A GMI Owning-Class Support Group
We had our first Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)* owning-class support group yesterday. It was led by Nelson Simon [Area Reference Person for part of Brooklyn, New York, USA]. The group will meet every three months. What a treat! [*The peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and those descended from them, and Indigenous people, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass. Using the term “Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)” for these people acknowledges their majority status in the world and interrupts how the dominant (U.S. and European) culture assigns them a minority status. Many Global Majority and Indigenous people living in dominant-culture countries have been assimilated into the dominant culture—by force, in order to survive, in seeking a better life for themselves and their families, or in pursuing the economic, political, or other inclusion of their communities. Calling these people “Global Majority and Indigenous” contradicts the assimilation.]
Meeting with GMI owning-class people is important to me. We face a complexity around “survival” that jams in the owning-class material [distress]. It’s always good to be together as GMI owning-class people and listen to one another.
Being GMI people, we have found it difficult to meet regularly because our lives are hit hard with emergencies, trauma, and drama. I’m glad we have moved enough that we can meet regularly and with solid leadership.
Nelson was kind, warm, soft-spoken, gentle, sincere, and firm yet humble. That was a huge contradiction to the harshness that comes down on us as both owning class and GMI people. Below is some of what he talked about:
- Anywhere there is oppression, someone is making a profit.
- We are being told lies every day that perpetuate the system.
- Humans have always tried to survive. This impacts us in a certain way as owning-class people. What do we really need? We get to work on this together.
- It’s not okay to hate owning-class people.
- No amount of material resource can undo a distress pattern.
I got to work on being vulnerable. My pull is to be harsh, cut people off, get hot-headed, and show anger. I am Native American (Lower Brule in South Dakota, USA), and it’s hard to be vulnerable when my human, as well as patterned, generosity is being taken advantage of. And it’s hard to be vulnerable given my owning-class distresses. I suppose it would be fine to be vulnerable in either case. Ha! More work to do there.
Urbana, Illinois, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for owning-class people
(Present Time 207, April 2022)