SOCIAL WORK VALUES IN ACTION
VOTING IN 2020 DOCUMENTARY AND DISCUSSION SERIES Collaboration and innovation in a season of multiple pandemics By Ria Brazil Jones and Danielle Breidung
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oter engagement has been an important focus for social work across the country throughout 2020, a year in which the need for increased civic participation proved to be as important as mining solutions for the multiple pandemics of our time: COVID -19, systemic i n e q u i t y, a n d t h e weakened guardrails o f d e m o c r a c y. T h e School of Social Work’s Athens and Gwinnett campuses joint Student Faculty Committees (SFC) contributed to this conversation by collaboratively hosting a virtual Voting in 2020 Documentary and Discussion series. While Ria Brazil Jones, Chair of the SFC in Gwinnett, and her fellow committee members were envisioning a discussion series geared toward political social work and voter engagement, Voices for Change Chair of the SFC in Athens, Danielle Breidung, was imagining a social justice documentary series accompanied by virtual discussions. When they learned of each other’s plans, Jones and Breidung decided to merge their ideas and leverage their collective insights and enthusiasm.
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These budding advocates quickly set out to organize virtual events that would not only engage SSW students, faculty, staff, and alumni, but also move the study of social work into action. Students, faculty, and staff donated their time, leveraged their relationships, and contributed their expertise to this series, which ultimately focused on the importance of political social work, voter participation (at the federal and local levels), sustained civic engagement, and the naming of inequities and systems of oppression which impact those endeavors. In total, more than 700 people screened three relevant documentaries and joined real-time, virtual discussions with experts from across the country. The Voting in 2020 Documentary and Discussion series set the stage with a screening of Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence on September 9, 2020. The screening was followed by a panel that included filmmaker Hal Jacobs and subject-matter experts Drs. Diane Roberts, Vicki Crawford, and Jane McPherson.
