About Me
Academic
Unsettling the Commons; Abolition Social Work
Activist
Abolition Toronto; No One Is Illegal-Toronto
Community
Field of Dreamers Cooperative Softball Association
Teaching
Emergent Encounters; Social Work; Social Movements
RUTH WILSON
GILMORE’S
TWO
QUESTIONS
a) So many more agencies and people
(i.e. store clerks, teachers, social
workers, nurses, day care workers, food
workers, etc.) have absorbed functions
of policing as part of their day-to-day
job.
b) The police force has absorbed more
and more the roles of social workers as
their budgets have ballooned and other
sectors of society have seen drastic cuts
RUTH WILSON
GILMORE’S
TWO
QUESTIONS
1) What makes peoples lives
vulnerable?
2) What are the process by
which we seek to deal with
harm in our society?
SPACES OF SOCIAL WORK
MUTUAL AID
CARCERAL SERVICE
&
& &
SOCIAL
EXTRACTIVE BAND AID
SOLIDARITY
CARCERAL & EXTRACTIVE
1. SURVEILLANCE – work to monitor and report on
communities.
2. CONTAINMENT – work to force communities to
abide by classist/racist/sexist/ableist rules
3. DISPOSSESSION – removal of people from
community, family, support networks
4. PUNISHMENT – cooperation with formal and
informal networks of carceral punishment
5. COERCION – work that happens to someone
without their consent, knowledge, or
understanding
SERVICE & BAND-AIDS
1. NPIC – advancing neoliberal policies through the non-
profit industrial complex
2. BUFFER ZONE – acting as a buffer zone between
poor/disabled/racialized etc. folks and those with
political power (the advocacy fallacy)
3. BAND AIDS –cycles of burnout (for workers) and loss of
hope/belief because people’s lived conditions don’t
change.
4. CO-OPTATION – community members are asked to sit on
endless boards, participate in numerous studies/inquiries,
sit through long and tedious town halls/meetings without
seeing change take place.
5. PROFESSIONALIZATION – creating social distance Image: Paul Kivel 2004
between social workers (as experts) and community.
MUTUAL AID & SOCIAL SOLIDARITY
1. COMMUNITY LED – community takes a leadership role in
determining healing, change, and addressing social
problems.
2. MUTUALITY – social workers understand that their own
well-being is tied to the well-being of others – and both
provide and accept support/help as needed.
3. DECENTRALIZED – social workers resist/transform/reject
professional associations and dogmatic forms of
education.
4. ANTI-CAPITALIST – social workers refuse to cooperate with
neoliberal policies/institutions and join movements
against capitalism.
5. ABOLITIONIST – social workers refuse work that is implicitly
carceral – they work with community to address problems
in alternative ways.
“People like me who want
to abolish prisons and
police, however, have a
vision of a different society,
built on cooperation instead
of individualism, on mutual
aid instead of self-
preservation.”
– Mariame Kaba
Being An Abolitionist
BEING AN ABOLITIONIST SOCIAL WORK ...
• Social workers were proposed as alternative
to cops – for mental health calls – following
the 2020 BLM Uprisings.
• Social workers were proposed as educators
for cops to improve their skills at dealing with
people who are in crisis.
• Abolitionist social workers suggested that just
hiring social workers did not deal with the root
of the problem – which is a society that uses
surveillance, violence, and control against
racialized communities.
... MEANS BEING OPEN TO SOCIAL WORK ABOLITION
• How do we create responsive,
community-based alternatives to
current social work models?
• Will more inclusive social work
spaces produce different results?
• Is it time to push back against
professional bodies and try to create
new networks of relationships
between community and social
workers?
Within – The spaces of contradiction, of survival, of mutual support
that exists in the world we live in today.
Against – The forces we assemble to struggle against the dominant
structure of power and their agents.
Beyond – The spaces and projects we create that help us to
imagine and bring to life new wasy fo being.
within / against / beyond
BUILDING THE
MYCORRHIZAL NETWORK
★ Social movements are most visible as reactions to
acute events.
★ But they are, in fact, the outgrowth of years of
relationships, collective practices, and radical
imaginings.
★ To lay the groundwork for transformative change
requires collaboration, patience, and tending to
these relationships.
abolitionist social work is meant tohelp
foster these possibilities.
discussion
