A conversation about the role of social workers organizing for justice in the so-called child welfare system.
Social work, historically and today, has been deeply embedded in systems of carceral control. With social work's legacy of ties to policing and oppressive family regulation through the child welfare system, the social work community is actively imagining and working towards a social work rooted in abolition, turning to traditions of resistance that also characterize its history. This webinar is a third in a series on Abolitionist Social Work organized by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAAASW) in partnership with Haymarket Books, challenging carceral social work through the development and practice of an abolitionist social work.
The Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAAASW) is a group of social workers from different parts of the U.S. building a year-long initiative to support abolitionist work in the field of social work. The initiative includes ongoing political education, research, knowledge generation around carceral and abolition social work, developing an online hub of abolitionist social work resources, and broader organizing and advocacy efforts to build abolitionist ideas and practices into social work.
Speakers:
Halimah Washington is a Black mama and social justice activist/advocate from New York City. Halimah has over 15 years of experience in human services and has made it her mission to be a social change agent. She has been action oriented, lobbying in Albany as an activist and advocate fighting for criminal justice reform, reproductive justice, education reform, fair and affordable housing and HIV/AIDS-related issues. Halimah is a Columbia University Beyond the Bars Fellow and NYC Department of Health Birth Justice Defender.
Joyce McMillan is a thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, and educator. Her mission is to remove systemic barriers in communities of color by bringing awareness to the racial disparities in systems where people of color are disproportionately affected. Joyce believes before change occurs the conversation about systemic oppression that creates poverty, and feeds people of color into systems must happen on all levels consistently. She completed a restorative certificate program at the New School and says change will not happen independently of healing. Her ultimate goal is to abolish systems of harm while creating concrete community resources. Joyce is the founder and Executive Director of JMacForFamilies, a 501 3 c she founded to support families.
MJ (Maleeka Jihad) is the Director of the MJ Consulting Firm, an Agency focused on dismantling systemic racism in the child welfare system through education, advocacy and policy reform. She is the CEO and Co-creator of EC3 (Emic Cultural Consultants Collective), where she specializes in organizational and individual transformational work with structural racism. As an adjunct faculty member at the Graduate School of Social Work with the University of Denver, she teaches race, privilege, social justice and law courses.
Michelle Grier (she/her) is a social justice worker and Black feminist committed to liberatory healing practices. She is a social worker, with over 10 years of experience, learning from and providing support to young people in schools and nonprofits. Her current commitments are focused on amplifying the mandates and messages of BIPOC youth survivors of racial and gender-based violence. She is a member of NAASW.
This event is sponsored by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/t2_LKmSz0Iw
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
May 19, 2021
Organizing for Power: Building a 21st Century Labor Movement in Boston
Join Avi Chomsky and Steve Stiffler as they discuss their new book, Organizing for Power, with Eric Loomis.
Boston 's economy has become defined by a disconcerting trend that has intensified throughout much of the United States since the 2008 recession. Economic growth now delivers remarkably few benefits to large sectors of the working class -- a phenomenon that is particularly severe for immigrants, people of color, and women. Organizing for Power explores this nation-wide phenomenon of "unshared growth" by focusing on Boston, a city that is famously liberal, relatively wealthy, and increasingly difficult for working people (who service the city 's needs) to actually live in.
Organizing for Power is the only comprehensive analysis of labor and popular mobilizing in Boston today, the volume contributes to a growing body of academic and popular literature that examines urban America, racial and economic inequality, labor and immigration, and the right-wing assault on working people.
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Speakers:
Steve Striffler is the Director of the Labor Resource Center at UMass Boston and author of Solidarity: Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights.
Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She is the author of numerous books; and has been active in Latin America solidarity and immigrants’ rights movements for several decades.
Erik Loomis is associate professor of history at the University of Rhode Island. His latest book is A History of America in Ten Strikes, published by The New Press in 2018.
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Order a copy of Organizing for Power: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1559-organizing-for-power
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/hs6WMuzwmzA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 20, 2021
Revolutions Book Launch with Michael Löwy
Join Michael Löwy, Marianela D’Aprile, and Aline Klein for a multi-media discussion of Löwy’s new book, Revolutions.
Michael Löwy’s Revolutions presents a startling visual documentation of a wide range of seminal revolutionary events, from the Paris Commune of 1872 through to the Zapatista uprising of the mid-1990s. The immediacy and dynamism of the book’s images tells the story of these upheavals in a way that texts rarely can, offering a rare glimpse of these complex and messy events and the real human beings who drove them.
This celebration of the book’s release will showcase dozens of these stirring photos as the participants discuss what the images tell us about their moments, and how today’s socialist movement can draw lessons from the revolutionary struggles of the past.
Get a copy of Revolutions here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1476-revolutions
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Speakers:
Marianela D’Aprile is a writer in Chicago. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Committee.
Aline Klein is on the editorial board of Jacobin Brasil and is an activist in the Party for Socialism and Freedom (PSOL).
Michael Löwy is emeritus research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). He is the author of numerous books, including Revolutions; On Changing the World; the Politics of Combined and Uneven Development; and the War of the Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America; Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History.”
Todd Chretien (moderator) is an organizer, author, translator, and high school Spanish teacher. He has contributed to several books, including Socialist Strategy and Electoral Politics, and is editor of Eyewitnesses to the Russian Revolution.
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/-gdjTK7V2f0
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 21, 2021
The Global Fight for Abortion Rights: Lessons from Argentina and Ireland
Join us for a conversation about the global struggle for abortion rights featuring lessons from Argentina and Ireland.
