Reimagining the Future of Social Change

Transcript:

Kim Bender:

Hello, I’m Kimberly Bender, GSSW's Winn Professor for Children and Youth. I’m your guest host today, sitting in for Dean Amanda Moore McBride. I’m excited to welcome you to Episode 12 of the Brave Ideas of Social Change podcast series produced by the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. The series draws on GSSW faculty expertise for fast-moving discussions on emerging research, practice and policy innovations to spur social change. Today’s guest is Assistant Professor Sophia Sarantakos, who’s here to discuss abolition and the future of social change. Dr. Sarantakos’ research, writing and organizing are focused on how the field of professionalized social change work can be captured and shaped into a tool and service of an abolition horizon. Dr. Sarantakos co-created and co-facilitates the Abolitionist Social Change Collective, which provides a virtual space for people engaged in all forms of paid and unpaid social change work, as well as the Social Work Activist Collective, a new mass-mobilization platform for all laborers within professionalized social change work. You know, I share an interest in collective care and social change, and I’m so excited to have discussion today. Thanks for being here with us, Sophia.

Sophia Sarantakos:

Thanks so much for having me, Kim. I’m excited to be here.

Kim Bender:

Excellent. So you describe yourself as an abolitionist, and you developed and teach a course here at GSSW that introduces MSW students to prison industrial complex abolition. So for our listeners who may not be as familiar with the concept, particularly how it’s being applied today, can you tell us a little more about what is abolition?

Sophia Sarantakos:

Of course. Yeah. So I think of and describe abolition as a refusal of the current economic, political, and social arrangement of our world, and perhaps most importantly, a daily commitment to building a different type of arrangement. It’s both a theory of change and a practice rooted in the understanding that the current world that we have right now is governed by ideologies and systems like racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacy, and that these ideologies and systems are actually inherently counter to supporting life — and that means the lives of humans, non-humans, as well as the natural world. And so what that means then is that if we really, truly want a livable planet and all living creatures to survive and thrive, then everything about our world has to change. And yes, this is a massive undertaking, absolutely. But I’m a firm believer that the framework of abolition really helps us break it down into these tangible parts and sites of struggle where we can see ourselves intervening and disrupting.

And so I also want to just name too — because I think there’s been a lot of distortion about abolition, especially since the rebellions for Black liberation in the summer of 2020 — that it’s important for folks to understand that this framework and praxis is actually over 150 years old and has an incredibly rich scholarly lineage. It’s a history. The history of theorizing and practicing hasn’t come from the academy. It’s actually come from enslaved Africans, abolitionists who fought to end chattel slavery, and most recently people who’ve been criminalized and caged by the state, particularly Black radicals fighting for Black liberation. And so I think maybe the last thing I’ll say is just that many people think of abolition as a way to name all that we have to be against and destroy to have a better world. But more than anything, it’s a guide for what we have to be committed to bringing to reality. And that means health care, housing, healthy food, clean water for all, returning land back to Indigenous people, just to name a few.

Kim Bender:

Excellent. Thanks, Sophia. So abolition is rooted in collective care, something that so many people have lost touch with. Tell us more about how collective care can figure into the work of abolition.

Sophia Sarantakos:

Sure. It’s a great question. So I’m probably going to say this name a lot during this interview, but Mariame Kaba says that we’re all living under the weather of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacy, and these systems are designed to pit us against one another and prevent and break collectivism. And so it’s through this constant fracturing and mythologizing of individualism that people in power maintain their power and keep the current arrangement intact. And so when we study and we practice abolition, we can come to understand that actually the only way to counter the forces that seek to keep us apart is to create ways for people to connect, learn from, understand, support, and build with one another. And I think another thing that we don’t talk about enough, particularly in professionalized social change work, is the fact that the state has intentionally over time, deskilled everyday people and made us think that the only way that we can and should address needs and harms that occur in our communities is to rely on “experts,” right?

People with training and licenses that are gatekept, state and federal officials and agencies that not only have strict rules for who’s eligible for help, but that they also perpetuate harm. And so engaging with abolition really helps us understand that supporting this hierarchical approach is actually part of the problem. And I just want to shout out this brilliant poet, Gwendolyn Brooks from the poem “Paul Robeson,” where she says, one of her lines is, “We are each other’s business.” And so when we outsource that care and we don’t actually understand that we are each other’s business, and we don’t step into that collective responsibility, we give away our collective power and the possibility of living in truly caring resource communities. And engaging in collective care is one of the many, many ways that we make abolition a reality in the here and now.

Kim Bender:

You started your career as a social worker, but aren’t social work and abolition sort of at odds in some fundamental ways?

Sophia Sarantakos:

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m of the mind that professionalized social change work — particularly that word “professionalized” is really important here — is most certainly at odds with abolition. The moment a skill is professionalized, it’s gate kept, it’s exceptionalized, and then people who are dedicated to maintaining those boundaries to ensure the field’s survival are chosen to lead it. Abolition is fighting for the democratization of knowledge; abundant, easy-to-access resources for everyone everywhere; the flattening of hierarchies among so many other things. And professionalization is in direct conflict with those demands. And I think it’s really important — particularly as an educator within this field — is that it doesn’t mean that good work that contributes to radical social change can’t be done within the profession. I don’t think that’s true. But it does mean that we have to understand the intentional limitations of the field, learn how to act subversively and build collective power within it as well as work outside of and against it.

