My life as a community activist

The author recounts his life and how it led to a career as an activist community psychology practitioner with a focus on issues of social justice. He tells of his upbringing, family and education as the background to a series of positions in various systems. The story shows an evolution from working with individuals to working with whole communities; and from working on issues of remediation and treatment to working on prevention and finally empowerment, social change, and social justice. The story of his life parallels the social issues of the time. Throughout the accounting of his life the author raises the questions that he was struggling with. The sequence of those questions is as follows: Can I emerge as a community leader? What do I do with that leadership? Can my work in psychology have any relationship to the larger social issues? Can my politics, social action and beliefs in social justice, be integrated with my mental health job? Can I find a setting that will tolerate and permit me to do work to create social change and reduce oppression? Can we build competent helping systems with partners from many sectors? Can we mobilize whole communities around community crises? Can we use coalition building to make a difference in quality of life? And finally: How can our spirituality inform our work for social change and how can our social change work to inform our spirituality?