NEWS

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.

The family policing system’s punitive approach does not – and cannot – ever authentically heal or prevent anything.

ICWA protects Indigenous kids by keeping them in the care of extended family or tribes whenever possible.

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.

The upEND Movement opposes any efforts made to represent gender-affirming healthcare as child abuse.

Communities gathering to abolish the family policing system are continuing the ongoing struggle against reproductive oppression.

Houston, TX (January 20, 2022) —– The upEND Movement is beginning the new year in its new home at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and expanding our team. We welcome a new program director and communications manager to join us in our ongoing commitment to building a movement of abolishing the […]

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?

Washington, DC and Houston, TX (June 18, 2021)—Last year, in the shadow of Juneteenth, which commemorates the day news of emancipation from human chattel slavery reached Galveston, Texas in 1866, and during the tumultuous summer of 2020, we launched upEND—a movement to abolish the child welfare system and center the experiences of Black, Native, and […]