But my favorite part?

When students totally blow me away with their commitment to social change, creativity in pursuit of justice, and all-around awesomeness.

In all fairness, this post is not about my students. But I feel like I can claim them just a little bit, because I worked with them in my capacity as an advocate, advising them on their project and connecting them to policymakers and allies.

And because, if I’m really, really lucky, they might end up in one of my classes one day.

I’m thrilled that this group received the national Influencing State Policy award. They completely deserve it. They absolutely did influence state policy, defusing the anti-immigrant argument that, somehow, attacking immigrant kids helps other college students. Their advocacy, including this video and the petition drive that garnered support from college students around the state, shored up Senate supporters of Kansas’ current instate tuition policy and injected a new theme into the media coverage of the repeal debate, both critical to the ultimate defeat of the attempted repeal.

What I love most, though, is that these students not only made an impact on state policy (in a truly beautiful way). They also demonstrated, for other students and would-be activists, that such influence is within reach and that it can be really fun, too.

I always cry at the end of the video, when this powerful collection of students says, essentially, “Hey, when you’re hating on hard-working immigrant students, you don’t speak for me.”

I am so glad that they found their voice.

And I can’t wait to hear what they say next.

I love, love, love that the Foundation understands that organized constituencies are our most vital resource, and that the Fellows are encouraged to think critically about how their organizations can meaningfully connect with those they serve, so that, together, they can create the future we so desperately need.

There’s something incredibly hopeful about starting an intense discussion about nonprofit advocacy with a focus on those we serve–and how we can win victories for justice only by releasing their full participation and their latent power. We start with strategies and the tactics that should flow from them, and think about how to organize so that those tactics work. Only after we’ve built plans to engage our grassroots do we turn to legislative advocacy and message development and even organizational capacity-building.

It’s “begin where our clients are”, translated for macro practice and supported by Foundation resources. And that’s pretty awesome.

But it’s one particular moment from last year’s grassroots organizing session that reverberated in my mind during these past several days, making it clear that it had a tremendous effect on me.

And so I’m repeating it here, and figuring out how I might weave it into my work with social service organizations trying to develop grassroots strategies, and with social workers who are struggling to understand why power is so essential to the realization of our visions, and how we can not only get comfortable with it, but, indeed, embrace it and its pursuit.

The trainer was Rudy Lopez, from the Center for Community Change, and the exercise was this:

Rudy had us close our eyes and think about the one person in our lives that we care about the most–the person whom we most can’t stand to think about being harmed. (This is part of the reason that this exchange sticks in my mind, I think, because I immediately thought about my oldest son, and it’s kind of odd that he’d so quickly come to mind, more than my other kids.) He then prompted us to think about something bad happening to that person, which, for me and for others, was a terribly difficult assignment, even for a few hypothetical seconds.

And then the kicker:

Rudy asked us to imagine that we had the power to stop that pain from happening to the special person in our minds. What would we do with that power?

It sounds simple, I know, but what ran through my mind instantly was this, “I need that power, to keep Sam safe.”

And what I didn’t realize, I guess, without the advantage of months of mental simmering, was that this moment catapulted me into not just being comfortable with power but really craving it, for the “right” reason of wanting to help someone else. Yes, it’s on a very personal level, and, yes, maybe it’s easier to relate when it’s a child you love instead of a community of strangers…but maybe not.

The next step, of course, is to build relationships so that we love, even deeply, beyond our more intimate circles. Then, we’ll reach for the power that would let us protect and serve and support them, too.

Because, the truth is, there is real pain threatening those we love, every day.

And we seldom have the power we need to do much about it.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

One fairly influential individual

There are a lot of sort of pop psychology, bumper sticker motivationals out there about the difference that one individual can make…they all sort of run together for me, but you know what I mean, right?

Probably the best known is attributed to Helen Keller, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

Beautiful, right? And capable of making me feel guilty when I’m, say, on my way to the fabric store instead of a rally.

The belief in the power of the individual is very much rooted in our culture, but much less frequently seen in how we build capacity for advocacy and social change.

Bet you never thought about that while stopped behind someone at a red light, hunh?

