A Girl’s Life
Jun 2nd, 2008 at 9:37 am by Susie
Read this horrific story:
In her final moments, she appeared in her bedroom window. The fire was closing in, raging through the narrow, yellow row house in South Boston. From the window, three stories up, 14-year-old Acia Johnson could see and hear help.
Sirens wailed in the distance. On the ground below stood her mother, her twin brother, and the family dog, all safe.
But Acia was trapped with her 3-year-old sister, Sophia, alone together - as they had been for much of their lives. Their mother was a drug addict, who repeatedly left the children to fend for themselves while she chased quick highs and fed powerful addictions. Their father, a chronic drinker and a petty thief, spent as much time in jail as out. The parents fought - often violently. Sometimes, the violence turned on the kids.
In that way, Acia in particular was like thousands of children neglected by absent parents. She came up with neither role models nor stability, overlooked by the very state officials charged with protecting her, flush with reasons to give up, act out, or think small. Many children in Boston go bad over less.
But in the months before the fire, even with her little sister on her hip, Acia was finding a way out. She was excelling in her studies and becoming the star of her middle school basketball team. She was falling for a boy, a good boy, and being recruited to play basketball at a championship-caliber high school.
The girl with every excuse to crumble had made options for herself. All she needed was a little help - more inquisitive social workers, sober parents, relatives willing to intervene. Someone, anyone, who would take a stand. No one did.
The fire that swept through Acia’s home on that early April morning was deliberately set, authorities say, the act of her mother’s enraged lover. But in many ways, it was also the culmination of years of abuse that others could have prevented and that Acia, try as she might, could not overcome. There was only so much a 14-year-old girl could do.
It was 3 a.m. Her mother was half drunk. Her father slept in a jail cell a mile away. The girls stood amid the smoke and flames as people shouted to them from below.
Throw the baby.
Jump.
Smoke spilled out the window. Flames crept ever closer. Fire engines rumbled toward the row house on West Sixth Street, and Acia made her decision. She wouldn’t let Sophia go.
“I can’t drop her,” her mother said Acia shouted.
And with that, Acia slipped into the smoke.
We have an awful mess here in America. Children who have the bad luck to be born into the worst possible circumstances - physical and sexual abuse, drug addicted parents, polygamy cults, extreme neglect - move far too slowly through a system that still, far too often, protects the parents at the expense of the children.
No one wants to set a legal precedent where courts can too easily sever family rights. But what about these kids? Are they chattel? Do they have no interests independent of their parents? Where do we draw those lines in this brave new world?
I was thinking about this the other day while thinking about those poor FLDS kids in Texas, because we really do need to figure out a constitutional way to see that children’s rights are protected in these situations involving religion.
And that reminded me of how some of the armchair experts in this comments section have “explained” to her supporters why Hillary Clinton is “not fit” to serve on the Supreme Court because she’s not a legal scholar. (Not to mention the perpetual refrain that she’s “never done a thing” on her own, and “feels entitled” because of her husband’s work.)
Hillary Clinton’s first scholarly article, “Children Under the Law”, was published in the Harvard Educational Review in 1973. Discussing the new children’s rights movement, it stated that “child citizens” were “powerless individuals” and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but that on a case-by-case basis, courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise.
That article eventually became the basis for sustained right-wing attacks against her during the Clinton administration. Right-wing matriarch Phyllis Schafly led the charge that Hillary Clinton wanted to make it easy “for children to divorce their parents.” Remember that? More from Wikipedia:
Rodham maintained her interest in children’s law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles “Children’s Policies: Abandonment and Neglect” in 1977[69] and “Children’s Rights: A Legal Perspective” in 1979.[70] The latter continued her argument that children’s legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances, and that serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted.[49] An American Bar Association chair later said, “Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate.”[49] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as “one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades”,[71] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[72] allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[49] and argued that her work was legal “crit” theory run amok.[73]
(Just as an aside: Barack Obama, despite being the president - as opposed to editor - of the Harvard Law Review and hailed as a brilliant “constitutional scholar,” (which, to me, implies publishing) has apparently never published a scholarly legal paper of his own - about anything, not even when he worked on HLR. Although he did serve as a research assistant for Larry Tribe on an article called The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn From Modern Physics, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (1989). The footnote states, in part: “I am grateful to Rob Fisher, Michael Dorf, Kenneth Chesebro, Gene Sperling, and Barack Obama for their analytic and research assistance…” Just goes to show you what hiring the right consultants can do!)
As first lady, Clinton continued looking out for kids:
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA, Public Law 105-89) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 19, 1997 after having been approved by the United States Congress earlier in the month.[1]
AFSA was enacted in an attempt to correct problems that were inherent in the foster care system that deterred the adoption of children with special needs. Many of these problems had stemmed from an earlier bill, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980,[1] although they had not been anticipated when that law was passed in as states decided to interpr+et that law as requiring biological families be kept together no matter what.[1] The biggest change to the law was how ASFA amended Title IV-E of the Social Security Act regarding funding.
