Name: How to End Family Policing Seattle Book Launch
Start: 2025-11-03T18:30:00-08:00
End: 2025-11-03T20:00:00-08:00
Location: Seattle Public Library - Central Library

How to End Family Policing Seattle Book Launch

With first-person testimony, laying out visions for alternatives to family policing, this book is a call to build flourishing communities.
About this Event

Join us to celebrate the publication of How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action (Haymarket) as we explore all the ways that family policing impacts our communities. From anti-abortion legislation, the policing of families, bans on gender-affirming care and undermining the self-determination of people experiencing violence and abuse, the family policing systems is an often ignored tool used to criminalize our communities.

Authors Shannon Perez-Darby and Shawn Koyano are joined by community organizers Såhi Velasco and Sully Sullivan for an evening of reading and conversation. Together we'll discuss how the family policing systems impacts our lives and the ways that together we can build flourishing communities.

Copies of the book will be available at the event through Third Place Books or you can pre-order here.

Location:

We will be in the beautiful Seattle Public Library Central Branch Auditorium (Level 1).

Note-The library closes at 6:00 p.m. It will reopen at 6:15 pm for the event. Seating is first come, first served for registered participants. All Library programs are free and open to the public.

Access:

The library can provide accommodations for people with disabilities at library events. Please contact LEAP at least seven days before the event to request accommodations.

For questions about the book contact [email protected]

For questions about the venue contact the library or call 206-386-4636.

Co-sponsors:

Thank you so much to the many community organizations co-sponsoring this event:

Accountable Communities Consortium, Alphabet Alliance of Color, API Chaya, Look2Justice, the Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral Project, Seattle LGBTQ Center, Seattle Public Library, Survivors for Justice Reform- Washington Chapter, The Coalition Ending Gender-based Violence and Third Place Books

About the Book:
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% 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 Roger, Lisa Sangoi, jasmine Sankofa, Kylee Sunderlin, Jasmine Wali, Amanda Wallace, Eleni Zimiles, and the editors.