See, when it comes to how we invest in building power to make a difference, we tend to focus almost exclusively on networks of people, on the connections that bind us together, and on how we create structures that leverage those relationships for power.

Sure, it’s obvious that no social movements are the sole work of any individual, even those that are commonly associated with one. But isn’t it also just as true that single individuals do, perhaps not as often as we would wish, change the course of history in amazing ways?

So why is the organization, or the community, most often our focal unit, when we think about what we need to develop in order to reach our goals? Why do we sometimes sort of gloss over the individuals who populate those entities, as though they are somehow replaceable, even when history so clearly teaches us otherwise?

I’ve been particularly thinking about this over the past couple of weeks because of the work that I do with The Sunflower Foundation and its Advocacy Fellows initiative. The initiative is somewhat distinct, particularly in the philanthropic world, because it revolves around advocacy, specifically, rather than a more diffuse sense of nonprofit leadership, and yet, unlike many other advocacy capacity-building efforts, individual advocates are clearly the emphasis.

The theory of change animating the Advocacy Fellowship is this: “the Sunflower Foundation believes that increasing the number of nonprofit health leaders who advocate on behalf of their constituents informs public policy and leads to real solutions for those in need. By becoming involved in advocacy, nonprofit leaders are advancing their causes, building public trust, and helping the people they serve.”

Notably missing, then, is discussion about the organizations in which these individuals work (indeed, they fairly frequently move organizations during the Fellowship or quickly following it) or about the sector as a whole. Instead, the idea is to find promising people, who happen to be working in nonprofit health organizations, and to work intensively with them to develop the knowledge, skills, and, yes, relationships they need to be effective advocates themselves. They are the ones held accountable for moving their work forward, and they are seen as the keys to advancing a vision of a healthy Kansas.

We’re still very much in the early stages of evaluation, but the indications at this point are, really, that the model works–that, no, their organizations do not necessarily greatly increase their advocacy capacity, but they as individuals do, and that that makes a difference. They are quoted more frequently in media accounts of related policy debates, they engage in those debates more often and with more influence, they are more respected by a larger circle of potential targets and allies, and they are increasingly sophisticated and outspoken in their advocacy.

It’s a bit of a gamble, this business of investing in individuals. We feel safer, sometimes, with organizations, because of the law of averages, but those same “averaging” tendencies can dilute and stall the radical message we want to convey: that, in the end, justice hinges on you (and me).

Here’s to sparking movements, one soul at a time.

Even though I often have to beg off when someone–hairdressers, or my kids’ teachers, or even another mom at the park–thinks that I can help with a psychological problem when I mention that I’m a social worker (I’m completely unqualified to provide counseling, and so I have to add the disclaimer, “not that kind of social worker,” and make a referral), I still think in clinical terms sometimes.

And, you know, working in public policy, and with elected officials, that’s sometimes really helpful.

Like this year, in my state legislative advocacy, I’ve been thinking a lot about psychopathology, or at least what I know of it, and about addictions and recovery.

And I’ve been thinking about the truism that, sometimes, our clients have to “hit bottom” before there’s enough incentive to change, and that crises can be powerful motivators for healing.

To me, that sounds a lot like where we are in our movement-building this year.

It’s hard to imagine things being much worse (although, just like in clinical social work, I’m hesitant to claim that they couldn’t be!): class sizes in public schools are too big, community mental health centers are turning people away, and public assistance offices are closing around the state.

We face the possibility of several lawsuits related to the actions of last year’s legislature–in the areas of reproductive rights and voting rights, most likely–and defending those will take even more money from the state’s coffers. It’s getting harder to be a student, or a woman, or an immigrant in our state, and there’s a collective sense of looking over one’s shoulder to see who will be the next target.

Except.

Just like when faced with a client whose life is crumbling around herself, I see promising signs of renewal.

I’m getting more emails from social service organizations with questions about how they can advocate. A workshop for agencies trying to transform themselves into agents for social change attracted more interest than they could accommodate. More letters to the editor decrying the program cuts are popping up in the papers. A community meeting about the closing of a local welfare office was standing-room only. Our local coalition against anti-immigrant legislation is growing statewide, with organizing cells taking off in communities large and small.

