A new report, Families Belong Together, Families Demand Repair, published by Black Families Love and Unite (BLU), exposes the racialized harm embedded in the family regulation system and calls for systemic transformation through reparative justice, abolitionist frameworks, and community-driven alternatives. Developed in collaboration with advocates, scholars, and impacted communities, the report includes contributions from students and faculty in CUNY Law’s Family Defense Practicum, led by Professor Julia Hernandez ’12.
The BLU report challenges prevailing narratives about family policing, documenting how the system disproportionately subjects Black families to state surveillance, intervention, and separation. It highlights how family regulation functions as an extension of racialized social control, entrenching cycles of poverty and trauma rather than ensuring child and family well-being. In response, the report calls for a fundamental reimagining of support systems—one rooted in mutual aid, non-carceral approaches, and direct investment in communities.
Professor Hernandez, whose scholarship and advocacy focus on the intersections of race, poverty, and family law, underscored the urgency of the report’s findings. “This report not only documents the pervasive harm inflicted by the family regulation system, but also demands a paradigm shift,” said Hernandez. “It charts a path toward real justice—one that acknowledges and addresses past harms and invests in families on their terms.”
CUNY Law students participating in the Family Defense Practicum have supported BLU since 2023, first to organize and hold a convening for impacted people at CUNY Law in Febraury 2024 to discuss what repair from family policing might look like, recording and archiving the event and helping to put together the report from the convening’s findings. Their contributions reflect the practicum’s broader commitment to training future public interest attorneys who graduate experienced in multi-faceted advocacy.
“I am extremely grateful for the invaluable opportunity to learn from advocates who are actively shaping family defense and work for families and community members towards family preservation,” shared current student Patrick Aguilar. “Better than any literature could, this work has shown me just how wide cast the family policing web is and the difficulties that impacted people and advocates must overcome through the fight for justice.”
CUNY Law’s Family Defense Practicum is part of the law school’s longstanding commitment to integrating immersive experiential learning into the classroom. Through its work on the BLU report and ongoing family defense efforts, the practicum continues to challenge the family policing system through creative and innovative lawyering