The Re-evaluation Counseling Community Goals
At each World Conference, the Re-evaluation Counseling Community sets goals for itself. These goals help guide our way forward. They also promote action in areas that have been difficult to focus on but are important to our progress.
The current goals are printed below. (Past goals, showing earlier stages of our work, can be found on the RC Community website at <www.rc.org/publication/guidelines_2017/goals>.)
The work we do toward all the goals of the RC Community will include the following:
1. Creating opportunities for RC Community members to discharge, discuss the situation, and develop new ideas, tactics, and strategies—using webinars, think-and-listens, classes, support groups, workshops, and other means to build common understanding
2. Working for the transformation of society rather than any partial solution—recognizing that transforming the present irrational structures into structures that provide all people a good life, free from oppression and exploitation, is essential to achieving any goal
3. Making connecting with and caring for all peoples the base from which we all work
4. Offering our RC knowledge and practice to everyone working on these issues
ORIGINALLY ADOPTED BY THE 2001 WORLD CONFERENCE
(Reaffirmed by four World Conferences and modified by the 2022 World Conference)
Goal 1: The Elimination of Racism
That the elimination of racism, in particular the racism aimed at people of Black African heritage, be actively made an ongoing, central piece of the work of the Re-evaluation Counseling Community.
(Goals 2 and 3 were replaced by goals adopted at the 2017 World Conference.)
Rationale—why we think this is the right goal for the RC Community now:
We firmly believe we need this goal at this point in our history. It is a simply stated, clear goal that has provided good direction and focus for the work in our Communities toward eliminating racism. We have made progress, but there is much work still to do.
We believe we need to retain this goal as written and approved of by past World Conferences, with one small edit: adding the word “Black” in front of “African heritage.”
We also agree with feedback from the Pre-World Conferences that the goal needs to be supplemented with ideas for how to further implement it. Some of these ideas can be found online at <www.rc.org/publication/racism/implement_goal_one>.
ORIGINALLY ADOPTED BY THE 2017 WORLD CONFERENCE
(Reaffirmed by the 2022 World Conference)
Ending Classism
That members of the RC Community, to move toward a rational society free of exploitation, commit to the following:
- Building connections with and learning from members of economic classes that are underrepresented in our Communities yet represent the majority of the world’s people—the sector of the working class engaged in the direct production of goods and services, and poor people
- Getting the theory and practice of RC into their hands and encouraging, supporting, and following their leadership
- Facing, discharging on, and challenging any distress that causes us to believe that some lives are more important than others, to seek economic advantage over other people, or to be preoccupied with irrationally seeking comfort and security
- Discharging toward a full understanding of the class society and its inherently destructive nature and communicating this understanding to others in our own way
Rationale—why we think this is the right goal for the RC Community now:
Most of our Communities have not yet done much work on this goal. Many of the people who have worked on it like the goal as it has been stated. It has been particularly important for the sector of the working class engaged in the direct production of goods and services to be recognized.
The absence of currently working-class and poor people in the RC Community still has not been noted by most RCers. Nor has it been seen as an effect of classism on and in our organization. This is a serious impediment to our reaching all our goals to end the exploitation of people and the planet.
In our current circumstance, there is no unifying explanation for the worldwide failures of capitalism. It is dangerous to leave the vast majority of the world’s population vulnerable to well-organized programs that offer reactive, racist, divisive, and often violent responses that appeal to people’s painful emotion. Without ending classism, capitalism could be replaced by an even more oppressive economic system.
To bring about a sustainable society, everyone—from every class background—needs to discharge their early class-based distresses and those related to the roles they play in society today.
Young People and Young Adults
That members of the RC Community commit to creating a world in which the thinking of young people and young adults is respected and at the center of any decisions that affect their lives and the world.
That we make getting the theory and practice of RC into the hands of more young people and young adults a significant part of building the RC Community.
That young people and young adults challenge the internalized oppression that separates them from adults and from each other and that keeps them from taking initiative, leading, and building the RC Community.
That adults, and young adults, discharge on and recognize the powerful role they can play as allies in young people’s liberation.
That we in the RC Community commit ourselves to developing and supporting young leaders across the Community.
That adults work to eliminate the distresses that prevent them from connecting with younger people and backing young leaders.
That all Co-Counselors heal from their own experiences of young people’s and young adults’ oppressions and stand against these oppressions in the present.
Rationale—why we think this is the right goal for the RC Community now:
This goal came from young people and young adults at the 2017 World Conference speaking to the RC Community from their perspectives. It supports young people and young adults in the Community.
