Radical social workers see connections between societal oppression and the personal issues with which many clients struggle. This form of practice is grounded in securing human rights as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Radical social workers ask “What would social service work look like if all people had the human right to food, housing, education and jobs at a living wage?” Fundamental to progressive social work practice is the analysis of the immediate, underlying and structural causes of human rights violations. What forces are preventing powerless people from fulfilling their basic human needs?

Radical social work practice includes: forming democratic and egalitarian relationships with service users and coworkers; addressing people’s problems from their own perspective; participating with service users and coworkers in collective action; and understanding that “the personal is political” – individual concerns can often be traced to larger power systems.

Progressive social workers challenge, where necessary, the neglect, ignorance, and passivity in social work that can cause the profession to overlook its responsibility to fulfill its societal function as a force for social change. It sometimes involves overcoming the fear of challenging the very structures which provide the profession with status and support. What kinds of interventions/conversations are possible in our daily lives/work which do not function to keep clients (or anyone else) in their place? Although social work education often teaches us to be “neutral,” noted educator Paulo Freire said: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

This approach to social work emphasizes action grounded in an analysis of all social, political, and economic structures that impede the fulfillment of everyone’s basic human needs.“For progressives, it is not enough to see; one must do.” *

*For more information, click here to view: Progressive Social Work by Rosemary Barbera, Mary Bricker-Jenkins, and Barbara Hunter-Randall Joseph

Monica: First, tell us a little about yourself, who you are, where you are from, what you do with your time?

Marilyn: I grew up in Seattle and ran away the way a proper middle class girl runs away, going to college. I came back to Seattle when my grandson was born.  I wasn’t going to be 3,000 miles away from my only grandchild. He/they are now 18 years old.  The first 3-years I took care of my grandson as work and then went on to some other interesting things.  In 2003, Susan Wurf, the daughter of Jerry Wurf, who was the head of AFSCME international called me. She knew me from our mutual membership in the NYC union, SSEU. As a SSEU member, I worked for the NYC Department of Sanitation for 8 years and it was the best job i ever had.  I loved the trucks!  I liked these kind of people. They were really, really smart. You don’t become a automotive mechanic if you’ve done well in school. But you can’t also be stupid and be a truck mechanic. They’re put down all the time as laborers, but you can only put them down so far because they know they are really good and have a skill. If you work in an office, even if you have a PhD, you can feel like crap easily for so many reasons. These guys had a solid core and i enjoyed working with them so much.

Anyway, Susan called me. She had married a contractor and moved to Arizona. She asked if I wanted to become a rep for a pre-engineered steel company. I jumped at the chance. Washington State had just passed an anti-affirmative action law and we were all still struggling with the impact. It knocked the “minorities” out of construction. It devastated whole communities.  The good jobs went away. The jobs went back to the good-old boys network.  I really, really wanted to provide work for these guys to get them back on their feet. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. This is my little contribution to the process. I’m the owner of Phoenix Builders – rising from the ashes. We have been affiliated with the Contractors Resource Center for many years and the Washington State Association of Minority Contractors. Our goal is to get people of color and women back into the construction industry. Many lost their own businesses when the old white boys network turned on again. We try to help get them winning the work again.  We are also working on policy, because that’s the deeper problem.

Monica: Do you still consider yourself a “social worker?”

Marilyn: My daughter once said to me “mom, you’re not a social worker anymore.” I said “Are you kidding, if i wasn’t a social worker I would never be able to do this.”  You have to convince a bunch of very entitled people, the ones who are in power, that they have a problem. Not only do the people of color and women have a problem but the power brokers have a problem too. You have to identify allies and work with them to get things done – just like any social worker. And you have to be really good at working with a lot of people who are not in the mainstream, identify the different strengths and weaknesses they have and move forward. None of them are valued even though they are very powerful people from powerful communities.

Monica: When did you first join SWAA?

