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SWAA Rochester Chapter Updates

Rochester Chapter May 2009:

The Rochester Chapter has been recovering from its whirlwind of fall activities. In October, we organized a conference entitled Poverty and Violence: Assault on Human Rights. More than 200 people from many segments of the community came together to hear keynote speakers, activists and authors Diane Dujon and Ann Withorn discuss connections between violence in our community and economic injustice.

Author and Yale University professor Elijah Anderson also spoke, and his topic was Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black and Male, explaining how the global economy is creating fewer jobs, global competition for low paying jobs and hence fewer options for poor, particularly young black men, to pull themselves out of poverty. The conference concluded with Rochester SWAA's first "Truth Commission, Putting Poverty on Trial." Fred Newdom, who presented at the conference, also served as moderator for the Truth Commission.

The Truth Commission was largely a joint effort between the graduate students from the Greater Rochester MSW Collaborative, a Social and Economic justice BSW class at SUNY Brockport, and the local community. SWAA's Hubert Wilkerson, formerly an organizer with Poor People United, played an important role by serving as a liaison between students and the grassroots community. His guidance allowed students to learn key interviewing techniques that supported the collection of several Economic Human Rights Violations. Truth Commissioners representing a variety of backgrounds and experiences, such as union organizing, social services administration, outreach to the homeless, and general human rights activism, acknowledged the testimonies and provided suggestions on how to alleviate further violations.

The following weekend, the Rochester Chapter hosted the SWAA National Steering Committee. There was a great turnout and many local members graciously stepped up to feed, house and connect with our National members. Cheri Honkala of Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign was in attendance and shared some of her experiences at the RNC.

Currently we are working on getting local members and interested grassroots leaders to the National SWAA Conference in July. We are still continuing to organize Reality Tours in the City of Rochester and fund a paid part-time organizer that works with a very dedicated SWAA member to plan, update and implement our Reality Tours. An example of this is a plan to organize a pilot tour for the differently-abled riders this spring.

Lastly, we are organizing a Spring 2009 event to further our work of highlighting poverty and economic human rights. We are bringing Ethel Long Scott, aka "Street Warrior" and Executive Director of the Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP), to Rochester as our keynote speaker. Ms. Long Scott will address an academic audience at the State University of New York at Brockport, a community audience in the City of Rochester, and will meet with local SWAA members. We hope to present these local organizing efforts to the national audience at the joint SWAA-PPEHRC Louisville Conference in July.

Rochester Chapter October 2008:

The Rochester Chapter is very busy planning an October 2008 Conference titled Violence and Poverty: Assault on Human Rights. We are collaborating with SUNY Brockport College, St. John Fisher College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Greater Rochester Collaborative MSW Program, the Rochester Chapter of NOW, local churches and poor people's organizations in an effort to respond to the recent increase in violence in our community. The conference speakers and workshops will focus on economic injustice and show its connections to the violence in our community. We have Elijah Anderson, Diane Dujan, Ann Withorn, Fred Newdom and many others scheduled to speak and offer workshops.

We continue to plan and offer Reality Tours and have received small grants to enable us to fund a part time organizer. The new organizer is a BSW student and new SWAA member. We hope to find funding to make this an ongoing position. Our membership has increased to include many people with diverse backgrounds who are willing to combine their passion for social justice and their unique talents. Our membership now includes a self taught web designer who has made our web page interesting, informative and most of all easy to use. Another new member is a media arts and sciences professor who is generously bringing her considerable talents to add exciting elements to our fall conference. We are also pleased to have an AmericCorp Vista volunteer who is highly skilled and dedicated to community organizing. Also joining us is a sociology professor whose connections have brought us our keynote speaker for the conference. A formerly homeless community organizer has also recently joined us and adds valuable input and perspective. Lastly, the Rochester Chapter is hosting the SWAA National Steering Committee Meeting, also in October.

