Episode 10: How to Succeed, Part 1

Follow the 40 year journey of one piece of legislation about adoption and how it finally got passed this year! Guests: Gregory Luce and Penelope Needham 

0:00 Introductions
4:26 How did you think this process was going to work when you first started advocating at the Capitol?
9:00 How do you work to fight a dominant narrative that you want legislators to unlearn? 
10:39 Who in this process had power to be helpful? 
11:34 Can you say more about the time when you came close, but it fell apart? 
19:14 How do you keep showing up? Can you talk about your emotional journey with this? 
23:12 How are relationships a part of what makes this happen? Are they authentic? 
26:25 Is there advice you’d give yourself when you were first starting out? 
29:54 Is there work ahead about overseeing the implementation of this bill? 

Transcript

Alan Berks

Welcome to Our House, a podcast that pulls back the curtain on Minnesota State government. I’m Alan Berks.

Leah Cooper

And I’m Leah Cooper. We’re the co-artistic directors of a theater company called Wonderlust Productions. In the process of putting together an original show about life at the state capitol, we learned that Minnesota government is very much like theater.

Alan Berks

In 1945, Minnesota passed a law that restricted adoptees’ access to their own birth certificates. Penelope Needham, an adoptee herself, has been involved in the fight to change that law since the early 1980s. 

Penny Needham

I was participating in something called the adoption symposium, which was a group of adoption professionals, agency workers, psychologists, educators, who were looking at how adoption is working in Minnesota. And one of the speakers was a sitting county judge. And I asked her, Why do adult adoptees need their parents' permission to have their original birth certificates? And she said, “Oh, I just enforce the law, someone's going to have to change it.” So that was like the “throw down the gauntlet.” Okay. And so we began to work on legislation, what that meant to change the law. And it got complicated from there. And that was decades ago. And this year, it finally passed. 

Leah Cooper:

How many years? 

Penny Needham:

Well, 30, something like 34 years ago. 

Leah Cooper:

Wow.

Alan Berks:

In this episode, we follow one piece of legislation and the complex path it took to get passed. It was an effort led largely by volunteers in the community – adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents too – who were willing to devote their time and skill, relentlessly, over decades.

Leah Cooper:

Joining Penny and I in the conversation is Gregory Luce, the executive director of Adoptees United and the founder of the Adoptee Rights Law Center

Gregory Luce  

I was born and adopted in the District of Columbia. And I had a kid in 1999, 2000, and that's really where my awareness of lacking a biological relative really hit me hard. And that's when I first started ‘well, let’s see what I can find out. During that whole process I looked up, “it can’t be this hard across the country. There’s no way you have to court and battle the courts. And a lawyer, I know what I’m doing, but most people don’t. And it was. And I said I’m going to jump into representing adult adopted people to try and get their records. Minnesota was one of the most complicated states in the country at that time, it had been since 1977. And from there, it just grew, just I became an activist and advocate and attorney who represented youadoptees who lack US citizenship. And I write bills now and navigate in legislature

Leah Cooper

The topic of adoption is very close to our hearts at Wonderlust. I’m adopted, and we made a play in 2016 about the complex, emotional world of adoption. Many adoptees do not have access to their own birth certificates which means other people know more about their origins than they do. So, we live with the constant message that we’re not entitled to the most basic information about who we are, where we come from, or even our genetic medical history. We’re expected to just be grateful for a happy ending that for us isn’t always happy. Frankly, it’s a kind of lifelong experience of being gaslit about our own existence. Because I was born in a closed Los Angeles County adoption in 1968, I still don't have access to my birth certificate. So I'm deeply grateful to both of our guests for the advocacy work they did and continue to do.

Alan Berks

Yes…  and by following all the twists and turns, and barriers, and tactics, and luck involved in passing this specific legislation, this story makes concrete a whole lot of what our previous guests described in general. It also makes clear the personal stakes involved.

Leah Cooper

Our conversation begins where a lot of the other conversations in this podcast begin–with the realization that the process is nothing like what we’re taught in schools. I asked Penny how she thought the process was going to work when she first started advocating at the Capitol years ago.

