Announcer:
Welcome to NASW Social Work Talks. The National Association of social workers is one of the largest membership organizations of professional social workers in the world. NASW works to enhance the professional growth and development of its members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social work policies. With our mission in mind, the purpose of NASW Social Work Talks is to inform, educate and inspire. We encourage you to learn more about NASW by visiting www.social workers.org and we thank you for joining us for this episode.
Greg Wright:
Hello, welcome to social work talks NASW podcast. My name is Greg Wright. And I am NASW is public relations manager and NASW did a survey of its members which indicated social justice is one of the main issues that our members want this association to focus on. So today our guest is Mel Wilson NASW's social justice and human rights manager. Welcome Mel. Hi Greg. Thank you. First off, Mel, we want you to tell us a bit more about yourself. How did you get into social work?
Mel Wilson:
Oh, it's a long story. Greg. When I was got out of the military, didn't know what to do, decided to go to college, went to Howard University. So it's beautiful school, the school social work, really wanting to get involved with social work there. During the time, during that time there was a lot of activity around social justice, civil rights, and it seemed to be the profession that I just gravitate it to and it was very important to me. So I committed myself to go into school and the rest is history.
Greg Wright:
Okay. How long have you been in the NASW social justice and human rights manager? And what excites you about that job?
Mel Wilson:
It's been about four years now. And it came out of a discussion with the previous executive director of NASW recognizing that social justice was beginning to emerge as an important issue. Uh, so they asked me to take on the position. It was really exciting because of the whole issue of criminal justice was in the forefront and that was the prominent social justice issue. But I knew at the time that there were many, many broader areas dealing with injustice. Uh, and the excitement was that I would get the opportunity to not only involve myself, but certainly be able to be a part of a movement where there was a clamoring for change, uh, a clamoring for working together and coalitions to resolve some of the injustices that existed in United States.
Greg Wright:
NASW has said five justice priorities. I was wondering if you could tell our audience what those priorities are and how NASW came about setting these priorities.
Mel Wilson:
The five right now now are voter rights, criminal justice, juvenile justice, immigration, and basically economic justice or a safety net issues. A little bit of background on how these priorities came together. About a year and a half ago, our CEO Angelo McClain and my boss Heidi Macintosh sat down and said that we really need to firm up what these priorities are. And so we presented them to the board. And then we also did a survey out to the chapters, got a lot of feedback, and got a consensus that these should be the priorities that we work on during that time - it was 2016 to 2017. And that it was important to not try to deal with all the issues in the world, but really center on major five issues that we can focus on and put a lot of energy behind. So that's how they evolved.
Greg Wright:
I was also wondering, how does NASW promote social justice priorities? In other words, what is the work that we're doing with both congress in Oregon and other organizations in order to promote our social justice priorities?
Mel Wilson:
Greg, that's on a number of levels. Internally at NASW one of the ways that we promote the priorities is that we have distributed and disseminated the priorities to all the chapters and through the social media. I also have done a number of presentations to individual NASW chapters talking specifically about the priorities. And pretty soon I will be doing a presentation at the University of the District of Columbia to talk about the social justice priorities. So that gets it out to the social workers. But to your point of getting it out to a broader, diverse, population or diverse interdisciplinary kinds of organizations, we and I believe very strongly in the coalition model. So for each of those priorities that we laid out there, there is an existing national coalition that meets on a regular basis and NASW and myself are regular members. We go to those meetings, we express ourselves, we talk about our priorities. And the priorities aren’t just something there to talk about. They are essentially action plans. And the intent of all of these priorities and the intent of working in coalitions is to bring about real change. Good example again is around the issue of criminal justice. There is something called the Justice Roundtable that includes well over 50 to 60 national groups and they've been really effective as a coalition of bringing about a lot of reforms or moving towards many reforms within the criminal justice system. And we focus a lot on legislature across the board -- legislation around voter rights, legislation around criminal justice and really, really, very much involved with the Dreamer immigration issue that is raging right now. We are a part of the task force dealing with immigration task force so that we just try to be where the action is and where the action is generally covers all the priorities that we've outlined in our own commitment.
Greg Wright:
Mel, I was wondering if you can name a few of the organizations that NASW works with. I have heard of our work with LCCR, but I was wondering if you could also name others.
