Another response to DSS/CPS trafficking children for profit

Informed Constituent (Albany, NY), The, August, 2006 by Margo Logan

A cooling evening breeze that comes off the Columbia River as I put pen to paper regarding our country and my part in the government system that controls "we, the people".

Rather than merely provide the reader of "The Informed Constituent" with my observations as a "Child Protective Services (CPS) Investigations" social worker. I will gift information from authors who gave me courage to pursue social justice for our children.

After speaking up for fifteen years I was recently fired for my whistle blowing activities as a child care licensor. As a CPS social worker I did not carry an on-going caseload. As a CPS worker I witnessed the culture of state government.

My witnessing was shared with the management of the agency. As a delegate to the national assembly of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), I attempted to make change. In 1994 as Co-Chair of a NASW regional symposium, I did a workshop called "Administrative Ethics, an Oxymoron or a Paradigm Waiting to be Shifted?" using my political cartoons to illustrate what I had witnessed.

In the thousands of CPS investigations I conducted, I rarely asked the police to put a child into protective custody.

I've concluded CPS was created mostly for knocking on the doors of people who have less money. Read Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love by Marilyn Van Derbur, the 1956 Miss America. Marilyn gave me encouragement in those very difficult days when I spoke up within the walls of the bureaucracy. Marilyn asked me not to quit. I did not. Marilyn postulates that there is more abuse among the rich than the poor of our society. The rich get to hide.

Only one citizen in my CPS years asked to see my identification when I came to their house. I was very taken by the dynamic that people just let us in and answered very personal questions put to them. The great majority of people were just trying their best to make it in this world.

Common in the culture of CPS was to talk with clients on the phone, hang up, then make fun of the caller to other co-workers over their cubicle walls. I tried to speak of this dynamic to the supervisor and other workers. They called it "venting". "Venting", they said allowed them later to be polite to the client or to public's face. I disagreed. This "venting" went on between co-workers and supervisors, too. It was quite horrible.

At a lunchtime event to celebrate the promotion of a co-worker to supervisor, out of about ten people, only two of us did not consume alcohol. Some of these social workers then went directly into the field to interview children. I spoke up.

One young girl that really needed our help didn't get it. I looked her up in the files years later and it was shocking what happened to her in the system. The on-going social worker I transferred the case to did not even interview the girl.

John Taylor Gatto (http://www. johntaylorgatto.com/) and his book, "The Underground History of American Education" will provider the reader an understanding of all the systems that are hurting our children. The reader will then understand why American citizens let CPS workers into their houses.

Derrick Jensen (http://www.derrickjensen. org/) and his books such as "The Culture of Make Believe" will bring to The Informed Constituent knowledge that can be utilized to get our country back.

Read these authors and sense of empowerment will begin to flower within you.