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Social Action | Definitions | Characteristics | Objectives of Social Action.

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The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation

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"Social action", as we are defining it in this initiative, "is the willingness of everyday people to band together to develop their power in order to change public policy."

The kind of "hands-on civic problem solving" taught in social action courses and projects is a model for how campuses can train student in the skills, knowledge, values, and orientation towards collective action.

Beginning with a retreat for 27 faculty and staff at the Sequoia Retreat Center in February, 2017, the Bonner Foundation for the first time began to offer social action training into the resources and networking we provide to the Bonner network.

In this transformative experiential learning model, students develop and launch a social action campaign of their choosing during the semester the course is taught. The student campaigns seek to change a rule, regulation, norm, or practice of an institution, whether on campus or in the community.

Since the Sequoia Retreat, we have organized a wide range of virtual and in-person course development institutes.

Next Steps

The Bonner Foundation hosts a virtual Teaching Social Action Institute each January and June. These three-day institutes introduce faculty and staff to an approach for incorporating social action campaigns into either a semester-long course or co-curricular workshop series. Visit our Meetings section of this website to find the dates and registration information for our next sessions.

We also host a series of monthly meet-ups and an end-of-semester Summit on College Social Action during the Fall and Spring semesters

Available Resources

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Social Action - The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation

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"Social action", as we are defining it in this initiative, "is the willingness of everyday people to band together to develop their power in order to change public policy." The kind of "hands-on civic problem solving" taught in social action courses and projects is a model for how campuses can train student in the skills, knowledge, values, and orientation towards collective action.

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On an early Houston morning, cars with their trunks popped open line up in front of Casa Juan Diego, just south of Washington Avenue. Casa Juan Diego primarily exists to serve migrants and refugees-referred to as huéspedes, or "guests"-fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries, but today there is a role reversal. Casa (as its volunteers call it) also distributes food sent from the Houston Food Bank to food-insecure Houstonians. Today, it's the guests, mostly Venezuelans, who load the food into the Houstonians' cars.

Before they begin, Louise Zwick, director and co-founder of Casa Juan Diego, asks a guest to lead them in prayer. Afterward, Zwick, 80, always dressed in no-nonsense black and often using a cane, returns to her office to face the day's challenges while the guests and volunteers hand out frozen chicken, bags of rice and beans, and vegetables and fruits.

A Venezuelan asks how long a box is supposed to last. "It's not enough for a week," a Spanish-speaking volunteer answers. "But it'll help."

"In Venezuela, this would have to last a month," he replies, shaking his head.

More than 6 million Venezuelans have fled that country's political oppression and broken economy in recent years. Until recently, most had remained in nearby countries such as Colombia. Increasingly, however, many are trekking toward the United States. There, after much suffering on the road, they are often dehumanized and turned into political props. But the stunts of Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis don't tell the whole story of how these migrants are received. Flying well below the media radar are outposts of compassion like Casa Juan Diego, where volunteers embrace periods of elective poverty in service to the poor-or, in Zwick's case, a lifetime of it-and where the migrants themselves are sometimes able to serve others and restore their own humanity.

Casa is a Catholic Worker house founded in 1981 by Zwick and her late husband Mark, a former priest, on the principles laid down by the legendary Dorothy Day and her mentor, Peter Maurin. The Zwicks had recently returned to the United States from a hazardous 1977 move to El Salvador, undertaken with their two young children, Joachim and Jennifer. Before El Salvador, the Zwicks were devout Catholics living a middle-class life in California. Mark was a psychiatric social worker and Louise a librarian, but they had steadily increased their devotion to the poor since their marriage in 1967.

