Social Welfare Action Alliance, Connecticut Chapter
The SWAA-CT chapter grew out of organizing and responses across the nation and CT by Social Workers in response to police brutality, as well as the CT NASW White Paper, community responses over the summer of 2020, and the historic police accountability legislation passed in CT.
Our immediate mission for this group involved creating a space for education, discussion, and organizing for professional Social Workers across the state of CT for work related to policing equity and community safety. We sought to do this work in communication and solidarity with those communities who are most negatively impacted by policing inequities, building on the eloquent words of philosophy of Just Leadership USA: “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solutions, but furthest from resources and power.”
While we continue to have this as an immediate focus, we see the need for a broad based, radical social welfare organization that mobilizes social workers and their allies who seek transformative social change. Our work is grounded in a radical, critical perspective on social problems and addressing the individual-level trauma produced by the unjust social, economic and political systems in which we work. We self-consciously oppose and work to undermine all entrenched, intersectional systems of domination and exploitation of the many by the few, including racism/white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism and homophobia, ableism, and other forms of injustice.
SWAA-CT has outlined the following broad areas of focus for the work we envision doing to advance a radical vision for social work in our state:
- Advancing Racial, Economic and Social Justice
- Health Care As a Human Right
- Policing, Justice and Prison Transformation Leading to Abolition:
- Voting and Election Reform
- Tax Equity/Fairness