The Reclaiming Tradition's Principles of Unity have been updated! Discussions began online in September 2020 as the BIRCH council met to discuss alterations to the fifth paragraph of the POU. Changes were agreed upon and then proposed to the wider community by the DARC council - Decolonizing Actions in Reclaiming Communities - which is made up of BIPOC Witches (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) from Reclaiming community around the world. Then in January, BIRCH council again met online with representatives from various communities, to make a final decision.
This is the new version of the fifth paragraph as it was agreed upon officially on 30 January 2021! This reflects the changes proposed by DARC, which all communities had a chance to discuss between September's meetings and January's.
"Our tradition honors the wild, and calls for service to the earth and the community. We work in diverse ways, including nonviolent direct action, for all forms of justice: environmental, social, political, racial, gender and economic. We are an anti-racist tradition that strives to uplift and center BIPOC voices (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Our feminism includes a radical analysis of power, seeing all systems of oppression as interrelated, rooted in structures of domination and control."
I am also now updating the Principles of Unity as they have been on our blog's "About" page, to reflect this new version. Hopefully this is the first of several much-desired updates for our documented agreed-upon values as a tradition. ⭐ You can read Reclaiming's blog about this update here.
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For transparency of our part in this process:
I (Ember) did not attend the final, live BIRCH meetings as a Community Representative. Our Ohio community is not very big yet, so I didn't think it made sense to require our own representative at this time. Instead, I am part of the BIRCH council cell of Reclaiming Pittsburgh, who did choose two Community Reps. I shared the proposed changes with those who have joined our Ohio community so far in our online spaces, and took any comments from our group to the Pittsburgh reps, so they could pass on both Pittsburgh and Ohio's feelings about the proposed changes. In this way, and one other I will mention below, Ohio was represented and had a chance to comment. Those who were currently in touch with us and had anything to say were all in favor of supporting the changes as is, so not a lot of discussion was needed on our end!
The other way Ohio was able to give comment was that I did sign up as a "participant" in the asynchronous online discussions that took place for BIRCH, just as anyone who wanted to was able to do. This was basically an online chat room type of discussion space where people could bring up concerns and ask questions before the live meetings (held on Zoom) even took place. Being in the discussion as a Participant is different from being one of the Community Representatives, who took note of what was discussed online and then brought that into the live meetings in both September and January. Having specific Community Reps for the live discussions is a way to keep things more organized and take less time by having only one or two people there to speak on behalf of each community, whose thoughts and comments they will have gathered ahead of time. So I was present in the online, text-based chats, but for the live Zoom discussions we were represented within Reclaiming Pittsburgh by RiverRider, Pigeon, and Jynx (including September and January sessions). A big thanks to them for doing that work! And to the other members in the BIRCH cell with us.
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We'd also like to say a nice, big HAIL AND WELCOME to Georgia Reclaiming! We helped their admin, Iris, by sharing how we set up a blog and asked the Reclaiming website to add its link so that people in Ohio could find us, and they've now done the same for Georgia! May those who are seeking find them. ⭐ And many kudos to Iris for taking on the role of being a contact person for seekers. Not everyone is called to do the work of building community. It is slow going, can be tedious, and we do not see many immediate rewards or glimmers of much progress, but ultimately we all believe it will be SO rewarding in the long run, which is why we do it. Congratulations on taking that step! 😃
Blessings, everyone! We will have other news for you very soon...
-Ember-
Ohio Reclaiming Witchcraft