The upEND team recaps season one and shares their visions for a future without family policing.

We break down recurring myths about “child welfare,” discuss the abolitionist communities growing from spaces such as book clubs, and reflect on topics like the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA).

About Our Guests: 

Maya Pendleton has been a part of the upEND movement since its inception. She currently works as a researcher and writer for the upEND movement, focusing on how we abolish the family policing system, the harms of the current system to children, families and communities, and the world we will build post family policing. 

Alan Dettlaff is a professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, where he also served as Dean from 2015 to 2022. Alan began his career as a social worker in the family policing system, where he worked as an investigative caseworker and administrator. Today his work focuses on ending the harm that results from this system. In 2020, he helped to create and launch the upEND Movement, a collaborative effort dedicated to abolishing the family policing system and building alternatives that focus on healing and liberation.

Episode Notes:

• Support the work of upEND: upendmovement.org/donate
• Read the episode transcript.
• Continue learning with additional resources in our syllabus: upendmovement.org/syllabus
• Alan Dettlaff and Dorothy Roberts were featured on CBS Sunday Morning in a national story on family policing abolition.
• Maya and Alan reference an article by Anna Arons called “An Unintended Abolition: Family Regulation During the COVID-19 Crisis.”
• Alan mentions the paper “Toward Thick Solidarity: Theorizing Empathy in Social Justice Movements” by Roseann Liu and Savannah Shange.
• The upEND team read “The School for Good Mothers” in a staff book club organized by Maya.
• Join Alan and connease’s book club, Toward Liberation.

After looking closely at how the family policing system operates, we zoom out to discuss how family policing is an extension of other carceral systems and how abolition is the solution. We just need to stretch our imagination. 

About Our Guest: 

Maya Schenwar is the director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism, and the board president of Truthout. She is the co-author (with Victoria Law) of "Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms," and the author of "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better." Her next book, a co-edited anthology entitled "Parenting Toward Abolition" (a collaboration with Kim Wilson), will be released in 2024.

Episode Notes: 

• Episode Transcript: upendmovement.org/episode1-7
• Support the work of upEND: upendmovement.org/donate 
• Continue learning with additional resources in our syllabus: upendmovement.org/syllabus
• Critical Resistance is building an international movement to abolish the prison-industrial complex and creates robust organizing resources. 
• Just Practice builds communities’ capacity to effectively and empathically respond to intimate partner violence and sexual assault without relying primarily on police or other state-based systems.
• Interrupting Criminalization offers political education materials, organizing tools, support skill-building and practice spaces for organizers and movements challenging criminalization and the violence of policing and punishment to build safer communities. 
• Ujimaa Medics is a Black health collective. We spread emergency first response, community care, and survival skills to access health justice and long term wellness for all Black lives.
• Fumbling Toward Repair is a workbook by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan intended to support people who have taken on the coordination and facilitation of formal community accountability processes to address interpersonal harm & violence. 
• Connect with Maya’s work at mayaschenwar.com, Truthout.org, and loveprotect.org.
  

Why keep advocating for solutions that don’t work? 

In this episode, we'll discuss reforms in the family policing system and how these reforms don't actually help to end the harms perpetuated against Black children, families, and communities. We'll also be discussing the differences between reformist reforms and abolitionist steps.

About Our Guests: 

Dylan Rodríguez is a teacher, scholar, organizer and collaborator who has maintained a day job as a Professor at the University of California-Riverside since 2001. Since the late-1990s, Dylan has participated as a founding member of organizations like Critical Resistance and Abolition Collective. He is the author of three books, most recently White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide. 

Maya Pendleton has been a part of the upEND movement since its inception. She currently works as a researcher and writer for the upEND movement, focusing on how we abolish the family policing system, the harms of the current system to children, families and communities, and the world we will build post family policing. 

Episode Notes:

• Episode Transcript: upendmovement.org/episode1-6
• Episode Transcript: upendmovement.org/episode1-6
• Support the work of upEND: upendmovement.org/donate 
• Continue learning with additional resources in our syllabus: upendmovement.org/syllabus
• Explore the resource “Evaluating Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps to End the Family Policing System” which was created and co-written by Maya. 
• Dylan cites Michael Oher’s conservatorship and exploitation by the Tuohy family. 
• Dylan mentions that the U.S. Military’s “Tactics in Counterinsurgency” publication. 
• Follow Dylan on Twitter and Instagram. 
• Follow Maya on Twitter and Instagram.