In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll cop to it right from the start: I was that student (in the front of the class, usually, which is probably even worse) rolling my eyes at some of the human development content in every practice/human behavior/child development class in my undergraduate social work education. My fellow instructors, you probably know the type–member of the Democratic Socialist Party, organizing a protest for just about everything, not totally grasping the intense privilege she enjoys in higher education?
I came, relatively quickly, to appreciate much of the clinical wisdom that seemed not-quite-radical-enough to me in those heady days before I actually did any practicing. Certainly I am glad that I had to learn how to listen actively, how to reframe, how to tap into people’s inherent motivations, how to identify hurt and accompany people through it.
In other words, I was (mostly) totally wrong, inexcusably impatient, and terribly naive.
However.
I never really bought into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and, unlike most of the rest of what I was so eager to gloss over, my skepticism when it comes to Maslow has only increased.
Because, really, I just don’t believe that we need shelter or employment, or even health or food, more than we need to feel that we belong, that we are respected, and that our lives have meaning.
My work, especially that which happens alongside people who are experiencing tremendous need in those first 2 or 3 tiers of the hierarchy, has only confirmed my sense that the pyramid is fairly paternalistic, and that people’s real search for ‘quality of life’ proceeds in a far different manner than this ladder would have us believe.
I see it in the individuals with severe mental illness who, despite insecurity in their housing and distance from their family members, root themselves in the community created at their community mental health center and find ways to creatively tell their stories in pursuit of greater justice.
I see it in the individuals experiencing homelessness, who, major needs in that bottom tier notwithstanding, tell me that their primary advocacy objective is to address stigma, because what hurts even more than being homeless is being hated for being homeless.
And I see it, and have seen it, over and over again in the individuals with significant challenges–big gaps, sometimes, in their ‘hierarchy of needs’, who only need to be asked to join with their peers and fight for their rights.
They aren’t waiting until they have enough to eat and a good place to live and a decent job.
They are craving, just like we all crave, an opportunity to earn respect and build community and experience purpose…
knowing that, in our society, those ‘higher order’ tiers can be the foundation from which the initial levels of the hierarchy are secured.
We–our profession, our society, our organizations–do ourselves and those we serve (none of whom, including myself, I’d really consider at Maslow’s ‘self-actualization’ level!) a great disservice when we assume that the best that we can collectively accomplish (empowerment and respect and purpose and community) is, quite visually, ‘beyond’ those to whom structures have denied the basics of life.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that food and shelter and clothing aren’t important. Or that we can pretend as such when we’re getting folks engaged in collective action. That’s a mistake, and it’s alienating and harmful and offensive.
But life doesn’t happen in neat stages. And we could do with quite a bit less hierarchy, I think.
Too vulnerable for empowerment?
*This is one of my all-time favorite stories, and favorite messages, too, so I’m republishing it in these final days of my maternity leave, as an inspiration to me and, I hope, to you, too.
Fairly often, when I talk with social workers about involving their clients in advocacy and organizing, encouraging them to find their own voices and to create social change for themselves, I hear some variation on “yes, but our clients are too poor/overwhelmed/scared/uneducated to play that role. We have to advocate for them.”
And that always prompts a discussion about how we are often the biggest barriers to our clients’ full empowerment, that we project our own fears and limitations onto their lives, or lack the relationship with them that would create a context for real risk taking. We need to get over ourselves, so to speak, and figure out ways, hand-in-hand with our clients, over, around, and through every obstacle that we might imagine (and many are, in fact, imagined) to their self-advocacy. But we have to figure out how to do that authentically and respectfully and honestly.
As I’m sure you’re not surprised, there was something in Half the Sky (have you read it yet? Go get it!) that spoke to this, too. Chapter Three was probably the most stunning part of the whole book for me, because it basically tells the story of a slum in India where women rose up against a violent criminal warlord who was raping, stealing, and murdering. Galvanized by his threats to a prominent woman from their own community, the women overcame their fears and, collectively, stabbed him to death, each one cutting him once.
No, I’m not saying that we start encouraging our clients to take this kind of direct action; we have a Code of Ethics, and I’ve written before about what that compels regarding appropriate means and ends.
But what got to me, and to the authors, was this: these were women who not only had generalized fears about taking action that is contrary to cultural and social ideas about women’s roles but was also in direct contradiction to the political powers in the area (all of whom also feared this guy)–they also had abundant evidence that their lives were directly at risk; he had, in fact, tortured and killed many of their neighbors.
And yet they did it anyway. And their lives, and their community, were transformed as a result. And the lessons that the authors take from this utterly dramatic tale are ones that carry tremendous significance for social workers and all who work with vulnerable people who must find their own voices and their own emancipation, too:
I used to answer those social workers who would give me excuses for why their clients couldn’t be their own advocates with something like, “if limited English proficient immigrants who aren’t even legally supposed to be in this country can be their own spokespeople, and can get out in the street and protest and testify in the legislature and organize unions, then so can [fill in the blank].” Now I’ve got a better answer: “if Indian women of the lowest caste, living in a slum ruled by a sadistic gangster, can rise up together and rid their community of his violent barbarism, then [fill in the blank]…”
If we can lose our hesitations, the possibilities are endless.
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Posted in Analysis and Commentary
Tagged advocacy, clients, empowerment, radical social work