Not everyone knows it, but Addison Road Community Organisation work on a national, even international scale, in a way that compliments and strengthen the work we do in the local community. A great example is our ‘Inner West – Raise the Rate Group’, dedicated to pushing for a rise in the rate of Newstart and the Youth Allowance. The group is also about unemployed people and concerned community members coming together to hear about the reality of life below the poverty line and devise ways to lobby for radically needed improvements and change to a brutal and inefficient system. Power to the people right now.
At this week’s Australian National Council of Social Service National Conference 2019 in Canberra our work got a little recognition and much applause when a forum on the national Raise the Rate campaign being run by ACOSS highlighted their alliance with Addi Road, the work of the ‘Inner West – Raise the Rate Group’, and our recent erection of a new street sign on our grounds, ‘Raise the Rate Drive’.
The creation of various Raise the Rate Groups across the country has been critical to community activation around the cause, and Karen Perkins from our Addi Road Inner West Group and Nigel Oglethorpe from the Blacktown Group (and originally a member of our Inner West Group) spoke with measured intensity about the cause and their own experiences.
It was all part of the same old lesson we have to re-learn every day: think global and act local. We need to keep the big picture in mind, all the while we act immediately and nearby where the need and energy is most powerfully felt and can be channeled into a movement for everyone.