To effectively organize for change, social workers must first understand power and empowerment. Now social work education needs to more comprehensively respond to this call. These movements are making meaningful changes in policy and practices, changes social workers have long advocated. For social workers to effectively join these efforts, we need organizing skills. In the weeks since George Floyd’s murder, we have seen a powerful reinvigoration of the Black Lives Matter movement and a broader effort to eliminate racism at all levels of our society. The second crisis front and center at the moment-anti-Black racism and state violence-also calls for organizing to address. We believe that this separation within social work education prevents students from having the full set of skills needed to answer the call in situations such as the pandemic. Often these skills are separated within social work curricula. These relationship-building skills may be considered “micro-practice” skills, while organizing and advocating policy changes, for example, may be considered “macro-practice” skills. We all know the power of listening to stories and organizing workers to build power and gain advances in their workplaces. One of the authors is a labor organizer, while the rest have worked as volunteer organizers in political and unionizing efforts and researched the effects of unionization. These relationships among workers have been built slowly and gradually over time. They have amplified workers’ experiences and opened the phone lines to policymakers so workers can engage power. Unions across the country have advocated for personal protective equipment for frontline workers. Through the pandemic, we have seen the power of collective organizing. Policies can dictate affordable housing access, wage standards (minimum wage), funding for public schools, air and water regulations in poor or working-class communities, funding for public transportation, workplace protections, and protections against various forms of discrimination. When we say “the personal is political,” it is not an abstract idea but instead alludes to the fact that people’s lives are greatly impacted, both positively and negatively, by policy. It is also the only way to enact policies that can challenge entrenched inequalities, improving the outcomes and well-being of individuals and their communities. Organizing, a process by which people build consensus and come together to work toward a common goal, is the only way by which oppressed and/or disenfranchised groups can leverage collective power to dismantle, reimagine, and rebuild societal structures. In this article, we briefly describe the importance of organizing and offer suggestions for social work education that prepares all social workers for engaging in organizing as a core part of their work with individuals, organizations, and communities. We need to recognize the interdependence, complexity, and intimate links between micro and macro practice, clients and social workers, and the personal and professional aspects of our lives. If we hope to prepare social workers to organize to dismantle the systems of oppression and inequality that have led to current suffering and marginalization, rather than acting as Band-Aids to these larger social problems, we must challenge our dichotomous thinking and frameworks. And by empowerment we mean the process through which people of color, women, low-wage workers, and other marginalized groups develop critical consciousness and collaborate to shift power in society-not the co-opted definition that tells us that empowerment is pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. What does this mean for social work education? We believe these crises call for social work education that provides all social workers training in organizing, so that we have skills to facilitate empowerment. As the calls for replacing police with social workers grow louder, social workers may be more in demand than ever. Too many social workers are trained to provide individual assistance, learning about policy and economic inequality as context without developing the skills needed to change them. They highlight the need for social workers, at the same time, to reveal the weaknesses of many social work education programs. The interconnected crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and structural racism dominate the headlines and our consciousness as we write this. Ballentine, MA, MSW Gabriella Jones-Casey, MSW Sara Goodkind, PhD, MSW and Jeffrey Shook, PhD, JD, MSW Evolving Education: The Power of Organizing - Micro Meets Macroīy Kess L.
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