By
Bernard J. Wohl, MSW, Retired*
By
Bernard J. Wohl, MSW, Retired*
Transformations in science and movement from an industrial-based society to an information and knowledge-based society have created expectations, possibilities and portents, which cannot be avoided. Speed is not the only convulsion. There is also the problem of direction, not only for settlements but also for social work as a profession.
The settlement house movement began in the slums of East London in 1884 with the establishment of Toynbee Hall. It was named for the brilliant young economic historian, Arnold Toynbee, who wrote about the effects of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization. Toynbee Hall became the working model for early American settlement leaders – Stanton Coit, Robert A. Woods, Charles Stover, Jane Addams, Mary Simkovich – all of whom were deeply affected by the poverty they witnessed in the London slums as well as their own neighborhoods. They viewed the settlement idea as an important step in reforming the social malaise of city dwellers. In their time they fought for their vision of justice and human solidarity even at the risk of opprobrium and loss of support for their valued services.
Reclaiming our past is not simple. From the distance of over a hundred years, the accomplishments and contributions of settlement houses seems hallowed and inevitable, as though honored from their very beginnings, without vitriolic attack and threats of reprisal and loss of support. Not so. Their contributions were carved out through conflict and coalition building.
For example, Jane Addams of Hull House from the 1890's on had a close association with organized labor. She invited embattled unions to meet at Hull House. She supported the men and women of the sewing trades, English-speaking and immigrant, Russian, Polish and Italian, in their fight against the miserable wages of the sweatshop. Addams and Hull House were sharply attacked for encouraging the “trouble makers”.
As Jane Addams expressed her opposition to World War I she suffered from the “spiritual alienation” that standing out against the prevailing current brought her during the war. “We were constantly told by our friends that to stand aside from the war mood of our country was to surrender all possibility of future influence, that we were committing intellectual suicide, and would never again be trusted as responsible people or judicious advisors.”
Notwithstanding this, fifteen years later, in 1931, Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“To stand aside from the temper of the times,” to challenge the ethos of denigration of the poor, of women receiving public assistance, of immigrants, documented and undocumented, of people of difference – difference of color, sexual orientation, and ideology – entails work. How risks such as these are addressed constitutes the defining moments for individuals and movements alike
The history of the settlement house movement and its early committed workers has much to say to us today about strength and tenacity in the struggle to regain lost ground and to move forward against the rule of entrenched privilege.
The past ten years have witnessed the victory of two decades of reactionary attacks against the social safety net that protected the poor, children, the elderly, the disabled and the immigrant. The services the settlements provide are essential in solving problems and building a sense of community in the neighborhoods they serve. Settlements are unique institutions. No agency I know of has the breadth and penetration that a settlement does. They work with people in communities in every phase of their lives – programs and services for pre-school youngsters, elementary, middle and high school youth, adults and senior citizens. They provide job training, mental health services, college counseling, housing, services to the homeless, health and other myriad programs with parents and their children. And yet as important as these services are it is not enough. Our communities of service are precious and important battlegrounds for the defense of common human need. But more is mandatory. We must involve the citizens with whom we work to participate in decisions that affect their lives. In our intense struggle to deliver human services with all the excellence and ardor at our command we have neglected our own history. Except in a few instances we have forgotten the lessons of settlement history to combine and integrate the struggles for services and policies, the local and the global immediate needs and the struggle for the future. We have to tap those living roots.
Do we have a commitment, beyond excellent practice and the delivery of integrated and comprehensive social services, to address the furies of our time in alliance with others to overcome the onslaughts of unemployment, racial and ethnic strife, intensification of the distance between rich and poor, and the destruction of community and a public life? I think we do.
I think we have to involve the citizens with whom we work to become part of the solution to the problems we face in our neighborhoods, in our states, in our nation and in our world. Much has been written over the years about all the internal social problems that face us as a nation – poverty, racism, unemployment, immigration, homophobia, the aged, education, health care, and many other wrenching issues that plague our democratic society, including the arrogant worship of greed and privilege.
Settlement workers – those who are closest to the poor of our cities, have seen the poor primarily as individuals and individual families but not in their social presence. We talk of community organization but we seldom mean by that helping to organize the citizens of our communities with whom we work.
It is true that settlements have organized non-partisan voter registration campaigns, sponsored forums for candidates running for office, involved teens from different settlements in the Nike Give Back Campaign as an expression of their rejection of the Nike exploitation of foreign workers. Youth have also been involved in going to Albany to plead for funds for a summer youth employment program that was slated for drastic cuts. Senior citizens have banded together to go to legislators' offices and register their concerns about the tenuous future of Social Security. They have also made clear their need for a prescription drug program as part of Medicare. All this is important and needs doing. We have to do more of this and not only on an ad hoc issue basis but as an integral connecting rod with all the different ages and programs within a settlement's purview. Social action (advocacy) is not an extra.
There are some very sticky and dangerous problems when an agency engages in social action. Foremost is the problem of avoidance of conflict by social workers. Further, there is the responsibility the agency has to the board of directors with widely variant views and connections to numerous interest groups that may be in conflict with the agency's involvement. And then, of course, is the fear of being excommunicated from private and public funding sources –the life's blood of an agency.
Settlements at other times in the past won the right to stand with those who challenged the status quo. They constantly talked about risk. Why not now?
What role should settlements and social work within our society play? We should do our best work to fuse the personal and the social – to give each other and the people who come to us and to whom we go out, their full possibilities for a human life. We must criticize the inequities and injustices in our society – its poverty, racism, homophobia and arrogant worship of greed and privilege. We must fight with passion for viable alternatives, for the careful nurture of all of our children, for work and health and housing, for confidence among our teenagers that they will survive to become adults.
The core method in settlement programs has been group work – helping people get involved in solving problems, finding strength and healing with others, learning how to live. There have been no developments in technology or medicine that would lead me to depart from that core method. All the local, national and international issues, political actions and catastrophes that settlements address, and should address, are going to be programs that begin with a group, and a group worker with the feeling in his or her gut that there is a struggle ahead.
The time may not have come for others, but I think the time has come for us, not as individuals but as workers in settlements and the human services to guarantee that our concern for the people with whom we work, transcends whatever differences we may have. The time has come to marry the services we provide with the policies that affect the need for those services and to see ourselves as catalysts that work to transform our world and ourselves.