Channel
4
Political Awards
|
Dave "Spiderman" Chick
has been nominated for his actions for the benefit of many
children.
Ring 09011 272706
to vote for him in
the Channel 4 Political Awards poll.
Result will be reported on evening news
10th February 2004
|
VOTE
FOR DAVE ! |
Speaking from the doorstep of her Chessington home,
David Chick's
former girlfriend asked:
"Has he fallen off yet? If I told you what I thought
about what he's doing it would be all swear words."
A man with her, who declined to be named, added: "That man is more
hassle than he's worth, that's all he's caused us."
|
Batman
and Robin
Royal Courts of
Justice
Another
London
Father
Protest
|
It is self-evident that without wholesale revolution in how excluded
fathers gain access to the media,
get treated in courts,
and
get treated in the field of social security
and tax system,
the civil rights spirit that government inaction
released will not disappear.
|
|
Spiderman
Protest brings Traffic Chaos to Central London
London, 04 November 2003
The ongoing wave of civil
rights protests by fathers against the UK Family Court policy of
cutting fathers
off from their
children has closed Tower Bridge
and is causing massive traffic diversions and traffic gridlock over wide
areas in Central London. Tailbacks have stretched 10 miles east and for
seven miles on southern approaches to the City.
David Chick entered a building site next to the approach
road to Tower Bridge last Friday 1.30am (29th October)
through an open door. At dawn he scaled to the top of
a
100ft
crane and unfurled a huge banner in protest about the denial
of civil rights from fathers. Since Friday the 36-year-old father has
sat atop a 120-foot crane beside London's Tower Bridge, dressed as
Spiderman, his daughter's favourite comic
book hero, in a bid to draw attention to the plight of excluded fathers.
Police say he is a safety hazard, and have closed the bridge, a busy
traffic route across the River Thames. The area around the bridge now
buzzes with irate drivers, puzzled tourists and a knot of angry men
who say Britain's legal system is cutting thousands of fathers off
from their kids.
"
Hats off to the man," said Charlie Harrison, a divorced father
of one who stopped to view the scene Tuesday. "It's the only way.
Parents and kids are suffering, but no one's listening."
Former Conservative minister David Mellor, who lives
nearby, told BBC London that Tower bridge should be re-opened. "It's ludicrous. Thousands of people are being inconvenienced
because the police lack any common sense and there isn't a politician
who can
tell them what to do". In contrast, when 200 Father Christmasses occupied
the Lord Chancellor's skyscraper, the Senior Officer among the Metropolitan
police called told the leading Father Christmas: "I will not see
my children this Christmas." Do such policemen increase or decrease
the inconvenience caused by Tower Bridge?
This superhero protest comes
hot on the heels of an action that for
four days had closed the Royal Courts of Justice with two fathers,
dressed as Batman and Robin, climbing on the roof to protest.  One fellow activist comments "It was freezing cold
last night and teeming down with rain - very slippy up there and very
dangerous. But
like any
man
he will
do
anything
to see his child."
Interviewed by the Evening Standard,
'Superman' Dave Chick says he has been denied access to his three-year-old
daughter despite the courts
ordering that
the child be given access the father.
It is believed that his former partner stopped Chick seeing their daughter
eight months ago. Mr Chick
appealed to his former girlfriend to "stop denying our child a loving
father".
In the interview Mr
Chick also said: " I was there at the birth. I fed her, I bathed her,
I played
with her for
the
first 10 months. [Then the child's mother] suddenly wipes out my life
and there is nothing I can do about it and the courts assist it all.
It is
an absolute
scandal.
"The corrupt family law needs exposing for more
and more children are losing their fathers and some of these fathers
top themselves or
kill their former partners and sometimes kill their kids.
"It could all be changed so easily but who cares
about fathers and children? My ex thinks she is going to provoke me
into going round
and losing my rag and doing something bad to her which I have never done.
I have got to the end of my tether - this is my cry for help.
"It's too late for me to be able to assist my relationship
with my daughter. It's already destroyed but hopefully my protest will
assist
the fathers and children of tomorrow."
He also relayed a message to the daughter he has not
seen for nearly a year. Mr Chick, from Burgess Hill, West Sussex, said: "I love
you darling. I hope to see you soon. I am missing you like mad".
Comment
by Fathercare.org :- |
Until
recently excluded fathers sincerely believed they could
seek changes by resorting
to letter writing. This approach has proven a vain hope
in bringing about change. Acting as gentlemen gets excluded
fathers nowhere.
