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CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
This chapter supports Module 1 in which you will:
- Understand what you’ll be doing in the course and why and
- Connect work to be done this semester with Code of Ethics responsibilities.
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Hello! And here we go! You might be wondering about this course and how we’re going to connect up the different ideas and concepts in a comprehensive way. Let me do a little dot-to-dot for us.
This course supports your learning for three of the nine required Council on Social Work Education competencies. They are:
- Competency 2: Advance Human Rights and Social, Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice
- Competency 3: Engage Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) in Practice
- Competency 5: Engage in Policy Practice
And, Leadership 2 has been assigned certain outcomes. By the end of the semester, based on what you’ve learned and done in this course, you should be able to:
- Apply a policy analysis process of building a rationale, collecting and synthesizing information, and presenting conclusions in a logical way.
- Evaluate policies to see whether and how they advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice.
- Advocate for policies informed by the points of view of those who are most directly harmed by racist policies and systems of oppression.
Okay, then. What does all this have to do with voting rights, registration, and engagement and running for office? Well, we need to have topics that provide us focus and serve as backdrops or frameworks where you can try out all the things — the competencies, the learning outcomes, etc., etc. I’ve chosen voting and running for office as the topics. Within and through each, you will analyze policy and build a rationale, advocate for policies that advance human rights and social, economic and environmental justice, and advocate for policies informed by people living the life who are most harmed by the current set up. (Remember — the system is not broken. It’s working just as it was intended to.) As you do those things, you’ll gain traction in the competency areas.
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That all said, in this module, we begin. Barsky (a great guy and you can catch more of his writing in The New Social Worker – free and online) helps us see how participating in electoral politics aligns with our values and requires us to exercise critical thinking and other social work skills. Lane and Pritzker give us a primer on voter engagement including dips into history (deep past and more recent), different ways of thinking about voting rights (as a right, a privilege, or a responsibility), how voter registration and voting is different depending on the state you’re in, and many, many resources that I think you will find useful this semester. I am pretty sure you’ll come back to this chapter more than once because it offers so much guidance and explanation.
Lane and Pritzker set you up for the Voting is Social Work campaign. Shannon Lane is very involved in Voting Is Social Work (VISW), no surprise. We’ll use VISW ideas and materials for the first big project of the semester. Part of the reason I chose Lane and Pritzker’s chapter and VISW materials is to show you that a) there are people (social workers!) doing good work and we can join efforts with them — this is not a solo sport; and b) we don’t need to recreate the wheel — in fact, that would be a waste of our time.
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Materials in this chapter include:
- Barsky, A. (2020). Ethics alive! elections in light of social work values. The New Social Worker. https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/ethics-articles/elections-social-work-values/
- Lane, S. & Pritzker, S. (2018). Political Social Work. Springer Publishing. Chapter 8 – Planning the political intervention: Voter engagement. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-68588-5_8.pdf
- Voting is Social Work website https://votingissocialwork.org/ You’ll use this throughout the first half of the course and for assignments.
- Read The Campaign under “About” and then this flyer: https://votingissocialwork.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2468/2021/05/Voting-is-Social-Work-Call-to-Action-Jan-2022.pdf
