Below is a kind of mini-autobiography written as part of the application process for admission to the Hunter College (Graduate) School of Social Work in 1994.
David John Mendelsohn
I was born in Manhattan in 1950 to a mother who was raised as a Presbyterian in South Dakota and a father who was a fourth generation New York City Jew. In fact, he was the first Jew my mother had ever seen, having been prepared for the event, in part, by a family friend who informed her that Jews still had small vestigial tails and that Jewish mothers had to discretely clip off the little horns of their children just after birth.
Attending public school through the 10th grade, (and returning to attend C.C.N.Y.), I was raised in the civic culture of “the melting pot,” whose message (for me at least) was that each of us had come from an alien society but that we should now be co-equal citizens in a city always being made over by each influx of new New Yorkers. Thought talk about the “melting pot” has given way to espoused respect for “cultural diversity,” I feel that they are linked in being twin supports for the same social philosophy: In our social and political life I respect your individual uniqueness and integrity as I would have you respect mine.
At my Reformed Jewish Sunday school, with its emphasis on social justice, and at home, with both the “holocaust” and the civil rights movement in the background of my consciousness, I was nurtured on the ideal that what was required of us was “to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God.” In other words, the highest ideal is to act with justice and mercy towards others now, in this world.
Perhaps the most important books of my pre-high school years was BLACK LIKE ME, in which the author, who was “white,” put a dark pigment on his face and hands, then continued with his life, reporting on society’s radically negative response to this change, while remaining the same human being under his skin. Looking back now, I can see that this book awakened me to the reality that social conditions and outside influences can profoundly affect us and that everyone proceeds from a different foundation (or lack of it) in this world.
After graduating from C.C.N.Y. cum laude in Communications, and participating in anti-war, civil rights and open admissions demonstrations, I worked for WNET/13 as a fundraiser for thirteen years. I stayed with the job just to pay the bills, rising to be Manager of Statistical Reporting and Analysis of the non-profit Development Division, really coming alive only outside of WNET, doing more directly political and social work.
In 1983, I produced a documentary for PBS on President Kennedy’s press conferences, in which I was able to present the man I so admired as a youth in the very forum through which I had developed a strong interest in the social issues of the day. Throughout a seven year period I produced a weekly city issues program for then City Council Member Ruth Messinger on WBAI, researching the week’s topic and writing the questions for her, later hosting the program myself. Here I came in close contact with those women and men, from all backgrounds, who were most thoughtful about the problems of their communities and what could be done about them.
It was through WBAI that the most important influence on the development of my desire to enter in to professional social work happened: LISTENERS’ ACTION ON HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING. During a discussion on Paul Gorman’s talk show in 1984 the fact that though many people knew about the “holocaust” as it happened no one did anything to stop it, (for instance demanding that the railroads leading to the camps be bombed as higher priority than some of the militarily strategic bombing raids), came up. Then someone else called in and said that now, as we spoke, another “holocaust,” this time in Ethiopia, was happening and each of us was standing by in full knowledge but doing nothing now to stop it. So Gorman asked if anyone would offer a place and time to meet. The next day thirty of us showed up to try to do something to make a difference. That year the “Listeners’ Action Network” gave out cards around the city that said, “Instead of another holiday present I have given (X $’s) in your name to Oxfam’s Ethiopian relief effort.”
The next several years at the holiday season we worked on homelessness and housing policy, collecting food, renovating homesteaders’ apartments, disseminating information about the Reagan era federal cutbacks of low-income housing funds and demonstrating for the creation of more permanent housing, not shelters, for our city’s homeless families and individuals, all of it organized over the radio and in a basement hall at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine.
In 1988, our march involved 15,000 New Yorkers and collected food at 100 sites. In 1989 some of us practiced a non-violent civil disobedience to support legislation ending the warehousing of tens of thousands of apartments at a time when tens of thousands were homeless in our city. While a deepening understanding of the political and social elements of the problem was interesting and the feeling that we were having some political success in raising consciousness on the issue was sometimes rewarding, it was the form and practice of the Listeners’ Action group that had the most impact on me.
In our meetings, whether they included ten people or a hundred, we valued listening closely to both the ideas andfeelings of whoever was speaking, with an emphasis on deepening our consensus rather than accomplishing tasks. We also eschewed leadership roles, always trying to encourage new people to take responsibility, with particular attention to the value to the group of women and homeless people getting their share of the time speaking and facilitating. It was enlightening to see that white males generally felt freer speaking in groups and that others needed encouragement if we were to truly act with everyone’s full input.
Usually the meetings were in circular “big group, small group, big group” formats, which resulted in a stronger bonding of the participants through the encouragement of more intimate sharing of personal feelings than occurs in a single large group, front to back rectangular arrangement. Today about fifteen of the “core group,” who worked multiple years together, have remained close friends, several now married or living together and many going on in social work of one sort or another.
