A Tree in a Forest

I think of myself as a tree in a forest: an individual in a collective that is much larger than myself. A tree is born, a tree dies; the forest lives forever.

I am a community organizer for National Democracy in the Philippines. I am also a social service worker and have been working in the field for about three years. It is in the National Democratic movement that I learned to educate, organize, and mobilize, which has become a theory-and-practice model that guides me in personal life, political work, and my job. I'm going to share how it applies to my role as a social service worker.

In Theory

Capitalism, and the subsequent exploitation of people and the earth's resources to keep overproduction going, is a root problem in our society. Capitalism perpetuates crises in housing, healthcare, mental health, poverty, climate disaster, racialized and gendered violence, imperial warfare, the prison industrial complex, and more. Capitalism makes social work a high-need field.

No individual social worker or social service institution can solve the root causes of inequality and poverty. Social workers are not superhuman and shouldn't try to be.

Social work is also not innocent. Its origins are colonial, paternalistic, and racist. The institution of social work and the welfare state of today is a machinery of Canadian capital; at its core it is a way to manage and control people. As a social worker, I am keenly aware that I work in an extremely harmful system.

I've come to view my economic work as a social worker as secondary to my political work, my role as a person who's part of the collective struggle against exploitation and oppression--a tree in a forest. My goal in the field of social work is to creatively utilize the resources, opportunities, space, and funding that come with it for people's movements.

In Practice

• To do political work outside my day job, to act politically in the community.
• To be an advocate for universal healthcare, affordable housing, free education and public transportation, and more.
• To continually raise my political consciousness.
• To show the people I work with that it's possible to change our conditions if we unite and organize for it. To show that the conditions they find themselves in are not due to their individual failings, but due to the failure of a system to serve the people.
• To identify, deconstruct, and expose dominant oppressive narratives. The scapegoating of migrants for the housing affordability crisis and inflation in Canada is a hot one right now.
• To assert our right to decent wages and working conditions as social workers to our bosses.
• To organize: create and join coalitions, associations, organizations, and other formations that . Link up with those who have the same values.
• To learn from the people.
• To serve the people.