Radical Social Work

In March of 2022, the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA) held a meeting on Crafting Today’s Radical Social Work Manifesto. Participants were asked to prepare for the meeting by reading Social work and social justice: a manifesto for a new engaged practice from the Social Work Action Network (SWAN) in the UK (and now international) as well as the Dubrovnik Manifesto.

SWAN Manifesto 

Dubrovnik Manifesto

We were motivated to do this as conditions in our country continue to deteriorate – the poor get poorer; racism and white supremacy are alive and well; access to affordable and reliable healthcare are not in reach for many; public schools are underfunded; and the list goes on. SWAA wanted to reflect on the current situation as well as what we could and should do given this situation. As one of our SWAA colleagues often says – “We were never meant to help” (Mary Bricker-Jenkins). We have to fight back. We can no longer be content at being the buffer zone between the rich and powerful and the poor and oppressed. We are committed to building new systems that push back against exploitation and oppression of both workers and people they work with. We do not want to reinforce the status quo – we want to transform it. 

At our event we crowdsourced what it meant to be radical social workers and social welfare workers. This free verse poem is taken from the comments of the people who participated. A longer Manifesto is in the works. This poem will  be published in the Journal of Progressive Human Services: Radical Thought and Praxis issue 34(2).

Facilitated by Rosemary A Barera, Joanne Hessmiller, and Barbara Kasper. For information contact rosemaryabarbera@gmail.com

Radical social work
questions the status quo in society
that keeps us spinning our wheels
not permitting us to do our jobs.
we should be rallying against inequality and inequity
recognizing that we need to eliminate injustice
and abolish the systems that prop it up.
Systems like the carceral state
family policing
capitalism
the military industrial
the medical industrial complex
and social work in higher education.

Radical social work
studies our reality
and connects the dots between oppressive structures like
capitalism, militarism, fascism, that exacerbate suffering
unjust and unfit living conditions
lack of access to health care
education systems that are crumbling;
systems meant to maintain so much suffering and inequality,
recognizing that the capitalist state
prefers us to live in a constant state of emergency
based on false scarcity of resources.
which does not permit us the time or energy to organize
and engage in social change at work.

Radical social work
pushes back against “professionalism”
that separates us from those in client status
and paraprofessionals
grounding  practice on lived-experience-informed practice
not “evidence” that fails to question injustice.

Radical social work
looks at the societal roots of “mental disorders” –
a strategy for commodifying social problems –
that sweeps issues under the rug as individual problems
when they are often structural problems
pathologizing human suffering
and blaming parents for neglect
when the structures in society are the culprits;
we should be calling for mandated supporting,
not mandated reporting 

Radical social work
commits to working in solidarity with the exploited
follows their lead
recognizes root causes not just symptoms
eliminates poverty, inequity, and injustice
targets unjust systems
supports union organizing
works for environmental justice
destroys neoliberalism and all its evils
because poverty is not neglect. 

Radical social work
owns up to social work’s past
a past rooted in white supremacy
racial capitalism
classism
patriarchy
fascism
colonization
cisgenderism
ableism
managerialism
the promotion of charity vs social change
the false god of professionalism
And commits to bringing those systems down.

Radical social work
puts our actual values into action
fighting for the fulfillment of human needs
and respect for human rights.
It calls us to dismantle the system
abolish all carceral systems
not ask people to jump through hoops in a system that oppresses them.
One class, one cause.

Radical social work
recognizes the ongoing harms of colonization within social work
and how those harms make us instruments of the state.
It calls for anti-capitalist
anti-racist
anti-oppressive
practice that supports
collective action
collective care and
economic human rights.

In the end, radical social work
implores us to do what we say we do –
to be liberatory
emancipatory
building a new world
because as agents of social control
we were never meant to help
and only we can change that.