Executive Director’s Message To Social Workers On Last Night’s Presidential Election

By Deborah Son,
NASW-CA Executive Director

Last night was tough. Today, many of us are sleep deprived, anxious, angry, and fearful. This election isn’t just about who wins the presidency. It is also about our four years of labor advocating to protect our communities, to fight against the separation of children from families, to make decisions grounded in science, and to end racism, xenophobia, hatred, bigotry, discrimination, misogyny, and oppression for all people irrespective of gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, ability, age, and creed. It wasn’t just last night. These four years have been tough. We’ve gotten used to being on the defensive that it seems a distant past the ability to creatively pursue policies and systems of care that reflect our core value of pure justice. Social workers are guided by our Code of Ethics to challenge social injustice, to help people in need, to respect the worth of all people – although these things drive us, it is exhausting to think about having to scrape together resources for ourselves yet again for the next four years to continue this right. While hope is not lost, we offer this validation to you that your fatigue is warranted and your self care comes first. Please take care of yourselves, social workers.