Over the last 25 years many fathers also wasted large amounts of their savings
and wages (and we are talking 6 figure sums) fervently hoping justice would
be
performed
in
courts
where the public is banned, where the press is forbidden to enter, where
so called 'CAFCASS'
child welfare experts remain untrained and ideologically contaminated. It remains
official Government policy that the reality of Family Court proceedings be
kept outside of public scrutiny by threatening fathers with charges of imprisonable
contempt were they to talk in public about what passes in these secret courts.
The
ongoing wave of protests highlights that
the mood
amongst disempowered fathers has irreversibly turned, and that we
are witnessing a new phase in how fathers fight to be a father to their
children.
The classic Government response
of merely
providing a few hundred thousand pounds of extra funding
to tame father groups to teach fathers
how
to act as
if
fatherhood
is about
being
are mere Sunday McDad, is
no longer working. That window of opportunity has closed. The Government's
favourite poodle organisation, FNF, is hemorrhaging members to the
pro-active Fathers-4-Justice group.
The
every other weekend 'turn up at mummies house to take children to MacDonald's'
(if she let's you) form of fatherhood is now on the trash heap of history.
Fathers are demanding real parenting time with their children, and they
are willing to go to prison if that is what it takes to make Government
change its tune.
The intense mood of outrage about father-cut off policies
that moderate fathers leaders had cautioned about to counterparts
in Lord
Chancellor's
committees two years ago, has turned into
ever more daring acts of civil disobedience protest
against the court system, against lawyers and against other father cut-off
organisations.
The government and its civil service advisors recently offered
some cosmetic changes and
a few new faces, (Lord Filkin was seconded from the Northern
Ireland Peace negotiations) but the crisis surrounding father
issues
is
now too
deep.
To
recover the situation the price tag the Government will
now have to pay to buy
peace may prove politically
beyond them. Government may even drive despairing fathers into terrorism.
In the meantime Government demonstrates its whimsical
approach by promising to consult
rock stars about what to do.
It is self-evident that without
wholesale revolution in how excluded fathers gain access
to the media, get treated in courts, and
get treated in the field of social
security and tax system, the civil rights spirit
that government inaction released will not disappear.
Institutional oppression of
fathers saw men like Conrad being sentenced to 84 days
for texting son on 5th birthday
- (he served
42 days
in
the Scrubs Prison), while doing nothing to mothers who
are are breaking court orders that were meant to
let children
keep their fathers. Conrad is not the only man who was
imprisoned for wanting to be a father, Mark Harris was
thrown into jail for 6 months for
waving HELLO to
his children
from
across
the
road, and he was sentenced to several more months in
jail for giving a birthday present to
his child.
The injustices in the Family
Courts have been occurring for so long that
today,
children made fatherless by courts a decade or more ago,
have grown up and are joining in the protests. Grand-parents
who were denied loving their grand child because of the
anti-father policies
of Family courts are amongst those who are willing to
break laws or get arrested in order to create a future
where children are no longer held hostage to anti-father
social policy. Too many
got hurt in the past.
There will be no rest
for those who politically ignore politicised fathers,
grand-parents and their friends.
Fatherhood today has
become political, it means nothing less than full human
and
civil rights
in
law;
in the
practice
of
the
law;
and
in getting access to all forms of assistance irrespective
of a parent's gender.
English men once gave their
lives so that the Union Jack could fly over a village
in a Third World country. Let's hope that government
listens when the grand children of these gallant men
now protest: "We will be fathers - we will bring down
whatever obstacles
are put in our paths!"
E. Hockenjos, 04 Sept 2003 |
BACKGROUND INFORMATION about CAFCASS,
the Monopoly Supplier which provides the "experts"
whose reports determine the life of children after parental separation/
divorce:
(read more):-
|
"Women take
for granted nowadays their place in the public sphere, in education,
work and politics; roles for which the victorians and Edwardian
feminists battled for more than a century".
Melanie Phillips, The Ascent of Woman,
Little, Brown 2003, p 316
|
Robin
on the
roof of the RCJ
October in London
High above the court
A member of the
CAPED CRUSADERS
FOR JUSTICE
group .
The same double
standard persists to this day, with women
claiming "equality" and yet insisting, for example,
that mothers have prior claim over fathers to their children
after divorce; or that women must be economically independent
of their husbands, unless they separate, in which case men must
turn back into breadwinners;... but if a woman is violent to
a man or a child, she must be suffering from an emotional problem."
Melanie Phillips, The Ascent of Woman,
Little, Brown 2003, p 316
|
|
contact