Statement by a Kensington social worker and Human Rights leader

I am a practicing social worker in the Kensington section of North Philadelphia, and a human rights activist working on issues of human rights violations in the United States and throughout the world.

In my decades of experience in human rights activism and social work around the country and in our very own city, I have never seen a situation where a city and its Department of Human Services felt the need to disgrace the constitution of our country, and its citizens’ rights under that constitution to peaceful protest, by threatening to take the children of protesters into custodial custody.

There is a deadly implication in this proposed action – that a parent who chooses to exercise his or her right to peaceful protest cannot provide, indeed make provision for their very own children to be cared for in the event that they may be taken into custody or in any other way have their human rights, their constitutional rights violated.

Across this city, and this nation, through years of justified peaceful protest, I have never seen, nor heard of a situation where a city threatens to seize the children. I can assure you, the leaders of our city, that if this occurs in the coming days, those of us familiar with our rights, those of us aware of the threatening nature of this kind of statement by our public officials, will be watching, will be documenting, and will be telling the world, that so very precious freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to have our children join us in our exercise of these freedoms, that these freedoms stop at the door-stop of the so-called City of Brotherly Love…

Phyllis Pautrat, MSW, LCSW
Member, National Association of Social Workers