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

This order is out of step with social work values.

The executive order "Safe Policing for Safe Communities" is a superficial and insubstantive order that does not adequately address the deeply troubling issue of systemic racism and police brutality against the black community. We have to do better than that.

We need to stand together as social workers and call for the defunding of police departments, investment in community wellbeing, and abolition of the prison industrial complex. AM, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration 2020 BSW, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work 2016

Dismantle white supremacy in social work!

Let’s do better!!!

This is against our ethics!

Please don't make social workers accomplices to - or responsible for reining in - the police. Besides the obvious issues of power dynamics this would bring up, further integrating social work as a profession with oppressive systems is just wrapping centuries of devastation in the thinnest fluffy blanket and calling it fixed. Follow SW ethics: listen to what the most affected communities are saying, & follow their lead. Individual officers do not need chaperones or babysitters or more hours of being implored not to kill people by professionals who they are culturally conditioned to dismiss. Instead, the system of policing is beyond reform & needs to be replaced with community-led solutions that truly provide safety, accountability, & healing. Helping create those systems should be our role & focus as social workers.

I am a licensed social worker in Cincinnati, Ohio who stands behind Black Lives Matter and beloved on abolishing the police. Adding social workers to the police force will increase policing and not create the change we need to protect black and brown bodies. The NASW should stand behind groups working to create real change.

As a social worker, I am deeply against NASW sponsoring the Executive Order. As social workers we need to advocate for our communities and our communities do not need police!

I graduated with my MSW from the University of WA. We as social workers need to be working to dismantle the police, not become them. Thank you, Ellen

When I learn about the EO I was upset. I was reaching out to my other SW friends trying to find support for how upset I was. I'm extremely disappointed that NASW is supporting this. Defund the police! BLM!

Defund the police!

Defund the police! The police industrial system is working exactly as it was meant to and cannot be reformed. Social workers and the associations that represent them should be on the front lines of the fight to defund police, not endorsing the idea they can be reformed.

Social workers do not belong in police departments, instead of jump onboard as accomplices for paltry reform, the NASW needs to call for defunding and disbanding police departments in all of our communities across the US.

If a social worker is not on the side of BLM- run away, far away

As a MSW student in a program dedicated to Indigenous sovereignty and liberation, I am appalled at the NASW and their support of the Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities. It is our RESPONSIBILITY to dismantle the very systems that oppress our clients and I refuse to pander to police reform mentality. DEFUND the police. PAY SOCIAL WORKERS to do community based work. REVOKE your support of this EO and stand with the communities you claim to serve.

We need to defund the police not further out ourselves in their system.

I am a white social worker in PA and I fully agree with this! We should always be ready to stand up for our communities, and to remove our support from those who are doing them harm!

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Please listen to the community on this. It is clear what they want.