Mandatory Reporting, Abolition, and Trans and Disability Justice

A Conversation with Ericka Ayodele Dixon, Victoria Copeland, and Shannon Perez-Darby, facilitated by Paris Chapman

Wednesday, April 27th, 12:30 pm PT/3:30pm ET

Over the last few years, we've seen a marked escalation of anti-trans policies specifically seeking to utilize the "child welfare" system and mandatory reporting to target transgender youth. These policies build on the social assumption that mandatory reporting is necessary to “protect” children from violence and abuse. Yet, mandatory reporting and the child welfare system have long been used to enact violence against Black, Indigenous, disabled, trans, queer, poor, migrant, and families of color.

In this conversation, we will:

• Lean into some assumptions and tensions that people have about mandatory reporting policies.

• Break down assumptions that many people have about mandatory reporting as necessary for children or other “vulnerable” people’s safety.

• Provide clarity on how mandatory reporting is used to control disabled, trans, low income, and BIPOC families

• Demonstrate how abolition offers a unifying framework to address the rise in anti-trans policies.

Most importantly, we hope that folks are left understanding that fundamentally, for trans liberation to be successful, we have to be grounded in disability justice and abolition.