Americans over the past three weeks have again witnessed the carnage of gun-involved mass killings. On November 19, 2022, five people were gunned down at a Colorado Springs night club frequented by members of the LGBTQ+ community. Only three days later, another mass shooting in Chesapeake, Virginia took the lives of seven other innocent individuals. The motivations of the perpetrators ... Read More »
Tag Archives: Mel Wilson
Women’s March Witness: “It was immediately clear the participants had a sense of purpose”
Mel Wilson, LCSW, MBA, social justice and human rights manager at the National Association of Social Workers, attended the Women’s March of 2018 in Washington, D.C. He wrote about his experience: The Women’s March of 2018, drew hundreds of thousands of marchers to major cities nationwide such as Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Denver, Dallas, and Montgomery, ... Read More »
A Social Work Response to Solitary Confinement
In recent years, there has been a growing national movement to challenge the practice and premise for using solitary confinement as a method of behavioral control in the nation’s prisons, jails and juvenile facilities.The strong opposition to solitary confinement is primarily based on questions about the belief that use of such practices is a clear human rights violation. Before we ... Read More »
NASW staff say fight against poverty key topic at Tanzania Association of Social Workers meeting
National Association of Social Workers (NASW) senior staff members joined up to a hundred Tanzanian social workers on Oct. 27-31 for the Tanzanian Association of Social Workers (TASWO) annual meeting. NASW Deputy Director of Programs Heidi McIntosh, MSW, and NASW Manager of Social Justice and Human Rights Mel Wilson, LCSW, MBA, were not there simply to observe the process. They ... Read More »
NASW has supported War on Poverty, Civil Rights Act initiatives for past 50 years
By Rena Malai, News staff Mel Wilson, manager of the NASW Department of Social Justice and Human Rights, was a teenager when President Lyndon B. Johnson gave his first State of the Union Address. Johnson announced a War on Poverty, and the Civil Rights Act was signed into law a few months later — in July 1964. “It was an ... Read More »
Administration Begins to Fulfill Promise to Shorten Certain Drug Sentences
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have begun to make good on their promise to reform criminal justice sentencing reform and encourage sensible drug policies. A first step toward sentencing reform began with Holder’s March 13, 2014 announcement of a new policy intended to shorten sentences for certain federal drug offenders. Just weeks later on April 20 Holder announced ... Read More »
NASW, allies are pushing to prevent steep budget cuts in USDA food aid program
Congress considering steep cuts in USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Read More »