Taking Children: A History of American Terror
Live transcription available here
A conversation with Laura Briggs, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Valeria Luiselli
Images of children in detention camp cages along the US/Mexico border shocked the conscience of many Americans in the latter part of the 2010s, as these images came to represent official US immigration policy. Yet, as historian Laura Briggs argues in her new book, Taking Children: A History of American Terror (2020), the separation of children from their families has a long history in the United States. From the slavery auction block to boarding schools for Native children and more contemporary practices that penalize Black, Native, Latinx, and poor families, the removal of children from their families has long been a strategy of political and social control.
This event brings together historian Laura Briggs in conversation with novelist Valeria Luiselli and law professor Dina Francesca Haynes. The three panelists will address the long history of policies of family separation in light of the current anti-migrant federal policy on the southern border of the United States. They will also highlight modes of organizing and resistance to such policies—through activism, legal strategies, storytelling and culture-making, and mutual aid.
Image credit: Avis Charley