5th May 2025
In The Stealing of Emily, the metaphor of the Underground Railroad once symbolized freedom—a lifeline for those escaping oppression and seeking a future of hope and safety. Today, however, the government has misappropriated this metaphor, turning it from a symbol of liberation into a state-sponsored railroad of control—a system where children are railroaded into predetermined outcomes, and parents are left powerless to stop it.
The fares on this new railroad are not paid in traditional currency, but in freedom, agency, and rights. Families and children are forced to pay the price of their individuality, their ability to choose, and their right to remain together. But what makes this system even more perverse is that the government conductor—the individual or collective body that determines who gets on the train, where they are taken, and when—is completely oblivious to where the journey truly ends.
The conductor in this metaphor is not a guide or a protector; they are a bureaucratic mechanism that pushes people along a track, without knowing, or even caring, where that track leads. The conductor’s role is not to ensure that families reach a place of safety or well-being, but rather to enforce the smooth operation of the system—the system of state-sponsored control.
Payments to the government system in this modern-day railroad are not contractual. Families pay unwillingly, with no clear understanding of the costs or outcomes. There is no clear contract or agreement between the state and the families they affect. In fact, the very nature of these payments is based on ignorance—families don’t know what they are paying for or where the journey will take them. The conductor has no insight into the destination, and the destination itself is an unknown, determined not by the needs of children or the well-being of families, but by a bureaucratic agenda that is more concerned with upholding its own authority than addressing the individual circumstances at hand.
If this all sounds dystopian, it should. The state-sponsored railroad operates on principles reminiscent of a totalitarian society, where individuals are treated as cogs in a machine, with no real autonomy, no real voice, and no meaningful control over their own futures. Like something out of a George Orwell novel, this system exists to maintain control, not to protect. It disempowers those who are already the most vulnerable and strips away the ability to fight back.
The railroad that Harriet Tubman once used to lead people to freedom has become a train of tyranny—one that takes children from their homes, their parents, and their lives without any regard for where they end up or what they experience along the way. The conductor may have the power to dictate the journey, but they have no idea what happens to the passengers once they leave their care.
The payments to this system—whether they come in the form of legal fees, court orders, or state-sanctioned actions—are unwitting and unwilling. Families are caught in a web of bureaucratic control, paying the price for something they didn’t agree to and don’t even understand. They pay for the illusion of protection while their freedom is stripped away.
And what makes this all the more horrifying is that the state-sponsored conductor is not even responsible for where the journey ends. They don’t know where the children are taken, or what will happen to them once they leave the train. The destination is unknown, but the process is guaranteed to continue, all while families remain powerless to change their fate.
The parallel to dystopian control is clear: this is a system where families and children are enslaved not by shackles, but by an invisible network of bureaucratic power—one that cares more about maintaining the smooth operation of the machine than about the human cost of doing so.
thestealingofemily.co.uk 
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