People Were Receptive
I was one of the volunteers in Paris. We did a lot of listening, to offer people some connection and a chance to move their thinking forward or to unload some upset. Sometimes we put forward our perspectives.
A young Sami woman from Lapland wanted to learn to use RC with her people. A white European woman said that our way of taking turns listening to each other was just what her climate change organization needed. A man from Congo and a man from Nepal both said that what we were teaching was what the whole world needed.
A Latina said that she could talk for days about all the racism she had experienced but that the four-minute mini-session at our workshop felt like a gift because she’d so rarely had an opportunity to talk about racism without being interrupted. Several people said they had never experienced anyone engaging people around difficult topics with such lightness and a sense of possibility as we RCers were doing.
We met many people who shared our view that only a massive, inclusive movement could force governments and corporations to do what must be done about climate change. This gave me a heightened sense of the importance of widespread access to RC tools that enable people to think better, connect more deeply and widely, and take action based on thinking.
Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
(Present Time 183, April 2016)