SWAA promotes radical social work & human services for social change. As an organization, we advocate for practice that addresses the structural causes of human suffering and work to dismantle those structures that affect us all.

Bertha Capen Reynolds

Founding of the Bertha Capen Reynolds Society

First National Meeting

We are excited to present some information about this organization’s namesake, Bertha Capen Reynolds, a true pioneer, an often overlooked social work pioneer, who offered alternatives to the psychopathologizing of “everything” in favor of systemic, structural, institutional and organizational perspectives and our behavior within and in response to them.

Progressives in the US can learn a lot from the life and work of Bertha Capen Reynolds because she was one of the earliest activists to combine the critique of capitalism embedded in Marxism with the insights gained from a psychoanalytic perspective. As a socialist and communist, she was a leader among radical social workers in the 1930s and 1940s who applied her ever more complex analysis to areas of clinical practice and social work education. During the McCarthy era, Reynolds was red baited out of the profession she had done so much to build with only a few progressive defenders.

It was not until at the end of her life that the profession rediscovered Bertha Reynolds – and even then it tried to avoid discussing her most radical activity and affiliations. It was to honor all of her life’s work that the Bertha Capen Reynolds Society (the previous name for SWAA) was formed, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, in 1985.

–Thanks to Ann Withorn, from the “non-social-work-but-Bertha-appreciating-left,” for this contribution.

Thanks to NASW Foundation, you can read an entry in their Pioneers Listing

The Social Welfare Action Alliance bases its work on the following Values and Commitments:

• Actualizing human rights
• Dismantling systemic oppression
• Engaging in Anti-racist practice
• Creating an economy based on equity and concern for each other and our planet that is anti-capitalist
• Collectively practicing for liberation
• Working to decolonize ourselves, our systems, our practice

As an organization we align ourselves with others doing this work. Our members are active in many organizations also committed to these values and engage in practice based on these values and commitments.

Rosemary Barbera (she/her)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
At-Large Member

Rosemary 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 in the 1980’s into the 1990’s 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. In Philadelphia she has worked with Juntos/Casa de los Soles, the Liberty Center for Survivors of Torture, and La Puerta Abierta. Current research examines the role memory plays in post-dictatorship society, community resilience after disaster, and building human rights social movements. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at La Salle University.

Larry Bresler (he/him)
Cleveland, OH
At-Large Member

Larry is the Executive Director of Organize! Ohio, an organization that advances grassroots community organizing and assists community organizing efforts as a strategy for progressive change in Ohio. He has over 45 years’ experience in nonprofit management, community organizing, and advocacy primarily focused on issues of poverty. His community organizing experience ranges from urban to rural, and neighborhood-based to statewide and national campaigns. Previous positions have included national director of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, director of a statewide health justice organization in Ohio, director of a Cleveland settlement house, Manager of Neighborhood Planning and Development for the City of Cleveland, and director of a rural interfaith human service and social justice organization in western New York State. He previously served as the co- chair of the Ohio Poor People’s Campaign, and has been serving as an adjunct professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Applied Social Sciences since 2006, teaching a wide range of classes relating to macro practice and poverty.

Tanya Burgess (she/they)
Phoenix, AZ
At-Large Member

Tanya is a licensed social worker currently located in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a doctoral student studying system inequity and political agendas which exacerbate poverty, precarity and disparity among our most underrepresented as they age. Tanya strives to model how anyone can weave intentionality into their daily lives, from professional development, to self-care hobby’s. She teaches students to question system protocols, encourages peers to actively work to change the inequities we see in the world, and hopes that someday the globe prioritizes eradicating poverty over capitalistic gains.

Nicola Capozziello (she/her)
Buffalo, NY
Buffalo SWAA Chapter

Nicole is a steering committee member of Social Workers & Allies Against Solitary Confinement, an issue chapter of SWAA. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Welfare at the University at Buffalo, where her work focuses on nature access and interventions for people involved in the justice system. She works as the Therapeutic Gardening Coordinator for the nonprofit Grassroots Gardens of WNY, as well as a local organizer and activist with the Western New York chapter of the Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. She is also a freelance writer on food, the arts, and social justice.

Michel Coconis (she/her)
Columbus, OH
Ohio SWAA Chapter, SWASC Rep

Michel identifies as a 60+ y.o. feminist social work educator, advocate, activist, and agitator from Ohio who has worked in BSW, MSW, and continuing education for social work and criminal justice in several states. As a practitioner, Michel started as a lobbyist in Ohio, then held field practica at the Ohio Statehouse and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction followed by work with the Ohio Public Defender Commission assisting attorneys in the mitigation of death sentences in capital murder trials. Trained as a jury selection expert in her doctoral work, she continues work as a mitigation investigator and jury consultant today. She is very engaged in the electoral process and alternative paths in social work education with a focus, too, on the Poor People’s Campaign; reproductive justice; economic human rights; media and digital literacy; restorative justice; bridging divides through dialogue processes; and working in communities in mutual aid and with Theatre of the Oppressed.