The goal, along with the Young People’s and Young Adults’ Strategic Plan <www.rc.org/yp_ya_strategic_plan> (also drafted in 2017) has moved the work on young people’s and young adults’ liberation forward.
We propose to keep the goal the way it is currently written, as there is still more work to do.
ADOPTED BY THE 2022 WORLD CONFERENCE
Ending Genocide and Honoring Indigenous Sovereignty
[Sovereignty will be more fully defined in an article in a later Present Time.]
That ending the genocide of Indigenous and Tribal peoples, and honoring and restoring full Tribal sovereignty over their lands and waters, be made an active, ongoing, central part of the work of the Re-evaluation Counseling Community.
Rationale—why we think this is the right goal for the RC Community now:
1. This goal promotes discharge and clearer thinking about Indigeneity, Tribal peoples around the world, and Tribal sovereignty.
2. Restoring full sovereignty of Indigenous and Tribal peoples, and their land and water rights, is a key challenge facing humanity at this time. Movement on this goal will give us a clearer understanding of protecting the Earth.
3. We need to discharge anything that interferes with our ability to end genocide worldwide, including distress recordings of greed, powerlessness, hopelessness, and numbness.
4. Protecting the Earth is an inherent part of Indigenous and Tribal sovereignty.
Growth
That members of the RC Community put increased effort into sharing the tools of RC with large and diverse populations.
That we make a thoughtful and sustained effort to reach out to the people we already have caring and committed relationships with, along with building new and diverse relationships.
That we assist interested people to use RC tools for themselves and, when appropriate, to become members of the RC Community.
That in order to pursue this goal, we keep discharging the distresses that hold us back from openly sharing what we find useful about RC.
That Areas, Regions, and Developing Communities organize classes, gather-ins, support groups, workshops, and other events to assist in achieving this goal, while continuing to support the existing members of the RC Community.
Rationale—why we think this is the right goal for the RC Community now:
The more broadly we share RC perspectives and tools, the more effective we will be in moving against all oppressions, ending the climate crisis, and making other positive changes in society.
Unified Goal on the Climate
Humans are on an unsustainable path that puts at risk most of Earth’s life forms, including ourselves. This path was created and is supported by destructive irrational policies carried out by the governments, institutions, and industries of our societies, for example, the fossil fuel industries. These policies must be completely transformed, beginning now.
To transform these policies, we must end the many forms of oppression our governments, institutions, and industries use to create and enforce the policies. We share a vision of a world free from oppression, in which people work cooperatively, in a respectful and harmonious relationship with the Earth, to ensure that everybody’s real needs are met. To make this vision a reality, we must significantly reduce consumption—especially by the globally dominant and more industrialized nations—by ending the irrational patterns of consumption our societies promote.
We in the RC Community commit ourselves to encouraging and supporting every one of us to act against and discharge any distress that might keep us from playing an active role, as large and radical as necessary, to resolve the climate emergency. For most of us, this will involve uniting with others to publicly oppose irrational policies and visibly support rational solutions.
The oppression of any group of people is unjust, inhumane, destructive, and against the interests of all people. Because our societies all use oppression to maintain themselves, we need to end all oppression to free humans from the grip of irrationality and end the threat to our climate.
To solve the climate crisis, we must transform the current economic system—with its focus on profits for a small number of people, its endless pursuit of growth, and its exploitation of both nature and humans—into a system that respects and sustains all life and ecosystems. To end the climate emergency, we must simultaneously work to end all oppressions and all forms of exploitation.
The societies that have exploited people and the Earth are the result of irrational behavior coming from humans’ vulnerability to distress recordings. The thoughtless, patterned desperation for more, without considering its damaging effects, has brought us to our current crisis. The distresses behind the irrational personal and institutional policies must be discharged for us to create policies that sustain our Earth’s ecosystems.
They must eventually be discharged fully, but we cannot wait for that to happen before we take large actions. The climate is deteriorating too rapidly, and the changes needed to address the crisis must begin now.
Working simultaneously on oppression and the climate emergency requires that we support and follow the leadership of Indigenous, Global Majority, and other oppressed groups—working together with individuals and organizations to build a united force that welcomes everyone to end the climate emergency.