As the Zwicks' commitment to a radically Catholic life deepened, they were inspired to join the comunidades de base [base communities], in which small groups of Christians banded together to form their own "church" in places like El Salvador. In 1977 the family moved to a poor barrio, a neighborhood,in San Salvador where they performed various volunteer activities and participated in study groups while living in a house whose walls "didn't quite meet" and where "there was no glass in the windows," as the Zwicks wrote in their 2010 memoir Mercy Without Borders. Louise supervised the children's reading and gave them violin lessons, and they all "suffered from intestinal diseases." But they soon had brushes with the increasingly violent agents of the Salvadoran government and decided to leave. They were willing to expose their children to poverty, but not death squads.

(Joachim and Jennifer remained attached to Casa over the years. When his father died of Parkinson's Disease in 2016, Joachim gave up his IT career and moved back to Houston to help out. For a time, Jennifer and her children also lived and volunteered at Casa.)

Mark and Louise arrived in Houston just as refugees from Central America began pouring into the city. The Zwicks agonized over whether to open their own Catholic Worker house. Louise had taken a job as a children's librarian and would make enough to support the family. So Mark quit his counseling job and they rented the "ugliest building in Houston" on Washington Avenue-then a cheap part of town-and started housing migrants and providing them with food and services. The Zwicks were taking a true leap of faith, as they had almost nothing to offer but a willing spirit and a little space. But, they write, "almost from the beginning people appeared out of nowhere to help." A doctor offered to start a clinic. A rice company said they had a thousand pounds of rice to spare. A handyman priest spent his vacation installing toilets and showers.

They also believed that they had help from another realm. The Zwicks wrote, "Dorothy Day died ... on November 29, 1980. We are pretty sure she went to heaven and arranged for us to be ready" to open their house, which they named after Juan Diego, the Mexican peasant to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in 1531. The Zwicks chose Diego for his example of humility. To them, he is a "Saint for Nobodies."

Surprisingly, perhaps, the diocese soon embraced them once they determined that the Zwicks were truly Catholic and not communist. (Whatever the Zwicks' personal convictions, Casa itself is resolutely apolitical. "We just wish people would be kinder," Louise says.) Mark was able to visit area parishes to ask for financial contributions and volunteers. Once the Zwicks established both their good intentions and their pragmatic, problem-solving approach to immigration, even law enforcement, including Immigration and Naturalization Services, as Immigration and Customs Enfrocement was previously called, began sending migrants their way.

In May 1981, they published the first issue of their newspaper, the Houston Catholic Worker/ Trabajador Católico de Houston, modeled on Day's Catholic Worker. In it, they recounted the "stories of the refugees and the adventures of living and working" in Casa along with articles questioning the neoliberal economic order that, in their view, forced migrants to leave their homes.

They were on their way, even if they didn't know exactly where they were going. When asked where he saw Casa Juan Diego in five years, Mark answered with typically self-deprecating humor: "I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow!"

Volunteers come and go from Louise's office. Dawn McCarty has been a Casa volunteer for 14 years and, with her husband, lives in a nearby Casa house. She also teaches social work at the University of Houston-Downtown. She and Louise are discussing a recently arrived Honduran couple. The husband has cancer and carries a colostomy bag. The wife arrived eight-and-a-half months pregnant and anemic. Once Casa volunteers got some food into her, she felt better and has now given birth. McCarty will navigate the bureaucracy to get the birth registered.

Another Catholic Worker, Marjorie Mika-one of the young, long-term volunteers who come from all over the country after graduating from college (usually Catholic)-enters to say that three of the sick and injured are lining up outside. Disabled undocumented individuals are not eligible for any kind of government assistance, so Casa helps 200 of them with rent and medical expenses. Louise takes out an enormous checkbook and fills out a check for $800 for the rent of a woman who lost both legs to cancer. Louise then writes checks for $700 and $300 to help a young man crippled in a car accident and a man with a severe gastric disorder.

Casa Juan Diego doesn't accept grants and the bureaucracy that comes with them, so the money for this generosity comes "100 percent from donations." The newspaper has a worldwide readership of 60,000, which leads to many contributions. One reason the donations go so far is that no one takes a salary-though housing and food are provided for Louise and other long-term volunteers.

