SWAA #RadChat Theme: What does it mean to be a radical social work student
April 13, 2026
7:00 – 8:30pm Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Organized by the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA)
(This event will not be recorded)
Being radical is inherently risky. Changing and challenging entrenched power is risky. The question is what risks you are willing or able to take, and how to take those risks strategically (in solidarity with others, etc.). Sometimes this risk can be merely challenging the norms and assumptions that exist in your own mind, that you were socialized and trained to hold — an internal decolonization. Sometimes it can mean engaging in an open dialogue with somebody you do not agree with, being critical where you can and open and willing to learn where appropriate. It also encompasses deeper risks (like acting in solidarity with Palestine, for example) or challenging the power structures and hierarchies that exist on campus, or resisting a government and economic system that conflates human worth with financial holdings, or resisting geopolitics predicated on dehumanization and western hegemony. Numbers, organization, and strategy are helpful with these important risks. But radicalism takes courage — it must. It also imbues those who take risks with courage.
We envision this chat as a brave container to hold complex emotions without the fear of policing or censorship. To this end, it will not be recorded.
Co-hosts for this event:
Matt Ross (they/he) is a liberation-oriented social worker balancing time between Crestone and Denver, CO. Matt is currently completing his MSW at University of Denver GSSW, focusing on abolitionist praxis, prefigurative movement work, and social policy as harm reduction. They center an ethics of unconditional care for all beings, working to harness the power of solidarity to abolish the PIC, racial capitalism, and all other death-making institutions. Matt believes that no one and nothing is disposable and that with enough friends, the whole world can be won.
Sarianna Sabbareseis a macro practice social worker. She works as a field organizer for the National Jobs for All Network (NJFAN) and the Connecticut Jobs and Human Rights Task Force, advancing federal and state policy to codify a Universal Federal Job Guarantee. She believes that all people should have access to good jobs at living wages (along with health care, college, child care, and other public goods and services) as a human right. She is also a counselor working with survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.
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