Rochester Chapter December 2007:

The Rochester Chapter continues to have great success with our Reality Tours. We have had members of the Monroe County Legislature, City of Rochester school teachers, doctors and residents from the University of Rochester, college students and high school students and church groups. We often have waiting lists for our upcoming tours. We were recently awarded a grant to fund a paid organizer position to help administer and produce the Reality Tours for SWAA. One of our members became the official organizer and did a wonderful job. Our next tours may focus particularly on women and children and poverty with special input and assistance from the Rochester Chapter of NOW and the SUNY Brockport Women's Center. Last spring, SWAA Rochester brought Willie Baptist to the SUNY Brockport campus to speak on "Becoming an Activist to End Poverty." He spoke on campus and later that evening in the community and the events attracted about 150 people.

Two Rochester SWAA members were accepted at the National Conference in New Orleans to present a workshop on "How to Organize a Reality Tour."

Our website is up and running and one of our members will be monitoring and adding updates. We are hoping this will help us attract new members. Lastly, we are looking forward to holding a small conference in the fall of 2008 that we hope will be a precursor for a conference in the spring of 2009. This will take a lot of effort and planning and we are hoping with an increase in membership and momentum we will be successful.

Rochester Chapter February 2007:

This summer, four SWAA members attended the National Truth Commission in Cleveland, sponsored by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. Two of the group members were students who found it an energizing experience, and a good introduction to the concept of economic human rights.

The Rochester Chapter is still inundated with requests from various groups to run Reality Tours. We decided to "kick it up a notch" and challenged ourselves by running four tours in one weekend! Participants included: the Jewish Community Federation; three social action groups from local Catholic Churches; University of Rochester Medical Students; SUNY Brockport Social Work students; and various other members of the community, about 100 riders total. We already have requests from a local Unitarian church and professors from other universities. We added a city school district principal and teacher to our line-up of speakers, as well as a professor from the University of Rochester who has done an amazing project on homicides in our community (see other story). One of our members is developing a grant proposal so that we might hire an organizer to work on these tours to free us up for other activities. There are already several names on a waiting list for the next tour.

We showed the video "Poverty Outlaw" to two groups of students on the SUNY Brockport campus in October. Plans for the spring include a community forum tying urban violence to the denial of economic human rights. We hope to invite Willie Baptist and possibly other KWRU members to facilitate this event.

Rochester Chapter May 2006:

Rochester SWAA, through some American Democracy Project funds and SWAA member Margery Saunders, deviously brought Fred Newdom to campus March 1st and 2nd to give a "Distinguished Scholars" presentation to the whole campus community as well as two lobbying/advocacy workshops to SUNY Brockport social work students.

We now seem to be able to run Reality Tours without having to worry about filling the bus anymore! We've had a recent request for a tour to be given especially for the Homeless Services Network (75 people). Three SWAA members gave a "How to organize a Reality Tour" workshop to the New York State NASW conference in Albany on March 24th, with approximately 45 folks in attendance.

Most recently, we collaborated with Let Justice Roll - a coalition of faith and community voices working to alleviate poverty in Rochester. They approached SWAA and wanted to know if we were willing to run a tour if they financed it, with the explicit goal of targeting Monroe County Legislators, the County Executive, and the new Mayor. The Tour ran on April 8th, with 12 politicians on board, along with a mix of community activists, church groups, and students. The tour was very successful, ending with lunch at a local homeless shelter and a de-briefing period.

We've also had a tour request from a SUNY Geneseo Education professor who has a grant to promote literacy to underprivileged school districts. SWAA is going to give a "mini tour" to teachers in the Rochester City School district on May 11th.

A few workshop participants at the NASW conference who expressed a real interest in the Tour were with the Binghamton, New York Homeless Coalition. They came to Rochester on April 8th and took the Tour to get a sense of it, with the intention of replicating it in Binghamton!

Finally, we are piloting a "Faces of the Fallen" project, with a few SUNY Brockport students gathering stories of economic human rights abuses, which we will put on our local web site and build from there starting next fall. We are currently hoping that a few SWAA members can attend the National Truth Commission in Cleveland this July.

Rochester Chapter November 2005:

This fall, the Rochester chapter worked with the local NASW chapter as well as the Federation of Social Workers (the union that represents county workers in the Department of Human Services) to distribute our 2005 voter education/registration brochures. Every member of our county legislature (because of new term limits) was up for re-election. Member Susan Ruhlin was particularly active in voter registration work.

