Tuesday 2 April 2013

Want to Shout about ESA? Here's your chance #ESAendgame


Guest blog from Atos Stories

Face it. The ESA mess has been going on long enough. Atos have been carrying out a test that terrifies sick and disabled people for long enough. The government has been pretending it's enabling people for long enough. So we were delighted to see our friend Sue Marsh lay down the gauntlet and say enough IS enough. We need to end the pain and fear of ESA once and for all and the ESA Endgame campaign might just do it.

We always wrote our plays as a way to educate people about Atos, the DWP and ESA. And we've had somesuccess. Over 3000 people have read Atos Stories, The Atos Monologues and Atos Street Theatre. 

The Monologues have been performed in Leeds, at Greenbelt and podcasted by My Life, My Choice. Despite having Newham Council cancel their 1st performance, Act Up are still planning on putting on the show.

But now we want to try something new. Something you can ALL get involved in. We have three versions of the play:  Atos Stories, The Atos Monologues and Atos Street Theatre and we’d like to invite you to put one of these versions on in your community.

You don't have do the whole thing, you could do a scene, sing a song, read part of the monologues. You could add your own stories or link with the stories published by Sue on her blog under the #esaendgame hashtag. But the idea is that everybody Acts Against Atos on the same day across the country. (Date to be confirmed)

You can do this anywhere, at a library, community centre, shopping mall,  theatre, your local Atos office. Wherever the most people will be able to hear the message. So if you are an actor, or if you are not, if you are disabled or sick or not., but you can read a part,
sing a song, act a scene and you want to get involved. Let us know.

You can download the documents here http://atosstories.blogspot.co.uk/
If you want to take part, email us at atosstories@gmail.com. Tell us who is taking part, where and when and we'll put it on our blog. 

Please try and get a record of the event, and we'll post a link.

By Acting Together, we CAN end the pain of ESA now!

4 comments:

  1. Yippee! Over 225,000 people have signed the petition asking Iain Duncan Smith to put his money where his mouth is an prove his ability to live on £53/week!

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  2. any fool could do that but to keep on doing it every week would bring about your downfall and death
    the standard bills for a small home alone are £200 per month plus rates £150 a month
    their would be no money for food left on £53 per week the man's a fool

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  3. If you factored in all the bills, he would probably have difficulty managing for even a week, but the petition suggests he do it for at least a year. As far as I can make out, a person on JSA aged between 18 and 24 has to cover food, energy, water/sewage, phone/internet, clothes, transport, miscellaneous and hobbies on £56.25 per week. Clearly, the idea is for parents or other relatives to step in, but what if they are skint? Or worse than skint, deeply in debt to wonga.com and other payday lenders?

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  4. PS Over 403,000 signatures to date!

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