Heather Gomez (she/her)
Colorado Springs, CO
At-Large Member

Heather is a DSW student at Tulane University and Senior Manager at the National MS Society. Her doctoral work focuses on the clinical experience of Black and Latinx people with multiple sclerosis. Racial disparities in health care and improving health outcomes of historically marginalized populations are her passions.

Sara Harrington (she/her)
Rochester, NY
Treasurer

Sara has been a radical social worker since 2017 and human services practitioner for almost 20 years. She is currently working as a clinical supervisor for CDS Monarch, a local agency that provides support and services for adults with intellectual disabilities and co-occurring disorders. She is also a member of the Rochester SWAA Chapter and a volunteer for the House of Mercy, a local shelter and advocate for people without homes.

Joanne Hessmiller (she/hers)
Wilmington North Carolina
Co-Chair SWAA Educator’s Network

Joanne serves as the Co-chair of the SWAA Educator’s Network. She is a retired social work educator and an activist in movements for human rights. She was the Co-chair of the Moratorium Against the Death Penalty in PA, a member of the Pennsylvania Coalition against Domestic Violence Batterer Intervention Services Network and co-author of Accountability: Program standards for batterer intervention services. A National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Translational Health Research Scholar, much of her current work is focused on antiracist paths to health equity and access and to education for students with special needs.

Barbara Kasper (she/her)
Rochester, NY
National SWAA Convener

Barbara is based in Rochester, New York and serves as the National Convener for SWAA. She is a social work professor emerita from SUNY Brockport and a founding member of the University’s Women’s Center. Barbara has a history of involvement in feminist social work research and activism, and anti-poverty organizing and movement building. She works collaboratively with others to coordinate the growth and development of national SWAA as a key resource for radical social work theory and practice.

Flower Noble (she/her, they/them)
Midcoast Maine
At-Large Member

Flower is the managing editor for the Journal of Progressive Human Services: Radical Thought and Praxis, a journal that has long been affiliated with SWAA.  The journal strives to publish radical perspectives in human services and manuscripts from human rights activists, abolitionists, and activist consumers/survivors of human services. Flower is also a practicing social worker in a public school.

Sharon Pratt (she/her)
Newark, OH
Ohio SWAA Chapter

Sharon is currently serving as a clinical therapist in private practice. She also serves as the president of the Ohio chapter of SWAA. In addition to her social work degree and licensure, she also holds a masters degree in public administration.

Patricia (Pat) Shelly (she/her)
Buffalo, NY
Buffalo SWAA Chapter

Pat is located in Buffalo, NY on traditional lands of the Seneca Nation. She holds a Macro position in the University at Buffalo School of Social Work, as Director of Community Engagement and Expansion, and provides opportunities for MSW students to attend Political Campaign Schools as well as advocacy and educational events in Washington DC, Albany, NY, and the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan. She is also a member of the Western New York Agents of Change. She also serves as SWAA’s social media coordinator for 4 platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram).

Stephen Monroe (“Zak”) Tomczak (he/him)
New Haven, CT
Connecticut SWAA Chapter

Zak is Professor of Social Welfare Policy and Community Organization at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) Department of Social Work. He has extensive experience with social justice movement activism going back to the 1980s as well as work for university disinvestment in the South African apartheid system. As part of his current community organization work, Zak is involved in a variety of efforts focusing on social and economic justice, including the National Jobs For All Network affiliate group working in Connecticut to advocate for state and federal job guarantee programs. Along with a group of colleagues concerned about the social work response to abuses by police, he helped form the state chapter of SWAA in 2020. As an active member of the Connecticut State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (CSU-AAUP), Tomczak works to organize colleagues to combat the trend towards neoliberalism in higher education.

Aviel Zayas (they/them, xe/xem)
Jersey City, NJ
At-Large Member

Aviel is a therapist in private practice prioritizing decolonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist work with the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community. In all of the ways they can think of and what they can learn from others, they try to shift the typical therapy power dynamics and create a safer, more open environment for clients. Aviel also provides consultations for therapists who want to learn how they can improve their work with BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ clients. In addition, Aviel  is a mentor for trans youth/young adults. The work they do with SWAA has involved helping clinicians to radicalize their work and seeing where else we can push the envelope.