Summer 2024 Issue

Political Social Work: How I Used My Social Work Skills to Fight Extremism in My Community (And How You Can, Too)
By Jodi Whitted, DSW, MSSW
Social Work Today
Vol. 24 No. 3 P. 24

It started with a mailer. It was mid-June, and a steady trickle of flyers started to make their way into mailboxes. A small group of people calling themselves “Onward Madeira” were claiming to possess the secret sauce needed to “foster a vibrant community while preserving the cherished traditions and small-town charm” by running for city council and school board. My social work Spidey-sense stood on high alert as I scanned my consciousness for associations to help make sense of the seemingly harmless tagline attached to their campaign. It wasn’t long before a quick Google and social media search confirmed my fears that these candidates were part of a much larger, more extreme group of people who have been stealthily attempting to infiltrate local schools and towns to ban books and strip towns of inclusive initiatives. Candidates included a combination of people who attended antidemocracy rallies, had retweeted anti-LGTBQ+ and antiscience propaganda, and had formal endorsements by groups such as Moms for Liberty, which was declared an Extremist Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.1 As a community member, I couldn’t stand idly by. As a political social worker, I knew I possessed the skills needed to help fight.

The intersection of social work values and political practice is often fraught with stigma and uncertainty. Questions related to how political participation will be perceived or accepted are a valid concern in an age in which culture wars are rampant and legislation threatens our ability to engage with clients about sensitive topics. How will my participation affect my position at my agency? What if my clients or employer find out about my political views? Professionally, do I have the freedom to be political?

The NASW Code of Ethics mandates participation in “social and political action” and states that we should “act to prevent and eliminate” any activity that results in harm toward minoritized or vulnerable people through political action. While this mandate is clearly stated, we are often left wondering how exactly to make that happen.2 Additionally, does this responsibility extend from our work at our agencies and with our clients to the communities where we live? In our social work programs of study, we are taught that it’s important to influence policy on a local, state, and federal level, but the connection between policy practice and political participation is not always drawn for us. While our roles at our agencies of practice are often not political, we know that, inherently, social work is political. In fact, political social work is a specific subspecialty in the social work profession and is defined as an arm of the social work profession that seeks to create social change by influencing power structures through civic engagement activities such as voting, volunteering on political campaigns, running for office, petitioning, protesting, providing legislative testimony, and other similar endeavors.3

The banner taken up in my small town was deeply personal, but the clear intersection between my personal desire to create change in my backyard and my professional obligation to take political action was evident. It was apparent who had the most to lose if local candidates on the Onward slate were elected: vulnerable youth, the LGBTQ+ community, and other minoritized people in our town.

Social Work Skills Put to Use
As social workers, we regularly use our skills of rapport building, communication, advocacy, active listening, and critical thinking to work with clients in the agency and community setting, and we work alongside professionals from other disciplines to ensure that goals are met. As in micro social work practice, grassroots organizing and coalition building require many of the same skills.

Rapport Building and Communication
At their heart, grassroots organizing and coalition building require the assembly of diverse community members with a range of skills who are willing to organize around a goal to create change. I was already acquainted with a small group of local activists who shared the same concerns related to the local election, but as a collective, we quickly realized that this would be an all-hands-on-deck effort, and we needed to mobilize quickly. We landed on the idea of forming a political action committee (PAC), which would enable us to have visibility through the purchase of social media advertisements, political mailers, and paid text campaigns. To make this happen, we knew we would need to use rapport building and communication skills to seek buy-in from other community members and constituents. We used coalition building not only to connect and recruit individuals skilled in social work, risk management, design, campaign management and consulting, writing, journalism, and law but also to seek the financial and public support of individuals with a broad range of political affiliations that were needed to operate our PAC.

Advocacy
As a social worker, I knew I had a commitment to the broader society beyond the students I served in my paid position.2 It was clear amongst our rag-tag group that, individually, no one person possessed the knowledge and skills to create, manage, and make our PAC a success, but collectively, we could be a powerhouse, garnering support from the public for our cause. By election day, we had reached thousands of households through ads, literature droppings, and postcards. We recruited hundreds of followers on social media and engaged community members across the political spectrum, and the voter turnout was record breaking, surpassing turnout in almost any other location in our state—a result of the advocacy work we’d done to begin educating those in our small town about the dangers of polarizing candidates and why they should join us in electing common sense candidates.

Active Listening and Critical Thinking
Thinking back on the work our PAC did, it’s evident that without the ability to listen, synthesize information, and critically work to put that information into an actionable plan, we would not have had the same success. Working together with people can be hard, and the willingness to consider other perspectives and choose the perspective that makes most sense (even when it is different than our own) can be difficult when varying opinions exist. In actuality, this is what social workers do every day as we help our clients navigate the complicated systems they encounter. We listen, and we help facilitate their own process of integrating information into a plan to reach their goals.

A Call to Act
Taking the first step can be the hardest. In an era where our attention is pulled toward competing interests and obligations, finding the time to carry the torch in our personal communities can seem like a task for someone else to tackle. Understanding what to do and how to do it presents another challenge. In my personal organizing journey, I’ve almost always found there are others out there experiencing the tug and pull of how, when, and if they should engage. There are others questioning if they are the right one for the job and wondering if they possess the right skills. I can assure you that, as a social worker, you do. And as far as the overwhelm? Sometimes, all it takes is reaching out to find your community of people who are willing to share their knowledge and share the load. And I’ve found it’s always worth it.

— Jodi Whitted, DSW, MSSW, is a political social worker who focuses on grassroots organizing and coalition building at the local level. She is also an assistant professor educator and the director of the Bachelor of Social Work Distance Learning program at the University of Cincinnati.

References
1. Moms for Liberty. Southern Poverty Law Center website. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/moms-liberty

2. NASW code of ethics. National Association of Social Workers website. https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics. Updated 2021.

3. Lane SR, Pritzker S. Political Social Work: Using Power to Create Social Change. Springer International; 2018.