Social Workers in Solidarity Against Safe Policing for Safe Communities Executive Order

As a BSW student, future social worker, and social justice advocate, I have an ethical obligation to dismantle systems of oppression. This executive order does not do that - we need to defund and abolish policing, not reform it - and I therefore do not support this order. NASW, do better! Set a proper example for future social workers like me!

Our ethics have us seek social justice, not continue to be a part of institutions that perpetuate inequality. DECOLONIZE SOCIAL WORK.

As social workers, we betray our commitment to social justice by collaborating with the police and participating in the prison industrial complex. We must build a new, anti-oppressive system, not become a part of the current system of oppression.

Defund the police because Black Lives Matter.

I was disappointed by the NASW's support of the Trump Administration's Executive Order involving police reforms. Not only does this executive order serve to uphold and maintain the structures in place that perpetuate racism but it is a blatant ignorance of the pain of families who have lost loved ones to police violence as well as the pain of the Black Community. The NASW's response to the recent events called on future leaders within the realm of social work to dismantle structures built upon systemic racism. This is not a job for future social work leaders, alone, to take on. It is a job for ALL social workers, both new and experienced, in THIS moment in time. And it begins by ending the social work profession's close ties with police and policing tactics, demanding more of this and future presidential administrations, and examining our own profession's roots in white supremacy.

We must do better to dismantle systems of oppression and the legacy of white supremacy. This is a bandaid to a much larger wound that needs to be healed on a deeper level.

Today I'm here to say the executive order signed by Trump regarding "safe policing" is simply a band-aid on a bullet hole that will only perpetuate a system of racism and oppression. Bringing in social workers to "fix" the broken police system doesn't magically heal our broken judicial system as a whole. In fact, social work, in itself, was built on racism; wealthy, white women are the founders of social work. Child protective services, foster care, and even the diagnostic statistical manual required for care in our health system, are merely a branch of the government system built on the same foundation of perpetual racism that we see in the police force. It can be seen when studying government funded social services that black mothers are more likely to be separated from their kids, for offenses DEFINED by the social workers who are meant to protect them, though trained through a field built on prejudice. By bringing more social workers into a failing system, we are simply adding more agents meant to uphold a system that DOES NOT WORK. We must, and I don't take this lightly, DISMANTLE INSTITUTIONAL RACISM. Burn it down, if you will. Start over. And I don't just mean our police force - my career, and the field of social work (which flaunts acceptance through a focus of micro-level interventions for minorities, while dismissing macro and institutionalized systems of oppression) must be dismantled. Lastly, as a paying member of the @naswsocialworkers : your post of Frump signing the executive order and silence in issuing a statement condemning this order IS DEAFENING. You do not represent all social workers and will hear our overwhelming support to #defundthepolice

The Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safer Communities does not get to the issue! The order calls for more police funding and technology without acknowledging how racism gave birth to and is interwoven in law enforcement. Nothing in this order suggests that real action to keep communities of color safe and alive will be implemented. The government is leaving it up to the government to police the police! Furthermore, the order does not address the systemic racism that exists within the field of social work itself or how it will work to end it's oppressive practices. This is not in line with the support of Black lives!

We need to look inward and look at the white supremacy currently entrenched in social work and make changes without our profession before we can be an example to others. And never should this example include working as a part of racist systems of policing that do harm.

As a MSW I am fundamentally opposed to the concept of involving social workers in the prison industrial complex. Institutionalized racism within systems of law enforcement cannot be solved by adding social workers in. The harm caused by these systems can only be repaired by abolishing the prison industrial complex.

I am an incoming MSW student after working in the field for 2 years, and this is not something I want to align with. We need to defund the structures producing inequality for the communitiesnwe serve, NOT put social workers under the domain of these violent and exploitative structures.

The NASW's stance to support any type of policing is unacceptable. There needs to be a complete dismantling of the systems that uphold racism and violence, and social workers need to work in creating new and equitable systems - not be a part of the old ones!

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has chosen empty statements and power-grabbing for our profession over showing up with authenticity and accountability for Black lives. Our loyalty to working towards collective liberation must outweigh our loyalty to any professional identity. We need to move towards transformation beyond what being embedded in state systems can provide, and social workers need to start orienting ourselves to that now... And instead, the NASW is doubling down on social work's long and painful history of perpetrating and enforcing state violence.

I am against the NASW using social workers as part of the broken policing system.

Defund the police, end social work/police partnership. Black lives matter!

There is no such thing as safe policing! NASW needs to do better!

As a MSW and soon to be county worker, we as Social Workers need to rethink and create new systems to work with our clients. Jumping in to a racists police system as “fixers” is not the way we need to go about this. NASW has a duty to uphold our values and commit to ending racism, instead of advocating to include social workers in the very system that perpetuates it.

I'm appalled that this would be the NASWs stance.

WI Social Worker

Social work as a system enacts violence on Black people, Indigenous people and other People or Color. We must abolish the police, abolish prisons, and work towards restructuring all systems so as to place Black people, Indigenous people, people of color and the LGBTQ community at the center of service.