Just like someone dealing with his/her own personal demons, these first steps are only that–tentative, sometimes conflicted, often inadequate.

There will be more dark days.

But if the first step is recognizing that there’s a problem, we’re on the path to healing.

Our struggles have names, and we have a shared hope that comes from having companions on a difficult journey.

We may be at the bottom, or at least near it, but we’re not down here alone.

And if those with whom social workers have the honor to work, every day, can build from their strengths to best their own battles, then we can, too.

Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really committed advocates–super smart and dedicated people who are working extremely hard to protect their clients and the programs that serve them, in a climate of drastic budget cuts and an eroding social contract.

It’s soul-sucking work, and we’re losing many, many more battles than we win.

Lately, though, some of us have felt like we’re really fighting the wrong battle. Or, more accurately, battles.

It’s not just the old “divide and conquer” problem–the fact that social service advocates are vulnerable to intra-skirmishes that distract us from the real enemies and make it easier for those same opponents to play us against each other.

It’s also that we deliberately avoid taking on the real struggles, and even sometimes miss noticing them altogether, because we’re trying to contain debates that we can really only hope to dominate if we act collectively.

Here’s how it looks in real life:

In Kansas, advocates spent all last year fighting against budget cuts in different program areas–mental health, public education, child welfare, senior services. And all year, the Governor and some legislative leaders hinted that their sights were really set on a policy battle far larger and more fundamental to our state’s well-being: the revenue foundation that shores up (or doesn’t) all of those programs and far more. For the most part, they have not encountered much effectively organized opposition. From my conversations with at least some advocates, it seems that many hoped that not antagonizing the Administration on that issue would, somehow, preserve some access and influence that they could use to defend their work and serve their clients.

So, in essence, we’re sitting on the sidelines while our fates–for the next several years–are decided.

Because, of course, if the Governor and his allies are successful in eliminating the state income tax, they won’t need to legitimate their budget-slashing goals at all: there quite literally won’t be enough money to fund any of these programs, and so advocates will be fighting over crumbs.

If the failure to build a sustained, strategic, progressive coalition to take on these more global, structural issues was just a logistical one (getting people together across distance), or just jurisdictional (getting people to set aside their competition with each other), or even just a problem of capacity (people not having enough resources to take on a fight this big), then I feel like we’d know better how to start addressing it.

After all, those are the kinds of challenges that we overcome in our organizing every day.

But the real reason that building this kind of “big tent” is so hard, I think, is that too many awesome advocates think it’s a bad idea–that taking on these common concerns dilutes their influence and compromises their positions. And so we have to overcome not just inertia but entrenched resistance, and we’ve got to do it without being able to offer any guarantees that their concerns aren’t, in fact, totally well-founded: this Administration absolutely does box out those who oppose them.

But advocacy isn’t about tallying the numbers of wins v. losses.

It’s about how we can build movements that shape how people see themselves, and their worlds, and about how we can change even the debates about the policy challenges we confront. It’s about being in the arena, even if we emerge somewhat bloodied.

And so we can’t afford to sit out the really, really big fights, and we can’t presume that going it alone is ever safer.

There are some battlefields on which we just have to be willing to make a stand.

And there is solace in solidarity.

Because this one is even unpopular with my own husband, who’s rather notorious for being SUPER easy to get along with (convenient, hunh?).

I am completely okay with paying more taxes.

I’ve actually told a financial advisor that I don’t appreciate his advice about how to shift investments to minimize our tax “burden”. I once delayed buying clothes for my daughter until after the sales tax holiday had ended. And I got into a long discussion with my oldest son in the Lego aisle of the toy store about why sales taxes are included in the total cost of the purchase, and why we have to account for that in deciding how big of a set we can get for his birthday.

This year, with all of the discussion in the Kansas Legislature about eliminating the income tax and “replacing” it with an increased sales tax, I’ve only increased my resolve about the inadequacy about my current tax rate. To me, paying taxes is an investment in the kind of society I couldn’t hope to buy for myself–safe roads, good schools, wonderful libraries, vibrant public parks–and also a reflection of the success my family didn’t necessarily earn but somehow still enjoys.