In particular, we must continue the work of ending all oppressions, and understanding the ways in which they intersect:
• Ending racism
We cannot end the climate crisis without ending racism. Racism and patterns of domination, colonization, exploitation, and extraction have created the conditions for the climate crisis. Also, Indigenous and Global Majority2 communities and nations have been, and are being, exposed to far greater climate and other environmental danger than are the vast majority of white-dominated communities and nations. [2 Indigenous peoples and the peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and those descended from them, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass. Using the term “Indigenous and Global Majority (IGM)” 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 Indigenous and Global Majority 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 “Indigenous and Global Majority” contradicts the assimilation.]
The RC Community commits to creating opportunities for everyone to do the following:
a. Implement the Strategies for Goal 1: Ending Racism (see <www.rc.org/publication/racism/implement_goal_one>)
b. More fully understand the connection between racism and the climate crisis
c. Discharge on the patterns and practices of white domination that have enabled, and continue to enable, rich countries to get rich at the expense of Indigenous and Global Majority communities and our Earth
d. Discharge feelings of powerlessness and any other feelings that would stop us from acting to end institutional and systemic racism and white supremacy culture
• Ending genocide and honoring Indigenous sovereignty
Protecting the Earth is inherent to Indigenous and Tribal sovereignty and to sustaining all forms of life. The RC Community commits to reading, discharging, and instituting proactively the Goal on Ending Genocide and Honoring Indigenous Sovereignty.
• Ending classism
The RC Community commits to building connections with, learning from, and increasing the participation of the sector of the working class engaged in the direct production of goods and services.
These workers are currently underrepresented in our Community, yet they represent the majority of the world’s population.
Their leadership is key to making the changes and building the solidarity needed to end the climate crisis.
• Ending sexism and male domination
Women and girls are among the most powerful forces in ending climate devastation. They hold vital knowledge as caregivers, land and resource stewards, and leaders of communities. They offer their societies long-practiced, sustainable, community-based solutions.
The exploitation of women’s reproductive work, caregiving, and agricultural and factory work (along with poverty) leaves women more exposed to climate change and other environmental shocks. Also, their lack of material resources with which to adapt to and mitigate climate impacts puts them at greater risk of sexual exploitation and male violence.
Females of all ages are significant members of the working class and of Indigenous and Global Majority peoples. We recognize the intersection of all their oppressions and the work needed to end their internalized oppression.
The RC Community commits to ending the divisions among women and to building a united sisterhood—while also welcoming and working with women’s brothers to end the exploitation of all women and girls and the environment.
• Ending the oppression of young people
Young people are at the forefront of facing the present and future effects of the climate crisis.
The RC Community commits to creating opportunities for young people to discharge the hurts of young people’s oppression and for adults to discharge the oppressor distresses that keep them from fully backing young people.
We support the leadership of young people. We also support adults to stay close and connected as they face the climate crisis together with young people.
The RC Community commits to discharging the early hurts from young people’s oppression that discourage us from taking action to transform society. People of all ages can unite and play large roles in ending the climate crisis.
• Ending anti-Jewish oppression
The RC Community commits to doing the work to understand anti-Jewish oppression, its significant rise worldwide, and the divisive role it plays in weakening liberation work (particularly the fight against racism).
We commit to discharging and acting against all antisemitic patterns that have been installed on us.
We will take an active role to ensure that anti-Jewish oppression is addressed in all liberation programs and to end the use of anti-Jewish oppression to disrupt liberation movements, and the climate movement.
• Ending Gay oppression
Historically and in the present, the oppression of LGBTQ+ people has been, and is being, used to divide and derail liberation movements and the climate movement.
The RC Community commits to understanding and ending Gay oppression, discharging and acting against all oppressions that target LGBTQ+ communities, and taking an active role in ending the use of LGBTQ+ oppression to disrupt liberation movements and the climate movement.
• Ending the oppression of disabled people
Disabled people are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. They are more likely to be displaced, injured, or killed. They are often the poorest of the poor.
Disabled people also model the cooperation and connection essential to addressing the climate crisis and assuring the future of humanity.
The RC Community commits to ending the oppression of disabled people by discharging the hurts that devalue disabled people’s lives and limit our view of what it is to be human. We also commit to building connections with and learning from disabled people.
• Ending all other mistreatments
The RC Community commits to ending all other mistreatments of groups of people in our societies. We will work to become stronger allies to each other and to remove any distresses, including oppressor distresses, that get in the way of our working together in a unified way.
Go to <www.rc.org/publication/environment/coe_draft_policy> to see the Draft Program on Care of the Environment and articles that explain its relationship with all oppressions.
(Present Time 209, October 2022)