A Workshop with No Classism
The Central North American Raised-Poor Workshop rocked! Our humanness got to shine on one another. I fell in love with everyone. I keep remembering several of the comments: "This was the first workshop where I was not shuffled off with my people. I was free to choose what I wanted." "It's impossible to look at people and the world in the same way as I did before." "This was the first workshop I have ever attended with no classism." Gwen Brown's* comment: "I've never attended or led a workshop where the people were all in love with one another, where there was no stiffness, and where the isolation melted so fast." I do not want this re-evaluation, this raised-poor excitement to die. We are powerful. We can get people together.
We have to show people that it is better to connect with humans than to isolate in a new house or worry about who is wearing the right shoes. We must connect with the person in those shoes. We have to teach people that isolation through class is destroying our human fabric.
So get ready to explode. Harvey will back us all the way. Gwen loves us. She has made such a difference. But we need more raised-poor leaders. For the past three years we have had a raised-poor Area Reference Person in West Madison, and the slack I was given really helped me. I was not restimulated all the time. I knew I wanted to stay in RC. I knew I had to establish safety for raised-poor people so that I (we) could work on our distresses and not restimulate the whole RC Community. The feelings of classism are hard to overcome when one feels "crazy" or "needy." RC has to have more raised-poor people teaching, leading, and growing into Area Reference People. Because of this workshop, raised-poor people are blossoming.
These are my goals for our re-emergence:
1. We must not set up other classes as our enemy. We need everyone as our allies. We must learn to see through to the other person and take the restimulations into session. It has become easier for me to look at a person and see him or her in spite of patterns of pretense or fear, etc. The three-point program for re-emergence is discharge, discharge, discharge. People are living for the day when they can get close to us. We need to get close to many people and discharge like hell.
2. We must practice, practice, practice until we know that we are significant. We should ask our counselors, "How am I significant?" Everyone else can see it but ourselves. Classism told us a big lie. Now we have to act on our own significance and throw out those lies.
3. We must call, write, e-mail, and have sessions with each of us raised-poor leaders. Each one of us needs the others' support. Isolation is our enemy. Classism will kill us one more time if we do not set up a community of raised-poor people discharging our way out of classism.
4. We should lead a support group in our Area-put ourselves in the center of our Community, for our own re-emergence. It could be around men, women, the religion or culture we grew up with, our class background, or our current class. We must give ourselves a chance to lead. Remember, everyone else can see our brilliance. It is time for us to see it, too.
I love all of you. Please don't forget to write me.
Tom Washa
2870 Pheasant Branch Rd.
Middleton, Wisconsin 53562, USA
* Gwen Brown is the RC International Liberation Reference Person for Raised-Poor People
(Present Time No. 110, January 1998)