Penny Needham  

I thought it would be easy! I was a student council representative in high school, I was the student advisor to the student government organization in the school where I was teaching, and you campaign for things and you work to solve a problem by listening and listening and then finding a way to introduce it in a way that would be understandable.  “Educate, advocate, and then legislate” was the motto. And I thought this would be easy. There were bright people around and there were encouraging people around. And then I found that that wasn't how things worked.

Gregory Luce

I think that's such a familiar story.

Penny Needham  

I was frustrated, I could do one-on-one with people and tell my story, which was the major advice I was given - tell your story. Because legislators, they need to know how people are affected by the laws that they make. And I thought okay, so I also knew that the bringing advocates who were not quite processed in their own adoption was not a good idea, because it just turned into a sobbing, whining, or angriness, all of the stuff that goes with grief and loss showed up in in an interview with a legislator. When you're trying to advocate, it doesn't help to just bully your way through it or be mad about it but, as I learned, there are about 80 some percent of people who are somehow connected to adoption. So going in with that knowledge and finding the commonalities with people individually, was what what worked for me. And then I learned about the politics of telling your story and everybody else's story and who was bargaining things with your bill, and their bill, and the complexities of legislature and how it worked. And so it wasn't as simple as just telling my story.

Leah Cooper 

It wasn’t enough to persuade each person.

Penny Needham

No! I remember one conservative legislator, when I told him that adult adoptees can't get their birth certificates, upon request, but everyone else can. And he said he didn't know that. And he had adoptees in his family. And he was incensed that they were somehow discriminated against, he signed up immediately. But as legislators come and go, he wasn't around for the vote when it actually came up sessions later. So there were people who were very in tuned with what we were saying, and they were people who, who did the “What abouts” as Greg would call them. “What about this? And what about this case? And what about this?” And we're just talking about a piece of paper. It's something that everyone else has, and we want it. And it was taken away in 1939 in Minnesota from babies, people who were adopted as children, and they couldn't get their own birth certificate, but everyone else could. They didn't have a guardian ad litem to advocate for them at that point. There was no one to speak for the babies. And another legislator said, yeah, they forgot about the babies, and the babies grew up. So that's kind of how we streamlined the message. So it was about a piece of paper that everyone has. It became a human rights issue. Rather than just my story. It was more about…

Leah Cooper  

So you learned the story can be persuasive. But you also needed a clear, streamlined message.

Penny Needham 

Yes. And something that everyone could “wear” - you have it, I want it.

Gregory Luce 

It was complicated to come up with that message that resonates.

Penny Needham

Yes.

Gregory Luce

Because it's gonna vary by state. It will vary by state. And that's just how I've seen it where part of the issue is you're dealing when you go into these meetings with legislators or when anyone really, there's this entire narrative of adoption that's hanging over your head. And you have to break through that dominant narrative for them to understand why this is an important issue. Because that's when they bring up the “What about,” because it's what they've heard about adoption or what they may have experienced with a friend who had an adoption, or sibling maybe. And the good of adoption always overshadows the secrets of adoption. And people in some ways don't want to hear about the secrets of adoption or the so-called bad things of adoption, things we've not done well, or not done well at all.

Leah Cooper  

I think this is something that's true of a lot of advocacy efforts, right? You're fighting a dominant narrative that has lived for a long time, and has so much traction that you have to sort of do some unlearning with a legislator before you can kind of start, right? 

Gregory Luce  

Yeah. There's laws now that's representing the narratives that maybe existed a generation ago. And now you're moving that along to a different narrative that now meets what we should have recognized years ago.

Leah Cooper 

And now how do you do that? Is it in 15 minute appointments with legislators, to lobbyists? What has been the journey for you?

Gregory Luce 

Oh, my God, it's, I had no clue, first of all, what to do. I just, I mean, I come from an attorney's perspective where you file a brief, you make a good argument, and that brief and decision is made and you hit a victory. No, it's so much hands on. It's so much understanding what the politics are within a specific legislature, what's going on at the governor's office as well. So it's not just the legislature, and understanding what messages may resonate with the people who have the power to make things happen. And, having a very simple message. And having a theme, it's in many respects, putting together a package that tells a solid story that you can just go from one legislator to another, and convince them that this is the right thing to do. But also, I mean, you have to understand where the power is. And that's sort of the cold blooded aspect of legislative work is they see you without power for most of most of the time, but you also have to recognize who that you're approaching doesn't have any power as well.