So when I say that we have to understand the intentional limitations of the field, one of the ways I think about this is the way that schools of professionalize social change work. We lean so heavily when we’re teaching students to think about the nonprofit industrial complex and engaging in nonprofit work. And again, it’s not to say that good work can’t be happening — harm reductionist work or work that does contribute to social change can’t happen in those spaces. That’s not true. But the very existence of that structure of the nonprofit industrial complex absolutely keeps the machine running. It creates a situation where we’re not actually reaching for transformative social change because we’re relying on large government funding, state and federal funding, [and] those people in power don’t actually want things to change that robustly. And so they’re giving these institutions money to just kind of tweak at the margins and just keep things moving along in a way that we feel like we’re engaging in some sort of change, but it’s not really changing the actual root issues. And we lean, I think, too heavily on that in social work education. And that’s one of the ways that we actually maintain the status quo. And I think that that’s something we really, really need to reckon with. And I’ll just shout out the text, “The Revolution Will Not be Funded.” That is an incredible text that is not taught in schools of social work and absolutely should be because it is a very strong academic indictment of the nonprofit industrial complex that lays out the problems in that sphere. And I think that that’s something that absolutely should be taught in schools of social work everywhere.

Kim Bender:

Thanks, Sophia. Yeah, those examples are really helpful. It reminds me of a little bit of work we’ve been doing together around mutual aid, and I remember a lot of pieces come up around how then these organizations have to worry about protecting themselves. So there’s a lot of liability issues in terms of making decisions that are going to reduce risk for the organization rather than think about being in solidarity with communities. And in fact, one of the fellows that'’ doing our mutual aid work has said that they sometimes find themselves having internalized professionalism, which is an interesting way to think about how you're both learning how to be a professional social worker and trying to be really critical about the ways that many of our systems function.

Sophia Sarantakos:

Absolutely. Right. It becomes more about the survival of that agency than doing the actual radical work. Absolutely.

Kim Bender:

So it can be such a challenge to envision a liberatory future, not to mention create one, when the problems we face are so complex and oppressive systems are so powerful and entrenched. How do you think about and approach this challenge?

Sophia Sarantakos:

I think about this question so much, and I have so much to say, and this is something ... My response is something I lean heavily into in the classes that I teach with my students. But I think the first thing I want to say is that people in power rely on our despair and hopelessness to keep things as they are. They really do want us to feel like the machine is way too big to tear down so that we shut our mouths and we just keep things running. And if we let those people in power win at that initial stage, that stage of just our ability to just imagine and hope, it’s game over for us. And I personally refuse to give up my mind and power that easily, and I know people in power want and need me to. And most days, really that’s enough to fuel the fight in me, personally.

Another element that fuels me, and I teach this a lot in the courses that I teach, is the fact that conservatives have no problem at all demanding precisely what they want and fighting for a deeply violent, repressive, deadly world. And so while those of us on the left are … debating the language and demands of abolition and the Defund the Police movement, trying to make it more palatable, we have conservative politicians, judges, and activists overturn, they overturn the constitutional right to abortion. And anti-trans legislation, which if we’re being really honest aims to eliminate trans people, is raining down across the country. And then at the same time, I really want to shout out the Stop Cop City movement. We can see in Atlanta, Georgia, police are becoming even more emboldened and effective at repressing social movements. In Atlanta, Georgia, there are 20 plus people right now being charged with domestic terrorism, and all they were doing was trying to protect the Weelaunee Forest to remain a forest as opposed to being absolutely destroyed and turned into a $90-million police training ground. And so I think it’s really, really important for people who want a better world to recognize that people in power that are committed to a deadly, unlivable world [are] actually not focused on incrementalism. They'’e going really big with their demands, and they fight to make those demands a reality. And if those folks can be so brazen with their lust for violence, I feel like I can and I have to be really, really bold with my unwavering demand for radical care and accountability and love. So that’s how I think about it.

Kim Bender:

So thinking about social work practitioners and scholars and students who might be listening now to this podcast, what are some of the things that they can and should be doing right now in their everyday lives and in their work? How can they be engaging in the work of abolition to contribute to this radical care, accountability, and love that you’re talking about?

Sophia Sarantakos:

Yeah, this is so important. This has always been, I think, an important question, but particularly right now with what we’re facing, [it is] super important to be thinking about and moving with [that] in mind. And I think one of the first things is that we have to come to a truthful understanding of the threat we’re under in this moment of converging crises, which absolutely takes studying and radical political education. But we also have to find ways to connect, learn, and build with one another. And I know I, myself included, people are scared. We’re overwhelmed right now. These feelings often lead to defeatism and immobilization. For me, though, one of the quickest ways to beat that defeatism is to stop thinking individually and start thinking collectively. And again, I’ll shout out the abolitionist writer and organizer Mariame Kaba. She’s got this brilliant set of four questions that she asks herself when she’s outraged about injustice, and I think they’re really instructive and can help us think about how we direct our feelings and our rage and our fear in these moments of crisis.

