Speeding up Liberation? The Next Step After Splitting up Into Oppressed Groups is What?

Maybe we can speed up general Liberation, so central to RC, by shifting the main focus from our own Liberations, from having been targeted by Oppressions, to becoming excellent Allies to all of the Oppressed?

I’m proposing a “paradigm shift” for RC. A paradigm shift is the opposite of a slow development. It is a sudden leap forward whereby a former set of ideas is either replaced or taken to a higher level. Well, in this case, I’m not proposing to ax anything that we learned, but rather to accelerate what we are doing by shifting our focus.

In the beginning, and for beginning RCers often still, it’s been difficult to split up in oppressed groups. Shouldn’t we unite rather than divide?

But we found that everyone sitting together was less powerful and more fake (at the expense of the oppressed) than first splitting up. When separated, we could practice combating our internalized victimhood, learning to like our fellow oppressed and supporting our own leaders and not in-flight. The goal never was to stay separate. Rather, we split up in order to eventually come together again from a better place.

It has been such an important phase in which we all looked at our own internalized oppressions to go against it and liberate ourselves and each other from it, and at times, with some Allies on the side.

But this has also colluded with ego-centrism. Everything always reminding us of how “little us” needed attention. Ready for a bold idea?

Maybe we can now begin focusing on being Allies to everyone. Surely, understanding how we were oppressed must teach us what people targeted by other Oppressions go through and how important Liberation is. But to a limit.

Maybe this resembles being a counselor. To be a good counselor, we must client. But the goal is not just to spread clienting around the globe. Rather, it would be good if everyone learned to counsel, to listen.

(Yes, sometimes, when we client successfully, others might be impressed, but nothing will teach them better the benefit of good clienting than them getting a go at it.)

I imagine that if we were going to do a lot of Allies work, we’ll counsel a lot about having been oppressed ourselves; that at “Allies to” meetings, most participants would like to be in a support group of their own Liberation group(s).

This idea of focusing on being Allies to everyone should result in us working more on our own internalized oppression. Being Allies to so many groups (and nature and the environment) should speed up and intensify us working on our own Liberations. But now not in a self-centered frame of mind but rather from seeking everyone else’s liberation with us.

Instead of ever-growing amounts of sessions, classes, support groups and workshops on Weigelias’ Liberation, let’s begin to prioritize sessions, classes, support groups and workshops on being Allies to Weigelias’ Liberation. (Weigelia is Harvey’s generic term for any oppressed group.)

Allies to Women, Allies to Jews, Allies to the Working Class, Allies to GLBTQIs, Allies to Weigelias, Allies to Nature.

Harvey compared the oppressive society to people of every oppressed group standing in a circle, each with a long piece of wood, everyone hitting all the others over their heads. Maybe liberation then can be that they each hold a flashlight, shedding light on everyone else’s struggle.

Maybe this could fuel internalized oppression for people that are conditioned to look after the interests of everyone else but themselves (women, Jews, GLBTQ, young people)? Yet, there is no danger of exploitation in this if truly everyone looks out for all the others, as then those groups also would be taken care of by many Allies.

But also, (more importantly,) we are not being Allies to look after others but rather to liberate ourselves from oppressive recordings – which might be worse for our physical and emotional well-being and functioning than our “own” internalized oppressions! We will be regaining all the clarities that the oppressive society has left with every oppressed group (and become as playful as young people, good at closeness as World Majority People, cooperative as Working Class people, quick as the Jews, etc.).

Maybe we see an (unsuccessful) attempt to this in the Wide World with the recent emergence of “Intersectionality.” This is a new student idea highlighting that everyone’s liberation struggles are interconnected with those of every other oppressed group. As a White Straight feminist, you must oppose Racism, Homophobia, etc.

Yet, at the moment (but it is early), this idea seems doomed to fail in that it tries to replace Class analysis. (That might be a major reason why anti-Semitism is not included – it sets Jews away as over-privileged, as the oppressor, perhaps also because, as we found out in RC, anti-Semitism (as every oppression) is deeply rooted in Classism.) This is understandable from a student movement in the Trump era, but it’s faulty nevertheless. However, most recently, the Women’s March organizers have gotten the message and begun to embrace Jews too.

In any case, I don’t propose to replace anything – only to focus most of our attention on being Allies.

In a way, this is nothing new. I did a lot of this when I was new to RC, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. But it would make a difference if this were a community effort.

Harvey thought that RC had helped popularize the idea of Support Groups. They’re everywhere now, for every group thinkable. Just imagine RC popularizing Allies With … Support Groups to the same extent.

What do you think? Are we ready to try this (with discharge)?