Another communication to the RC Community from Tim Jackins—June 1, 2020

Dear members of the RC Community,


As our society continues to crumble, it is less and less able to hide the oppressions on which it is based and their cruel and deadly implementation. The disruption of everyone’s life due to COVID-19 is also making societal irrationality more difficult to hide. 


There is increasingly overt opposition to the injustice and oppression built into our societies. Large demonstrations of outrage about racism are happening in many places in the world, and society is less able to suppress this opposition.


By restimulating old fears and isolation, our societies push us into not actively opposing what we increasingly know is unjust, oppressive, and exploitive. However, the oppressive and irrational aspects of our societies will not stop by themselves. For society to change, large numbers of us need to move into vocal, active, intelligent, and caring opposition. The more of us that can overcome the quieting effects of old distresses, the more quickly a better world for all can emerge.


Many people have been badly hurt by these societies for centuries, and some will respond in desperate, irrational, and destructive ways. This will happen and does happen any time people have been hurt badly enough. We can take this as evidence that the changes we have been working for are needed. 


Protests must occur even though they may be used by some to act irrationally. They must occur if society is going to change. Frederick Douglass, long before our picture of human irrationality developed, gave an astute analysis of situations like ours: 


“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”


Please challenge yourself as fully as you ever have. Let’s see what we can do.


With love and appreciation,