“What I want people to understand is that you don’t have to earn joy, you don’t have to have money to have joy. You don’t have to do anything in order to know that it exists within you.”

“He said, ‘I don’t have a learning disability. I learn really well. I have a school disability.’”

"Migration is not a crime; it’s actually a natural, fundamental part of human existence.” — Laurie Cook Heffron, PhD

“Our task is to resist authoritarianism and to cultivate liberatory alternatives to set agendas as social workers. We need to be agenda setters.”

“I was taught social justice meant more services. Now I understand that social justice means we don’t need so many services.”

"Any place that you would show up and advocate for your own child, now you show up and you advocate for people and families and children of color, too."

“Keeping the ‘why’ central — the ‘why’ we talk about religion and spirituality is because we care about the clients. Oftentimes, when we get caught up in our own discomfort, we avoid these conversations.”

"When we think about oral health, we really silo it rather than thinking of it as we have one body; we have one health. But oral health is really the gateway into someone's whole health.”

–Candace Ziglor, DSW

“Abortion is so stigmatized, controversial and a hot button issue that even social work has been hesitant to make it a primary component of the things we talk about and advocate for, even though reproductive health care affects everything.”

“Having conversations about important issues that affect our lives is how we address the social determinants of our health because it nurtures and cultivates community and a sense of belonging.”