Innuendo 5_2015: Human Rights and Social Justice: Dr. Joseph Wronka

Professor of Social Work (Springfield College, Massachusetts USA), as well as Fulbright Scholar in Social Justice, Poverty, and Human Rights, Dr. Joseph Wronka was my guest in this special edition of Innuendo. Dr. Wronka was for the second time a guest lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Sankt Pölten, holding lectures, seminars and workshops for a week here, in Austria, so I had to „grab“ the chance of interviewing him. After spending some time in Pakistan as a Fullbrighter and more trips to Geneva as Permanent Representative for the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), Dr. Wronka shared some of his earliest memories and experiences that have steered him in this sometimes unrewarding, sometimes even scary fight that is that of a social activist for human rights and social justice.

Starting on the historical Bunker Hills, where 226 British dead soldiers „won“ a battle in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War, and where Dr. Wronka first experienced human malice and brutality, we went on to Brooklyn, New York, and the Catholic Worker Community, in the tumultuous era of the Vietnam War and open civil disobedience. Author of four books, two out of which, Human rights and social policy in the 21st century  and Human rights and social justice, you can find in the library of the University of Applied Sciences Sankt Pölten, Dr. Wronka is still trying to live, as he says, in „the spirit of Crazy Horse“, the great Lakota spiritual and military leader; it is this spirit that keeps on pushing him to do stuff out of „crazy love“, like play the accordion at Occupy Wall Street or live in the arctic regions of Alaska, to help develop a generalist counseling program in an indigenous community; it is also the spirit of the eagle, its courage and its vision, which Dr. Wronka believes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be, that defies the storm clouds and gets the big picture, one of the four principles of Crazy Horse, besides peace, humility and everlasting love. In that same spirit, we were accompanied by Inti Illimani, Goran Bregovic, Jaramar, Thom Yorke and Drugstore musically, in a kind of a tribute to humanists, including Pablo Neruda, Martin Luther King and Salvador Allende, among others that have (also) believed in the value of the human being, albeit understood in the Native American sense, as „Earthling“.