NAMI Walk

Suna and I participated in NAMI Walks in Austin this morning. It involved waking up. Early. For us.

This morning, Suna and I joined friends from Live Oak, Wildflower, and First Unitarian Universalist churches to help raise money for NAMI, the National Aliance on Mental Illness. Although we knew it was a good cause and a good walk, we were’t exactly clear on what the acronym stood for. Was it the National Association for or against Mental Illness. Neither one sounded right because both were wrong.

We met some friends at Starbucks in Round Rock, and they drove us in to the event.

The walk was too much for some of the participants. Here two volunteers try to resuscitate a poor feller who collapsed en route.

We parked across the street from the walk, which was to take us from Ladybird Lake up Congress Avenue, around the Capitol, and back again. As with many of these health-conscious events, a large part of the preparation involved eating donuts and standing around with friends. I got to take a lot of pictures of dogs, people, and the city.

“Move over there! You! Jeez, it’s easier to herd cats!

NAMI organized team pictures. I hope our captain can obtain a copy for us. It was something of an ordeal for the photographer-in-the-sky, and I want him to know his efforts are appreciated. After several attempts to get our group to move back far enough to get us all in frame, he gave up and moved his ladder. Even so, he had a little more trouble getting some of us to move to the right until he pointed out that it was his left.

Two valid points: 1) Corporatism does not equate to capitalism. 2) Corporations are not people.

One of my favorite parts of the walk was when we passed the Occupy Austin protesters who, like the Occupy Wall Street gang, are still trying to figure out what they want to replace the egregious corporate greed of our financial sector with. The UUs cheered them, and they cheered us back. (Neither group cheered as loudly on the return trip. I think we were tired.) They seem to be nice people, even if I can’t figure out what they want from their media presence. Maybe that’s because they seem to be a clearinghouse for disparate leftist agendas…like what the Democratic Party was before they were assimilated into the Wall Street Continuum. Sorry for the Star Trek mashup, but it seemed appropriate.

There was even a visitor from another planet.