Thread by @thestustustudio

🚨 The Family Must Go: DSA Panel Pushes Full-Scale Cultural Revolution

“I want to perform abortions at a church before it’s all said and done.”

“The only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and the duration of the contract.”

“Sex work and marriage can’t exist without each other—they’re two sides of the same coin.”

“We argue for abolition of the family in general… the institution of the family acts as part of the carceral system.”

“When we talk about family abolition, we’re talking about the abolition of the economic unit… all of our material needs taken care of by the collective.”

I don’t know what the National Democratic Socialists of America are thinking—but they just uploaded a panel to their YouTube channel from Socialism 2025 called “The Left and the Family,” and no surprise, it is anti-family, anti-children, and deeply disturbing.

The panelists:
– Emily Janakiram, writer and organizer with New York City for Abortion Rights
– Katie Gibson, Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago
– Eman Abdelhadi, University of Chicago sociologist (and somehow the most reasonable one)

This is their “future of care”: abolish the family, collectivize child-rearing, normalize sex work, and radicalize children into the movement.

It feels like the Democratic Socialists of America are drunk off their Zohran Mamdani win—and now they want to burn the whole house down.

Eman Abdelhadi is the "moderate" on the family abolition panel—but that’s more strategic, not an ideological compromise. Her argument is clear: incremental material wins like universal pre-K are worth pursuing only as steps toward a more radical future—one in which the family, capitalism, and liberal society are dismantled entirely.

“We live in a shitty, horrible-ass, no-good society… We might fight for material improvements… under a system that is frankly horrifying.”

She frames family abolition as a “liberatory horizon,” something to be held alongside short-term policy goals. The danger, in her view, is not being too radical—but becoming satisfied with reforms and mistaking them for real liberation. Her concern is being “bought off.”

“Otherwise we fall into a liberal tendency… to be like, okay, we’re bought off now.”

She doesn't reject reform. She co-opts it—to normalize revolutionary goals over time and shift the Overton window without triggering backlash. It's an explicit call for ideological patience and strategic duality.

“They're not two things to reconcile. They're two things to hold at once.”

This is not moderation. It's a roadmap for revolution by way of reforms.

University of Chicago Teaching Fellow Katie Gibson says children are “legally the property of their guardians” and “treated as if they’ve committed a crime” for being poor.

“If you are born into a home headed by a Christian fundamentalist tyrant, you have the rights that that tyrant gives you.”

“Think about that on the scale of all the children who are going to become wards of the state under the fundamentalist tyrant we have now.”

She’s clearly talking about Trump—but the real target is the family itself.

Gibson claims kids are criminalized simply for being born into poverty. It’s true that poverty is often mislabeled as “neglect” by child welfare agencies. But...

-Children are not legally considered property. That’s false.
-Children do have rights independent of parents in criminal, medical, and educational contexts.
-It’s true that around 400,000–450,000 children are in U.S. foster care at any given time. It's hovered around there for a decade.

But the point isn’t policy reform. It’s ideological. Gibson sees the family as a carceral institution—and wants it abolished because she believes life in the collective will be better.

Eman Abdelhadi blends sociological critique with a call for the left to push material policy gains—even as she hedges on whether to embrace the more radical rhetoric of “family abolition.”

“Even a mainstream sociologist… says, ‘Other countries have welfare states. The U.S. has women.’”

She argues that austerity isn’t just budget policy—it’s a redistribution of labor, offloaded onto women under the guise of personal responsibility. The state cuts back, and feminized labor fills the void.

“Women are the permanent precariat… being asked to do all the work the state is refusing to do.”

What’s her strategy? A left that emphasizes material policies—real, tangible benefits people can feel—rather than just lofty ideology or radical slogans. But this is still about moving toward that abolitionist horizon.

“I’m ambivalent about whether we use the F word [family], but… we need to be really clear about what material benefits we are gonna give people.”

She wants to win over people where the right currently dominates—by offering a competing narrative and a platform that delivers real-world victories.

“Left policies keep winning, even when the right gains politically… People trust referendums more than politicians.”