Moreover, AFSA marked a fundamental change to child welfare thinking, shifting weight towards children’s health and safety concerns at the expense of reuniting with birth parents no matter the level of abusiveness.[1] En such, AFSA was considered the most sweeping change to the U.S. adoption and foster care system in some two decades.[1] One of AFSA’s lead sponsors, Republican Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, said, “We will not continue the current system of always putting the needs and rights of the biological parents first. … It’s time we recognize that some families simply cannot and should not be kept together.”[1]
Ideas for the bill originated with both Democrats and Republicans.[2] First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton originally voiced interest in the issue of orphaned children in an article she wrote in 1995.[3] She then held public events to give the issue exposure,[3][2] and meet with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials and private foundation executives over policy questions and recommendations.[3] The bill began in Congress with bipartisan support, then became contentious over issues of terminating birth parents’ rights to children and funding levels for programs to keep children out of foster care.[2] Hillary Clinton played a key role in finding a compromise between Republicans and Democrats on the latter issue after negotiations first broke down.[2]
Just a reminder: Politics isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about personality, or validating your demographic. Public policies have tangible, real-life consequences.
Try to remember this promising 14-year-old girl, standing at the window of a house on fire with her three-year-old sister, their lives cut short - and ask yourself what can be done to help kids like them.
“Politics isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about personality, or validating your demographic. Public policies have tangible, real-life consequences.”
I couldn’t agree more.
In trying to help my youngest sister’s two girls, I learned why most people refuse to get involved. As a single woman and assumed lesbian, my motives were suspect by Social Services - I had a vendetta against my sister, I was was out to steal her kids, etc. I endured occasional verbal abuse and loads of frustration in dealing with my sister and her also alcoholic husband.
Finally, when my sister was dying and about to be evicted, I took in the younger girl, working openly with Social Services and the police, advised by one of the lawyers I worked for. At that point the rest of my family jumped in to save my niece - from me.
I concentrated on helping my older niece (different dad) deal with her mom’s dying, and my older sister has stayed friends. But that was the break between me and the rest of my siblings, their spouses and kids.
I’m not sorry for what I did; my conscience and my love for my nieces wouldn’t allow me to do less. But I certainly see why more sensible people save themselves the grief.
“Barack Obama . . . has apparently never published a scholarly legal paper of his own - about anything, not even when he worked on HLR.”
This statement is probably inaccurate. All student editors on the Harvard Law Review (including the president and other officers) publish their scholarly works in the form of unsigned “NOTES” — as distinguished from the signed “ARTICLES” and “COMMENTS” published by non-student contributors. This is a long-standing and inflexible policy at HLR, which differs from the attribution policies of similar student publications such as the Yale Law Journal.
It is, of course, possible that Obama didn’t write a student NOTE for the Harvard Law Review, but that would be unusual and, for the president of the Review, almost unprecedented.
Actually, I did research that. Remember, Obama was the HLR PRESIDENT - not editor. He apparently never wrote a note, either. I did find out that the body of work in the year in which he served as president has been cited much less than the typical year of HLR - substantially less. After the year he served, the rules were changed to REQUIRE the president to write.
As examples of the attribution policy at HLR, I’m adding URL links to the two most recent issues of the Review, March 2008 and April 2008:
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/121/march08/march08.shtml
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/121/april08/april08.shtml
I was on the Review as an editor in 1984 and as one of the two Executive Editors in 1985, so I have plenty of general background on the inner workings of the publication. That doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, of course, but I’m curious as to your research methods. Would you share them?
RLS:
I don’t know about what, if anything, Obama wrote. And it wasn’t me commenting above (this is my first time to the blog; I found it by searching for “Harvard Law Review”). But I do believe I’m the guy who originated the first quantitative analysis of Obama’s work as president of the Review, in comments on Volokh, back in February, here, based on a citation analysis of cites to the material published when Obama was in charge, compared to cites to the material published when other presidents were in charge:
http://volokh.com/posts/1202117776.shtml#324143.
You should be able to find some commentary on various blogs about this — in particular, Steve Sailer (or Sailor) had a long post.
There are various objections which can reasonably be made to the raw numbers I reported, as some commentators pointed out. In mid-February I did some further number-crunching, using a more refined methodology, which yielded the following conclusion which I e-mailed a few commentators, but haven’t yet put on a blog: as best I can tell, going as far back as electronic databases permit, the volume of the Yale Law Journal published in a particular year has NEVER had more cites than the volume of the Harvard Law Review published in that same year, EXCEPT in the year Obama was in charge. For that year, Yale greatly exceeded Harvard in later citations to the volume.