In 1988 our “WBAI Listeners’ Action Radio Collective” won the Gold Reel Award for Public Service from the National Association of Community Broadcasters (NACB) and in 1989 I was asked to produce a radio documentary for the Pacifica Network on homelessness. Working with an extraordinary radio producer, Andrew Phillips, Program Director at WBAI, we recorded the voices of homeless men and women as they marched (for sixteen days) from New York to Washington and fixed that with analysis by national housing policy makers. The result, HOUSING NOW! : The Journey Home, won the top awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, World Hunger Year and NACB.
During this same period I was the producer/host for a fortnightly Listeners’ Action radio program, which brought together the voices of homeless activist and government officials, with ordinary listeners in our call-in segments. In all of this I was enriched by contact with people from many backgrounds, and I learned to listen and to encourage people to speak their minds and hearts. During special “free-form” programs I facilitated discussions on: the problems and rewards of monogamy, civil disobedience with a Gandhi scholar and Mitch Snyder (the homeless leader), about environmental racism, living with AIDS, about the assassinations of the ‘60’s and governmental secrecy, always encouraging listener phone calls.
Along the same lines, of bringing people together to better understand and share experiences and commitments to social change, I worried intermittently as a program development organizer and public relations person for the LEARNING ALLIANCE, a non-profit, grassroots, school without walls. Here I worked under the director and founder David Levine, learning more about listening, and facilitating groups towards their stated aims.
In the summer of 1991, I was invited by the SEVA Foundation, the Cathedral of St. John the Devine and the Insight Meditation Center, along with one hundred other social activists or spiritually committed people from around the country, to a six-day retreat, where we were to explore the conjunction of spirituality and social action in our lives. We meditated together and shared our experiences, but what was most valuable was a sort of revolution that some of the women and people of color felt they needed to bring about, concerning the underlying control that the planners (who were too white and male in relation to their numbers in the larger group) of the retreat had and continued to have, over our daily work together. Through this, finally successful, process we all were forced to grow to more deeply see and express who we really were, overcoming our own preconceptions and prejudices.
Another experience over many years that has helped to interest me in a social work career comes from my participation in a kind of spiritual work that chiefly involves listening closely to others and oneself. This practice has deepened my patience towards others and myself as well as my interest in the deeper feelings and hopes of others. I have also been in therapy enough to have appreciated both the difficulties inherent in personal change and the value to others of a well-trained counsellor.
Last year I produced a radio documentary about the assassination of President Kennedy based on an interview I did with the late Judge Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s film JFK, which was aired on about thirty public radio stations. I also began writing and producing a television documentary concerning the problems of secrecy in an “open” society. This year I am producing a training documentary with Dr. Harris Peck of Physicians for Social Responsibility, illustrating the value of the “big group, small group, big group” format for holding public meetings, which will be helpful to social action organizations, churches or other groups when they have public meetings where a deeper level of personal involvement is desired.
All of these experiences had two things in common: an interest in social issues and a desire to do something to help people directly or to help them understand more about our society in order to be better prepared to take action to “make a difference.” However, the more my work moved towards being a media producer, the more it became necessary to be a promoter, concerned about selling the next project, rather than actually being occupied with the work itself. Then, late last year I met a woman who is a therapist in a community services clinic and with whom I have seriously discussed the kind of work she does.
The more we discussed the science and art of individual counselling and working with groups the more I felt that such work could satisfy both my social activist side and my artist side while providing me with a more focused and consistent practice, unlike the on again, off again field of producing.
Since then I have taken the time to seek out other psychologists and social workers in order to get a broader view of the variety of sub-fields for which an M.S.W. is appropriate and although an Administration or Community Organization concentration, with their more societal and activist sides would seem most natural to my past interests and work, I feel that the more direct and personal Casework and Group Work fields offer me something closer to my deepest and truest side, that which is concerned more with the human emotions than the political power structure. Perhaps part of this feeling comes from the satisfaction I felt through some personal counselling I gave over the course of a couple of months to a close friend who was very depressed, and the fact that my commitment to giving this help was brought on by the loss of a brilliant social activist friend through suicide.
Whatsmore, just because I am working with individuals and smaller groups does not prevent me from continuing my social action or even my producing efforts. The training film I am producing for Physicians for Social Responsibility and my radio work on housing and homelessness show that at times I may even be able to combine both the practice of listening and understanding with the work of illustration and teaching through media.
I expect that my work at Hunter will prepare me to put in to daily professional practice what I was brought up to value and have grown to enjoy: work which is motivated by the commitment to helping my fellow New Yorkers overcome the problems that their conditioning in our social system have created.
I don’t anticipate any unusual problems in working for the degree. I have the commitment to be open, to learn and to do what’s asked of me. I even have hopes that I’ll enjoy the process over the next two years.