Leah Cooper  

And who have you found in this process actually had power to be helpful?

Gregory Luce  

Well, I mean, the Speaker of the House was an early ally.

Penny Needham 

She was also an author, a chief author for several sessions.

Gregory Luce  

That’s Melissa Hortman - she was critical in this whole process. And there's been legislators over the years, you know, way better than I do, Penny that those players that had power along the way, it ultimately became an issue of the Minnesota becoming a trifecta where the Democrats controlled the Senate, the Governorship and the House. And we had an incredibly strong Senate proponent, Senate author, in Senator Erin Maye Quade. But still, you had power battles, I'm sure, going on behind the scenes as well. And sometimes it didn’t relate in any way to the issue that you're trying to get across.

Leah Cooper  

Right. I recall that in this long journey that you've been on, Penny there, you came really close once, and it all fell apart because of some deal that had nothing to do with birth certificates. Can you say a little bit about that process?

Penny Needham  

Right. Well, we've got, again, we've chosen wonderful authors who have championed the bill and got it, got it through committees and through House or Senate floor votes. And that happened once before in 2007. When it passed the House, it passed the Senate, but the Governor vetoed it. And that was devastating. I mean, the chief author was, we cried, and it was an emotional and just a real down to have that happen. And then to start over again. But to realize that, that one person could just sign a name, and kill all of that work immediately. 

Leah Cooper

And why did he veto it? 

Penny Needham

Well, he said a formal thing about he was protecting the rights of birth parents, but we knew because our coalition included birth parents, they are getting really tired of being the scapegoat for saying that - It's because of us, my child can have her or his own birth certificate? That's not what we asked for. We never asked for that kind of power or secrecy. We support the children that we gave birth to. We don't want to deny them. And yet people would say what about the birth parent who doesn't want to know or want anyone to know? Well, that was at least an adulthood away, 18 to 21 years ago. And things change. And then people want to know who they are and where they came from. And birth parents want to know what happened to their child. And so you're cutting off something that is what everyone wants. Who am I? Where did I come from?

Leah Cooper

Why do you really think Pawlenty vetoed it, if it wasn't to protect the birth mothers?

Penny Needham 

Well, his aides said to me, the Governor knows that this will pass someday, but it can't be on his watch. 

Gregory Luce 

It had to have been abortion politics. 

Penny Needham

There was in my view, it was either payback for the chief author who, in the house, championed our bill, but vetoed something that he did. And she was in his party. And there are loyalties of leadership within a party. And there was another person who said very verbally, that that was the most important thing that ever happened in her term that that was vetoed, and she had an uncomfortable link with adoption. And she didn't want it to pass. So she wanted the secrecy to remain. And yet later on, she would show up at at committee hearings and use anonymous hearsay testimony as proof that that was why the bill shouldn't pass. And this anonymous hearsay testimony kind of followed for several sessions. It was a strange way of showing power.

Alan Berks

So there are two things here I just want to underscore. The unrelated issue was a transportation bill. Around six GOP legislators crossed party lines to override Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of a transportation bill that included a tax increase. Each one of those legislators paid a heavy price for crossing their caucus. In this case, one of the legislators was the chief sponsor of this adoption bill–and some people think that the Governor vetoed the adoption bill only to send a message to this legislator for crossing him.

Leah Cooper

Which is a pretty good example of why it is so hard for members to go against their caucus even when they believe in an issue.

Alan Berks

Penny is also talking about how much power an individual legislator has to block something they really don’t like–even when the majority approves. Here’s Gregory with more: 

Gregory Luce  

It was not uncommon in the other states I've worked in where there's one or two senators or a House member who is adamant against a bill. And that really is the thing that keeps the bill from happening. We didn't really have that so much in Minnesota, although we had a few senators - Senator Warren Limmer is one – who were adamant against it. And when the power changed so that the Democrats are all in control this past session, the power was gone. And that made a big difference.

Leah Cooper  

This echoes so much of what we've heard from folks who work inside that. One, you might not even know why it failed. 

Gregory Luce 

Exactly.

