Social Work Leader Strives to Bring Truth to Power

Boardroom

By Paul R. Pace

“As an abolitionist social worker, I joined the call toward collective liberation and non-reformist reform,” NASW Maine Chapter President Lacey Sawyer says of why she ran for the board position.

“We speak truth to power,” she says. “We work toward creating compassionate, mutual communities that nurture equity and access. We build social connectedness and inclusivity, and work to dismantle the power and punishment bureaucracies that drive disconnection and marginalization.”

Sawyer said she learned to thrive, not just survive, when she was growing up amid generational and working-class poverty in Maine’s rural Aroostook County—within a lineage characterized by a matriarchal, single-parent family structure.

“Because of my lived and living experiences, I firmly believe that authentic expertise at any table arises from those with lived and living experiences as the essential way to address systems of harm and promote justice, equity and inclusion guided by the very people who have survived or are trying to survive oppression,” said Sawyer, assistant clinical professor and practicum education coordinator at the University of New England School of Social Work. She also is an adjunct professor at Yeshiva University, and formerly with Columbia University, schools of social work.

She says it is vital for members of NASW to volunteer with their professional association.

“For far too long social workers have defaulted to clinical excellence and neglected the justice mandates in our Code of Ethics,” Sawyer said. “Now more than ever, we need all hands on deck dismantling systems of harm, fighting to save our democracy, and creating caring, compassionate ecosystems that promote the dignity and worth of all people through universal human rights.”