Local Nonprofit Joins Efforts to Have June Recognized As Stolen Children's Month

Op-Ed: June is Stolen Children's Month — A Call to Abolish the Family Policing System

By Minister BeKura W. Shabazz, President of the Injustice Reform Network

June has been declared Stolen Children’s Month by a growing collective of family policing abolitionists and directly impacted advocates. Founded by Ashley Albert—a courageous, directly impacted mother and unwavering activist—this month is a declaration, a demand, and a memorial. It is a time to center the stolen voices and shattered lives of children and families torn apart by the child welfare system, which many of us know more accurately as the family policing system.

For those of us who have lived through it, who are still fighting to reclaim our children or rebuild our families after their destruction, this is not a symbolic gesture. It is a national reckoning.

The Injustice Reform Network and its campaign "Coalition for Families Against Child Separation", were both founded out of the trauma and resilience of my lived experience and that of many others. We proudly stand in solidarity with Ashley Albert and the thousands of children, parents, kinship caregivers, and grassroots organizers demanding the abolition of a system that traffics in grief and injustice. We do not simply want reforms. We want this system abolished. Now.

Too many families are caught in the crosshairs of a system that polices poverty, mislabels medical conditions, and criminalizes care. Every day, Child Protective Services (CPS) invades homes under the guise of “protection,” removing children not from harm, but from hardship—hardship that could be alleviated if the vast resources funneled into family separation were redirected into family support.

Consider this: Millions of taxpayer dollars are poured into hospitals and so-called “child abuse pediatricians,” many of whom wield more unchecked authority than medical specialists in their own fields. Parents face accusations based on vague or disputed medical claims while their voices—and those of other medical professionals—are silenced. Foster parents, often well-intentioned, are granted financial support that biological families in crisis are denied. Caseworkers, service providers, and court systems all receive their piece of the pie—lucrative, incentivized, and built on the backs of vulnerable families.
This is not protection. This is profit. And profit is incompatible with justice.

What we are witnessing is civil death—the slow, institutional erosion of a parent’s rights, a child’s identity, and a family’s future. And too often, that civil death turns into real death. The trauma of removal. The abuse that happens inside foster placements. The suicides, overdoses, and deaths of despair that follow. The stories are too many to name, and they are not rare—they are systemic.

That is why we fight—not just in June, not just during court hearings or when the media is watching, but every single day. And every June, during Stolen Children’s Month, we fight louder. We shine a spotlight on the invisible cages of family court, on the quiet grief of birthday parties without children, on siblings separated and never reunited, on grandmothers and aunties deemed “unfit” despite being the true anchors of their families.
Stolen Children’s Month is more than a campaign. It is a movement. It is a demand that the United States confront its family policing crisis with the urgency and honesty it deserves. We invite you—educators, doctors, community leaders, neighbors—to stand with us. Examine where your tax dollars go. Question the systems you interact with. And most of all, listen to the families who are navigating through them and those who have survived them.
To learn more and to join us in the fight for abolition and family unity, visit:
https://www.movementforfamilypower.org/stolen-childrens-month

Stand with us all year. But especially in June.

#StolenChildrensMonth #FamilyPolicingAbolition #AbolishCPS #ReuniteFamilies #StopFamilySeparation #SupportNotSeparation #UntilTheySeeUsToo #WeAreTheEvidence