Page 152 - ReAwaken Ebook 1st Ed

Meaningful Action: The Rally

As we dreamed up what meaningful action might actually look like, we continually sought

to avoid limiting our ideas and choices. Stephanie and I discussed how we could bring the
richness, knowledge and learning of ReAwaken to an ongoing conversation and

statement. How we could connect with people who may not have attended the 5 days of
ReAwaken was a focus Quickly we realized that we had many brothers and sisters in

marginalised communities. And there it was…. a rally.

The next time we spoke to PJ and Oryx for our weekly/fortnightly organised catch up we
shared the idea of a public rally, and inviting community groups to joins us. The

excitement of the idea was vibrant. As the Healing Voices movie says we could ‘bring
mental health out of the shadows’, and we had come up with a very visible and powerful

way to do so to end the event. Better still it gave us the opportunity to make a connection
on a wider scale with other groups.

Although the initial idea was a march from Victoria Square to Parliament, we instead met

on the steps of Parliament and handed over the ReAwaken Manifesto to Katrine Hildyard,

Member for Reynell, SA. Katrine has been a supporter of the community screenings of
Healing Voices, speaking at events and more broadly supporting the community

conversation for change. She agreed to meet us on the Parliament steps without
hesitation and we duly arranged for buses to take willing attendees to the parliament for

the rally.

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