I’m writing about a wonderful workshop—the December 2019 Conference on Climate 
Change/Climate Justice in the RC Communities, in California, USA, led by Tim Jackins and Diane Shisk. For me it was a huge contradiction [to distress] to spend time with so many RCers who are taking on the climate crisis.


Participating were a hundred or so RCers from all over the world, about half of whom were People of the Global Majority and Native people. Most participants came from the U.S. west coast (California and Seattle). There were a number of people from Mexico and Central and South America who had been at COP25 with Sustaining All Life. Also attending were people from Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands. 


Language liberation was prioritized. This was one of my favorite parts. Everything that happened up front (except demonstrations) was interpreted. There were breaks every twenty minutes for one minute of silence and to give attention to those whose first language was not English. This slowed the pace of everything, which I think was wonderful for all of us. Speaking of pace, I noticed that Tim and Diane spoke only in short chunks before calling for a mini-session. Never more than ten minutes of information was given before we got to discharge. Again, this meant everything was slower. But doing this was clearly necessary—after only five minutes of information about the climate, everyone was ready for discharge!


The workshop focused mostly on working on our early hurts. Many years of institutionalized distress recordings and harmful ways of treating each other have left us confused. We’ve grown used to the distress recordings that we’ve lived with for our entire lives. In a way we are comfortable with them. We have a frozen belief that the distress is real. In particular, we have been left thinking that we are isolated and alone. Tim asked anyone who feels “odd” to raise their hand. All hands went up. He had us look around and notice that “the distress makes you feel that there’s something wrong with you—there’s nothing wrong with you.” 


We all had to make an early decision to give up, go away, and close the door. That was the right decision at the time. But now we need thinking that is more flexible than thinking based on decisions we made when we were two years old. The distress looks and feels just as real as it did back then. We will want to give up over and over again, but we have to keep returning to it and discharging it. The climate emergency requires as many people as possible having their full flexible intelligence, and that means we have to go after [pursue] the early distress and liberate our minds from it. 


We had a mini-session in which we asked our counselor, “Are you on my side? Can I count on you [depend on you] to be on my side—could you decide that about me?” 


Diane led a dinner table where she took notes as everyone said what they thought needed to happen in the wide world to end the climate crisis. In another round, the question was what needed to happen in RC. She suggested that we all go home and lead a one-day workshop on climate. Also, if we’re not already teaching RC, we need to consider starting—we need to get RC into as many people’s hands as possible.


Diane talked about how the United States misuses its influence in the world—for example, by manipulating the Kyoto treaty and the Paris agreement. She suggested that USers, in particular, need to take on the climate crisis.


There were many chances to share with activists—who are doing similar work, doing very different work, and haven’t figured out what to do. I got to meet several times with activists who are in a group that I am part of, and we have stayed in touch since the workshop. 


I led a fun topic table about the importance of getting activists laughing (so they can discharge some fear) and using games to make that happen. I also got to back [support] someone who led a table about “the joys of getting attacked,” which led to work on our early hurts. 


Tim said many of us are being run by our patterns in our choices about the climate crisis. Our material [distress] pulls us to “freak out,” numb out, tell people what to do, and so on. People need to work enough on their early material that they can find their own clear thinking about the climate crisis.