Penny Needham

Because so much happens behind the scenes.Two, there's a lot of sort of secret loyalties and frankly, deals being made, right? Or just the kind of loyalties that make somebody say this can't happen on their watch, they can't be associated with it right. And then three, that it's a waiting game, right? You either have to outwait somebody who's so opposed to it, they're never gonna let it happen. And they happen to have the power. Or you just have to wait for everything, for stars to align, so to speak. So that enough of the people in favor of what you want are also in power, which is that been your journey would you say?

Penny Needham 

And also, I think sometimes it comes in, after the storm, it just kind of sails in, nobody knows it's there. It's there if they read, but we're not going to use the method of getting everybody involved and telling everybody to call this and do that. And so there's the crowd sourcing kind of way. And then there's the quiet way of just, you know, submitting it and going through the channels and doing it and it's done. And doing it very simply – just contact the legislators that are involved directly, and not think you have to get the whole floor, the whole house, the whole Senate. And we did a lot of that. We had bills that had 67 authors in the house, you know, we had to have a companion bill, because we had so many signatures and they're only 35 on a sheet. In the Senate, that's a different process. But we would actually talk to all of those people and get them on board, but only to find out that somebody in a leadership position is not going to use that Bill anyway, or is going to take the opponent position, regardless of how many signatures we got, and how many authors we had.

Leah Cooper  

So it's not about quantity.

Penny Needham

It’s not about quantity.

Penny Needham

It's about strategy.

Gregory Luce  

I would think there's a huge amount of strategy in the background. I also think there's a matter of luck. There's always been some lucky thing happened, some person in the legislature didn't get reelected, and he was a chair of a substantial committee and therefore, was an opponent, and therefore it wouldn't go through that committee. And that person didn't get reelected. And suddenly you have a new committee with a new head and they may support the bill, or you have in Minnesota where the Senate was 34-33. With one senator that made the difference, because they won by, you know, less than 100 votes. And so that luck is always involved in that. But you're right. It's always a waiting game until that, that luck strikes in some ways. I mean, it's not, it's not 60% of what happens, it's not 40 percent, there’s probably this 20% luck that seems to be involved in all of these efforts.

Leah Cooper

So how do you… what I hear you saying is you have to be tenacious, you have to keep showing up. 

Penny Needham

Be persistent. 

Leah Cooper 

Yeah, you have to be persistent and hope the circumstances come together. So how do you do that? Can you just talk a little bit about the emotional journey of sticking with something like this?

Penny Needham  

It's darn hard! I actually had one senator who I knew I could go to, to cry with, because she was a former author. She had gone from the house, she was the chief author of the bill in the House, at one point, she became a Senator. And she still would cheer along the sidelines, but couldn't by herself make it happen. But, you know, I would just text and say, Are you available for a hug? And you know, I could go right in. And so you make, you make connections that way to cope with the, the huge downs that happen when you don't make it or you have to start over again. Or you have to pull a bill like we did in 2021. Because we could tell it was gonna get vetoed, and when it gets vetoed in a committee, it's dead. So,

Leah Cooper 

So is it better to pull it, then let it - 

Penny Needham

Yeah, because then it's, it stays alive. And, and it doesn't go on your record. As you know, it was killed.

Gregory Luce  

We could come back the following session, because it was the biennium. If it was defeated in committee, it would be just done.

Leah Cooper 

I see. 

Gregory Luce 

Yeah. And also, I mean, you find out too, that legislators don't like a loss on their records. Nothing will come up for vote unless they already know what it's going to what the vote is going to be. Which is weird. I mean, it was rare in any of the cases I were sessions I worked in where we knew we didn't know what the vote was going to be. Usually you always knew. I knew in this case as well.