Louise remains calm in the middle of the bustle, and despite the frequent very loud clamoring of her phone, she is as unflappable as her husband was; it seems to come with the territory.

They don't keep a strict count of guests and volunteers, but Louise estimates that "over 100,000" migrants have spent at least one night at Casa Juan Diego, and that "hundreds" of Catholic Worker volunteers have spent at least several months here. Hundreds more have pitched in one day a week or so.

The numbers of guests ebb and flow with immigration controversies. But on a more-or-less typical night, they house around 100 guests. These days, in fact, Louise says they've reached their capacity. "We can't help everybody," she says.

The crisis in Venezuela has led to the current upsurge. Louise estimates they make up 90 percent of the guests. "Is there anyone left there?"

To reach the United States, many Venezuelans brave the fearful Darién Gap-the 60-mile stretch of roadless jungle between Colombia and Panama. It's filled with dense forest, steep mountains, expansive swamps, and criminal gangs. Nobody knows how many have died there, but it's certainly more than the 50 annually that the Panamanian government reports.

If they manage to reach the U.S. border-the United States has leaned on Mexico to retain many of the migrants-they typically surrender to border agents and request asylum. They are given a court date and are sent to either a sponsor or to a place like Casa Juan Diego and given a year to prepare their asylum case. In other words, the migrants who reach Casa have "papers" and are not here illegally.

Dr. John Butler has spent one morning a week at the clinic for around seven years but is still wide-eyed at what the Zwicks have created. (Other doctors and dentists also come in on a regular schedule.)

"I drive through River Oaks to get here," he says. "These two worlds are right beside each other, but they have nothing in common."

Butler treats seven to eight patients a day. Many are like the 16-year-old Honduran who suffered a hit-and-run while out walking. "He came in with multiple abrasions and a fractured arm. We tried to talk him into going to the ER, but his family has a big bill with a hospital and he was reluctant to go." Other cases are painful to even contemplate, like the boy who fell out of a tree while putting up Christmas lights at a River Oaks mansion and is now paralyzed.

Butler says of the migrants, "They don't want a handout." A 60-something man came in with pain in his knees after walking from Honduras. "He talked about wanting to find work. It's inspirational stuff." He adds, "I always wanted to do missionary work. Little did I know I just had to drive down the street."

When Annette Baird, originally from the UK, said she wanted to volunteer, Louise asked what her skills were. When Baird answered, "I can cook," Louise cut her off-"That's what we need." Today Baird's lunch includes spaghetti squash and herbs she took from Casa's extensive garden.

The volunteers are seated together because today is a discussion session on one of the Catholic Worker sources Mark and Louise included in their co-authored 2005 book, The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins. In it, the Zwicks show how certain writers influenced Day and Maurin. Dostoyevsky is an important source. His line from The Brothers Karamazov, "Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing, compared to love in dreams," is virtually a Catholic Worker motto.

"These writers are very important," Louise says. "They make us more than a soup kitchen."

She has asked one of the live-in volunteers, C.J. Donofry, from Pennsylvania, to lead the discussion of the French theologian Emmanuel Mounier and his philosophy of personalism, which was seen as a Catholic response to existentialism.

Donofry grapples with the somewhat abstract text, trying to connect it to the very concrete work of Casa. "Personalism is a way of meeting people where they're at," he says, and "We all belong to each other."

Donofry is a recent graduate with the unusual degree combination of a major in sports marketing and a minor in theology. With his business major "I felt kind of stupid coming here," but reasoned, "You're only broke and 22 once" and took the plunge. He arrived in May, three weeks after graduation, not speaking "a lick of Spanish." He's been a quick study, and "now I translate documents." One of his main duties is paying for and arranging travel for migrants once they've got a sponsor.

He recently bought plane tickets for 14 men and arranged for a bus to take them to the airport. (The local Catholic Charities often pays for the tickets.)

"I'm just a guy from the Philly suburbs," he reflects with a broad smile. He was thrilled to find that a nearby bar was the gathering place for Houston's Philadelphia Eagles fan contingent, and he's gone every Sunday.