I don’t claim such statistics are dispositive, but they seem to dovetail with anecdotal reports that the stuff published under Obama’s watch was pretty crappy (much politically correct), and that editors on the review were so unimpressed by Obama that they elected an “anti-Obama” president the following year (i.e., someone who would enforce tough standards and run the trains on time):
http://volokh.com/posts/1202117776.shtml#323660
I will try to post the rest of my statistics somewhere, maybe in a week. Anyone interested should feel free to e-mail me.
–LawStatMan
One more point, looking back at the Volokh website I remembered why I did the further statistical analysis, of citation rates to Yale and, also, several law reviews cited a bit less than either Harvard or Yale. It was to disprove the suggestion of “StatTruthMan” that perhaps the raw numbers I reported — which just compared various Harvard Law Review years to other ones — could be explained by Obama being unluckly to be president during a “dry” year for legal scholarly generally. See here: http://volokh.com/posts/1202117776.shtml#324861.
As you’ll see when I post my info, there was nothing to support that hypothesis. And, my analysis turned out the startling fact that the only year Yale beat Harvard was when Obama was in charge at Harvard — and that year, Yale beat Harvard by a huge margin in terms of subsequent citations to that volume.
lawstatman@fastmail.fm:
I have neither the resources nor the motivation to engage in an analysis of Obama’s relative efficacy as president of HLR. I don’t support Obama. That said, his productivity in that capacity doesn’t strike me as being terribly important given the nature of that extracurricular work, his needs as a law student, and the time that has elapsed since then.
In any event, my comments on Susie’s post were very limited in scope. My wife reads this blog and when she brought that particular quote of Susie’s to my attention, I felt that I should chime in.
Although I’m a Hillary supporter, I feel it’s only fair to note that the journal she worked on at Yale, the Yale Law Review and Social Action (not HLR’s counterpart, the Yale Law Journal), was a complete rag and that the journal she published her first article in, the Harvard Educational Review, is not a journal of LEGAL scholarship. So it’s all apples and oranges as far as that goes.
# ^ Rodham, Hillary (June 1977). “Children’s Policies: Abandonment and Neglect”. Yale Law Journal 68 (7): 1522–1531. doi:10.2307/795794.
# ^ Rodham, Hillary (1979). “Children’s Rights: A Legal Perspective”, in Patricia A. Vardin, Ilene N. Brody (eds.): Children’s Rights: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Teacher’s College Press, 21–36.
Are they running for president, or applying for tenure?
yeah, what izquierdo said. this whole thread is like a microcosm of this ridiculous primary. the number of publications obama has doesn’t matter at all. then RLS makes the point that obama almost certainly was published as a “note” because all HLR members were (that was my impression as well. i didn’t go to harvard, but in my school anyone who made it on the law review got published) and then that is followed by some claim that the HLR was cited as much during obama’s time as it was other times.
who gives a shit? the last point really makes it seem like some anti-obama people are determined to discredit him any way they can, even if it makes them look utterly ridiculous in the process.
What did I say in the post? I said it was in response to the people who insisted Hillary Clinton wasn’t a legal scholar. The Obama stuff was an aside, but of course some people will always read into it what they will.
“Who gives a shit?”
I give a shit, and it’s MY blog. The fact is, Clinton has done some important work on children’s rights. That matters in the real world, where real children live.
If it was only about Clinton, or only as a response to Clinton criticisms, why mention Obama at all? The juxtaposition kind of implies “If you vote for Obama, more young girls will die in fires.”
no, if you vote for obama–whose entire campaign is based on misogyny as evidenced by his use of the word “periodically” and his two-fingered face scratches– he will implement an authoritarian fascist state in the US of A that is far worse than anything promulgated by the bush junta…
Keep up with the proper HRC-supporter party line!
–and keep drinking lattes!
Getting back to the topic at hand, reports like these make me want to push more strongly for distribution of smoke alarms in poor neighborhoods.
But that probably wouldn’t have helped much in this case: a malicious arson, from the article. So the simple “technical” fix, as much as it may prevent dozens of deaths in other cases (seen every winter in Philly), won’t fix the messy human problems that are the proximate cause of this tragedy. If only things were that simple.
Okay, so let’s just argue about the primary; it’s better than dwelling on some kids burning to death because everyone around them failed them badly.
Susie: So one article published 31 years ago makes her a “legal scholar”?
In what field does one get called a scholar based on one 31 year old article?
Which is not to say I don’t think Sen. Clinton is qualified to be president. She is. However as she clearly won’t be getting the party’s nomination it’s a moot point.
As far as we “armchair” experts are concerned, allow me to point out by any examination of legal experience Harriet Meirs had a far more impressive resume than Sen. Clinton, and her nomination was torpedoed because of her resume being to thin. Compare the backgrounds of Roberts and Alito (and no, I wish to hell they weren’t on the court, but there is no question regarding their qualifications) to Clinton’s. Considering how quick you and other Clinton supporters have been in playing the experience card on Obama it seems kinda strange to see one 31 year old article parlayed into a claim of “legal scholarship”.