I just want to speak a little about why social workers are not a good alternative to the cops…and it’s important we have these yarns as we actively work to defund the police.

I know people suggest this with the best intentions, likely because they believe that social workers provide “nonviolent” aid, but even passive violence is violence.

To argue for social workers to replace cops is a poor attempt at laying a thin veneer of respectability and humanity across a system that needs abolishing. To accept this substitution of professions is too big a compromise, because…

Social workers are part of the broader welfare system which is just another tentacle of the PIC &another institution of control &surveillance. The PIC has so intricately woven into the fabric of carcerality, professions like Social work that often

people are not even able to see the violence from the outside looking in.

Social workers are the foot soldiers of the welfare system, which still has its roots in assimilation, and maintains its legacy of genocide

Social workers hold the greatest power a state can hold over its people – the power to forcibly take children away from their parents, and permanently sever the parent/child relationship

IMO Social work as an institution has done little to challenge the system that has resulted in our circumstance and disadvantage. They exist to assuage the guilt of the privileged, and further the colonial project.

A majority of social workers are yt.

And the well-meaning of them glide in to “help the poor and deserving” and then escape to their nice neighborhoods and happy families.

Abolition is a vision of a world where the PIC (and all its tentacles) does not exist. We want to address the perpetual conditions and social forces that create and feed the PIC monster

Abolition is not just dismantling, but is also a building project – we want to build a world where no one is disposable, where life is precious and care is paramount.

So please, make sure your sense of urgency and impatience to find immediate solutions aren’t perverted into just furthering the colonial project and feeding the system – lets create a space of possibility and dialogues of curiosity.