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

I will not sit on the sidelines while the organization that I pay to be part of stands complicit with white supremacist systems of racist oppression. We must do better.

Abolish white supremacy and systemic racism. This is the only answer possible and acceptable to centuries of oppression. It was already time to make a change many many years ago but today things will finally change. This is a revolution and I want to make sure I am on the right side of history. Let's make the world a better place. For today, for tomorrow, for future generations. In honor of the past. I'm with you and I will never shut up. Black Lives Matter ✊

Your white supremacist roots are showing NASW. Do better.

I'm very disappointed in the NASW, but not particularly surprised. I'm a retired social work faculty member.

I resent any indication that I would be entering this field to align with police.

I strongly believe in the abolition of prisons and policing and as a social worker refuse to align with such oppressors. We must fight to dismantle white supremacy, and state sanctioned violence on black and brown people. Defund the police.

Black Lives Matter. Defund the police.

I am beyond disgusted that the NASW would have such a tone deaf stance at a time like this. We must dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression, not work with them!

Defund the police. Fund schools. All Black Lives Matter. Angelo McClain is wrong.

We cannot become allies of injustice.

NASW has a responsibility to stand up for racial justice by condemning any efforts to integrate the field with police or increase the current involvement that the field already has with police. We should be moving towards building a mental health system that can be independent of police. Please listen to the many Black social workers who are calling for the field to dismantle its links to white supremacy and state sanctioned violence.

I am a social worker who stands for abolition of prisons and policing, and I call upon our profession to refuse to align with police departments, which perpetuate systemic oppression of black and brown people in particular. The community needs harm reduction services, not social control.

I stand with Social Workers against this idea of their being incorporated to the police departments. This is not the solution to issues of injustice and brutality in the police departments across this country,

I strongly oppose the position that we work with police forces to continue terrorizing communities.

Retired clinical social worker, I believe we need to defund the police and our military and reform, transform our agencies to create an effective social safety net for all of us in the United States!

As a Social Worker, I am dedicated to fighting systems of oppression and institutional racism. Policing community directly contradicts the code of ethics value of social justice. I believe social work should endorse abolition of policing.

Angelo McClain, I'm upset and disappointed with your recent decision to support the executive order on "Safe" Policing for Safe Communities. As demonstrations and revolutionaries across the country have been organizing and protesting in the streets in the recent weeks to demand that elected officials defund police and reject initiatives that merely seek to reform, you have instead chosen to not take those voices and community needs into account. Supporting initiatives that simply reform cops such as community policing DO NOT WORK, and they run contrary to the needs of the community and our clients. US police systems have broken the social contract as they continue to kill Black and Brown people and are rooted in racism and oppression. This social contract cannot be repaired. Right now I am asking, demanding, that you reconsider this position and instead support initiatives on the road to abolition--the only possible way we can ensure that our client's communities are safe. I'm asking you to demand that cities across the country Defund the police and reinvest those funds into social services, it's what social workers must do as we remain accountable to our clients. I am a recent graduate of UC Berkeley and am entering a field whose problematic history of oppression and racism is not lost on me. We must be a part of this moment and demand greater change. We must actively work towards dismantling white supremacy. It is time. Please don't take further steps back. You must publicly commit to ending racist systems and acknowledging the role social work holds in upholding these systems.

We are not with the police department.

The system in which we work is and always has been racist, and we cannot remain complicit.

As social workers we need to be the advocates against police brutality and the problem solvers of this problem. This can only be a reality when we start fighting the system which allows this corruption.