legislature each spring and I attended my first in 1996. Attendance was less than 50 people, this in a state with a population of about 20 million where it is estimated there were 2.5 million plus non custodial parents. It was disorganized with few meetings between organization leaders and the leaders of the legislature and important committees. Many attendees showed up in shorts and t-shirts and it was not uncommon for a meeting with a legislator to turn into an insult fest with legislators shouted at for what they haven’t done to help out. Once the event was over there was no lobbying presence and outside of this legislative activity there was no interaction with state agencies or the executive and judicial branches of government.
After 3 years of litigation I lost my kids to alienation in 1999. Instead of dealing with individual injustices I decided to get involved to change things for the better for everybody. I was elected President of FRA-CD and also made the Chair of the Legislative Committee with FRANYS. I had weekly meetings with legislative leaders and began lobbying the Governors Office and the Office of Court Administration which oversees NYS Courts. I was joined by FRA-CD members Debby Fellows and Randall L. Dickinson and we 3 became the principle advocates and lobbyists in NYS.
In 2001 we lobbied the NYS Senate Leader for money for a fatherhood center and were to receive a grant of $25,000 the first year. But some in the state leadership feared that FRA-CD, the largest chapter of 6, would break from it so they “decertified” the FRA-CD leadership. They then filed felony theft charges against me for paying the chapters outstanding bills “without authorization”. The frivolous charges were dismissed at grand jury, but not without 6 month’s under the color of charges which resulted in the Senate pulling support for the Fatherhood Center.
The removal of FRD-CD did result in the chapter going independent and the Coalition of Fathers and Families NY, Inc. (FaFNY) was formed as a statewide membership organization from the leaders of the FRA-CD Chapter. FRANYS and its chapters ceased activity except for local in person meetings and folded all together a few years later. We chose to call ourselves a coalition as our focus was going to be on educating and lobbying NYS Government in all branches and at all levels and in doing so would bring together the various organizations in NYS to work on goals and objectives such as shared parenting and court reform.
We held a statewide lobby day in April of every year to bring in the groups to lobby for our legislation. In addition we held weekly meetings with legislators, staff, the Governors Office and NYS Court Administration. I delivered flyers and handouts to the entire legislature EVERY week, walking the floors and delivering them personally. We wrote op-ed articles and appeared on TV and Radio. But to maintain this level of work we were expending 30-40 hours a week, this on top of our full time jobs. Maintaining membership lists got to be an administrative burden and we changed to a Board run organization which freed up more time to lobby. We affiliated nationally with the American Coalition of Fathers and Children (ACFC). We held many successful protests with media coverage and were successful in changing many policies and rules for the better and we blocked a lot of anti-father legislation.
In 2006 we started a push to get shared parenting enacted. The powers opposed managed to hold the bill in the Children and Families Committee of the Assembly and we focused our attention there. Through affiliation with ACFC we used Glenn Sacks “His side” computer-fax and developed a “Thumbs Up!” campaign to bombard members of the committee daily and continually to bring the bill up for a vote this in addition to collecting signatures across the state. Month’s of work culminated in a scheduled vote but opposition by Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver resulted in him horse trading favors for no votes and a slim majority of both parties together held the bill, in effect killing it that year.
The work load took a toll on those with the organization and combined with changing life circumstances the leaders took a needed break from organizing and lobbying. Unfortunately no persons or organizations have stepped up to fill the void in lobbying state government. The National Parents Organization is pushing for Bill A0918 in the NYS Assembly a shared parenting in temporary orders bill and a quick search shows Shared Parenting S02916 Helming, and S04260 Parker in the Senate. A04005 Weprin, same as S02584 Lanza which is the Family Court Reform Act (a FaFNY sponsored bill) is still in both houses. All bills sit with few multi or co-sponsors showing a lack of lobbying for enactment.
I think my experience supports my position of a lack of support and organizational cooperation. I don’t want to sound all gloom and doom though. Given that organizations are staffed almost 100% by unpaid volunteers and we represent a group of people who have been financially wiped out, and usually remain so for many years, the advocacy organizations have made great headway. In 1995 you would have been given every other weekend Friday at 5 to Sunday at 6 and one mid week 4 hour visit with NO enforcement for interfering with that little time and it was unheard of for a father to actually get custody. Child Support Enforcement and courts treated you like the enemy, now not so much. So things have improved, but there’s much more to do.
Just as emails and internet changed our organization from meeting in a physical location once a month, social media and high speed internet are changing the way groups “meet” and discuss things. Information which took us month’s to find or distribute now can be disbursed in minutes with the worlds information available immediately on your smart phone. That said, it is a bit shameful that in this day and age of instant communication we have no organizational cooperation towards a specific goal, no individual participation in action items like contacting legislators, and legislation like shared parenting which has about 85% support of the population sits idle with no organizational or grass roots advocacy.
If you agree the system needs changing the person to do that is you and the time to do it is now.
James Hays, (Ret) NYS En-Con Police Lt., Co-founder and past President FaFNY, past Director NY MAN, life member NCFM, past administrator with Friends of Protection For Men.