by Robert S. Schachter, DSW, ACSW
(October 2001)

It was only when I departed a train in Albany at 9:40 AM on September 11 that I learned about two jets slamming into the World Trade Center. As the shock waves began to reverberate through me, a social worker who I bumped into in the station asked if I realized who was going to be hurt by this disaster.

My mind immediately split in two: one side politely being responsive to his question and the other preferring to attend to the shock, how I could get in touch with my family and my office, and return to New York City as quickly as possible.

I didn't want to consider his question at that moment, I thought that he was skipping a step in how he was receiving the news, and I wanted time to sort things out. Yet I knew he was pinpointing a regrettable, probable reality.

As I am writing this it is now two weeks after the day that changed so much (September 25-26). During this time hundreds of social workers volunteered to work on the front lines at the World Trade Center and wherever survivors and rescue workers were gathering. And NASW moved as fast as possible to mobilize a disaster response of its own. This included connecting member-volunteers with places needing them, providing weekly training sessions, and putting together a meeting of the profession scheduled for October 9th.

It was our hope that the October 9th meeting would help all of us better define our roles and responsibilities as social workers as the reverberations of the disaster unfold over the long term.

It's at this point that I find myself being reminded over and over again of that rhetorical question posed in the train station in Albany. I presumed that my colleague was referring to the people, including children, who have already been suffering in the Middle East/Southwest Asia who could very well be victims again, when the anticipated reprisal from the U.S. would eventually take place. I also assumed that he meant low-income people, many people of color, and immigrant groups here in our own City and country.

An enormous response has been put into place to address the survivors of the disaster at the World Trade Center, and this is extremely important. So many families have lost loved ones, and those who died were often the breadwinners for their families. An enormous number of children lost a parent, and some lost two. And there is the devastating effect on those who witnessed the disaster, starting with those who narrowly escaped with their lives, but includes all of us. It is appropriate that so many social workers joined the effort, and this is something that we can take pride in, if pride is something we are allowed to feel in these times.

At the very same time, we face an enormous challenge in continuing with the work that social workers were engaged in prior to the disaster. That work is all the more important because of how people were affected, both consumers of services and social workers as providers. We will have to struggle with accepting the unfolding reality of the disaster, wherever we find ourselves, while moving forward within a normally difficult work environment.

One issue that concerns me is what attention needs to be paid to people with very low incomes who are approaching the deadline for when their cash benefits will end. It is expected that 35,000 people will be affected on December 31, 2001, and probably another 15,000 soon after. This problem has not gone away because of the disaster; in all probability it has gotten worse. Jobs may now be harder to find: 100,000 people were expected to be out of work as a result of the disaster. And the loss of jobs could very well push people who left the welfare rolls back on, if they can get on.

Is the City, under Mayor Giuliani, whose popularity soared during the crisis, going to address this? I don't have much optimism. During one of his recent television press conferences he glowed as he announced that he was making city office space available to a displaced tenant in the World Trade Center. Where would the space be? - The Human Resources Administration's headquarters on Water Street in downtown Manhattan, where thousands of staff deal with income support and employment readiness.

Just as many low-income people move toward a day of reckoning in their lives with the prospect of losing their benefits, the organization charged with serving them (however well that may be) will be in the process of what will be a mammoth relocation. All to make way for a business considered to be of greater importance.

In Albany and in Washington, advocates for the poor and for health and human service programs were fighting for more money for programs. That fight may have gotten much harder unless it is for disaster relief. And on the streets, the experience of the disaster is being translated by too many into hatred and acts of bias.

No doubt, my colleague at the train station had it right. When catastrophe hits, the hardest hit usually includes those with the least means and those who have been vulnerable in the past. We can be sure that social workers will have a great deal to say about how the disaster, and the move toward a war, will affect the lives of people who have already struggled for so long. Hopefully, ours will not be a lone voice in the wilderness.