Language Liberation at the International “Mental Health” Liberation Leaders’ Conference
In October 2019, ninety-five RC “mental health” liberation leaders gathered in New Jersey, USA, for a conference.
The language liberation team, led by Xabi Odriozola (International Commonality Reference Person for Languages and Interpreting), had been meeting for several months prior to the conference. We were pleased with what we were able to accomplish. We had up-front interpreting into Basque, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, Russian, Yiddish, Italian, French, and Gronings in every class [Gronings is a collective name for some dialects spoken in the province of Groningen, and around the Groningen border in Drenthe and Friesland, in the Netherlands.] There was a sense of excitement about participating in a significant liberation movement (rather than just “tolerating” the language liberation work).
Janet Foner (former International Liberation Reference Person for “Mental Health” Liberation) often said that what is considered “normal” behavior is that of a white owning-class Protestant heterosexual man. Here in the United States, we can add English speaker to that list. People immigrating to the United States have been expected to assimilate—to leave behind connection to their roots, their land, their culture, and their language—in order to be accepted as “normal.” Many of us began to make a connection between our language history and our “mental health” history.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussionlist for RC Community members
(Present Time 198, January 2020)