● We begin with, I kid you not, the table of contents from a
law journal – specifically the issue of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law
featuring papers presented at the Strengthened Bonds conference. The
full issue is here. Here’s what you’ll find in it:
Editor’s Note—Growth in Unprecedented Times, Nicolás Quaid Galván
Foreword—Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing the Child Welfare System and Re-Envisioning Child Well Being, Nancy D. Polikoff & Jane M. Spinak
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: How I Became a Family Policing Abolitionist, Dorothy Roberts
ARTICLES
Political-Economic Roots of Coercion—Slavery, Neoliberalism, and the Racial Family Policy Logic of Child and Social Welfare, Gwendoline M. Alphonso
The Surveillance Tentacles of the Child Welfare SystemCharlotte Baughman, Tehra Coles, Jennifer Feinberg & Hope Newton
Abolition, Settler Colonialism, and the Persistent Threat of Indian Child Welfare, Theresa Rocha Beardall & Frank Edwards
Reimagining Schools’ Role Outside the Family Regulation System, Brianna Harvey, Josh Gupta-Kagan & Christopher Church
Twentieth Century Black and Native Activism Against the Child Taking System: Lessons for the Present, Laura Briggs
Toward Community Control of Child Welfare Funding: Repeal the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and Delink Child Protection from Family Well-Being, Angela Olivia Burton & Angeline Montauban
Using Peacemaking Circles to Indigenize Tribal Child Welfare, Lauren van Schilfgaarde & Brett Lee Shelton
How Racial Politics Led Directly to the Enactment of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997—The Worst Law Affecting Families Ever Enacted by Congress. Martin Guggenheim
Mutual Deference Between Hospitals and Courts: How Mandated Reporting from Medical Providers Harms Families, Clara Presler
The White Supremacy Hydra: How the Family First Prevention Service Act Reifies Pathology, Control, and Punishment in the Family Regulation System, Miriam Mack
Assimilation, Removal, Discipline, and Confinement: Native Girls and Government Intervention, Addie C. Rolnick.
Ending the Family Death Penalty and Building a World We Deserve Ashley Albert, Tiheba Bain, Elizabeth Brico, Bishop Marcia Dinkins, Kelis Houston, Joyce McMillan, VonyaQuarles, Lisa Sangoi, Erin Miles Cloud, and Adina Marx-Arpadi
And see also from the Journal’s Forum:
Calculating the Souls of Black Folk, Predictive Analytics in
the New York City Administration for Children's Services. J. Khadijah
Abdurahman
In other news:
● This really should be obvious: If you don’t know your rights then you don’t really have those rights. New York City’s family policing agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, desperately wants to keep it that way. Because then ACS can keep right on barging into homes in the middle of the night, ordering that the children be awakened, questioned about the most intimate details of their lives and stripsearched – or maybe worse – without families having any idea that they can fight back. THE CITY reports on a fight in the New York City Council over whether ACS will continue to be able to run roughshod over families.
● Last month, two online news sites published more than 10,000 words about foster care in West Virginia. Not one of those words came from a birth parent. I have a blog post about why that’s a problem, and why so much of the journalism of child welfare has failed.
● OK, I never expected to write this sentence: Paris Hilton has an op-ed in The Washington Post. It’s about the abuse of children who are institutionalized. In her case, she was forced into an abusive institution by her own parents. But, as she points out:
An estimated 120,000 young people are housed in congregate-care facilities at any given time across the country, many of them placed through the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
Hilton also took part in a webinar with other survivors, led by Think of Us and Breaking Code Silence. And because she took part, Sixto Cancel of Think of Us said, people are paying a lot more attention than when the other survivors were speaking out on their own.