And the first question is, “What resources exist so I can better educate myself?” And this for me is that political education piece. So really trying to educate about the history of what’s going on, how did we get to this particular moment, and what’s really happening right now? Not from mainstream media, but from really digging in to a more truthful understanding of the world. And then the next few questions are really about how we move. So who’s already doing work around this injustice, because almost certainly there are folks doing work around it. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support to help them? And how can I be constructive?

As history repeatedly tells us, right, I know we want to wring our hands, we want to pray for better days, but those things do not stop fascism, which is what we’re facing right now. Only relenting collective movements can do that, and we have to come together. And I just want to shout out one of the platforms that I’ve been lucky enough to co-organize, which is the Social Work Activist Collective. And it’s this incredible group of social work practitioners, academics who came together, and we’re trying to figure out a way to bring individual workers that are within the field of professionalized social change work into already-existing movement spaces. So we have this incredible movement right now for payment for placements, which is organized by students across the country and social workers who are fighting for the right to … get paid for their field work as opposed to paying for it out of pocket, and just so many other existing movements. The movement to stop the licensure exam, for example.

There are these incredible pockets happening across the country, and we don’t have enough people mobilized together to engage and really kind of power build and expand those movements. And so this platform is really a way to call people in, invite people in to learn together and say, “Hey, look at all these incredible things happening across the country. Look at all the ways that you can plug in and help build power in this movement and in this moment to actually have the profession be what it really should be, which is radical and really transforming the social landscape.” So that’s just one way that we’re trying to engage in that work and something that I’m excited about right now.

Kim Bender:

Thank you. You also embody abolition in your teaching in the classroom, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about how you advance this work or how we advance this work as educators.

Sophia Sarantakos:

Yeah, absolutely. So, I said earlier that abolition requires changing everything, which is a quote by Ruth Wilson Gilmore as well. And in the same way, being committed to the liberatory pedagogy means changing everything about education. And I’ll just name a few things. The barriers to entry, course policies, grading systems, teaching styles, content, everything has to change about how we think about educating. And engaging in an abolitionist praxis in education, for me, means eliminating things like entrance exams like the GERE and application fees. And just something as simple as seeing our students as whole people with full complicated lives and starting our relationship with them from a place of trust and connectedness as opposed to skepticism and difference. It means refusing to engage in punitive practices like penalization for late work and absences, which I know is just so rooted in how we function [and is] a difficult thing to kind of move away from, but that’s what it calls for. It means abandoning the letter grade system — which personally I believe is so detrimental to learning — and instead engaging in qualitative, supportive evaluation processes. It means teaching the truth about the world we live in, our history, our president, and how social change actually happens, not from the nonprofits like I mentioned earlier, but from the ground up — from people and from movements. And social work programs — we really do peddle this idea that elected officials, legislative policy, nonprofits, state [and] federal organizations, philanthropists, and even, of course, social workers are key players in social change, when in actuality they play a significant role in maintaining the status quo. And I think that when educators really begin to refuse these ideas and practices and commit to truth telling and holistic pedagogy, we will get closer to an abolitionist praxis in the classroom. But we really have to be committed to unlearning all the things we’ve been told about how we’re supposed to educate.

Kim Bender:

What sustains you and gives you hope in this work?

Sophia Sarantakos:

Yeah, I appreciate this question. It’s a beautiful one, I think, and I have to think about this a lot for myself. And some of the things that come up for me are that my personal experiences and family history are really a huge part of what fuels me. I’m a queer ungendered person, and I’ve experienced a great deal of harm, particularly as a child and adolescent, and it was my imagination and hope for something better. That was one of the main things that kept me alive, honestly. And Mariame Kaba has this quote that says, “Hope is a discipline.” And while I really wish I hadn’t experienced the harms that I did when I was younger, I am very grateful for the deep practice of hope they prompted in me at that young age.

I also want to shout out my family, my family history, and my ability to imagine and commit to hope also comes from my family. My father is 86 years old, and he was born and raised in Kalamata, Greece. He lived through World War II as a young boy. He watched Nazi soldiers come into his home, take his father and uncles away, and march them away to concentration camps. He also fled to the mountains of Koutala and watched as Nazi soldiers bombed his home town. And I was raised with these stories and discussions around fascism and what it looks like when the world is overtaken by hate and violence. And I was raised in a family with a history and message that there’s certainty in resignation, but there’s endless possibilities if you fight. And I take it very seriously to carry these lessons and histories with me as I do my work.

Kim Bender:

Thanks so much, Sophia, for your efforts to create a better future for all of us, and for sharing your knowledge and insight and inspiration with us and with your students, and with those you’re organizing with. Thanks for your time.

Sophia Sarantakos:

Thank you so much, Kim. I really enjoyed having this conversation.

Kim Bender:

Subscribe to our Brave Ideas for Social Change podcast for more conversations like this. You can learn more at socialwork/du.edu/change.