City walk raises awareness about disability rights

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on September 16, 2023.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

Members of the community gathered outside of City Hall Friday morning to take a walk and raise awareness about the disability rights movement.
The 2023 Citizen Walk About, organized by the Southern Alberta Individualized Planning Association (SAIPA,) was themed “Together we are strong – Celebrating resilience.”
Executive director Mark Davids told media prior to the event, they were expecting a great turnout.
“This year’s theme is ‘together we are strong,’ and it really is meant to highlight the adversity that we’ve had to overcome the last two years with the pandemic and all the changes that have taken place, both federal, provincial and even at the municipal level,” said Davids.
He said the theme was also focused on the need for people to stand together even more now for their rights.
 “Together we are strong, so we’re going to be marching as a group to show that we are a unified group that has a large collective voice,” said Davids.
 He said the disability sector in general tends to be out of the limelight and therefore this type of event is important because it brings it front and centre for people that might not be aware of some of the barriers that people face in day-to-day life.
“One that we hear constantly is transit. Transit has been a really big deal for the last year-and-a-half to two years. It was before that, but it’s only gotten so much of a bigger issue. People need to be able to access the community, they need to get to their jobs and things like that,” said Davids.
He said that is just one example of why they need to have that strong collective voice. Record sales on T-shirts suggested Friday’s turnout would be a big one.
 “People have just been really happy, really excited that this event is coming back in full. We had to take a bit of a break during the pandemic, we were fortunate to be able to do it last year but some people were still a little bit hesitant, so we’re expecting a really strong turn out,” said Davids.
The event saw dozens of people walking from City Hall to Galt Gardens Friday morning, with some of the participants asking people driving by to honk.

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