This is left-populism with revolutionary intent. It’s about tactically disarming opposition with bread-and-butter policy while continuing to erode the foundations of liberal capitalism and the family structure that supports it.

Olivia Katbi, longtime BDS activist and Portland DSA member, gives a window into the left’s internal contradictions:

“Our family agenda campaign… almost everyone who joined the organizing group was a woman… many of them mothers… all powered by women.”

She acknowledges the organizing energy comes from women—especially those already burdened with care work—but immediately labels that “problematic.”

“How do we draw more women into left organizing without reinforcing gendered care work?”

Translation: DSA needs moms to power its campaigns, but resents relying on them. The tension here isn’t just practical—it’s ideological. Katbi sees motherhood as a site of political contestation, not just a demographic.

She also warns about what she calls the “wellness to Maha to MAGA pipeline”:

“It’s really concerning to see women I grew up with buying into this fully… not only white women, but Black women and Arab women.”

This is a huge admission. DSA knows that young mothers—especially in working-class and minority communities—are turning to faith, family, and even conservatism not out of ideology, but because they find happiness there.

“So many women… are getting sucked into conservatism as a way to opt out of capitalism.”

But instead of asking why this alternative appeals, her focus is on how to “disrupt that pipeline.”

That’s the strategy: undermine the appeal of family-based or faith-rooted conservatism—without giving up their labor.

Abdelhadi doesn’t believe that simply building utopian enclaves will topple capitalism—but she does believe that these “glimpses” of a post-capitalist future are vital to movement-building.

“We have to start to radically restructure our spaces… to make them these bits of—these dispatches from radical futures.”

She stresses the importance of practical support like childcare, shared space, and resource redistribution within the movement, framing it as a way to live out revolutionary values now.

“We say we want more women to participate… but none of our events have childcare.”

This is a core tenet of prefigurative politics: the idea that revolutionary movements should mirror the society they seek to create.

She also offers a strategic contrast with the political right.

“The right is winning because they are able to excite the passions in a moment where everyone is in despair…”

Citing Judith Butler, she warns that the Left keeps trying to reason with people, while the Right stokes emotion and offers meaning—even if it’s “a horrific” one. Her solution?

“We need to excite the passions… and we’re good at creating community spaces.”

From Encampments to stitching circles at Socialism 2025, she views communal organizing as emotional fuel for revolution. It’s not just about ideology—it’s about offering a sense of post-capitalist life now.

Emily Janakiram, writer and organizer with NYC for Abortion Rights, says women are the true resistance fighters—because they’re the most brutalized by capitalism and the family.

“Women lead the fight against capitalism and imperialism, period.”

For Janakiram, women aren’t just disproportionately affected—they’re radicalized. Men may be celebrated as leaders, but it's women, she insists, who bear the double burden of patriarchy and capitalism—and fight back the hardest.

She rejects both mainstream feminism and conservatism as traps.

“One group tells you to be a girlboss and get an IUD without any anesthesia. The other says get married and have children.”

But her most extreme claim comes when she links motherhood itself to violence.

“These women are miserable… The reason that these women always end up abusing their children so violently is because it is impossible to pop out 8 children and take care of them without replicating the violence that is being forced on you.”

Eman frames feminist organizing within Muslim communities as being constrained by both external Islamophobia and internal suspicion.

“Anyone within the community who claims feminism… becomes this outsider force that needs to be attacked.”

She criticizes what she sees as "outside interventionist lenses"—secular or liberal feminist frameworks—that she believes alienate Muslim feminists and provoke backlash from within their own communities.

But the more politically explosive portion comes in her analysis of Muslim-Christian right alliances.

“There has been a massive attempt to organize Muslims by the Christian Right… book bans, bans on the pride flag, and hysteria around trans rights.”

She links this to real-world incidents—Pride flag protests and "trans panic in schools" but presents it not as a grassroots development, but as a right-wing infiltration.

“You have people saying… since when do we try to legislate stuff like this? We’re not out here trying to ban alcohol.”

Then she pivots hard to post-October 7.

“Some of the more famous Muslim figures who were starting to make friends with the Christian Right… suddenly had to pay. These people were calling for genocide.”