Mel Wilson:
Sure. I would talk about the LCCHR, that is, the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights. They've been around for a number of years, over 20 years, and have about 200 members nationally. It includes many of the major civil rights organization – the NAACP, La Raza. Just most of the major organizations - The National Organization of Women – you can go down the list. They are probably the most active, probably the most cohesive and comprehensive coalition that exists. Right now they are headed by a woman named Vanita Gupta who used to be the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice under the Obama administration. It was headed by for 20 some odd years by Wade Henderson, who was one of the leading, or is one of the leading civil rights leaders of the United States. It focuses on civil and human rights in the literal sense. So all of those areas that we talk about - voters rights, immigration, we've talked criminal justice every - every area that deals with human rights. There is a working group that LCCR has that works under this umbrella. And the keyword with LCCR is that it is an umbrella organization, meaning that they do not direct individual member organizations on their day-to-day operation, but there's a consensus amongst members or member organizations that we will work as a collective to resolve certain - the major issues of the day.
Greg Wright:
Well, I was wondering why is it so important for NASW to partner with other organizations? I've heard you mentioned before that there is strength in numbers.
Mel Wilson:
Yes, that is the reason. The coalition model isn’t new. It emerged perhaps 10 years ago when many organizations recognize that you have to have a multitude of organizations around an issue to work together, to plan together, to advocate together. There is strength in numbers. If we try to, for instance, address the issue of criminal justice and one of the issues that we were about to get into is bail reform. If we tried to do that individually as NASW it would be very, very difficult to get attention of members of Congress, the attention of other agencies, even of other organizations. But when we do it with LCCR or with the Justice Roundtable, then we are much more strong and able to have much more leverage with some of the most powerful folks in this country. So it is an imperative that organizations really, really want to bring about change and social justice we have to work as a collective.
Greg Wright:
Now, if I'm a member of NASW and I want to get involved in advocating for social justice issues, what can I do?
Mel Wilson:
You really should start and work from your state and even lower than that in your locale. There are often, especially in larger cities, a number of coalitions, a number of social activist groups that are working on a range of issues. And you need to identify – at least try to find out – if you have a particular concern let’s say voting rights, if you have a particular concern about the way voting goes on in this country, then you need to search out a number of groups such as the LLCR’s coalition around voters rights in Washington DC. But in New York there's just a number of organizations that you can, and join in their activities. On national level, I'll use another example. The Justice Roundtable, LCCR, each time there is a meeting these are open-ended. You don’t have to qualify as an organization or have specific qualification. You can just join and be part of that coalition. Each time they have a meeting there is a call-in number so you don’t even have to physically…you can live in California and if it’s happening in Washington, D.C. you can call and join in that dialogue. There are often sub-groups or working groups that are available. You can participate as a working group member. And I recommend that because that way you get a way to really get involved in the hands-on kinds of activities. And you get a better sense of what some of the outcomes or where some of the major issues are trending towards. So, it is – a lot is incumbent on the individual to find out what is going on in their jurisdiction or their state. But certainly there are many opportunities on a national level.
Greg Wright:
Right now NASW has five social justice priorities. Once more as you said they are voting rights, criminal justice, juvenile justice, immigration reform and economic justice equity. But is there a possibility that this association may actually alter its, uh, priorities based on what's happening in our current political environment?
Mel Wilson:
Yes, Greg, when we developed the social justice priorities, one of the things we did, we wrote in, so the guidelines and one of the areas that we really paid attention to was that things evolve. And so that the suggestion, the recommendation was that on an annual basis, the NASW board, the NASW CEO, the chapters would have a chance to look at all fivemcurrent social justice priorities and have a dialogue and make a decision as to whether or not we should replace one, two or more of those priorities. But it was designed to be flexible. It was designed to recognize that a given priority and that may might emerge any given year so therefore you must be able to adjust and add new priorities. But one of the, one of the most important things that we wanted to do is not expand priorities just willy nilly. We want to keep it at that level of five. Now, five is somewhat arbitrary, but it seemed like a reasonable number of priorities that that organization can work on in the given year. So we're at that point now where we'll do a survey, we'll get out to the chapters, we'll have a conversation with the board and with the CEO, and work out a mechanism where we can get feedback and there's a possibility, for instance, the issue of environmental justice is not one of the priorities now, but it's certainly one that should be considered. So there's a strong possibility for 2018 year that environmental justice would become one of the priorities and we may drop another one.
Greg Wright:
Mel, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.
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You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of social workers. We encourage you to visit NASW website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound's social work policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. We also invite you to join us for the 2018 NASW national conference, which runs June 20th through the 23rd in Washington, DC. You'll have an opportunity to earn 20 plus CEs, your nationally renowned speakers participate in unique professional development workshops and enjoy fulfilling networking opportunities. To learn more and to register today, we invite you to visit www.social workers.org thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.