The Day of Awakening was actually a four day programme with screenings of The Great European Disaster Movie in 9 European cities, including Warsaw, Vienna, Stockholm, Kiste, London, Sheffield, Ragusa, Forli, and Cluj.
Europe Day was also the occasion to launch our collaboration with Roger Casale and New Europeans. Roger has kindly taken on the role of interim Campaign Director for Wake Up Europe! This is in addition to his role as CEO (p/t) of New Europeans.
Launching the Day of Awakening in a speech to the European Association for the Defence of Human Rights Annual conference in Vienna on 6 May, (the 160th anniversary of freud’s birth), Roger Casale said:
“If Britain leaves the EU it will tear up my rights as an EU citizen and it will hasten the day when all our rights as EU citizens will be torn up too. We need to understand that the challenges we are facing with Brexit in the UK are the same as the battles we need to fight to protect democracy in Poland. They are the same as the battles we need to fight to stop walls being rebuilt to divide us again in Europe. As I speak, demonstrators are clashing with police at the Brenner Pass to protest at the threatened reintroduction of border controls and the construction of a fence – yes a fence – between Austria and Italy and so dividing the Tyrol. Let today be a “day of awakening” for all of us. Let us Wake Up Europe together! Let us get the job done of saving Europe from itself. Let us stop Europe from sleep-walking to disaster.”
Throughout the weekend and into the following week – Monday, 9th May , Europe Day and even on the 10th May, special events and screenings continued inspiring hundreds of people young and old to engage in the battle for Europe.
One highlight was the screening at the House of Commons on 9 May as well as Annalisa Piras’s keynote address on ‘Europe as a Project of Peace’ in Denmark on 10 May.
Returning to the theme of Freud, Vienna, and the destruction of Europe, Wake Up Europe! has also reached out to the community of psychoanalysts and to psychiatrists in Europe through participating in the roundtable on European identity on ResonanceFM on 10 May with through Roger Casale as a speaker.
We will be drawing on all these resources as we power up the Wake Up Europe! campaign and seek to galvanise individuals and communities across Europe to come together to think, to talk and to act so as to save Europe.
We don not claim to have all the answers. In fact we do not claim to have any of the answers. We just know that another Europe is possible. Let this be the rallying cry of the next phase of our Wake Up Europe ! campaign.