She claims October 7 (and what she calls “the genocide”) exposed fault lines: right-wing Christians may tolerate cultural alignment for a time—but ultimately, she sees them as potential enemies of Muslims.

“So far as the Christian Right is up for mass killing of Muslims, that’s gonna sever [the alliance]... but in quieter moments, they’re going to keep organizing.”

Eman views Muslim alignment with conservative values on gender, family, and sexuality as a temporary vulnerability—one the left must disrupt.

Eman Abdelhadi claims that Muslim Americans remain broadly progressive, even on hot-button issues.

“On queer rights, trans rights… the majority opinion among Muslim Americans is still progressive and permissive.”

But she warns of a “loud minority” that could be organized by the right—and says the left needs to stop taking Muslim voters for granted:

“Liberals were like, ‘We can take this community for granted because they’ll never move to the right.’ So let’s literally do a whole genocide and assume they’ll still vote for us.'”

That “genocide” is her shorthand for U.S. support of Israel post-October 7.

“There are very strong leftist Muslims.”

Eman Abdelhadi champions Zohran Mamdani-style policies while keeping eyes on the revolutionary horizon. For her, reforms are not endpoints but stepping stones.

Emily Janakiram is the most openly militant. She invokes past revolutions in Vietnam, Burkina Faso, and Telangana as models—where armed women overthrew colonial systems, abolished marriage, caste, and dowry, and briefly lived out a communist feminist vision.

“They were armed… they carried out briefly a communist vision of liberation of women.”

She laments that U.S. and neoliberal pressure crushed those communes—but still dreams of rebuilding them.

Katie Gibson targets the child welfare system directly. She promotes “mandated supporting” as an abolitionist alternative to mandatory reporting—framing CPS and mandated reporters as carceral tools that criminalize poor families.

“Instead of supporting parents, we police them.”

Her aim is to abolish instead of improve or reform what she calls the “family policing system.”

“I want to perform abortions at a church before it’s all said and done.”

That line comes from Andrew, a self-identified Baptist minister and DSA member from Austin. He frames it as part of his “revolutionary horizon”—a symbolic inversion of faith, morality, and institutional power.

“I’m also a Baptist minister… and on that revolutionary horizon, I want to perform abortions at a church before it’s all said and done.”

This isn’t about expanding access to healthcare. It’s about flipping the sacred into the profane, using the language of care as a weapon against traditional belief structures.

Meanwhile, Olivia Katbi (Portland DSA, BDS) admits their "Red Diaper" child care system doesn’t really work. Katbi gives a painfully honest account of their struggle to support families within the organization.

“We do have child watch at our general meetings… but they’re not super prepared.”

One volunteer group got their first 8-month-old and had no idea what to do. Olivia says she wouldn’t even leave her own toddler with them:

“I would never drop her off… I don’t want to do that to someone else.”

Ironically, they require background checks for all childcare volunteers—relying on state systems they otherwise call carceral and oppressive.

They want to abolish “family policing,” but they’re still using it to vet babysitters.

🚨Maria Sipin isn’t just a Portland DSA member—she’s Chief of Staff to socialist City Councilor Mitch Green. 🚨

In this clip, she explains how the DSA’s “family agenda” campaign was born directly from COVID-era mutual aid and participatory budgeting, funded by federal relief money.

“A lot of our comrades had roots in COVID recovery work… mutual aid… participatory budgeting… using federal dollars from ARPA.”

The crisis, she says, unlocked a new political opportunity: mass need, collapsing infrastructure, and desperate neighbors became the conditions for radical organizing.

“After all the COVID money ran out, we realized—how do we sustain the programs we really care about?”

Faith spaces, schools, and community groups became hubs for redistributing food, housing vouchers, and child care—regardless of politics. But the goal isn’t just to remember that moment. It’s to recreate it—permanently.

“What capitalism had done to us during the pandemic…”

“I still feel like today is still the pandemic, but in the eyes of the government—that terminology isn’t relevant anymore.”

Responding to a question about Black feminist kinship networks and historical survival under slavery, Eman Abdelhadi lays out her vision of family abolition—centered not on ending care or love, but on dismantling the nuclear family as a material survival unit.

