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Reposted by Kristen Martin

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

In light of National Adoption Month—which is meant to promote adoption of children in the foster care who have been made orphans by the state—some mini reviews of a foster care-related podcast, TV show, and news: open.substack.com/pub/american...

What I'm Listening to/Reading/Watching

Some counterprogramming for National Adoption Month

open.substack.com

November 10, 2025 at 3:51 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Adoptees Crossing Lines Podcast

@adopteecrossing.bsky.social

Every time the state says it’s “saving children,” someone is getting paid.

Billions in federal dollars flow through the family policing system each year, not to keep families together, but to remove and rehome children.

This isn’t protection. It’s profit.

#adopteesky

Text on a light blue background reads:
“National Adoption Awareness Month.
Every time the state says it’s ‘saving children,’ someone is getting paid.
Billions of federal dollars flow through family policing each year, not to keep families together, but to remove and rehome children.
This isn’t about protection. It’s about profit, power, and punishment disguised as care.”

$Text reads: “01. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997) rewards states up to $10,000 per finalized adoption, on top of millions in annual federal reimbursements for foster care. Meanwhile, family reunification programs receive only a fraction of that funding. It’s not that the money doesn’t exist — it’s that it’s intentionally redirected away from keeping families whole. The system profits more when families are separated.”$ Text reads:
“02. Private agencies, lawyers, and nonprofits profit from every step of the adoption pipeline.
But the cost is paid by parents criminalized for poverty, by families fighting to be reunified, and by adoptees who inherit the grief of state violence.
For every check written in the name of ‘child welfare,’ a bond is broken, often permanently.”

Text reads:
“02. Private agencies, lawyers, and nonprofits profit from every step of the adoption pipeline.
But the cost is paid by parents criminalized for poverty, by families fighting to be reunified, and by adoptees who inherit the grief of state violence.
For every check written in the name of ‘child welfare,’ a bond is broken, often permanently.”

Text reads:
“03. Imagine if those same dollars funded food programs, housing, childcare, and cash assistance instead of removals.
That’s what abolition looks like — shifting money from surveillance to survival.
Ending the family policing system isn’t about scarcity. It’s about choosing care over control.”

November 10, 2025 at 3:02 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

In light of National Adoption Month—which is meant to promote adoption of children in the foster care who have been made orphans by the state—some mini reviews of a foster care-related podcast, TV show, and news: open.substack.com/pub/american...

What I'm Listening to/Reading/Watching

Some counterprogramming for National Adoption Month

open.substack.com

November 10, 2025 at 3:51 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

jamelle

@jamellebouie.net

in any case it is wild that voters just sent a huge message and a bunch of senate democrats are all, “it doesn’t look like anything to me”

November 10, 2025 at 1:02 AM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

gabriel b

@gyzyby.bsky.social

"WICKED for good" in the Zohran Mamdani campaign font

November 8, 2025 at 10:00 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

archery szn kwisatz haderade 🏹

@booksandbows.bsky.social

there are a lot of good adoption books (and a lot of really bad ones) but i want to take a second during #NAAM to recommend “Relinquished” by @gretchensisson.bsky.social. mandatory reading if you want to have any kind of informed conversation about adoption in 2025. 🥚

archery szn kwisatz haderade 🏹 @booksandbows.bsky.social · Nov 7

Keep thinking about this part of Relinquished (Gretchen Sisson). 🥚

This small family unit assembled through adoption —Ryan in his dress blues, Rebecca in her pearl earrings, and baby Hope sleeping peacefully through the din in a pink swaddling blanket-somehow came to represent the best of our country. No one needed to know if Hope's mother found housing, addiction treat-ment, medical care, or safety in order to proclaim this a happy ending, but Phoenix and other relinquishing mothers noticed it right away. "Ugh, whatever," Shelby grumbled to me, reflecting on the incident. "Cop takes baby, everyone claps, including the Democrats-it's the story of this country. Then six months later they're all upset when babies are taken from their mothers at the southern border. And they should be upset about that! But the hypocrisy is real. And stupid."
The focus on the solidity and sanctity of adoptive families is indeed nonpartisan and has always been.

November 7, 2025 at 2:26 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Rainesford Stauffer

@rainesford.bsky.social

Firmly believe one of the ways to improve trust in journalism among young people is to support them in learning to research, write, and report themselves. Even if they never pursue it as a job, it helps to understand the process, and encourages them to engage with their local journalism outlets.

Nieman Lab @niemanlab.org · 4d

About half of the teens surveyed believe that journalists frequently “make up details, such as quotes” and “pay for sources.” More than a third of teens believe journalists could improve by simply “Telling the truth,” “Fact checking,” and “Not lying.” buff.ly/7vgO0ci

“Biased,” “Boring,” “Chaotic,” and “Bad”: A majority of teens hold negative views of news media, report finds

About half of the teens surveyed believe that journalists frequently “make up details, such as quotes” and “pay for sources.”

www.niemanlab.org

November 6, 2025 at 11:51 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

Every night before I take a shower, I have “special time” with my kittencat where she demands pets and then I rock her like a baby

November 7, 2025 at 1:11 AM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

Thanks to @literaryhub.bsky.social’s BookMarks for picking my review of Susan Straight’s SACRAMENT as one of five must-reads for the week! bookmarks.reviews/5-reviews-yo...

