Public Testimony to the City Council General Welfare Committee on March 10, 2008
Preliminary Budget Hearing

Good Day Everyone. My name is Rolando Bini, the Executive Director of Parents in Action, an organization that advocates for Family Preservation and System Change.

Of course ACS, like every other bureaucracy wants more money every year. It is the logic of those who have a bested interested in not only protecting their jobs but if possible expanding the industry to allow them to climb the economic ladder regardless of the social harm they do.

I have to recognize that ACS under Commissioner Mattingly has initiated 2 new programs that are positive: the Family Team Conference and the Visiting Host. But to be honest they are to be fully implemented in 10 years. That is too late and too little. In the meantime thousands of children are being harmed by the ACS and lately ACS has become cold, cruel and heartless toward Black and Latino families.

They take away children under any imaginable excuse and then when presented with overwhelming evidence that they made a mistake, they use the lame excuse that it is up to the Judge. As if the Judge does not rubber stamps everything that ACS ask them, and let’s not forget that those Judges are appointed, re-appointed by the Mayor and they work for him. Family Court is an Institutionalized System of Injustice where there is no Due Process and no Jury Trial. Parents only win 2 cases out of every 1,000 against ACS on 1028 Hearings; probably the most important step in Family Court.

ACS is the greatest Child Abuser in New York City, for every child that they may help, they destroy a thousand. They are also the greatest Orphaners since they fabricate Orphans out of parents whose only crime is not to be rich. On top of that they are the greatest Educational Neglecters: every child that fall in ACS grip, starts performing less in school. This is not a surprise since the cruel crime of ripping a child from the people they love and trust the most is a devastating event that psychologically scars them for life. No wonder that 75% of them end in prison and most of the rest recycling from the homeless, and mentally ills industries.

Foster Care is a profit-driven Industry. Children are taken away under any imaginable excuse from the people who offer the less resistance: poor Black and Latino Parents. 97% of the 17,000 Children in Foster Care are Black and Latino, less than 1% White.
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The "Business with Children Industry" treats those Children as Chattel. They are just a commodity that feeds a vast profiteering enterprise. ACS workers, Foster Care agencies, Doctors, Nurses, Psychologists, Psychiatrist, School Guidance Counselors, Attorneys, Judges, etc. make a living out of the suffering of these innocents.

This Business in reality is an assembly line that also feeds other industries: the prison, homeless, and mentally ill populations could not grow without a constant feed from Foster Care Children. Think about it. If we could heal society and have no Foster Children, thousands of people would be out of jobs.

According to Northwestern University Professor Dorothy Roberts in her book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare: "It costs the federal government eleven times as much to provide foster care as to provide public aid to families".

Now, we can not blame only ACS for this cruel scheme. After all they are the biased enforcers of the Laws passed by the City Council and the State Legislature. People who pass bills against the Black and Latino population and seem to not care about the ultimate consequences of their actions.

ACS pretense of protecting children is a cruel joke. It is like invading Iraq by claiming that they have weapons of mass destruction and then trying to impose Democracy on them by occupying them. And Family Court is similar to the Guantanamo Military Courts where defendants do not have the right to see the evidence against them.

Part of the scheme to look good and reduce the number of children in foster care is the forced adoptions of children. In the last 5 years more than 20,000 foster care children have been forcibly adopted. Most of them have parents who desperately wanted them back.

The whole Child Welfare Industry is based on 2 false propositions:

1. It is profit-driven predatory industry that feeds on those who offer the least resistance. The more children they kidnap, the better for everyone who work for this industry, and thus has a bested interest in its survival and growth.

2. The ridiculous premise that a stranger, either with good intentions or for the love of money could take better care of a child than the parents, defies logic, instinct and biology. If this nonsense was true, we would had disappeared millions of years ago.

So, we have a system that is designed to produce maximum social harm. It pretends to defy the laws of economics and the laws of nature. Either Morons’ Logic or Clever Evil Social Engineering.

Based on what I have said, I ask you to cut all funding to ACS. Thousands of Black and Latino children and their families will celebrate with joy this fact. We will save $2.5 billon directly and many more because we will be closing the main feeder of the prison, homeless and mentally populations.

Close Down ACS and let Our Children Go!

Please do this for our children. New York City will be a better and happier place to live without ACS.

Parents in Action

For Leadership and Human Rights

http://www.parentsinaction.net

Rolando Bini – Executive Director, rolando@parentsinaction.net, 347-624-4830