Marilyn: After college I moved to NYC totally green and naive.  I was very overwhelmed with school work at Oberlin College and could not do anything to learn anything about the world. So after school I moved to NYC!  SWAA was my future, but I didn’t know it yet. I hit NYC and I knew nothing. At least I knew I knew nothing. I was raised in a Republican family.  I knew this was nuts but I didn’t even have a tool to know what was real. The first two people I heard about who gave me a clue were Paul Robeson and Howard Fast. I got a job as a telephone rep and after 3 weeks they fired me because I had a back injury that makes me suddenly fall down. This really upset me and gave me a flavor of what happens. I got a job as a typist at the Episcopal Church. I happened to be typing up these biographies of these priests. It was incredible the number of those priests that were red baited, and the number that refused to red bait others. I kept talking about this. Someone, said “you should get a job in welfare.” my response was “what’s welfare?” Mimi Abramovitz, another SWAA founder, could not believe me or how much I didn’t know. I think she didn’t care for me because I was so green. I did go get a job and I did work in welfare.  One of my co-workers, a guy, heard me talking and he came running up to me and said – you’ve got to join the Bertha Capen Reynolds Society (BCRS – former name of SWAA).  I did join and the NYC meetings were held in Mimi’s living room. I would go and soak up the information. After a time I became the mail person and i would sort mail during the meeting and just soak it up. These meetings were like an advanced degree program. I couldn’t believe it.  If you know there is a lot to learn then just listening to the conversations, the decisions and how they are made, even the agenda – you begin to learn why it’s all happening. You don’t necessarily have to buy the perspective, but you have it and you can go out and check it out. Talking about important issues, and agreeing and disagreeing, it’s really important.

Monica: Why is it important?

Marilyn: Mary Bricker was one of the other students in my social work graduate school program at Fordham. She was more sophisticated than me but I had learned a lot in my two years with BCRS. We spotted each other right off the bat.  We identified and talked about the “I’m going to help you” problem. Liberals and social workers do this. “I have the skills and I’m going to tell you what to do.”  I’d look at the people we were working with and I’d think – these are, for the most part, people with incredible strengths and incredible experiences and perspectives. And they were being treated like they knew nothing and like it was their fault. That is one way the system keeps itself going. Blaming people. Acting like it’s individual to individual. We both hated it.  I really did not like my school or my cohort, except Mary. I sort of fell into social work and it was SWAA that helped me keep a perspective – or grow one. The original SWAA NYC chapter was this support – helped us create an analysis.  For those who felt like we did, that the helper mentality was wrong. It gave us a network and helped us figure out another model. It was a very successful chapter.  We had just started community organizing tracks in SW and that is what we were doing. Recognizing the strengths and the power within communities. And also that the system is what is broken.

Monica: What happened to that chapter?

Marilyn: The way BCR and SWAA has been structured is through strong leadership on the campus and if you don’t have that then it does not happen.  It was the faculty who would draw people into SWAA and then there was a steering committee. We worked together.  If the internal support networks were not at the school then it would die out.  That also happened here in Seattle. If we had strong faculty then SWAA would thrive and if not, then it would die out.

Monica: What has changed in SWAA?

Marilyn:  I think SWAA functions now more as a social work support network and a connection to the people’s movement. The chapters help support people, but it’s hard to keep it going. Now it’s more of a national network, versus the smaller chapters. There are some chapters.  We are not reaching a lot of social workers. There were other chapters when we were in NY but most of the work happened in the chapters. I would go to the national steering committee meetings. I was so honored to be there. It was really wonderful. It was like starting as a toddler and growing up. I’m ever grateful for SWAA/BCRS for all I’ve learned.

Monica: You’re leaving the SWAA national steering committee (NSC). Why is that? How do you feel about that? Will you stay a SWAA member?

Marilyn:  I owe such a debt to SWAA.  Now with all the computer stuff I don’t have all the tools to help with the NSC like I did in the past.  But  I am a lifetime member so I will stay involved.