Because, in a truly progressive tax system, paying more taxes should be a mark of achievement.

How is that a burden?

And my final reason for being totally okay with my tax responsibilities? It’s a sort of extra license to complain, I guess. I certainly don’t agree that only those who are net taxpayers have a right to participate in collective governance–democracy shouldn’t be ‘pay-to-play’–but I do feel quite justified in articulating my opinions about how public funds are spent, because some of those public funds are mine. How would I have time to advocate effectively if I was busy trying to find ways to weasel out of my financial obligations to the commons? And, yes, it does feel like weaseling to me.

Of course I wish that I had more disposable income.

I just don’t wish that nearly strongly enough to walk away from my principled belief that there are many goods in our society that would not be nearly so “good” if not shared in common.

I’m proud to play a part, albeit smaller than I wish, in funding that commons.

So, not in my name, Kansas Legislature. Not in my name.

On a typically hot El Paso day, I sat across the table from a middle-aged man and his 14-year-old son. About a month before, they’d traveled from their home in northern Mexico, crossed the border without documents, and rung the bell at our house of hospitality. Like most guests, they’d come with hopes—soon disappointed—of finding day work. Beds in the men’s dorm were always in high demand, and the pair had already stayed past the two weeks we usually offered to guests who, arguably, had more opportunities than single women or families with young children. I explained the house’s time and space pressures, and they laid out theirs: They were stuck. There were no jobs to speak of in their hometown, no way to pass the Texas or New Mexico highway checkpoints without identification, no eligibility to be or work in the U.S. with authorization even though there was, surely, demand for their cheap labor. “I know,” I blurted. “It’s the global economy!”

That was during my second stint working and living with newly-arrived immigrants, refugees, and asylum applicants at Annunciation House, a Catholic Worker-style organization started in the late 1970s when Central American refugees were fleeing civil war violence. In the eight years since my first year-long stay, I’d earned an MA in Latin American Studies, presented workshops on NAFTA, participated in foreign factory workers’ labor campaigns, organized against the Iraq War, traveled to 12 developing countries, and written grant proposals for social and legal services for farmworkers and other immigrants—all attempts to learn about and effect structural change, and all propelled by memories of my neighbors on the border. I’d also worked as a paralegal, coordinator of social services for migrant farmworkers, and tutor. On good days, I hoped the folks I was working with and I were making a dent in temporary problems or, better yet, systemic injustice. On bad days, I pondered what I preferred crying about at the end of the day: the individual I felt I couldn’t help enough, or the latest in-fighting at a coalition meeting?

When I belatedly began to consider an MSW, I was troubled to learn that many programs require students to choose one concentration: either macro/indirect/administrative/community practice, or micro/direct/clinical practice. Huh? What appealed to me about social work was precisely its person- in-environment perspective and seeming appreciation for multiple and simultaneous forms of contemplation and action.

As a student, I discovered (and undoubtedly helped perpetuate) the stereotypes, born of desperation for self-definition, that can exist between “our” type of social worker and “the other.” Community students derided their clinical counterparts as apolitical, touchy-feely, diagnosing, wanna-be psychologists. I heard less the other way around, but if pressed, could snarkily characterize community practitioners as self-righteous, intellectualizing policy wonks with questionable empathic skills. The gravitation toward specialization in social work education and practice I saw seemed to reinforce the unfortunate bifurcation of the field. Though more of a community practice person myself, I sought out my sympathetic academic dean to help me design more of a mix of classes than ordinarily prescribed under our school’s track system. I’m glad for the broadened education this allowed me.

But still, the divisions and attendant dilemmas in social work practice remain: How best to advance social justice? Is social change the purview and prerogative of only macro-level interventions? I try to remember why returning to Annunciation House when I did was appealing to me. Much of the daily work there consisted of proverbial Band-Aid activities: putting on meals, stocking a clothing bank, ushering people to a medical clinic—often providing swift relief of immediate needs, but not exactly uprooting the ills of the global economy. Yet our practice of radical hospitality felt transformative. And I have found direct work with individuals elsewhere to also be consistent with my vision of social justice.