Penny Needham  

And there are legislators to who have loyalty to their party, but want to be for your bill, but they can't vote for your bill because of their party. So they find a way to go the bathroom during the voting time, or they just exit the room. And there are people who who want to be liked so so much that they won't take a stand and they won't sign on the bill. Or they'll say I can't sign on your bill. I’ll vote for it. But I can't sign on your bill because I'm taking a stand on a particular issue that is a partisan issue, or my party is against any contact with that party for now. So I'm not going to put my name on it, but I'll vote for it if it comes up. And then they'll change their mind. And that's that crisis happens and resolves, and then they'll put their name back on it, it's… or they've yanked their names off. Because of, you know, somebody is opposing, and they don't want to be known as supporting something that their party opposes. It's very political, very political, and you don't know which part you're playing. I'm just, I'm just driving the bus in the straight line, this is what I want, and trying to get support. But I don't know where those…

Gregory Luce  

I mean I will say that I was amazed -  I'm privileged, I've been newer, in this whole process, maybe last five years, and to work with someone like you who's been involved at least 25 years. But I was constantly amazed at the relationships you had with many of the Senators, or House members. Like the one you mentioned that you could just cry on their shoulder. And that was really, really nice to see that you can have these human relationships with people who you view as people in power. But that sort of humanizes them to see that there's this relationship, they understand the issue. They want the issue to pass because it is something that resonates as a human right. And it's not, for them, caught up in all the politics. Although they do understand how it does get caught up in that. So it was really remarkable to see those relationships where you would go into a meeting room, I'd go in with you. And then you have a 10 year history with this person.

Leah Cooper  

Do you think those relationships are part of what makes it happen?

Gregory Luce  

Definitely. Oh, yeah.

Penny Needham

I think so.

Leah Cooper  

I know those? Are they authentic relationships? Do you think? Or is it really just about building a case?

Gregory Luce

That's a great question.

Penny Needham  

I'd like to think they're about building a relationship, and not just building a case. Although there were people who said, I thought I thought that passed already. And so they thought and they wondered, you know, why was there one more time looking for a signature?

Gregory Luce 

I think that's what I was amazed by – these were authentic relationships. These weren't relationships built on “What power do you have? And what power do I have?” This was, I'm interested in this issue, and this is an important issue. Yeah, that's what it was maybe experience in other states, it's not what I've seen.

Penny Needham 

There's also that recollection, oh, you're still here. So I could, I could be at the elevator, not doing any, any advocating, but just being at the elevator, and there would be a recognition. Or I would listen to their story, too, and how it related to adoption. And they had things to tell me too. Or wanting advice, as an older adoptee on their adopted child, or their nephew, or their niece, or how can I be supportive? Or how will this make a difference? So they personalized what we were talking about in their own lives too. Which I think also helps that bond of, yeah, this is a real person. She's coming back again and again! She's not going away. And I would stand at the back of hearings for people who are kind of on the fence, I'm just let them know, I was watching. And I was there. And it was important.

Gregory Luce 

Go to open houses that the legislators, you know, in their community or online coffee talk.

Penny Needham 

Or thank them for their support in a public in a more public way. So that they they also knew that we were supportive of what they were doing too. And these were good people. We found really good authors and co-authors. These were people who genuinely supported human rights, and saw this as a human rights issue, which I think are probably the most difficult in legislative work to pass. The money stuff is money. But the human rights things have a lot of emotion with them, a lot of very poignant reasons why this is good law. And there are judges who don't know: “Really? Oh, well, I guess you have to change the law.”

Leah Cooper  

I suspect your ability to listen is what makes it an authentic relationship over time, right? And it's also strategic. Right? Well, they answer to know what their position is if you actually understand their relationship to the issue.

Penny Needham 

Yes. And that's a way also to bond with our two understand where the What Abouts come from too, because they may have a What About that has no basis of reality today? But that's what they believe. 

Gregory Luce  

Yeah, it's breaking that narrative.

Penny Needham  

Yeah, it's when the times change the law needs to change. When we look at welcoming babies instead of hiding babies. That's a major change.

Leah Cooper  

Yeah. So I wonder now all these years later really for both of you, is there anything you would, if you could go back? Is there anything you would do different? Any advice you'd give you at the beginning of all of this?

Gregory Luce  

If I always thought, and again, I'm new at this, but I've always thought there's no formula to this work. You wish there was. I mean, people ask me all the time, okay, what do I need to do to get this bill passed? It's like, well, that's a long process. You need to build relationships. You need to understand who's in power, what kind of power they hold. You need to learn a lot. But you also have to be there a lot. That's where lobbyists come in. And if you have the money to hire lobbyists, they're there. And they're your voice and your ears and they report back. But, you know, grassroots organizations like ours, we have zero money to hire lobbyists, so we have to be there. And that's true in any state that you're working in. What would I do looking back? I don't see any difference, anything that anything that we would have changed, other than I wish it would have happened earlier.

