The murder of Ma’Khia Bryant hit me particularly hard because abolitionist spaces have generally not centered the family regulation system in their analysis. To the degree it’s mentioned, I see stats on outcomes or language of “kinder gentler policing”

The family regulation system or child welfare as its most commonly known, is not “kinder or gentler”, it’s a horrific form of integenerational policing that exists on a vast continuum from removal, detention, child care, surveillance, etc

I think people who are not directly impacted by the system conceive of the problem as microagressing White social workers, but most are not MSWs they are “caseworkers” because brick and mortar poorhouses at the turn of the 20th century were predicated on “worthiness” of aid

So caseworkers were detectives investigating the family’s case, like were they truly worthy of government assistance based on destitution. Majority European immigrants had to give up their rights to citizenship and “whiteness” to enter these poorhouses

Aka give up their right to vote, put their kids on Children’s Aid Society orphan trains to the west, placed with *good Christian families* or into workhouses and residential centers where many literally were beaten into worthiness

Our “social safety net” was always punitive but as @DorothyERoberts writes, the family regulation system became most punitive when Black women fought for inclusion into AFDC (aid for dependent families and children)

Scroll to Clinton abolishing “welfare as we know it” to stop the welfare queens (poverty racialized as Black), the Crime Bill heralds not just the beginning of mass incarceration but the height of family separations in the US

In November ‘97, Clinton passes the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) where the state mandates termination of parental rights (TPR) for children who have been in foster care for 15 out of the last 22 months.

This produces a generation of legal orphans as many of them
either are left in foster care or if adopted under the age of 12, come back in on PINS (person in need of supervision/kiddy parole) petitions as teenagers https://www.clcny.org/files/118689205.pdf

S/o to @movfamilypower who started the @RepealASFA campaign because almost a quarter century later, kids are having their parents rights terminated because billion dollar agencies are commodifying kids over reuniting them

I’m not denying that sometimes kids are unsafe in their home, that sometimes parents can’t parent but 9/10 people don’t understand that child welfare is a system that produces death, jail and sexual assault.

The moment you come into contact with child welfare, you’re like 11:59 of the doomsday clock. If you don’t open the door, they’re calling the cops, if you get too loud they’re calling the cops, 5 min late, cops, cops, cops

Kids in care end up dead all the time; in foster homes, group homes, residential, detention center, but who’s demanding an autopsy? Would we have known if it was an Adoptive parent or group home worker and not a cop that killed her?

I felt @prisonculture when she said she ain’t got no anxiety about the Chauvin verdict cuz she divested from the system, but I also grieve for what passes with no public emotion b/c it doesn’t get recognized as a system

They strip search every kid in the house when there’s a child welfare investigation. There is nothing kind or gentle about the family regulation system. Plantation metaphors don’t do it justice cuz it’s like the auction block was never dismantled just professionalized

Reminder to please listen to #adoptees #FFY and people currently in the foster care system (of which I’m not but am always down to amplify those who are) https://twitter.com/upfromthecracks/status/1385383533926092807

https://twitter.com/upfromthecracks/status/1385362962962128896