“What we actually mean is the nuclear family as an economic unit… the way we live now, who your parents are, who you partner with, how many children you have—these are all economic conditions.”

She frames this goal as a “liberatory horizon”—a future where food, housing, education, and care are collectivized, and personal relationships no longer dictate access to basic needs.

“You can fall in love with anyone… without wondering if they have $150,000 in student debt.”

But Eman doesn’t stop there. She turns to examples of Black women and Indigenous communities as proof that alternative care models are not only possible—they’ve always existed on the margins of capitalism:

“We’re not reinventing the wheel… We’ve seen Black women do it. We’ve seen Indigenous communities do it.”

This is where the rhetoric turns from radical to exploitative.

She glamorizes struggle, using the historic survival strategies of marginalized women—especially single Black mothers—as models for a post-capitalist future, while glossing over the pain, instability, and exhaustion that often define those realities.

Plenty of Black women raising children alone today would bristle at being cast as proof of some “liberatory horizon.” They’re not rejecting the family—they’re fighting to hold it together.

“The only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and duration of the contract.”

Quoting Burkina Faso revolutionary Thomas Sankara, Emily Janakiram launches into a full-throated attack on the institution of marriage—not just its modern form, but its very existence.

“Marriage can only exist alongside the criminalization of sex workers.”

She argues that marriage and sex work are structurally linked: both involve the exchange of bodily autonomy and sexuality for economic security—but one is sanctified and subsidized by the state, while the other is criminalized.

“The criminalization of sex work is the dark underbelly of the legally enforced institution of marriage.”

She’s careful to note that individuals can still get married for practical reasons—she herself married someone for immigration purposes—but marriage should not be a “horizon” or political goal.

“I don’t think we should be fighting for the state or the capitalist to package our love and sexuality with economic security.”

Then she escalates the critique. Just as capitalism relies on an underclass of precarious labor, Janakiram claims marriage relies on an underclass of women, trapped by limited options.

“The fact that marriage might be the only form of economic security available to impoverished women should not be a reason we preserve marriage as an institution.”

Responding to a question about whether the left should create spaces that expose children to political values the way the right does, Eman Abdelhadi doesn’t hesitate:

“I’m frankly shocked they’re not reading Marx in there… it’s really exciting to hear.” (Joking about Socialism 2025's Child Watch program)

She immediately pivots to strategy. The key, she says, is multiple entry points—build places that draw people in for different reasons, not just political education:

“The person who wants to read Marx can do that, but the person who just wants to take a lap in the pool can also come and do that.”

Citing her own academic research on mosques, she says the most successful institutions are ones that combine faith, food, and social life—and that the left needs to replicate that model.

“The most successful mosques are the ones that have food nearby… an entry point for different people.”

And kids? According to Abdelhadi, they’ll “eat that up.” Literally and ideologically.

They want to abolish the family—but still design community spaces to culturally engineer the next generation through social services and soft-entry radicalization disguised as child programming.

Emily Janakiram claims that both the right and parts of the left have manipulated social policy to entrench control over women and families:

“Certain sections of the left have fought really hard to package austerity alongside the family… or to say we’ll give you social services to coerce you to have more children.”

She says the solution isn’t traditional family values—it’s resistance. And while she phrases it mildly here—

“Women and children are the most harmed by capitalism, but also… the architects of their faith, and should be given all the tools to fight back.”

—it’s hard to read that line in isolation. Janakiram has repeatedly praised armed uprisings led by women in revolutionary movements, from Burkina Faso to Telangana. So when she says “tools to fight back,” she likely doesn’t just mean policy advocacy or community organizing. She means militancy, possibly even violence, if history is her guide.

She tries to soften the blow by reframing family abolition:

“It’s not about separating children. It’s the right that separates children.”

But this is a rhetorical sidestep. She still advocates for abolishing the traditional family as a vehicle for distributing resources, and dismantling any system where economic security is tied to legal relationships.

“Everybody should have the right to cohabitate and love with whom they choose.”

To Janakiram, liberation doesn't come through reforming institutions—it comes through dismantling them, often by force. Her vision for family abolition is inseparable from her revolutionary ambitions.