"Impatient Patience"

June 17, 2000
Plenary Speech

By Dr. Robert L. Schneider, Professor - Chairperson of Influencing State Policy

When speaking of politics, policy, and social change, I am reminded of the Groucho Marx joke about two women lunching in a restaurant: "This food is awful", says one. "Yes," agrees the other, "and there isn’t enough of it!" While these three topics certainly give us plenty to complain, conjecture, and cry about, this conference’s title remains unchanged over the years because we cannot get enough of them......What would we do with out them?

But, this evening, I feel particularly happy to be here because I feel as if I am among familiar friends, who cherish each other’s viewpoints on politics, policy and social change. For the next few days, if this year is anything like last year, all of us can behave like "old friends," who share the good and the bad, who do not need to pretend or impress, and who speak what is on their minds with each other. It should be a satisfying smorgasbord and an opportunity to learn together as colleagues. You will probably compare this conference with your most memorable graduate class, and then, to add to the analysis, contrast the memory of your latest school faculty meeting.

Enough about predictions....At this conference opening this evening, I want to challenge each of you to incorporate the title of my remarks into the core of your being and never forget it nor let it escape. As you go about educating, lobbying, advocating, or getting votes, I ask you not to be patience at one time and impatient at another. I ask you to adopt simultaneously and hold tenaciously onto an "impatient patience." We, who are social workers, who advocate for the oppressed, the exploited, the poor, the voiceless, we must never separate these two qualities, because in separation, as Paulo Freire said in 1988, they both become disasters.

Let me begin with an illustration of "patience." When we see or experience social injustice and want to respond, do we not often hear that "change is coming, but we have to be patient." Don’t we in the policy arena frequently recognize that we have to be "patient" in order to "work within the political system?" Aren’t we told that, "patience is a value or a strategy" that will win in the end? "Patience," we learn, is a cardinal virtue because that is just the way "city hall or the legislature works." If you are not patient, you may upset some powerful people, "so don’t get excited, calm down; our turn will come." Be patient.

Who is helped by patience that is centered on such acceptance? when children are left in dangerous families, when elders are cheated out of pensions, when the mentally ill are maltreated in institutions, when HIV/Aids patients are denied drugs, when women are battered, WHO is being helped by being patient? Are we not supporting the exploiters and the status quo? Patience alone is a disaster.

Let me turn to "impatient." Each of us here probably have a list of issues that really frustrates us, causing high levels of impatience. Mine includes: the division in social work between clinical and macro; why there isn’t enough affordable housing; people, including faculty, who do not see that policy affects practice everyday for every client; why private companies like McDonalds get "corporate welfare;" social workers who think advocacy is a macro issue; why every social work program doesn’t have at least one entry to ISP’s annual contest, State Policy Plus; why people don’t vote; why many faculty do not belong to NASW. What’s on your list?

Are these issues worth being impatient about? Certainly, and there are many more. So, it’s good to be impatient, no? Pure impatience is also a disaster because it often leads to ineffective action. It leads me to oversimplify complex issues. What do I do with my impatience? I complain. I say things. I lose my cool sometimes. I act out. I offend. I make summary judgments. I plot with my friends. I undermine. I waste a lot of time steaming.

Here are the difficult questions: If being impatient produces little lasting result, how long should we be patient? What is too much patience? Isn’t impatience really in our heads and not based in the real world? If I am only patient or if I am only impatient, what can I accomplish?

The answer lies in possessing impatient patience! The answer lies in figuring out, not what we would like to do, but what is possible. The answer lies in combining these two elements as we put them into our practice and teaching, because they constitute the attitude required for effective politics, policy-making and social change.

Accepting this conundrum and fusing the two together means that we should all continue to be very impatient when it comes to issues of social justice. There is no dodging some issues. However, our impatience needs to be permeated by a select patience demanded by the real circumstances. We should all recognize the complexities of social change and policy making, and the need for persistence. If I am only patient or if I am only impatient, what can I accomplish? The two are inseparable for us in this field.

The head of NAMI-VA, Val Marsh, exemplifies this entangled duo. She is hyper-impatient with the mental health system in Va, a predictable quote in the newspaper about the Governor’s latest attempt to downplay the rights of the mentally ill, and she gets on some people’s nerves with her abrasiveness and stubbornness. Yet, Val also knows how decisions are made, where the power is, how to get the money flowing, when to call the media, how to design a strategy and accompanying tactics, how to dig up the facts, how to be persistent and patient, how to frame an issue, and how to organize a rally, a press conference, or a one-on-one with the State Secretary of Health and Human Services. She possesses impatient patience.

Policies are made by men and women like us. Social change is inevitable, but it is not preordained or predestined. It is subjective, and we can each learn what is possible in our states, communities, and nation, and then we can make or refrain from making an effort to alter issues and events.

Answer the question: how would our society, communities, profession, or programs be different IF......[fill in the answer, beginning with the pronoun, "I," "IF I,"].....decided to teach and act as an advocate? if I made my colleagues and students comfortable in the halls of the legislature? if I reached out to my clinical colleagues?
If I initiated dialogue with the opposing side? If I were more impatiently patient? If I thought about what is possible, and not about what is only my preference?

To me, this group here tonight constitutes the heart and soul of the title of this conference. Who cares more about politics, policy, and social change than you do?

Answer me! No one....again.....no one....again....no one.

Are you going to be patient? No! Are you going to be impatient? No! Will you be impatiently patient? Yes!

Then the changes we seek will soon become a reality. Thank you very much.