It’s true that most of the national and global news these days is frightening stuff – wars, wild weather and climate disasters, train derailments and toxic spills, mass shootings, earthquakes and building collapses, desperate migrants dying at sea and in unforgiving deserts, and on and on. Add to all that the political madness of book bans, anti-trans legislation, draconian curbs of reproductive rights, attacks on higher education academic freedom, social welfare cuts in the face of deepening economic distress – the leading edge of rising tide of proto-fascist style leadership. So it’s understandable, if regrettable, that growing numbers of sensitive folk – social workers and social work students among them – just want to tune it out and get on with daily life in the best way they can.
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news, though you’ll almost certainly need to turn to the alternative press for worthy stuff that lifts the spirit and sparks the imagination for what could be. The corporate media is making far too much money from “the world as it is” to become a truth-telling inspirational engine of change. Here’s two items that caught my attention just today:
“Labor Spring” is about to sweep America’s college campuses with organizing teach-ins, aiming to prompt action – especially action by young people with the greatest stake in a livable future – and to fuel the continuing favorable shift in attitudes toward unions and their capacity to protect and advance workers’ rights, thereby providing a desperately needed counterbalance to the worsening rightward tilt of U.S. politics. You can read all about Labor Spring in In These Times – https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-spring-national-organizing-teach-ins-on-campus
But no efforts to improve the lot of the working class (and, by the way, social workers, whatever the professional pretensions of some, are very much part of the working class) will prove of lasting value if our ruling elites remain unconstrained in their evident lust for “great power conflict” (part of the U.S.’s current national defense strategy) and the enrichment of the military-industrial-congressional-media complex that insanely cheers it on. So it’s indeed heartening to see a revival of the antiwar and anti-nuclear arms movement. That movement has a major demonstration planned in Washington, D.C. for March 18, the 20-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, demanding an end to war and the redirection of war spending to the satisfaction of human needs. The event is endorsed by over 80 peace and social justice organizations, and intends the put the ruling elite on notice that it may not presume a docile public that will allow the warmongers to proceed unopposed. Read about the major march here – https://www.unacpeace.org/
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 