Most wanted includes mom and her "kidnapped" son

In early June, MIM took a trip to the post office to read 
the FBI most wanted list. We found about eight people sought 
for murder charges but they were a minority amongst the 
bizarre items on the clipboard thanks to the decay of 
patriarchy in U.$. imperialism. The FBI considers Amy Joan 
Aufenger of special note, because of her "kidnapping of her 
son from his elementary school in Norfolk, Virginia." 

Reading this, some anarchists might consider Aufenger a hero 
for relieving her son of the oppression of capitalist 
schooling. In all likelihood, however, this case refers not 
to resistance to capitalist schools but to a property 
dispute -- between mother and father who have divorced, over 
their supposed property, a child. Since someone other than 
the mother has custody rights, the mother's taking of her 
child to Europe would be considered "kidnapping." So it is 
that each year the property battles known as "custody" 
demonize parents and leave children with strange 
impressions. 

If taking custody of a child is a "crime" 
deserving the "most wanted" list, then it is little wonder 
that children grow up thinking there is no starvation, war 
or serious oppression. Certainly there is something wrong 
with the idea that children are parents' property and the 
fact that these "custody battles" cause so much grief and 
occasionally end up in violence. But "most wanted" -- puh-
lease. Let's get our hands on the architects of Amerika's 
starvation-by-sanctions campaign against Iraq or the war in 
Vietnam first. 

The FBI got in a good dig at the mother by 
calling her a "suicide risk" in capital letters. Because of 
the nature of the system, MIM considers such attention to 
family life by the state authorities to border on 
pornographic. By taking what is private and making it 
public, the FBI commoditizes everyone's private life. With 
the "kidnapping" statistics as they are, no doubt there will 
be justification for FBI salary and hiring increases. 

There were numerous other "missing child" posters in the FBI 
clipboard. MIM would like to point out that these posters 
can be interpreted two ways. One is that there is seriously 
someone sick enough in U.$. imperialist society to steal 
children. That was the original interpretation of these 
"missing children" campaigns. Recently, the stranger-
stealing-kids interpretation has been debunked as not 
usually applying, because most cases can be seen as 
essentially a custody battle settled outside legal channels. 
When for example, a grandmother takes a child away from his 
or her mother, the child is considered "missing," just 
because the grandmother did not trust her daughter to raise 
the child. Either way--truly sick people or just decaying 
families having custody battles outside the law--the picture 
is not pretty. The facts are a reminder to MIM of just how 
impossible it is to write aggressively enough about U.$. 
imperialism. "Nationally over one million children are 
reported missing each year!!" For that reason the National 
Missing Children's Locate Center distributes over 250,000 
pictures of children a week. It does not occur to our 
critics that we are talking about a "human rights violation" 
on a massive scale--right here in the United $tates. MIM 
looks forward to increasingly rearing children in collective 
units. Child-care providers who see themselves as heroic for 
changing the custody of a child should become a thing of the 
past and parents should no longer think of children as 
property for their own enjoyment. --MC5

Note: http://www.cnnw.net/~nmclc/