Penny Needham  

In my head I heard “don't take it personally.” But that's exactly what I think made it happen. Because it was personal. And because it became personal between me and a legislator. And I think that relationship was built by being personal. So I think that early advice I got was to tell your story, which was important, too. That legislators need a face on what they're deciding, I think they have way too much paper to read. Some of them don't even read it at all, or they have someone else read it for them, and then spit out the important bullet points. But there are a few who say, I want to read this. And they'll take time to read it sometimes even in front of you, or they want their copy, or they're going to talk with other people that they trust to read or whatever. Because the legal part is very hard to understand.

Gregory Luce

Right? I was just gonna comment too that it was a team effort. And we had a really great team, because you would go in and sometimes Erin would be there, too – she's a birth mother – and I'd be there. And we'd all have our own roles. I mean, I could certainly tell an interesting story about my adoption and make it personal, but I wasn't my role was Mr. Technical. So that your role is to tell your story. And if questions came up about what about the birth mothers, you got a birth mother they're talking about? Well, it's not about us. It's about it's about adopted persons having their own identity. And within a technical issue came up, then everyone would turn their head and look at me, and I'd have to answer. Well, this is what the bill does.

Penny Needham  

And we often do the advocate in teams of a birth parent, an adoptive parent too, who was also a lawyer, and then if we had Greg along, too, who had helped write the bill, so he could do the technical pieces of what the language meant. 

Gregory Luce 

Without boring them to tears.

Penny Needham

Without boring them to tears. And with a sense of humor, which helps! Because I think digesting all of this stuff as a legislator is really difficult. You know, okay, I agree with that. But all you know, part A says this, and what does that mean? And there are rule fights over words that have nothing to do with the concept of getting the birth certificate, because of the language of the law. And not being a lawyer, I don't go there. But it's heartbreaking when it comes down to the words on the paper. 

Leah Cooper  

So, one of the things we've heard in some of these interviews is that getting a bill passed doesn't say anything about how it's going to be implemented. Is there work ahead around overseeing the implementation of this bill?

Gregory Luce  

Yeah, it, I think was written well enough, and supported well enough that the implementation should be fairly straightforward. And interestingly, they they, because of the budget surplus, they put over a million dollars towards implementing this whole process, which is… we were just shocked that they allocated that money for that. I've never heard of that in any states that have done it. So that is that bodes well. I'm a little worried that in 2024, which is coming up, that there's some sort of cleanup bills, which they do when. Especially in what we've seen in the last year with a whole bunch of bills came through. I hope we don't have to find any things that are called clean up bills, but are in fact, something else that would undermine effort. I don't think so. 

Leah Cooper  

Can a clean-up bill actually take something back? 

Gregory Luce

It could. Yeah. Yeah. 

Leah Cooper

So you kind of have to be relentless.

Gregory Luce

Vigilant, yeah.

Leah Cooper 

I'm hearing a couple things. You have to write the bill so that the implementation is built right into it. I hear that money helps. And I'm hearing you gotta keep an eye out for cleanup bills.

Gregory Luce

 Right, right.

Leah Cooper

Wow.

Penny Needham  

Yeah, the fiscal note was out of our hands. The Department of Health – MDH – I believe submitted some justification for using the money for publicity and for retooling the device to get to applications and delivery of birth certificates. But we also have the same person, employee, state person in Minnesota Department Health, who has been at several hearings in the last several sessions. So again, relationships with agencies as well as legislators helps things, I believe. 

Leah Cooper 

This is some of what we've heard when we've talked to agency staff, right? It's the staff who have to make it happen. And if they're not part of the process, it just makes the transition that much more difficult.

Gregory Luce 

Oh, and it makes it really tough to get the bill passed in the first place if they haven't been consulted. Yeah.

Leah Cooper  

Wow, so also relationships with staff. It's a lot of ingredients. 

Penny Needham 

It's a lot.

Gregory Luce

It is.

Leah Cooper

Not to mention your own tenacity.

Penny Needham  

It's not an all by yourself project

Gregory Luce  

It was in South Dakota.