Louise has been up since 3 a.m., answering emails and working on the newspaper, so in the early afternoon she rests. But they never know who's going to knock on the door.

Today it's a wheelchair-bound Guatemalan man who lost his left leg above the knee while trying to jump a train in Mexico. Now he needs help getting on a plane to Florida, where a friend will take him in. The volunteers confer and determine that C.J. will take him to Catholic Charities in the morning, and that they will get him on the airplane.

The volunteers have noticed that his wheelchair is worse for wear, so someone goes back to a storage room and pulls out a new one, still in its box. While the chair is being assembled, the Guatemalan has time to talk to a reporter. First he spells out his name: Kenny Eduardo Vidal, age 33. Then he tells his story:
I came from Guatemala City to look for work. During the pandemic I lost the little work I had, and for this reason I left. I have an 8-year-old daughter at home and my mother is diabetic. We're a poor family. I told my parents I would send money home for them and for her, but I haven't been able to. In Chiapas [Mexico] I was traveling with three Hondurans. We were jumping on a train but I slipped and the train took my leg. I was screaming without end but the Hondurans left me to die. A lady finally heard me and called an ambulance. This happened January 26, 2021. My family doesn't know what happened to me. I talked to my mother recently, and I told her I was well.
Kenny pauses to unwrap his stump, revealing a wet circle of blood in its middle. His deep eyes are bracketed between his black COVID mask and the black hair that sweeps over his forehead, so his gaze is penetrating.
After the hospital, I crossed Mexico by bus. I walked with crutches. It took three months. I would beg enough money for a short bus ride, and then get off and beg again. I suffered a lot. Demasiado [excessively]. But I'm determined to do what I came to do. To get a job and help my family. When my leg stops bleeding I can wear my prosthetic leg. With the prosthetic, I can do any kind of work.
Expressing this hope has brightened Kenny's eyes. " Siguiendo pa'delante. [Moving forward.] Sigo vivo, gracias a Dios. [I'm still alive, thanks to God.]

C.J. enters the room and hands Kenny a bag packed with travel necessities and tells him that his transportation to the airport has been arranged. Kenny's eyes seem to smile.
God has blessed me.
In the evening, the volunteers and many of the guests gather for the weekly mass. Louise leads the music on her guitar. In his homily, the priest asked the age-old question: "If God is good, why is there suffering?" He paraphrases his answer from the gospel: "The wheat suffered in being harvested," he says. "Grapes suffer in being smashed to make wine."

To someone whose life has always been comfortable, this is a hard teaching. For survivors of the Darien Gap, it may simply confirm the obvious truth.

Afterward, guests and volunteers gather for dinner, which has been prepared by the guests themselves. They discuss the events of the day and share family photographs.

Then the guests clean the dining area and retreat to their rooms to call their loved ones, wherever they may be.

In her home, a few blocks away, Louise relaxes by reading some theology, or perhaps a Dorothy Sayers mystery, until her day finally ends.

She's not interested in retirement. "I'll die with my boots on," she says.

At lights out, everyone sleeps-if no guest is screaming too loudly as she remembers a trauma she suffered along the way.

Then there's a knock at the door.

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At Casa Juan Diego, Refugees Find An Outpost of Compassion

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Since 1980, migrants fleeing poverty, violence, and natural disaster have come here for refuge from an intolerant world.

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Mothers Against Greg Abbott emerged in August 2021 when a single mother staged a protest at the Texas Capitol. However, the movement has since evolved, encompassing a broader range of issues such as safeguarding public education, advocating for gun control, defending women's reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights and freedoms, and protecting voting rights. Today, Mothers Against Greg Abbott has transcended state boundaries and become a vocal and influential presence in national politics, actively advocating for policies that prioritize the well-being of families and children.

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Fighting for ALL Texas Families - Mothers Against Greg Abbott

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Mothers Against Greg Abbott has become a vocal and influential presence in national politics, advocating for policies that prioritize the well-being of Texans.

