DESCRIPTION

What does it mean to practice radical social work? What makes radical social work different from progressive or liberal social work? What does it mean to be a radical social worker today with an increase in surveillance and the use of technology? This conversation will be framed around these three questions.

As Angela Davis says, “Radical just means going to the roots.” Most social work practice helps perpetuate the existing problems in society by not going to the roots of the structural issues that cause so much pain and suffering. Privatization, a focus on evidence-based practice, and the increasing use of technology have removed the “social” from social work. It’s time we revisit what it means to be a social worker and to take that back.  This discussion will explore how social workers and social welfare workers have been obligated to enforce social control rather than liberation.

PRESENTERS

Mary Bricker-Jenkins, PhD
Mary Bricker-Jenkins became a social worker by accident in 1960 when she returned from helping to establish a liberal arts college in Uruguay, South America. Her experience as a welfare worker, occurring against the backdrop of the civil rights and anti-war movements, caused her to question the myths and legends about poverty, poor people, and the social order in general that she’d inherited from her “comfortable” white family.  In search of theory that fit her experiences, she fell in with some Marxist social workers and welfare rights organizers.  They exposed her to an unsanitized version of social welfare history.  At that point things started to make sense.  Mary became a founding member of SWAA, and later a co-founder and first national coordinator of the Association of women in Social Work.  In the 1980s, her dissertation on feminist social work practice broke new ground in qualitative and feminist scholarship.  During her 40 years of writing and teaching in social work education she carried a large public practice, most notably in child welfare, public social services, and the movement to end poverty.  She is a board member of the National Welfare Rights Union and has been active in the Poor People’s Campaign.  Her primary commitment in retirement remains organizing to end poverty, which is to say seizing the opportunity finally to fulfill the mission of social work to meet common human needs.

Rosemary A. Barbera, PhD, MSS
Rosemary A. Barbera is a social worker who has been working in human rights since the 1980’s in the U.S. and Latin America, including work with immigrants fleeing war and the violence of poverty from Latin America and Africa.  She lived in Bolivia and Chile and was a human rights worker in both countries.  She continues her work with survivors of human rights abuses in Chile as well as with the family members of the disappeared there. In the US she has worked with various immigrant rights organizations, the Social Welfare Action Alliance, the CSWE Commission on Global Social Work Education, the CSWE Committee on Human Rights, and SWCAREs – Social Work Coalition for Anti-Racist Educators. Current research examines the role memory plays in post-dictatorship society, community resilience after disaster, economic inequality, and building human rights social movements. She is an Associate Professor of Social Work at La Salle University.

Emcee/Facilitator
Joanne Hessmiller, PhD, LCSW, was Associate Professor of Social Work at North Carolina A&T State University (retired). Dr. Hessmiller’s work is centered on economic human rights, dialogue and deliberation in personal and public decision-making, and the use of technology to advance these areas of practice. She is a reviewer for the Journal of Progressive Human Services and Co-Chair of the Faculty Network of the Social Welfare Action Alliance.

Interpreter
Christopher Coles, Spoken Word Poet, Activist, Abolitionist, and Sign Language Interpreter. A native of Rochester, NY, Coles applies his influence throughout the community to perpetuate the significance of personal, political, creative, and spiritual healing.