1st PPP a Student's Response

After the PPP in April one of the callmesquare students delivered a speech to her peers:

I was lucky enough to attend a gathering recently that was called the PPP. Short for the People’s Performance Project. The aim of the gathering was for new writers to read and act out their works, musicians to play their music, and for people to get out and meet new people.

There was a very diverse range of people there including gay couples, lesbian couples, hetero couples, interracial couples and a man named Christian with cerebral pausy. The age ranged from 13 years of age to the oldest being the 67 year old left wing feminist lesbian named Joan.

After we had all had the opportunity to perform our works, Christian then gave a short speech. Although it took him some time to get to the speakers spot and some of what he said was hard to understand, it hit me that it was not what he was saying that was important, the point was that, in this group of 70 people, he had actually been given the opportunity to speak. People had stopped to intently listen to what he was trying to say.

This group of people were getting to know each other, looking past each others’ differences and just being people together.

You’ve all heard debates and speeches where one side will say “but it’s unnatural” and the opposition will say “but we’re all one people” but things like that only skim the surface of the issue.

You can’t force a person to change their mind. All we can do is set an example and educate. The way to combat the problems of discrimination and hate is to give people the opportunity to go out and meet this people that are different to them and to then realise that we’re not so different after all.