The Constitutional Right to be a Father, Really

Posted by minneapolisfalling

I am writing here for the first time and i wish to commend

the efforts of Tony and those involved with this complex

issue.

I probably would NOT have so much understanding or

even interest in the same, if i were not myself a “NCP” as

its easily referred to; i.e. i have a son named Joshua

and he loves his dad dearly and as deeply as anything

in this world and he’s taught me the meaning of

unconditional love again, in my rather eventful life at

49 years of age.

I have a strong interest in making this effort here in

Ohio as strong as any in the nation. I would like to talk

not just on the blog but in person and expand this effort

across the state and i believe, we can do so. I know there

are some other groups and we need to organize around

the central themes that have often been posted and

discussed.

My specific background is having been a lawyer for over

14 years engaged in various forms of public/private sector

solo law practice, with a major emphasis on both

criminal and constitutional law [or what used to be referred

often to “civil rights” law] My “civil rights ” expierience

dealt specifically with suing major police chiefs,

prosecutors and their officers for serious pattern abuse.

I know a thing or two about a powerful federal law which

was enacted during the Reconstruction Era of

America, which were and remain the “enabling statutes” of

the 14th Amendment to the United States, once formerly

called the “KKK” act in a less politically correct era.

This 42 U.S.C Section 1983 area of the law became my

forte and its a vehicle that I am a student and have been

a litigator for. It is the law that was relied upon by former

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshal, when he as a

very young NAACP lawyer challenged racial segregation and

changed this nation for ever, in 1950’s.

It was a law that the “old segs” from the South

had basically written off and the judiciary and Congress of

American had forgotten for over a hundred years promptly

after it was enacted.

If it were NOT so readily misapplied by the Supreme

Court of United States, in the late 1800’s we would NOT

have had to undergo the searing experience of all that has

followed in terms of the modern civil rights movement; i.e

there was a federal law on the books that clearly prohibited

the very kinds of racial and legal discrimination that

was practiced by all those southern states and some of us

in the north for years and is still happening in part.

But this is a site not about racial issues nor a primer on

Civil War Era Civil Rights Amendments or is it?

Not quite but then why does such a crazy father write

of such ? Because this is the very same law we use today,

over a hundred and fifty years almost after it was passed

to sue bad “state actors”, i.e. bad cops, bad police chiefs,

and sometimes, bad administrators.

What can it also be used for? To sue bad CSEA officials

and very bad case workers in certain instances…

and it is one very powerful weapon, based on federal

standards, not state law.

It has been restricted in part by a conservative majority

of Supreme Court justices over the years, but it remains a

very potent weapon on the side of the individual inside our

fading democracy.

It may be in fact, among the most prominent laws that

actually gives the individual today to become his /her

own “private attorney general” as the statute again

held in its own original language {something about those

guys in the 1800’s seemed to like something called

democracy! or at least thought it was important!}

In short it gives some of us, the ability to “equal the

playing’ field” inside a court of law in this nation.

And its why so many are not told about it and why even

more courts and police and CSEA officials do not want you

to know about it.

More and more lawyers, today, because of the epidemic

of police brutality and environmental issues

are utilizing this “Section1983” law, so more folks are

becoming aware of the same

School officials are particularly scared of it…and that

means, fathers have a powerful legal weapon, if they know

how to weld it, to create “justice at the point of a pen”

from those who would and do often rip off our children’s

and our parental rights from us, acting in the name

of the state and what Section 1983 calls “the color of

law”

Its a thought process i have been thinking of since i

myself in this part of my life, am not thinking so much as a

constitutional lawyer right now, but as a one very upset

single father of a beautiful son named Joshua who HE has

been made to suffer sick, sick things at the hands of

our currently lovely state of affairs as it affects fathers

inside this state, [for me, inside of Mahoning County Ohio

Juvenile Justice System, Youngstown that is]

I like many have a story, but i wanted to reach out and

grab some …well…attention here by stating..”lets come

and reason together”, as the Bible states and together,

indeed, as the director here says, lets get this party

going!…

What i am suggesting, is among the various legal

statutes and efforts at present, we just may well also have

a powerful 19th Century legal weapon that was intended

to eradicate a form of “domestic terror”, as the preamble

to this 14th Amendment related statute said, as per

Congressional approval in the1870’s when it passed,

its still very much, perhaps, at our disposal

… and i think it is contains potentially powerful

constituitional case law resources that has yet to be fully

applied to the area of father’s rights and to the kinds of

various sicko, sad and tragic things i see posted by those

seriously affected fathers on this site

NOTE: I am NOT promoting my own work. I am NOT

practicing law either at the present so it does not matter

to me in that way anyway

and I am not suggesting that I could represent anyone

here.

BUT…what i AM stating, there is a powerful law that was

once and even today, invoked from the dusty law books of

the din of history, that came roaring back to life to not

openly change the south, but to bring serious change

to our nation and helped to bring it back into the modern

nations society of all humankind.

If ‘Section 1983’ litigation could help do this for an entire

nation, it ought to be able to have a role in what i perceive

as an experienced student of constitutional law in making

change happen for those of us who are so deeply affected

as single fathers trying to simply raise our children in a very

loving and caring manner, often in spite of, not despite the

best efforts of the many juvenile courts and often

imbalanced feminists mothers hell bent on using the child

as a ‘revenge piece’ …

instead of thinking of the child’s true best interest.

I am talking policy level considerations and about

creating a policy discussion which can lead to serious legal

and democratic reforms about how fathers are being

treated throughout this nation today, and how there may

be, if we put our collective heads together, a way to make

children’s rights, for fathers [and affected single mothers

where made the victim of this abusive sick system as well]

work for those who its supposedly intended, the children’s

best interest.

I personally wrote at the grand ole age of 30 this state’s

first minimum wage increase proposal ever and then had

the task to get it past the state legislatures daunting

House Labor Committee in the late 1980’s.

[This committee was made up of half republicans who cared nothing for such kinds of issues in 1988. Jim Petro

opposed this proposal and so did Beatty Jo Davidson and both were on the same. I was thirty and i was fully prepped

to debate these higher powers and after my testimony and the defense of the proposal i wrote,the bill, with the help

of a few organize labor friends, made it out of committee after my testimony..and became law.

There were other such proposals including ones to protect children in door to door candy sales, and school year

initiatives ending nightmare labor intensive overworked teens that i also helped to create by taking a direct lead in

making these legislative initiatives become law.]

I did this over 20 years ago this year. So, I would like to

see today, if I can help w/ these issues i see everyday in

my own life along w/ your organization’s strong advocacy.

I think i can help do this;so please…”let us come and

reason together”… my son, and your children are not

getting any younger, nor better, for having their

fathers being so oppressed and becoming so tied up

emotionally and internally, over what others not so well

intentioned or not, are doing to both their young lives and

our own Jeffersonian “pursuit of happiness”.

Write or contact me

[You can visit my own constitional rights

blogsite…midwest center.blogspot.com and follow the links

to my legal career’s work and efforts on behalf of the poor

and the civil rights cases in Eastern Ohio over the past 15

years. Every judicial officer in this state, in the highest

places knows my name, and my work…some for ill, some

for not so good, even some …out of respect.]

But again, i write mainly to communicate a theory and

one i think and have been trying to find a “home” for…

Tony, it might just be Italians in our midsts, will have to

do it again, for this nation, like our brother Columbus, in

progressing a critical pressing [and very emotional] issue

forward.

Let’s talk soon.

richard o