The deadline for art, poetry, and short fiction submissions has been extended to January 31, 2024. Read More
We can build a society where children and families are strengthened and supported, not surveilled and separated. The upEND Podcast illustrates that the “child welfare” system is beyond reform and needs to be abolished. The only solution to ending the harm of what we name the family policing system is a fundamental reimagining of the way society cares for children and families.
upEND’s program director Josie Pickens is a Houston, TX-based organizer, educator, journalist, and culturalist whose writings and public conversations focus on race, gender, and sexuality. Josie has been regularly published in Ebony, Essence, Bitch, The Root, Cassius, Mic, and more. She has more than twenty years of community organizing experience where her focus has been prison-idustrial-complex-abolition, family policing system abolition, and building mutual aid networks.
Jaison Oliver is an educator and community organizer working on upEND’s communications team. As a member of the BLMHTX/ImagiNoir Collective, he builds collaborative spaces in order to imagine and create abolitionist communities where Black people can thrive.