In recent years, global movements for abortion rights have made incredible breakthroughs. In late 2020, feminists in Argentina won their decades-long fight to legalize abortion. In 2018, Ireland’s victorious movement to repeal the 8th amendment led to a historic referendum vote that marked an enormous shift in public support for safe, legal abortion.
In the decades following the landmark 1973 Roe V. Wade decision, the abortion rights movement in the United States has endured a wave of setbacks and sustained conservative backlash. Following years of clinic closures and restrictive state laws, an estimated 11 million people seeking abortion in the US now live more than one hour’s drive from an abortion clinic. Abortion activists fear that the political landscape is heading toward a “post-Roe America”.
What lessons can we learn from the global struggle to inspire us to build a fighting movement in the U.S. to defend Roe and assure abortion access to all who need one?
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Speakers:
Clare Daly is an independent member of the European Parliament elected from Dublin Ireland, former member of the Irish Parliament and mover of multiple pieces of legislation for Abortion Rights in Ireland, and long standing activist on the issue.
Sarah Leonard is the publisher of Lux, and a member of its editorial collective. She is a contributing editor to Dissent and The Nation.
Camila Valle is an editor, translator, and writer in New York. She is a member of NYC for Abortion Rights.
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This event is being sponsored by Lux Magazine, Chicago for Abortion Rights, Chicago Abortion Fund, Chicago DSA Socialist Feminist Working Group and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/q-d84uG_i7E
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 24, 2021
America on Fire w/ Elizabeth Hinton & Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Join Elizabeth Hinton and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor for a conversation on themes from Hinton's new book, America on Fire.
From one of our top historians, American on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s is a groundbreaking story of policing and “riots” that shatters our understanding of the post–civil rights era.
What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors—and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past.
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Elizabeth Hinton is associate professor of history and African American studies at Yale University and a professor of law at Yale Law School. The author of America on Fire and From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes and speaks on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States. She is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation and editor of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Her third book, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, published in 2019 by University of North Carolina Press, was a finalist for a National Book Award for nonfiction, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History.
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To support our partnering indie bookstore, pre-order your signed copy here: https://www.midtownscholar.com/preorders/america-on-fire-signed
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This event is co-sponsored by Liveright Publishing, Midtown Scholar Bookstore and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/p3njQGGxK_g
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 25, 2021
Border Abolition Now w/ Harsha Walia, Gargi Bhattacharyya, & Maya Goodfellow
Harsha Walia, Gargi Bhattacharyya and Maya Goodfellow discuss the global migration crisis, racial capitalism, and the ascendant far-right.
How do borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist rule?
Amidst a global pandemic, governments around the world have accelerated border closings, imposed more barriers to asylum seekers, and expanded immigrant detention. In Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change generating mass dispossession worldwide.
Join Harsha Walia, Maya Goodfellow and Gargi Bhattacharyya for a discussion about this timely book.
UK readers, purchase Border and Rule here: https://housmans.com/product/border-and-rule-global-migration-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-racist-nationalism/
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Speakers:
Gargi Bhattacharyya is one of the UK's leading scholars on race and capitalism. She is the author of Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2018), Dangerous Brown Men (2008), Traffick (2005) and co-author of Empire's Endgame (2020).
Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and, most recently, Border and Rule. Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee.
Maya Goodfellow is a Research Fellow at SPERI, University of Sheffield. She is also a regular broadcast commentator and writer, having written for the New York Times and the Guardian, among others. Maya is the author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats (2020).
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This event is sponsored by Housmans Bookshop and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/dSETYvreYZI
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 26, 2021
Black Lives Matter at School: Iowa Edition
Education activists Lisa Covington, Jesse Hagopian, Denisha Jones, Lucket Kiche, and Matè Muhammad, in conversation about the struggle against systemic racism in schools, how we can win real educational justice and other lessons from Black Lives Matter at School organizing in Iowa and beyond.
Order your copy of Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice from Prairie Lights Bookstore here: https://www.prairielightsbooks.com/book/9781642592702
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Speakers:
Matè Muhammad is an activist, organizer and cultural worker from Des Moines, IA. Matè is a passionate writer, graffiti artist and musician and began his activism in 2014 after the tragic police murder of Michael Brown. In 2019 Matè created @theblackartivist - a revolutionary creative vehicle - and in 2020 Matè co-founded the Des Moines Black Liberation Movement of which he is currently the Field Operations Director.
Lucket Kiche (He/They) is a Black, Queer, Non-Binary Transman teaching in the Iowa City Community School District. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, he came to Iowa City as an infant and has yet to leave. He spends time serving as an At-Large Board member for Iowa City Pride. As an educator, Lucket pushes and advocates for the equitable treatment of all minorities and strives to teach about as many intersectionalities that time will allow. They also continue to remind others that we can no longer be complacent with a system that has superficial protections for marginalized people.
Denisha Jones is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and Director of the Art of Teaching, graduate teacher education program, at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School.
Jesse Hagopian is a member of the national Black Lives Matter at School steering committee and teaches Ethnic Studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is a co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives.
Lisa Covington, M.A. is a youth development professional, curriculum developer and PhD Candidate at The University of Iowa studying Sociology of Education, Digital Humanities and African American Studies. In 2020, Lisa received the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Award from the Iowa Department of Human Rights. As the Director of the Ethnic Studies Leadership Academy in Iowa City, Lisa works with Sankofa Outreach Connection to provide an educational leadership program for African American girls to learn Black history and advocacy strategies through developing competencies in digital humanities, social sciences and the arts. Lisa also works with teachers across the state through Black Lives Matter at School-Iowa.
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This event is sponsored by Prairie Lights Bookstore, Black Lives Matter at School-Iowa and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/QIALE2cLpb0
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
