3 MINUTE MOVEMENT

Hi.


You don’t know me but I want to get to know you.
You don’t have to like me at first, and I don’t expect you to.
But before you apply any energy to judge me, hear me out.
Before you turn your back on me, touch my hand.


You and I might never come across each other again.
But we have the choice to make a connection right now, right here.
All you have to do is look deep inside yourself and just answer this one question:
“How can we become better human beings?”
And your answer will forever bind us. We can work together no matter where you are.


We are now friends. 


What is the 3 Minute Movement. 
A new project in the making aimed at reclaiming humanity in a market society where even our most essential needs have been commodified. 


I want this project to bring focus on the individual as a human being rather than a consumer or any other role that society has imposed upon us. I want to get to the raw emotions we deny ourselves or forget to experience them.


With this movement, I want people to just take a break and take moment to look and experience the world around them. I want people not to be afraid to give each other a chance and get to know one another. 


Join the 3 Minute Movement 
My aim is to collect all your thoughts, and post them online so that we can all work towards reclaiming what is ours: dignity and humanity.


All you have to do is read the letters below, pass them on if you like them. Tell me what humanity & dignity mean to you, what can be done to achieve it. Tell me how we can together reclaim humanity in our global world.


Join the 3 Minute Movement. Don't let your voice go unheard. I am here to listen and share with you and others like us. Post your letter or feel free to email it to me. The only catch is that the letter is to be read within 3 minutes.


Do send me your contact information so that I can give you credit online as well as in print (should we decide to publish it as a print newsletter). 


I look forward reading & sharing your input.

Letter from Susan (Westminister House)

For over 30 years, Westminster House has provided long term residential recovery for women healing from addiction. Westminster House promotes and facilitates a desire for recovery: helping women help themselves overcome addiction. The recovery program provides the necessary tools to women, so they can trust their own ability to reclaim a drug-free existence.

In our society, addiction is an ever-present issue that impacts every community, every group of people, every income level and drug addiction statistics indicate that it costs hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money each year.  It’s frightening to know that over six million children in North America live with at least one parent who suffers with addiction.

Like many, I am perplexed that there is no global remedy to addiction and that there is not more energy and resources devoted to positive action that actually helps people to recover and reclaim their lives.  Westminster House Recovery Centre for Women offers a residential recovery program for women and has a proven record of success. 

Addiction is a ferocious disease, and treatment can only succeed by virtue of a ferocious and extended effort. Westminster House provides residents with all the support they need along the road to wellness.  We know that women can and do recover from addiction.

Sincerely yours,

Susan H.

@womendorecover

@susieloves2twit

Letter from Min
Hi,

My name is Min, and I want to start a small movement. It will be a movement of change that will strip us of wealth, preconceived notions, and politics. This movement will leave nothing but the being within each of us so that you and I can talk about being human beings and to create a true connection between us. By focusing on humanity, we avoid bias, lies and deception. We recognize within each other ourselves, and in your human needs I will see my needs.

I am reaching out to you as a daughter, friend, student, member of this society living below the established poverty line, cousin, uncle, father. 

But I am trying to reach much further than your social and political role. I am trying to reach that level on which you and I are nothing more than flesh and bones. With this letter I am trying to touch you, reach that human being in you who feels pain and guilt at the sight of a starving child, the human in you that bursts in anger at injustice and corruption, the being in you that feels before you think. At the end of it all, in our death beds, stripped of all glory, achievements, and wealth, you and I will face each other as nothing more than human beings: that’s whom I am trying to reach. Empathy of all our principles is the one true Canadian value. 

All I ask is for 3 minutes of your life. I understand your time is very valuable to you, but if I didn’t think that your 3 minutes was more valuable to me than it is to you, I wouldn’t be asking. I am asking you share my perspective on what I think would undeniably mark a step forward in our society.

I wake up to the news every morning. I see our political discourse being dominated by attacks, deceit, and accusations as our leaders try to destroy one another, refusing to work together. I see our politicians playing a zero sum game where the victory of one means the end of the others. There is no dialogue or reasonable arguments in politics today. I see a Prime Minister who is not willing to answer our questions, and opposition leaders who rather than working together, are trying to brand themselves as nothing more than products to be consumed.

On May 2, we will vote. Some of us are more partisan than others upholding certain principles and values we believe our party represents. I see parties breaking our lives into fractions as they see fit for their rhetoric: health care, daycare, education, crime, environment, etc. But we don’t live like that, do we? If one issue of all issues is more important to you, then that is the decisive matter on which you weigh your vote. But…does it fee like you are compromising a lot by isolating the one factor on which your vote is contingent? Not to mention that some social and economic themes do not even make it into the political agenda?

Each party leader tells us that they are the one. This political rhetoric takes away all hopes for change. But this 2011 Federal Election will not be the last election, and these candidates are not going to be our last political leaders. There will be others and as such, we need to start believing that you and I working together can make changes happen regardless of which party wins.

There will be no perfect party. Once we understand that, we begin to see that all parties are the same; we are the difference. It is our voice and our concerns that are adopted for the political rhetoric our leaders practice. They cannot determine what is important to you: only you can determine that. Your concerns and the issues that you speak of is what should set the political agenda. But you alone, are but one voice. We need each other and the moment you and I realize that we need more justice and democracy, we, together, can set the political agenda within the frameworks of our daily lives.

I am not afraid of making mistakes. And whichever party wins, I just want us to be able to hold those who represent us accountable. It is our government and we all have a stake in it. We cannot point fingers at politicians for their shortcomings if we, who have elected them, never bothered to exercise our rights to hold them accountable.

Our democracy has been assaulted again and again while our rights and voices have been dormant and sometimes silenced. As there will be no perfect political party, there will be no perfect political system. But you know what, it is our political system, our democracy and our country, and I think it is time to claim our rights to govern ourselves through proper government proceedings, through transparency, and collaboration between political parties.

Please inform yourself. Speak to others, reach out, share your ideas of a better Canada and listen to other perspectives. Make a friend. And please vote on May 2, 2011.

Thank you,

Min Reyes