HOW TO EMAIL or POST TO THE WEB (3 of 5)

Contact Information

Please scroll down to Contents of the Email to see the text that needs to be used. Feel free to add a personal note if you want, but don’t spend much time on it.

Dick Cheney, Vice President: Email vice_president@whitehouse.gov

Senator Barbara Mikulski

http://mikulski.senate.gov/ Click on Contact Me, then fill out the “Send me a message” part at the bottom. For topic, pick “Human Rights”.

Senator Ben Cardin, Maryland

http://cardin.senate.gov/ Click on Contact Ben (upper left corner), then follow directions.

Senator Barack Obama (you can contact him even if you don’t live in Illinois!)

http://obama.senate.gov (click on email us on the left-hand side)

Congressman John Sarbanes, Maryland:

http://sarbanes.house.gov/contact.shtml Click on send me an email

Congressman Elijah Cummings, Maryland: TBD

http://www.house.gov/cummings/contact.shtml

Please contact anyone else outside of these offices that might be able to ensure that we get this letter. I don’t know exactly how these things work, but I’m pretty sure we can get a letter with the President’s signature even if he isn’t personally consulted first. Sorry, we've never had a crisis like this before!

Contents of the Email

Please have subject/header say “Smith/Kenya Adoption Crisis”.

If you are posting online to a politician’s website and there is no “header”, just use “RE: Smith/Kenya Adoption Crisis” If people see a bunch of emails with the same header when they arrive first thing in the morning, hopefully it will immediately attract their attention. If the box is too small to fit all of the text, then you can just use the first paragraph.

Just Copy and Paste the Text Below, Adding Your Name and Where you Live

My name is___________ . I live in ______________. I am writing on behalf of Sundi and Damon, the prospective adoptive children of Jeromy & Kimberly Smith. Can you please petition President Bush to sign the Smith’s customized approval letter, requested by the Kenya High Court, pertaining to adoption cause matters 179 and 180 of 2007?

As you are aware, the legitimate concerns about Sundi and Damon’s safety raised by the government of Kenya are serious and should be treated as such. Tragically, forced child labor and many other forms of abuse are pervasive throughout the world. Therefore, the suspicions regarding the Smith’s possible negative intentions for the children are not born in a vacuum. The United States is equally committed to eradicating child trafficking from the planet.

Section 162, Subsection B of the Kenya Children’s Act of 2001 requires that the requested documentation be provided per the court’s request, as a pre-condition of granting the Smith’s adoption order. Kenya is a sovereign state that places utmost emphasis on the protection of any children that come out from under their protective umbrella and into the protection of another sovereign state. Given that both our governments share the same burden for the protection of all children—particularly orphans—please assure the Kenyan government of America’s commitment to the safety of Kenya’s precious children by providing assurances that Sundi and Damon will be accepted as US citizens and enjoy all of the corresponding privileges and protections.

The Smiths MUST have this letter in their hands by Wednesday, April 23^rd. Kenya is 7 hours ahead of EST and the final, extended deadline for submitting official documents is Thursday morning. Their hearing is on Friday, April 25^th at 8:30 am (1:30am EST).

Sundi is now five and a special needs child in serious need of medical intervention that cannot be obtained in Kenya, and Damon is 20 months old. Thank you in advance for your time, and for doing everything you can to ensure that these two orphaned children are not removed from the family that they have been part of for the past nine months, which is the only family that they have ever known.

Respectfully,