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From January 2001 NASW NEWS
The hard work begins after the elections are over, Dellums says. More than 2,000 social workers gathered under sunny skies near Baltimore's Inner Harbor Nov. 1-4 to be moved by passionate speeches, to learn how the Internet affects practice and to earn continuing education credits at more than 300 workshops at NASW's Social Work 2000 conference.
Attendees laughed with and learned from the opening plenary remarks of former House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ron Dellums, officially said goodbye to NASW Executive Director Josephine Nieves, and took Tyne Daly of television fame to their hearts during four hectic days at the Baltimore Convention Center.
A conference surprise was the great interest in the Cyber Cafe, the Internet training center, which often had standing room only, with lines forming outside for later training sessions. Word spread that topics like Web-based counseling and building a Web page were being taught with humor and in a nonthreatening way to those lacking technological savvy.
Of the 80 exhibitors, several were companies promoting Internet continuing education services and forming networks of providers to provide Internet counseling. The City of Los Angeles, where social work jobs are going unfilled, had two booths, one each to recruit child welfare personnel and mental health staff.
Dellums opened the conference with reminisces of his days as a social work student at the University of California at Berkeley in the tumultuous 1960s. "Every single movement of the '60s emerged simultaneously and in close proximity in that community: peace movement, civil rights movement, nationalist movement, Black Panthers, Gray Panthers, women's liberation, gay liberation, movement for civil rights for the disadvantaged, and movement to preserve the fragile nature of our ecological system," said Dellums.
The ACSW information booth proclaims the NASW credential's 40th year. People were forced by circumstance and space to hear each other's anger and pain and to have their ideas "molded and nuanced by the fact that there were other movements out there."
Outgoing NASW Executive Director Josephine Nieves (right) receives gift from President Ruth Mayden. His was an inpatient generation, said the tall, graying former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. "We wanted to reorder priorities, to change the world, to challenge injustice, to end the war, to stop building nuclear weapons."
"I went in [to Congress] thinking it was a sprint, but in the course of my tenure I learned a couple of lessons: patience and humility. I learned I would have to change my view; it wasn't a sprint, it was a long-distance run. It wasn't just about seizing power, it was about enduring," said Dellums.
When the elections are over, social workers "still have to be involved," said Dellums, now president of Healthcare International Management Co. "We gray-haired folks who wanted to change the world, we didn't just do it during the campaign season. We did it during the period of governance. We challenged the president and the Congress, the state legislatures, the mayors and city councils. We challenged the regular order." Another highlight of the conference was the final plenary session, when Tyne Daly, who accurately portrays a social worker on television's Judging Amy, praised social workers for their front-line work with the nation's poor and disadvantaged [see separate story]. Other events during the conference included:
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