By The Parents

This is not where we thought we would be. We are not politicians. We are not legal scholars. We are not lobbyists with press kits or media teams. We are parents. We are caregivers. We are people who believed we were doing the most important job we would ever have: raising children.

And then the system came. It did not arrive with support. It did not offer help. It arrived with forms, with accusations, with deadlines, and with a quiet threat that felt louder than anything we had ever heard.

We were told to comply. We were told it was temporary. That if we did everything right, our families would be whole again. We did everything right.

For many of us, there was no roadmap. Only silence and fear.

Still, some of us lost everything.

We do not write from a place of theory. We write from experience. And we are telling you now that this system is not just flawed. It is functioning exactly the way it was built to function: disrupt, displace, disappear.

We did not plan this. We did not seek out the fight. But silence is no longer an option.

Some of us were unjustly targeted. We were labeled before anyone asked us a single question. But we pushed back. We questioned every claim, every paper trail, every system that tried to rewrite our story. And in doing so, we found each other.

We are speaking because the pain is not rare. It is not isolated. It is not reserved for a few unlucky cases. It is a pattern. It is a structure. It is a machine. And that machine has a name.

We are here because parents across this country are being criminalized for loving their children in ways the system does not approve of. Because poverty is treated like neglect. Because history is rewritten in reports that never tell the full truth. Because families are being erased behind closed doors.

We never meant to be here. But now that we are, we are not going anywhere. Not until every child taken without cause is returned, every worker who pushed false narratives is held accountable, and every policy across this state and this country reflects justice, truth, and the dignity of families.

With love,

The Parents 🖤