The Best World Conference Yet
The recent World Conference was the best one yet! I have been to all but one World Conference since 1981, and they have been getting better and better each time. The diversity of participants, including a large group of young people and young adults and a large group of African-heritage people, Latinos/as, East Asians, South Asians, and Indigenous people, as well as people from many countries, made the conference rich.
Tim’s1 talks, particularly about building our Communities, were inspiring. He said we had done well on ending racism and increasing access to RC for young people, and suggested we look around the room to see the evidence of that.
He led us through the Guidelines2and goals discussions with his usual good humor and with seemingly infinite patience for long discussion, some of it late at night. He made sure everyone who wanted to had a chance to talk, yet he kept us on track, mostly with humor. Diane Shisk worked long hours, very efficiently, with the Guidelines committee to revise the proposed changes after getting our input.
I got to cry a lot during both Tim’s and Diane’s self-estimations. It was moving to see how close they had become and how well they were thinking about each other. Hearing some of the conference participants’ directions for Tim and Diane, seeing how well loved and thought about they were, was also moving.
I attended two meal tables with Xabi Odriozola, the International Commonality Reference Person for Languages and Interpreting. He said, “They tried to take away our land, and then our language. Without our connection to our land and to our people, we could be much more easily manipulated into what the oppressive society would have us do.” I had always known this about the Jews but had never thought about how it applies to people of so many heritages.
Sessions and groups with people from so many different places gave me a picture of the power of RC worldwide.
Janet Foner
International Liberation
Reference Person for
“Mental Health” Liberation
New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, USA
1 Tim Jackins’
2 The Guidelines for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities — the policies for the RC Communities