Home > Celebrate > 2008
Recovery Rally and Cruise > Highlights
5,000 MARCH ACROSS
BROOKLYN BRIDGE TO DEMONSTRATE UNITY DURING
ADDICTION RECOVERY
MONTH
This year’s Rally was
extraordinary in a number of ways. Most obvious was the human
bridge of recovery that spanned the Brooklyn Bridge and led
into Manhattan. New Jersey’s participants began the
day with a ferry ride to the base of the bridge in Brooklyn.
From there they walked to Cadman Park, where fellow recovery
celebrants from New York and Connecticut were assembled.
2008
RECOVERY CRUISE AND RALLY VIDEO
This video
documents the journey, including national, NYC metro
and New Jersey participants who made their way from Liberty
State Park in Jersey City to the Brooklyn Bridge and
back on Saturday, September 27, 2008.
“I like to be a voice for recovery. I would go to Congress (to speak), no problem. I’m
a success story, with four years clean.”
Donna Messinger, FOAR-NJ’s Essex Chapter member
The theme of September’s
Recovery Month was Join the Voices of Recovery: Real
People, Real Recovery. With the crowd of 5,000 and the
spectacle of those many individuals acting in unison to demonstrate
the strength of recovery, the Rally embodied the determined
advocacy to have addiction accepted and treated as a disease.
Ivette Torres, associate director of Consumer Affairs for
the Center of Substance Abuse Treatment in Washington, D.C., “We
have to make sure elected officials know about the 20 million
Americans who need treatment.” Before leaving the park
to begin the walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, Torres said, “Let’s
walk, let’s be proud, let’s continue to advocate
for those 20 million who need treatment.”
“Being
a part of the Recovery Rally was such a moving experience.
Even the onlookers who were stuck in traffic were 'moved';
not because of frustration at being in traffic, but with
real respect and inspiration for the sheer feat of recovery.
To witness the thousands of people, all supporting our great
cause; it was breathtaking.”
Raquel Mazon Jeffers,
director of New Jersey’s
Division of Addiction Services
Friends of
Addiction Recovery-New Jersey is thankful of the wonderful
volunteer photography of John Diaraneo, Sam Marks, Beverly
Monsen-Keating and Dan Meara.
Inevitably, amid all
the stories of lives redeemed from addiction, there was one
of a life undone, carried across the bridge not by his own
two legs but in his father’s
heart. Twenty-four year old K.C. Meara lost his life to an
overdose in early July, so it was left to his father, Kevin,
a Hamilton Township councilman, to mourn his son on an occasion
generally marked by joy.
“It’s a privilege
to be here. I am one face of many millions.” The recovering
community is still too taciturn when it comes to advocacy.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil – we don’t squeak
enough."
Morris Williams, Recovery Delegate,
from Washington, D.C.