In October we ran another Reality Tour. We had a full bus; many of the 40 passengers came from suburban church groups. This time we tried to include a few more "consumers" of social services, and added a speaker on Medicaid and lead paint poisoning. This Tour was co-sponsored by the local NASW chapter. In fact, a week before the Tour we had an op-ed article published in the Rochester newspaper that was also endorsed by the Federation of Social Workers as well as the NASW chapter - no small feat! This article focused on challenging our County Executive's recent assertions that the reason the County budget is running such a deficit was due to social services.

In the month of November, Rochester SWAA sponsored two screenings of the documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," both on the SUNY Brockport campus and the downtown SUNY Metro Center. For more information about the Rochester chapter, contact Melissa Sydor at melsk@me.com.

Rochester Chapter July 2005:

Rochester SWWA members have been very active working in coalition with other grassroots community groups. On February 14, 2005, Alberta Roesser of SWAA traveled to Albany with Sister Grace Miller of the House of Mercy and Jon Greenbaum of Metro Justice to lobby against Governor Pataki's budget cuts and to show support for the Empire State Economic Security Campaign (ES2).

The "delegation" visited the offices of Assemblyperson Susan John, as well as Senators Patterson, Maziarz, and Robach. Most often, they met with their assistants except with Rochester area Senator Robach, whom they met with personally. The overall response from the politicians was that our concerns were taken seriously and that our delegation should leave feeling assured that the cuts to Medicaid were not going through. But SWAA member Roesser stated: "That is not how I felt. When Mark Dunlea of Hunger Action Network of New York State supplied Senator Robach with some specific solutions, the Senator refused to believe any of the facts that Dunlea presented. At least our representatives understood we came not only with problems but also with viable solutions."

SWAA Rochester also organized another Reality Tour in April, and once again we had a full bus! Two SUNY Brockport Social Work students coordinated the Tour for their senior project.

Two SWAA members were represented at an April 7th "Emergency rally to stop Pataki's budget cuts to Medicaid and Family Health Plus." Eight cities across New York State rallied to defend patients and local institutions from Pataki's draconian cuts in the proposed state budget. One of our members was on an advisory committee for the planning of "From Poverty to Dignity & Decency for All." This was a community conference (an offshoot of "Let Justice Roll" organized by the National Council of Churches and the Center for Community Change) that took place on May 13th and 14th to develop an action plan to address poverty in the Greater Rochester Area. Three SWAA members attended the conference.

Alberta Roesser is also the new President of the Greater Rochester Chapter of the National Organization for Women. And Susan Ruhlin has been writing grants with Poor People United to raise funds for a human rights project house, which will house chronically homeless adult men and women.

Finally, Rochester SWAA has plans to begin work in conjunction with Rochester Voters Alliance, the Federation of Social Workers, and NASW to organize legislative candidate forums in the upcoming months in the City of Rochester, focusing on poverty issues. If you would like more information about Rochester's SWAA chapter, contact Melissa Sydor at melsk@me.com.

Rochester Chapter February 2005:

The Rochester SWAA Chapter has been quite active. Last spring we hosted Mary Bricker-Jenkins and Willie Baptist at events that were co-sponsored by the SUNY Brockport Social Work Depart- ment, Poor People United, Strong Memorial Hospital's Social Work Division's Social Action Committee, and the Federation of Social Workers. Willie and Mary (and a "team" of presenters from KWRU) gave Economic Human Rights workshops on the Brockport Campus, at Baden Street Settlement House, and Strong Memorial Hospital. Their presentations had an exhibit of the "Shirts Off Our Backs," part of a traveling t-shirt exhibit from the "Welfare Made a Difference Campaign." Brockport students also made shirts with local poor people at various agency locations.

In April we also sponsored another Reality Tour. One of the "tourists" happened to be an MSW student who was so inspired by what she saw that she helped Poor People United secure a grant to purchase a bus to convert into an emergency hypothermia "shelter on wheels." The bus just made its debut during the second week of December!