Penny Needham  

They did it with one person! 

Leah Cooper

Wow.

Gregory Luce  

That was crazy. I mean, I was involved a little bit in South Dakota, there was one constituent there. And it happened before us – just this past session.

Leah Cooper

Wow.

Penny Needham 

And that's the other thing, too, that we are now the 15th state to give unrestricted access to adoptees for their own birth certificates 

Leah Cooper 

Is it easier if you’re not first? Because you can point to the other states?

Gregory Luce  

I didn’t think it would be a thing. But yeah, it does make a difference, especially – and we've had six or seven in the last five years. And that's, that shows that there's a trend a real trend.

Leah Cooper  

Because momentum is influential.

Gregory Luce  

And you know, Minnesota was by probably by far the most complicated law to undo. And the fact that we now have now undone it, I think we'll be able to use that in other states like Michigan, which built their law on top of ours, or Wisconsin, which did the same thing. Theirs is very similar to our old one. And so there are two bills, one in Wisconsin, one in Michigan that may… we'll see. It's hard. You never know  – could be another 20 years in each of those states as well.

Leah Cooper

We’ve been talking with the executive director of Adoptees United Gregory Luce… and longtime advocate for adoptee rights Penelope Needham.  Well, it’s nice to know that at least Minnesota is not alone in our ever-so-slow march toward progress.  

Alan Berks

I just want to point out how kind and patient Penny remains throughout this process. They had the votes and passed the bill 16 years ago. It gets vetoed for ambiguous reasons but she keeps coming back. Not only does she keep coming back but she actually listens to legislators when they come to her for advice related to adoption! 

Leah Cooper

And I want to thank them again for their advocacy. Even in our last episode, where we talked to people who don’t work inside the government or the Capitol building, they were still people with jobs that revolve around politics – advocates who are paid to do the work. Penny and Greg are volunteers. Greg points out that you’ve got to be at the Capitol, and if you can’t afford to have a lobbyist there for you, then you have to show up yourself.

Alan Berks

You have to show up yourself. You have to have luck. You have to build relationships. You have to be aware of the politics. You have to have the wording of the bill just right. . . It’s like Penny and Greg are putting labels on all the mysterious levers and buttons of the machine that makes government go. You have to have buy-in from the agency staff that will implement it. You have to have a comprehensive strategy. You have to be able to tell the story from multiple perspectives. You have to change the narrative that people have grown up believing.

Leah Cooper

Penny was a teacher. Greg is a lawyer. They both happen to be optimistic, tenacious, persuasive advocates. But is it fair to expect people who already have full lives to navigate all of these hurdles with optimism, tenacity, and charm in order to pass legislation that will directly affect them? 

Alan Berks

In our next episode we’ll talk with some folks from another community we’ve made a play with – and about – people impacted by incarceration. We’ll learn about how they built coalitions to pass several significant reforms this past session.

Leah Cooper

Our guests will be Former House Representative Raymond Dehn, Justin Terrell, Executive Director of the MN Justice Research Center, and Brother Shane Price, founder of the Power of People Leadership Institute

Alan Berks

That’s next time on Our House. I’m Alan Berks 

Leah Cooper

And I’m Leah Cooper. “Our House '' is a podcast of Wonderlust Productions. Our production assistant is Frances Matejcek, our editor is Marianne Combs, and our sound designer and audio engineer is Peter Morrow with help from Rachel Briese. Music was composed by Becky Dale. Lyrics by Alan Berks and Becky Dale. 

Alan Berks

The professional actors you heard singing in this episode are Megan Kim, Adam Whisner, Bradley Greenwald, and Laurel Armstrong. For detailed credits on the making and performing of the play, visit our website at wlproductions-dot-o-r-g. And, if you enjoyed this podcast and want to support more work like this, click “donate” while you’re there. Or give us a nice review wherever you read podcast reviews. 

Leah Cooper

Big thanks to our partners and supporters who have made this podcast possible, including the Minnesota Humanities Center, Eastside Freedom Library, In Progress Studios, MinnPost, The Theater of Public Policy, and the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation. See the thank-you page on our website for a full list of the donors and foundations who make all of our work possible. 

Alan Berks

Thanks for listening!