Liberatory practices require that social workers think about categorical social stratification in terms of power hierarchies brought about through practices of individuals, cultures, and institutions. Our focus is on how scaffoldings of white supremacy impact organizational, structural, and professional interactions in social work. We provide examples and stories to illustrate operations of white supremacy and offer alternatives through a counter story. The counter-story reveals how transparency, accountability, and caucusing (with structured safeguards) support alliances that build transformative restructuring. We emphasize the importance of interrupting structures and translations of white supremacy on an ongoing basis.

This is an autobiographical story in which Charles Feldman grows up absurd, wants to be a hippie, is briefly involved in a socialist organization, comes down with schizophrenia, doesn't realize at first that he has an illness, suffers at the hands of an incompetent psychiatrist, gets better treatment with new providers, comes to terms with the illness, advocates on behalf of people living with mental illness, and resolves his existential identity crisis by finding a spiritual home in the Vedanta movement, which provides the culmination of his recovery.

This article summarizes a roundtable discussion held at Thresholds in Chicago, Illinois in September 2012, where six people diagnosed with serious mental illness talked about what helped and did not help them recover and successfully reclaim their lives. Their comments, taken as part of their personal narratives, can help enhance understanding of the recovery process. The discussion is organized by the themes that emerged: considering life as distinct from diagnosis, meeting basic needs, empowerment, education, community, faith and hope, healthy thinking, peers, and focus on wellness. Panel members also offer advice for mental health service providers.

Between 2005 and 2010, discussion of child abuse in the Republic of Ireland focused on abuse perpetrated by priests and members of religious orders. This attention is largely a consequence of three different and complex reports: (a) a 2005 report examining abuse in the Roman Catholic diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, (b) the Ryan Commission's mammoth report which, published in 2009, received coverage throughout the world, and (c) a report that was produced the same year and examined the handling of complaints of child sexual abuse by a “representative sample” of priests in the Dublin diocese during 1975 to 2004. This article seeks to furnish a brief, critical introduction to an international social work readership and concludes by focusing on two themes: the figure of the pedophile priest and the power of the Church in Irish society, and the centrality of poverty and social vulnerability in the lives of the victims of abuse.

This article performs an institutional autoethnography of working in a residential treatment center, proposing a moral economy in which the exaltation of white nondisabled professionals is tethered to the denigration of disabled Aboriginal children. It describes how resident and staff resistance, respectively, can be taken up so as to facilitate the smooth continuity of the status quo. And it raises questions about everyday institutional practices such as physical restraints, behavior modification, and life-skills curricula, suggesting they may not do what they are intended to do and may instead wither away knowledge and skills that residents had cultivated before their “intake.”

The current deterioration of America's middle class will test the ability of the social work profession to take the concept of class seriously and sharpen our understanding of the maldistribution of wealth as a form of oppression. The effort requires identifying and discrediting prevailing ideologies in both the popular culture and our profession. The middle-class crisis provides the opportunity to devise innovative coalitions of working-class and middle-class Americans. Recent efforts may point the way for social workers to help catalyze such movements.

The solidarity economy movement is a burgeoning global justice movement that focuses on economic justice, sustainability, and democratic processes. Social workers care about alleviating poverty, but they generally adhere to neoliberal strategies and ignore transformative approaches to economic justice such as solidarity economics. Recent neoliberal community-development efforts center on approaches such as asset development, human capital building, and social capital enhancement. Solidarity economy seeks to boost economic and social development that promotes shared ownership, sustainable production/consumption, and fair distribution. In this article, we launch a critique of current approaches to community development and argue for a solidarity economy approach.

This article examines the activities of Jane Addams and the Progressive party campaign for President of the United States in 1912. Using primary and secondary data, the article addresses the many decisions and challenges faced by Addams and supporters of Progressive party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt. In particular, I focus on the ways in which issues associated with race, class, and gender shaped the election and Addams' experience within it and the ways in which, despite their apparent differences, Addams was able to support and actively campaign for Roosevelt. Moreover, I examine the struggles of Progressives to define themselves outside the parameters of Socialism in 1912 and the role by played by red-baiting in that effort. In sum, this article seeks to develop a deeper understanding of Addams, the settlement-house movement, and Progressivism and to elevate in importance the 1912 election for President in that larger history.