Radical Social Work Planning Meeting In New York
Repost from Social Welfare Alliance:
You are invited to help plan the future of radical social work!
Who: Radical social workers and social welfare workers
Where: Rochester, NY
When: February 7th - 9th, 2020*
What: We will gather together in Rochester to plan a bigger gathering of radical social workers, social welfare workers and those impacted by these systems. We hope to learn from each other and also learn from people’s movements which are building all around us and working to change this unique moment in history we live in and move our society toward justice. We will build our vision and action for Radical Social Work together! **
Please RSVP by 12/20/19, since space is limited. For more information, please email swaapdx@hotmail.com or call Monica Beemer at 503-860-9880.
*We will start gathering Friday at 2:00pm for introductions and preparation for the weekend. Friday night the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will be in Rochester and we are invited to attend their meeting. Saturday during the day and a working dinner, and Sunday am (until 1:00 pm) SWAA and other radical social work folks will gather to plan a radical social work unconference for some date later in 2020.
We ask that folks who attend be ready to help plan for the Radical Social Work Unconference in 2020.
We ask that folks pay their own transportation to Rochester but we will provide hospitality housing Friday and Saturday (Thursday night may be available if you are coming in early - please let us know). We will also provide snacks at every meeting and breakfasts and lunches Saturday and Sunday.
Partial travel scholarships are available so that everyone will have access to join us who wants to make this commitment. Fill in the “Scholarship Request” survey (link below) to request this support.
Ready to Join Us?! Please fill in the “Registration” survey to register for the weekend:
The Future of Radical Social Work: An initial analysis of the current context and a Call to Action
Those of us who labor in the social welfare system have been taught that we have a dual function: social care and social control. For well over a century, the radicals among us have struggled mightily to protect and promote the “caring” function over the “control” function. We have organized, theorized, ennobled, and promoted a social welfare system designed to meet common human needs. Sometimes we won, wresting reforms from “the powers that be” while envisioning a fundamental change, a truly radical transformation.
Today that vision has never been more impossible to achieve—nor more possible.
In the social welfare system in which we work today, we face privatization, commodification, cutbacks, and previously unimaginable cruelty underpinning new policies. We can comprehend these only if we understand that we were never intended to help. Simply put, the scaffolding of our social welfare system was constructed in the 19th century to control a restive working class for which socialism and communism were increasingly appealing. In the virtual negotiations between labor and owner classes in the industrial era, the social welfare system was a major clause in the social contract. Well into the 20thcentury, it kept the peace between oppositional--but interdependent—classes.
Enter the microchip—and all it has made possible. Robotic production and cyber-supported global commerce have made it possible to produce previously unimaginable amounts of goods and services—enough to meet the basic human needs of all of us. But they have also rendered superfluous huge sections of the working class, people no longer needed in production of goods and many services. As we have moved from the industrial age to the electronic age, the essential relationship that defined capitalism in the industrial period has ended—and with it, the owning class’ need for the social welfare state.
So we are, as it were, stateless. As the social welfare state becomes a relic of a bygone period of human history, what are we to do? As we face at once both our obsolescence and the material abundance made possible by new forms of production, what is our radical vision? Will this abundance be used to meet the human need of the many or the greed of the few? What is our role in this new struggle? As we join the ranks of the dispossessed, what are our strategies for survival? In a period of revolutionary transformation, can we fashion a revolutionary definition of our work?
These are the kinds of questions we will address at our Unconference. Since nobody can be expected to have all of the answers, we expect no traditional keynote speakers, papers or workshops. Rather, we will use structured conversations, cultural work, sharing of works-in-progress, and other means to unleash our creativity and strengthen our community for the challenges and opportunities of this new period in history. And we will have some fun.
We recognize there are other issues issues that are also relevant to the context of today, including
How the war economy affects the wellbeing of people and planetThe connection between racism and xenophobia in the moment we are livingThreats to our planet
And the need to examine the opportunities that are also arising from this moment.
We hope you will join us!
Social Welfare Action Alliance
http://socialwelfareactionalliance.nationbuilder.com/