Children vs. Ideology

.... The Israel-Gaza Test

As Robert Penn Warren once wrote, “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption, and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud.” Events of the last month in Israel, Gaza, and here in the US have unfortunately confirmed for me that pessimistic view of politics, the policy sphere, and life.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists attacked kibbutzes and towns near the Gaza Strip, killing and butchering families and taking hostage hundreds including at least 30 children, some as young as three. The situation has broken the hearts not only of their families and friends but also of empathetic individuals around the world. Knowing Israel would have to take military action, the terrorist attack has rightly frightened peace-loving individuals everywhere. Even when nations do their best to adhere to laws of war, there will be innocent civilians — men, women, children, the elderly — on both sides who will be killed. “War is hell,” as Gen. Sherman famously said.

Given the harsh reality, you’d think that those concerned about the protection and well-being of children would offer productive solutions that condemn the Hamas attacks, demand the immediate release of hostages, call for the terrorists to be held accountable, and seek lasting peace. But among many of our self-proclaimed child welfare leaders — those leading the “abolish child welfare” movement — we’ve seen the exact opposite.

The child welfare abolitionist UpEnd Movement, based at the University of Houston, released a statement decrying Israel’s "state violence, imperialism, and settler colonialism, the very same conditions that oppress people all over the globe” and blamed the current tragedy on Israel’s “insistence upon dominance, power, and greed.”

Alan Dettlaff, former Dean of that school’s Social Work Department and a co-founder of UpEnd, praised on Twitter (or X or whatever) a statement by a group of academics that not only professed solidarity with the Palestinian “struggle for liberation” but actually held up as an exemplar of that struggle a terrorist who was convicted of attempting to blow up a theater full of Israeli men, women, and children.

“This is the kind of statement we should expect from schools of social work and social work organizations if our profession truly stood for justice,” Dettlaff wrote glowingly. “The lack of any statements like this speaks volumes.” Thank God he no longer has that opportunity.

Richard Wexler, who has always fought to keep children with families and out of foster care, has collaborated in the past with Dettlaff and UpEnd. These kind of comments drove Wexler to state he would no longer have anything to do with UpEnd or Dettlaff.

A brief Twitter scroll reveals that other “leaders” in the movement to abolish child welfare (and other societal institutions) are similarly silent on the terror and instead have devoted their time to expressing “solidarity” with Palestine and justifying Hamas’ actions. E.g., Dorothy Roberts; Dylan Rodriguez, who wants to abolish prisons as well; and the “Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work,” whatever the heck that is.

Why do they cheer Hamas and condemn Israel? Because of an ideology that demonstrates their support for “abolishing child welfare” isn’t really about doing what is best for children and families: it’s about imposing their ideology on the rest of us.

That ideology is best described as a neo-Marxist effort to tear down modern society and start over. “Marxists fight for the overthrow, dismantling, and complete replacement of the core institutions of the capitalist state, including namely the police, prisons, military, and courts,” according to the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation. “These elements of the state must be abolished through revolution.”

It’s clear that the child welfare abolitionists are just part of this larger movement. At its recent convening in Houston, UpEnd held a panel discussion that brought together a “diverse” group of abolitionists including Micah Herskind, an Atlanta-based leader in the “Stop Cop City” movement. These activists share a worldview in which every group must be classified as either oppressor or oppressed, and one’s rights depend on that classification. As members of the “settler colonialist” class, Israelis must be wiped out so that the oppressed Palestinians can rule the land “from the river to the sea.” Who gets to decide which class you’re in? Take a guess.

It should be clear that this ideology (or theology?) is far removed from the philosophy that gave rise to the United Nations, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other founding documents of our international human rights regime. That philosophy believed “in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women” and that children shouldn’t be discriminated against “irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.”

The abolitionists have determined who is more valuable, and no one may question that decision. Ryna Workman, the NYU Law Student Bar President who sent out a newsletter alleging Israel’s “full responsibility” for the Hamas attacks, doubled down on her statements to ABC News. Asked to express some empathy for the hostages and victims of October 7, she replied: "I think whether or not my empathy goes to Israelis or to Palestinians is really not the question here. What the question is, is will we call for an end to this genocide and will we call for a cease fire?" Here’s my response.

Does any of this matter to the daily work of child protection and child welfare? Well, consider this. The CEO of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, Leonard Burton, is also a founder of the UpEnd movement. CSSP supplies or has supplied federal court monitors for a number of child welfare class action cases, including those in New Jersey, and D.C. Many of the pro-Palestinian protests (as well as those protesting the Atlanta Police Facility) are sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, an organization that supports Russia’s war on Ukraine and denies that Uighurs in Xinjiang are placed in concentration camps.

Maybe I’ve been naive about the “abolish child welfare” movement. Maybe I thought academic folks like Alan Dettlaff were just channeling their inner John Lennon when they called for the “creation of a new society where the concept of welfare does not exist because families have what they need to thrive.” Surely these folks had the interests of children at heart and were committed to protecting them, I thought. Any such naivete has been wiped away by this movement’s response to October 7.