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Chapter 5. Choosing Strategies to Promote Community Health and Development | Section 4. Social Action | Main Section | Community Tool Box

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Learn how to empower the population and use strength in numbers to spread awareness of the issue and unify the community on a common cause.

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At Angela House our philosophy is to establish a community of women who respect themselves and each other, and who are committed to working for their own empowerment as well as the empowerment of their families and each other. The administration and support staff work hand-in-hand with the residents to create a communal atmosphere where each individual feels respected and valued. The empowerment of our residents is one of the primary goals of Angela House. It is accomplished by assisting each resident to identify her strengths, set her own agenda, and make constructive changes in her life.

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The mission of Angela House is to successfully transition women into society after incarceration. At Angela House our philosophy is to establish a community of women who respect themselves and each other, and who are committed to working for their own empowerment as well as the empowerment of their

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This article is based on a #MacroSW Twitter chat series on social action in social work. #MacroSW Twitter chats are held every Thursday night at 9 p.m. Eastern. For more information, check out https://macrosw.com. The New Social Worker is a #MacroSW media partner.
Social action harnesses collective power to leverage positive change for communities. The goal of the Social Action Model is to redistribute power and resources, expand democracy, and create a just and equitable society. This model presupposes that there are disadvantaged and oppressed communities that need to be organized.

Key theories of the social action model include empowerment theory, ecosystem, social support, and social network perspectives. An important feature of social action is the involvement of the community throughout the process.

#MacroSW has been presenting a social action series since 2017. To date, topics have included community assessment, action planning, and radical community organizing. Over the course of presenting and attending #MacroSW Twitter chats, I noticed that there were many participants who didn't know where to start when it came to organized change on a macro level. They were aware of problems communities were experiencing, but they didn't have the knowledge and skills pertaining to action planning and mobilization.

This isn't surprising, considering the lack of emphasis placed on macro curriculum in social work programs. Education for Macro Intervention: A Survey of Problems and Prospects (Rothman, 2013) highlights concerns about the state of macro practice in social work education. The concerns raised included:

lack of interest or opposition by faculty to macro courses and programs

little to no hiring of macro faculty

school curriculums that are primarily clinical

The intent of the social action series is to provide participants with resources and information about social action and community organizing that they can apply in social work practice. Experienced community organizers often participate in the chats. They offer additional insight into the matter by sharing resources and experiences.

Social Action Chat Series

The first chat in the social action series, Social Action 101: Vision, focused on defining community and writing a personal and shared vision for the community. It should be noted that I approach these chats from the perspective that the social workers/community organizers doing this work are themselves members of the community in question.

Your personal vision for the community is your ideal picture of how things should be. An exercise I suggest is: Sit down with a blank piece of paper and a pen. Think about the communities that you are a member of. Choose one community to focus on. When you think about the community, what issues exist? What resources are present or lacking? What concerns do you have or have heard expressed by others in the community? What positive changes would you like to make? The responses to these questions will help you to come up with an ideal picture for the community.

Once you have a personal vision, you want to go about turning it into a shared vision. No one person is the community, so you want to get input from as many community members as possible. Start by sharing your vision with other community members. Get feedback from them, and listen to their concerns and hopes for the community. At this point, you need to be open-minded and willing to change the vision to incorporate ideas from other members.

Social Action 102: Community Assessment provided an overview of carrying out a community assessment. A community assessment provides additional insight into the community and the issues the community faces. Before diving into one, you should check to see whether there is an existing one that has been done within the past 5-10 years.

A community assessment includes a description of the community, definition of the issues the community is facing, identification of key influencers in the community, and decision makers who have the ability to make necessary changes. It's important to get the community's feedback, and this can be done in a number of ways.

Social Action 103: Action Planning dealt with writing an action plan. The community assessment helps to identify and define problems. It should shed light on how the community at large views those problems and which ones they consider most important. The next step is coming up with an action plan that will resolve the identified problems.