5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week

bookmarks.reviews

November 6, 2025 at 3:22 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

chris bell

@christopherbell.bsky.social

If you're in NJ this Friday you can see some of my short films (The Confection & Boundaries) along with some others! River Union Stage, Milford, 7:30!
www.riverunionstage.org/meet-the-ens...

Meet the Ensemble: Boxing With Gaia | River Union Stage

www.riverunionstage.org

November 5, 2025 at 9:25 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

As JMAC for Families says, "They separate children at the border of Harlem, too"

Tony Corsentino @notalegalrecord.net · 5d

i think it's time to note that ICE did not pioneer child taking; that it's not a new atrocity being visited upon the vulnerable; that "child welfare" agencies routinely use it to police families in crisis; that good progressive people enter the "foster-to-adopt pipeline" to benefit from it. 🥚

November 5, 2025 at 7:11 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

Penny Loafer loves voting for PA Supreme Court judicial retention and for Philly DA Larry Krasner!

A tricolor cavalier King Charles spaniel wagging her tail, looking at an “I Voted!” sticker

November 4, 2025 at 6:24 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

Can't wait for the end of NJ governor campaign ads during Jeopardy

November 4, 2025 at 12:15 AM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

For @washingtonpost.com, I reviewed Susan Straight's SACRAMENT, which doesn’t merely reproduce the sights and sounds of the pandemic — it allows us to understand how the first surge forever changed the people who gave up the most to help their communities persevere. Gift link: wapo.st/4oMVjs7

Review | ‘Sacrament’ is a rare novel that deepens the human drama of covid

Susan Straight’s latest follows two nurses at a Southern California hospital in the early days of the pandemic.

wapo.st

November 3, 2025 at 2:41 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Kea Krause

@keakrause.bsky.social

Spent the summer in the woods writing this feature for @bowdoincollege.bsky.social Magazine about some of Maine’s oldest trees and how to care for a forest over time. Just your neighborhood ocean gal lost in the trees:

www.bowdoin.edu/news/2025/11...

Letting in the Light

www.bowdoin.edu

November 3, 2025 at 5:52 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Adoptees Crossing Lines Podcast

@adopteecrossing.bsky.social

NAAM isn’t about awareness, it’s a state sponsored marketing campaign.

Every November, the family policing system rebrands family separation as “love.”

It’s time to tell the truth: adoption isn’t liberation. Abolition is.

#adopteesky

Light blue background with a white starburst design in the corner. Text reads:
National Adoption Awareness Month
“NAAM is about the government, and the family policing industry, celebrating the buying and selling of children under the guise of ‘love.’
Since the beginning, NAAM has been less about ‘awareness’ and more about manufacturing consent for family separation.”
Instagram handle @adopteescrossinglines appears at the bottom.

Light blue background with black text and a white abstract star shape on the right. Large “01.” at the top.
Text reads:
“NAAM is a marketing campaign. Created in the late 1970s and federalized by President Clinton in the 1990s, it was used to promote adoption out of foster care, not to address why families were being separated in the first place.
By 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act offered states financial bonuses for each adoption finalized. That law turned children into revenue streams, accelerating the permanent removal of mostly Black, Indigenous, and poor children.”
Sources listed at the bottom: Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997); Roberts, Torn Apart (2022); Child Welfare Information Gateway, “History of National Adoption Month.”
@adopteescrossinglines handle at the bottom.

Light blue background with a white starburst in the upper right corner. Large “02.” at the top.
Text reads:
“Every November, agencies, politicians, and influencers flood timelines with slogans like ‘Adoption is love.’
But that’s not awareness, that’s propaganda.
These campaigns erase the violence of family policing, the grief of first parents, and the realities of adoptees. They sell comfort to the public while hiding the state’s role in breaking families apart.”
@adopteescrossinglines handle at the bottom.

Light blue background with white decorative accents in the corners. Large “03.” at the top.
Text reads:
“This month, don’t ‘celebrate’ adoption. Interrogate it.
Ask who benefits when families are separated, who profits when children are adopted, and who gets silenced when adoptees tell the truth.
NAAM doesn’t need more awareness. It needs abolition.”
@adopteescrossinglines handle at the bottom.

November 3, 2025 at 3:01 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

For @washingtonpost.com, I reviewed Susan Straight's SACRAMENT, which doesn’t merely reproduce the sights and sounds of the pandemic — it allows us to understand how the first surge forever changed the people who gave up the most to help their communities persevere. Gift link: wapo.st/4oMVjs7

Review | ‘Sacrament’ is a rare novel that deepens the human drama of covid

Susan Straight’s latest follows two nurses at a Southern California hospital in the early days of the pandemic.

wapo.st

November 3, 2025 at 2:41 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

Proud of this statement from our cultural critics working group at @fspnwu.bsky.social: open.substack.com/pub/freelanc...

Freelance Solidarity Project (@fspnwu.bsky.social)

The Freelance Solidarity Project fights to raise labor standards for digital media workers across our industry. Part of @nwu.org

fspnwu.bsky.social

October 30, 2025 at 5:54 PM

Kristen Martin

@kwistent.bsky.social

See: chapters 8 and 11 of my book THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

October 31, 2025 at 3:13 PM

Reposted by Kristen Martin

Tony Corsentino

@notalegalrecord.net

within 15 feet of each other: a display on Indigenous Stories and a display on National Adoption Month, which promotes #adoption.

entirely unaddressed: the story of adoption as an essential colonizer’s tactic of predation upon Indigenous communities in the name of Christianization & child welfare.📚