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Social Work Ethics, Values, and Advocacy Practice } 29

Violence: Violence is an obvious form of oppression. It results in oppressed groups being subject to physical harm at any time and for no reason. News shows tell the tale of sexual violence against women, police violence against Blacks and other minority groups, and hate- motivated assaults on individuals from numerous groups. Thus, one approach to anti- oppressive social work practice analyzes the situ ation to be addressed using one or more of the types of oppression and works to overcome it or them. Barnoff (2001) describes the difficulties of implementing this framework in feminist social service settings but also provides examples of enabling processes. It is important to note that the anti oppression framework is not universally accepted at a conceptual or practical level for social workers. Tester (2003), for example, strongly challenges the use of an anti-oppression framework for social work practice, and his work represents an interesting ex- ample of the conceptual and practical debates around the topic. This debate is still in full swing and can be an important alternative way of viewing the role of social work in advocating for social justice. Examples of Ethical Issues in Advocacy Practice Up to now, this chapter has focused on the ethical responsibility social workers have to address societal and client problems through advocacy and the need to focus on social justice in their practice. Still, the questions remain, How do these principles operate in the real world? Is everything fair in love, war, and advocacy practice, or should social workers be held to some other standard of behavior? Saul Alinsky (1972), in his classic essay “Of Means and Ends,” argues force fully that people who extensively debate the morality of means and ends “wind up on their ends without any means” (p. 25). Organizers must use what is avail- able to enable them to accomplish their goals: “He who sacrifices the mass good for personal salvation has a peculiar conception of ‘personal salvation’; he doesn’t care enough for people to be ‘corrupted’ for them” (p. 25). It is ap- propriate to be concerned with ethics only when there is a choice of means. Thus, if the ends are just and the means are limited to one tactic, that tactic, no matter what it is, is fair. It is only the powerful who call the effective tactics of the dispossessed “unfair.” The NASW Code of Ethics may be used to support Alinsky’s (1972) view in part, but the overall message is clear that social workers should be held to a higher standard. Maryanne Mahaffey (as cited in Haynes & Mickelson, 2009) maintains this point vigorously: