Occupy CPS

Join OOP and OCCUPY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES during the MAY 1st GENERAL STRIKE!

Come out on May Day to SHUT DOWN this horribly oppressive institution that doesn’t give a fuck about children or parents!

We cannot only block capital in spaces of waged labor, but also in the capitalist, racist, patriarchal reproduction of social life! STRIKE EVERYWHERE!

When: May 1st 8:30 AM
Where: CPS 401 Broadway — near Jack London Square.

See you there.

… why occupy CPS?

Despite the good intentions of some workers in the agency, Child Protective Services (CPS) is not what it claims. It does not do us a service, it does not protect our children, it does not create healthy environments for them. CPS is designed to enforce a so-called “normal” model of the family, actively punishing those of us who do not comply with the capitalist, patriarchal, racist, white supremacist ideal of what a family should look like.

CPS is used to scare and punish people who threaten or fight the system.

CPS targets the poor, people of color, single mothers, queer, and non-gender-conforming parents and kids.

CPS is notorious for targeting poor single mothers.

When children are removed from their homes, they are taken into group homes, where underpaid, over worked and under trained “care” providers are responsible for them; in ratios of about 10 to 1. Children who have never before experienced abuse are often abused by other children who have; or by overworked employees and have no way back to their families, or into foster care until a judge decides their fate — often months later. Those who are eventually placed into foster care are often are often physically or sexually exploited by selfish fucks just trying to get some extra money out of the situation.

Also, the mere fact of being a queer, trans* or gender-nonconforming parents can get child services called on a family — if, for example, a homophobic or transphobic school counselor gets wind, CPS can be called.

Children are also more likely to be displaced if they are queer or trans*, and the truth is CPS is NOT likely to place children in foster care with queer or trans* parents! This reinforces the homophobic ciscentric idea of the family, and endangers queer and trans* youth.

Finally, the mere fact of being black or brown, poor, and a parent, will result in heightened scrutiny and policing from CPS — CPS is a racist institution and enforces its violent rules primarily on people of color. A middle class white mother, and even a queer white middle class couple, will not be treated the same by CPS as a poor African American single parent, period, and this is how institutional racism is reproduced.

Occupy Patriarchy will fight back

Feminists, queers, and trans* people who have been organizing within the Occupy movement since the beginning started Oakland Occupy Patriarchy to support each other as we organize against racism and patriarchy and gender oppression, both within our movement and within the greater capitalist society. We recognize that capitalism, patriarchy and racism are mutually dependent and we want to end them all in favor of a better world for all of us. Our action against Child Protective Services on May Day is part of our struggle.

Many of us at Occupy Patriarchy have direct experience of CPS’ oppression. We are fed up with CPS and are determined to expose its repressive actions and to continue to build a community to fight it. On May 1st, The day of a new GENERAL STRIKE, we will occupy CPS. We will gather at the CPS office on 4th and Broadway in downtown Oakland at 8:30. We invite and call in all who share our critique, our anger, our oppressions, our experiences, and our revolutionary spirit to join us.