Divest, Invest, & Mutual Aid

We are honored to be part of this symposium issue envisioning the transformation of family support and honoring the work of Professor Dorothy Roberts. The symposium is both essential and timely. It is essential because abolition of the family policing system is needed, and needed now; it is timely because the inequality exposed by the pandemic and the overdue reckoning with state violence, particularly against people of color, have mobilized communities bringing new energy and hope. In this piece, we look to mutual aid as a solution to the harms wrought by the family policing system. The vast majority of parents enter the system because of the government’s failure to support them, particularly through its divestment from and punishment of families in low-income communities of color. What families need is concrete material aid—housing, food, childcare—rather than state surveillance and punishment. As the abolitionist group Critical Resistance puts it: “The best way to reduce harm is by building safe, healthy communities where people have their basic needs met.” Moreover, listening and giving agency to these families constitute an essential component of true transformation of the way our society protects all children and supports all families. In this piece, we describe how mutual aid is both a practice and a theory. It couples material resources with empowerment and community-building of those impacted by the system, in order to secure transformative change and real harm reduction for children and families. We map mutual aid’s long history of use in marginalized communities, such as by the Black Panther Party, to help each other and to fight back against the carceral state. Documenting the recent resurgence of mutual aid efforts, we flag parent organizing as an essential force to abolish the family policing system. We conclude that only financial investment in, and power-shifting to, communities can truly keep all children and families safe and healthy