International Commonality Reference Person for the Care of the Environment
My name is Wytske Visser. I am the International Commonality Reference Person for the Care of the Environment. I am working class and a native European. I was born and am living in Friesland, a province in the Netherlands. Frisian is my first language; English, my third.
Since the RC Communities adopted the new goal on care of the environment,1 more RC leaders then ever before have gotten involved in care-of-the-environment work. Awareness of the effects of our oppressive societies, of the disruption and exploitation driven by greed, is growing quickly.
It is recommended that all RC leaders lead on care of the environment and always make genocide and environmental racism visible as they do so. Working on care of the environment is not a way to escape from or step over putting ending racism and genocide in the center of all of our work.
Living in a healthy balance with all of life and moving toward a sustainable future are about one for all and all for one. Doing the work as laid out in our goal will help us to more quickly end every form of oppression.
Our oppressive class-based, male-dominated societies put each individual in an isolated corner. Confusing messages about appearance and competition keep each of us preoccupied and holding back from showing our love and caring.
We need to unite in peaceful mass movements. Life on earth is amazing and miraculous in its uniquely complex beauty. It is worth fighting for.
We can provide some of the big and bold leadership that is needed for us and for the next generations. Sharing RC tools will bring improvement to every action and organization. It is also time to begin giving up comfort and lowering our consumption. We can be role models that will inspire people in the wide world.
We can transform our societies into ones in which all life is sustained.
Beth Cruise, the editor of Sustaining All Life, the RC journal on care of the environment, is working with a team on the second issue. It will be printed in October of this year.
An RC project by the same name, Sustaining All Life, will send a delegation to the biggest-so-far United Nations conference on climate change (COP21) in Paris, France, this November. We will do workshops, forums, and listening projects and have an information booth with literature, posters, and more. Diane Shisk and I will lead the delegation. Some of us involved in the project are preparing a non-RC pamphlet to bring to the conference. It will contain what we in RC know about working on care of the environment, along with an introduction to Co-Counseling.
I want to finish with a quote by Harvey Jackins:
“An effectively caring person is the most ‘dangerous’ revolutionary you can let loose.”
Let’s go for2 effective caring!
Ljouwert, Fryslan, the Netherlands
1 A goal adopted by the 2013 World Conference of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities:
That members of the RC Community work to become fully aware of the rapid and unceasing destruction of the living environment of the Earth. That we discharge on any distress that inhibits our becoming fully aware of this situation and taking all necessary actions to restore and preserve our environment.
Distresses have driven people to use oppression against each other and carry out destructive policies against all of the world. A full solution will require the ending of divisions between people and therefore the ending of all oppressions.
The restoration and preservation of the environment must take precedence over any group of humans having material advantage over others. We can and must recover from any distress that drives us to destroy the environment in our attempts to escape from never-ending feelings of needing more resource.
2 “Go for” means work enthusiastically toward.