Family Policing Doesn’t Prevent Child Abuse, Abolition Can
While the family policing system also purports to prevent child abuse, abolition seeks to prevent harm before it occurs in the first place.
Upending The Racialized Family Ideal
Child welfare policies reward those who uphold the American “family ideal” and police, punish, and profit from those who don’t meet it.
2023 Convening Recap
There is a place for all of us to resist family policing and carcerality, through practice, policy, and language.
Abolitionist Steps to Build a Better World
Reforms are ineffective at combating racism and harm in part because they do not intend to, but also because they begin with the wrong presumptions.
No Coincidence: Black Family Separations Then and Now
Black families faced an incomprehensible level of pain, anger, confusion, and powerlessness during enslavement. Sadly, when speaking with Black families who have had their children forcibly and involuntarily removed by the family policing system today, too little has changed.
We Know Investing In Families Works. Why Are We Still Investing in Harm?
The family policing system’s punitive approach does not – and cannot – ever authentically heal or prevent anything.
The Power of Co-Opting: Language Is Changing, But Will It Change the Status Quo?
When we call a system that surveils, regulates, punishes, and forcibly separates families a “child welfare system,” we misconstrue that system’s purpose and actions.
Reproductive Justice Demands the End of Family Policing
Communities gathering to abolish the family policing system are continuing the ongoing struggle against reproductive oppression.
Finding Space to Imagine: How White Supremacy Culture Stifles Creativity
How do we collectively and collaboratively create new ways of supporting and caring for families without replicating the coercive structure, surveillance, and separation in other forms?
Making Possible the Impossible: A Black Feminist Perspective on Child Welfare Abolition
In 1863, Harriet Tubman and eight of her trusted scouts orchestrated the Combahee River uprising in South Carolina. The uprising…