You can find an action plan template at: http://www.politicalsocialworker.org/social-action-planning/

The action plan includes long-term and short-term goals and objectives, a description of barriers, identification of stakeholders, a timeframe, actions to be taken, and tactics that will be employed.

Social Action 104: Intro to Community Organizing introduced community organizing practice, including the role of the social worker as community organizer. The chat gave an overview of four types of community organizing:

locality development

social planning and policy change

social action and systems advocacy

coalition building

The most recent installment of the series, Social Action 105: Radical Community Organizing, focused on the features of and theories that undergird radical organizing.

Weill, Reisch, and Ohmer (2013) defined radical community organizing as a:
form of community practice that encompasses a dynamic set of theories, goals, ideologies, values, strategies, and tactics that seek to achieve a more egalitarian, open, and socially just world through the creation of fundamental structural, institutional, ideological, attitudinal, and behavioral changes in communities, societies and individuals. (p. 362)
Distinguishing features of radical community organizing are:

analysis of root causes of inequality, injustice, and oppression

alternatives to institutions

actions that promote structural and institutional change

Why Social Action Matters

As mentioned, social work education has moved away from macro practice. Given current events in the United States and globally, it is imperative that social work reconnects with macro practice and engagement in social action.

Our profession's code of ethics calls upon us to be involved in advocating for change that benefits society as a whole. The NASW Code of Ethics (2018) states:
The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. A historic and defining feature of social work is the profession's focus on individual well-being in a social context and the well-being of society. Fundamental to social work is attention to the environmental forces that create, contribute to, and address problems in living.
In December 2017, The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner released a devastating report by Professor Philip Alston. Professor Alston spent two weeks traveling through the United States and talking with homeless people and those living in poverty, as well as elected officials and political appointees. The mission of the visit was to investigate whether extreme poverty was undermining the human rights of U.S. citizens. What Professor Alston encountered was a country with extreme income inequality:
The United States is one of the world's richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty.
Some of the issues the report touches on are:

Health. We are living shorter and sicker lives. The infant mortality rate is steadily increasing, and people are living with untreated diseases. It is believed that as many as 12 million Americans are living with a parasitic infection (Alston, 2017).

Voting. Our voter turnout rate is well below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average of 75%. Only 55.7% of the voting population showed up to the polls in the 2016 presidential election. Only 64% of the U.S. population was registered to vote in 2016. This is a startling fact, especially when compared to other democratic countries such as Canada, where 91% of the population is registered to vote (Alston, 2017).

Poverty. Out of the six richest countries, our child poverty rate is the highest. There are 13.3 million children in the U.S. living in poverty (Alston, 2017).

These are all issues that are of concern to social workers. While many will work directly with those affected, these issues need to be confronted on a macro level. Alston's report mentions a number of actions that can be taken to address economic and social inequality.

Given the current political climate, social workers need to be able to work with oppressed communities to create change that ends social injustice and inequity. Social workers cannot be afraid to get involved in the political and policy process.

References

Alston, P. (2017, December 15). Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E

NASW. (2018). Code of ethics. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English

Rothman, J. (2013, June). Education for macro intervention: A survey of problems and prospects. Retrieved from https://www.acosa.org/joomla/pdf/RothmanReportRevisedJune2013.pdf

Weill, M., Reisch, M., & Ohmer, M. L. (2013). The handbook of community practice. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rachel L. West, LMSW, is an advocacy and community outreach consultant based in New York. She is a co-founder of #MacroSW Twitter chats and holds a BA in history from SUNY Stony Brook and an MSW from Adelphi University.

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#MacroSW: Harnessing Power Through Social Action in Social Work

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This article is based on a #MacroSW Twitter chat series on social action in social work. #MacroSW Twitter chats are held every Thursday night at 9 p.m. Eastern. For more information, check out https://macrosw.com. The New Social Worker is a #MacroSW media partner. Social action harnesses collective power to leverage positive change for communities.