Why? First, I think of how I learned to be with people at Annunciation House. It was based on personalism, the belief that we each have a responsibility for one another’s well-being—not as “service providers” and “clients” who dispense or receive solutions—but as people, cognizant of our various privileged and marginalized identities, who make an attempt at solidarity, communitarianism, and real relationship. In one of his Easy Essays, Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin made the common critique that social workers learn how to help people adjust to their environment, but not how to change it. “Social workers must become social-minded before they can be critics of the existing environment and free creative agents of the new environment.” In houses of hospitality, he said, social workers “can acquire the art of human contacts and the… understanding of social forces” that allow them to build with others a new society.

I think that’s what happened my first year on the border, and my return signaled that once was not enough. Certainly, houses of hospitality and other direct service settings are not the only training ground for social-mindedness. But for me, no book, course, theory, organization, or campaign has ever been as consistently informative, radicalizing, grounding, or exacting of accountability as sharing a roof with people whose experiences testify to the countless ways we say some human lives are more important than others. I think of Gaspar, Tatiana, and Concha when I act, and when I don’t.

Also, I’ve found that while it’s obvious that the personal is political—the plight of an out-of-work father and son originates in systems much larger than a single family—we sometimes overlook that the political is personal. Poverty, war, crime, lack of access to health care and education are not only policy issues, but also causes of crippling personal depression, anxiety, and trauma. Recent research indicates that microaggressions—subtle verbal, nonverbal, and environmental communications that insult and invalidate members of oppressed groups—may be more harmful than overt acts of discrimination and hate. If oppression operates at ideological, institutionalized, interpersonal, and internalized levels, shouldn’t there also be four I’s of social justice?

Consider a woman I worked with who spent nearly a year in immigration detention following a false criminal accusation. She had been sexually, physically, and psychologically abused by family members and intimate partners since she was a child. We filled out a culturagram together, an assessment tool used to explore aspects of a person’s background and identity. One square asked about experiences of abuse and trauma. To my surprise, before any mention of incest or domestic violence, the client wrote that the trauma she had was “not being free” because she was undocumented. Under experiences of oppression, she listed persecution by Immigration and said, “For this reason, we need an amnesty.” Clearly, she knew how the politics of immigration, institutionalized sexism, racism, and xenophobia, and interpersonal violence had oppressed her, and identified changes she wanted to make, from personal relationships to involvement in immigrant rights organizations. But she also dealt with a great deal of internalized shame and self-loathing. In the time I knew her, she grew to love herself more, which helped her feel personally empowered, able to secure a visa for crime victims that will allow her to legalize and bring her three sons to join her, and able—I have no doubt—to positively affect her community. Doesn’t every member of “the social” deserve that kind of justice?

Indeed, in our criticism of direct services and clinical interventions as superficial or soft, I think we inadvertently dismiss the real, felt, multilevel needs of people; wrongly assume that they don’t understand how systems work (when if fact, they’re often experts); or think micro-level work can’t be political (when, in fact, it’s often a necessary precursor to wider change). We know that unexamined privilege, among other ills, can make direct services insulting and paternalistic. But I think closing the doors and telling people to come back for a meal only after NAFTA’s been repealed or immigration policy is reformed would be no less presumptuous or demeaning. Absolutely we should ask why the poor have no food and should eliminate root causes of hunger. But justice should include the right to eat today.

And there are reasons for offering a meal beyond meeting a physical need. At the first Occupy Denver event I went to, I met a man who said he’d been homeless for a long time, moving from one state to another as he was able to. He’d recently arrived in Colorado and had started sharing a tent on the capitol lawn with other demonstrators. He believed in the multipronged movement for economic justice, but he was most excited about the newfound company of people who cared about his cause and cared about him. “I’ve had a hard time for a lot of months,” he told me. “But the last few weeks have been so much better.”

Sometimes when I imagine what the world will be like after all just revolutions, I think of what will not have changed. People will still die—not from preventable disease, human-wrought violence, or unsafe work, but they’ll die nonetheless. People will have decent homes, time off work, and material support to grieve their losses with dignity, but there will still be losses, inevitable and heartbreaking. We will still have an urgent need to belong to each other. I believe social work on any level that honors this reality has the best potential to achieve social justice.