This fall, we worked on our own voter registration project specific to the greater Rochester area. We formed a coalition with the local chapter of NASW and the Federation of Social Workers (union of social workers at the Department of Social Services). Representatives from these three organizations met regularly and pooled resources to create a brochure targeted to human services workers and one targeted to low income workers explaining the issues that might be of concern to Monroe County residents. We sent these brochures in addition to schedules for opportunities to registered voters to one hundred and fifty organizations and human service agencies.

SUNY Brockport social work students worked with the coalition and we focused voter registration efforts on low income housing areas in districts where county legislator seats where up for reelection. This was a big year for County government races; the Republican-controlled legislature had six seats open for reelections with the possibility of swaying the legislature to the Democratic side. We were able to register over eight hundred voters and on Election Day we helped make sure voters had transportation and child care to get to the polls. This effort built the ties between the three organizations and we have plans to continue working together in the future.

During the fall, in conjunction with local organizations such as SUNY Brockport, Poor People United, the Federation of Social Workers and House of Mercy, we held another Reality Tour, with a new "twist." We included issues related to the local refugee population and HIV/AIDS in Rochester. Among the passengers were eight medical students from the University or Rochester who have been part of a team that opened a "free clinic" in the city.

SWAA - along with the Rochester Poor People's Coalition - cosponsored an event with Poor People United, bringing Ron Casanova (NYC chapter of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign) to Rochester for a speaking engagement that was preceded by the showing of GNN's Crack the CIA and KWRU's Corner Wars.

Rochester Chapter March 2004:

In the past six months, our Chapter has been very active. We worked with local groups - Poor People United, Rochester Poor People's Coalition, and Metro Justice to protest the disastrous County Budget cuts and organized efforts to influence the budget decision-making process. We continue to build connections with the Federation of Social Workers (the union representing workers at the Department of Health and Human Services) and became a task force of Metro Justice of Rochester (a longstanding independent, grassroots, progressive membership organization). We helped the Rochester Poor People's Coalition organize a protest at the County Legislature, and supported Poor People United in their fight to obtain a hypothermia shelter. We ran a Reality Tour in October that left us with a 25-person waiting list, and which was attended by several elected officials and "kicked-off" with an appearance from Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson. This tour (and the accompanying media coverage) helped us to expand our membership; one of our members created an excellent database for us which contains close to 300 names. We also helped poor people from Rochester get to the Kensington Welfare Rights Union march in August. More recently, we supported the local NASW's "Walk a Mile in Our Shoes" campaign.

Rochester Chapter June 2003:

The Rochester SWAA Chapter - with the Rochester Poor People's Coalition, the House of Mercy, and SUNY Brockport Social Work students - organized a downtown rally on December 7th at the Salvation Army and the Central Church of Christ to greet the New Freedom Bus Tour. Through donations and fund-raising, students were able to buy the food and prepare and serve a dinner for the freedom riders. Students also found housing for the bus riders, and another downtown church fed the group breakfast.

A vigil was held at School No. 17 on December 8th in Rochester with local welfare rights activists and the Freedom Bus riders to draw attention to the national campaign for economic human rights as well as the fact that Rochester is the 11th in the nation in the numbers of its children living in poverty. This event was covered in the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper and two local TV news programs).

In March, SWAA members Barbara Kasper and Melissa Sydor gave a workshop on "women and welfare reform" as part of the annual International Women's Day conference. The workshop was well attended and it generated a great deal of positive feedback.

In April, the chapter sponsored its fifth "Reality Tour." We were able to fill a school bus with students and members of the community for this three-hour consciousness-raising event. Tour "guides" included representatives from the Rochester Poor People's Coalition, Human Service Workers United, EMPOWER Welfare Rights, and folks who work with people with AIDS in the low-income community. One local TV station sent a reporter and camera person to cover the tour, and a newspaper reporter accompanied us to most of the tour stops as well.

Beyond these activities, our Chapter continues to bring together activists from various organizations to plan action strategies aimed at drawing attention to the devastating effects of the County budget cuts and the numerous ways our local welfare department is denying people their right to services.