The Social Justice Doula – Lutze Segu, MSW

Episode 31

Guest: Lutze Segu, MSW

Host: Shimon Cohen, LCSW

 

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Transcription services provided by FIU’s Disability Resource Center

 

In this episode, I talk with Lutze Segu, who is the Social Justice Doula, from Miami, Florida. Lutze explains that she works to “create the conditions for social justice learning and transformation to take place” for individuals and organizations. She talks about how she loves seeing people grow and become committed to antiracist social justice work, become politically active, how she deeply believes in the inherent value and good of people to change, and that even though conditions in the world can be terrible, she always has hope doing this work. Lutze shares techniques she uses with people to help with this transformation and explains how theory, specifically Black Feminism, saved her life, helping her to see how systems oppress and that people are not to blame for their conditions, and how this relates to social work’s person-in-environment approach. We discuss the white supremacy enacted by social workers and clinicians who pathologize oppression, placing the problem inside clients, rather than acknowledging the violence of this “anti-Black, anti-woman, anti-queer, anti-trans, anti-immigrant world” and how social workers should be committed to social justice, not gatekeeping and the maintenance of oppression. She challenges us to ask ourselves what we are really practicing and “how are we personally going to divest from anti-Blackness.” Lutze also talks about how she got into this work, sharing a powerful story of what it meant to attend Florida Memorial University, an HBCU in Miami. I hope this conversation inspires you to action.

 

www.lutzesegu.com

Instagram: @socialjusticedoula

Twitter: @FeministGriote