How to End Family Policing Pop-Up Reading Group

How to End Family Policing Pop-Up Reading Group
January 25 - March 1, 2026 | Sundays 4:30-6pm EST
Online via Zoom | Co-hosted by the Beyond Prisons Podcast and the Engaged Dharma Book Club

From leading abolitionist organizers, a much-needed intervention arguing that the systems that purport to protect children make them—and our communities—less safe.

Based on decades of shared organizing, study, and lived experience, the contributors to How to End Family Policing argue that the child welfare system cannot build genuine safety. Rather than the misleading language of “child welfare” and “child protective services,” scholars and activists use the term “family policing” to name the fact that these institutions and practices are neither neutral nor benign. Black, Indigenous, and Latinx parents do not mistreat their children at higher rates than white parents. Yet 53 percent of all Black children in the United States will experience a child protective services investigation before the age of eighteen.

Offering first-person testimony and laying out visions for alternatives to family policing, this book is an urgent call to build flourishing communities.

With contributions from Corey B. Best, Annie Chambers, Noran Elzarka, Brianna Harvey, Shira Hassan, Shawn Koyano, jaboa lake, Elizabeth Ling, Leah Plasse, Margaret Prescod, zara raven, Ignacio G. Hutía Xeiti Rivera, Dorothy Roberts, Arneta Rogers, Lisa Sangoi, jasmine Sankofa, Kylee Sunderlin, Jasmine Wali, Amanda Wallace, Eleni Zimiles, and the editors.

Schedule

All sessions are on Sundays from 4:30-6:00pm EST and will be recorded

January 25th
Introduction - with editor Erica Meiners

February 1st
Discussion on Outrage

February 8th
Discussion on Action

February 15th
Conversation with Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

February 22nd
Conversation with Sarah Katz - Family Justice Clinic | Temple Law

March 1st
Closing - Where do we go from here?

Co-Facilitators

Kim Wilson is an artist, educator, writer, and organizer. She is the cofounder, cohost, and producer of theBeyond Prisons podcast, and co-editor of We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. Kim received a 2023 Leeway Transformation Award for her ongoing commitment to art and social change. A social scientist by training, Dr. Wilson has a Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy, and her work focuses on examining the interconnected functioning of systems, including poverty, racism, ableism, and heteropatriarchy, within a carceral structure. Her work delves into the extension and expansion of these systems beyond their physical manifestations of cages and fences, to reveal how carcerality is imbued in policy and practice. She explores how these systems synergize to exacerbate the challenges faced by under-resourced communities, revealing a deliberate intention to undermine and further marginalize vulnerable populations

Adriana DiFazio is a Buddhist meditation teacher, scholar, chaplain, and parent whose work explores the intersections of Buddhism, critical theory, and social change. Her teaching emphasizes the dharma as a collective and liberatory practice, grounded in both personal and systemic transformation. She took refuge in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition in 2018 and holds an M.Div. in Buddhism from Union Theological Seminary, where she focused on Engaged Buddhist ethics and Marxism. Adriana teaches meditation and Buddhist studies through her online newsletter and community, Radical Change (adrianadifazio.substack.com).