Rayna Drake highlights why TPR Connect Groups are essential for building resilient, self-reliant communities. Drawing on her legal and government studies background, she stresses the importance of organization, strategic planning, and active participation. A powerful invitation for those ready to step up as coordinators and help strengthen our collective future.

Triccy:
All right guys, so last weekend we had our second seminar for the TPR North Connect groups and we got one of our volunteers, Rayna Drake to have a chat to you about that.

Rayna Drake:
Hello everyone. So I have never done this before. Okay.

So last night as I sat at home trying to think about how to formulate this speech in such a way that it has the maximum impact possible. I found myself stuck because I couldn't figure out how to begin and I didn't know why. I am a writer and usually with words just I flow. However, for once I couldn't figure out how to begin this speech and I tried to figure out why that was. And it occurred to me that what I'm about to say, most of you already know. Now why is that relevant at all in regards to the connect groups?

Anyone?

Thoughts? What can I say today about the connect groups that you guys don't already know? Nothing precisely. However, I still find myself up here needing to talk about it. Why? Pardon? Because it's important. It's vital.

Sometimes we know some things and we know that they're important, but life gets in the way. Things get in the way and before long something that we knew we had to prioritise falls on the back burner. How many of us here has had that happen for any project in your life, family, loved ones, work, anything? Right.

Now, in the best of times, that is not ideal. Correct? However, in a time of war, such complacency can be deadly and I am not here to send you home in absolute terror.

I think that's what the government strive to do, so I don't need to add to that. However, in whatever you do, if you have an opponent, it is important for you to understand your opponent. It is important for you to be realistic about your opponent, what their position is, what they're looking for, where they're about, how positioned they are compared to yourself.

This is not so that you can run under your bed and shake in terror, although you might want to do that. It is so that you can develop the most effective and efficient strategy to face your opponent. And you cannot do that if you're not honest about your opponents. Now, again, I don't have anything to say about our opponents that you guys don't already know.

We've had three years, actually a lifetime of their nightmare culminating in three years of absolute hell that we all went through. So I don't need to speak anymore about what they're about, but what we do know, or one thing I would like for us to think about is that these people are organised, they have a strategy in place, they've got the resources and they're absolutely committed to the outcome they want to see. And that outcome happens to be something or a world in which humanity cannot thrive.

Now, where does that leave us as a community and as a people? Any thoughts? Where does that leave us? Pardon? Enslaved. But what it requires of us as well at the bare minimum is that we also must be organised.

We must have a strategy. We must gather up resources and we also need to be absolutely committed to the outcome we want to see because if they have the resources, half the time, have been putting these plans in place and they're absolutely committed to the outcome they want to see for us and yet we are only half as committed to the outcome we want to see.

Guess who's going to win? It is as simple as that.

So that's where the Connect groups come in. The Connect groups are our way to build our alternative communities, our alternative infrastructures so that we can opt out of the madness they are trying to get us to comply with.

If we do not have alternatives to go to, then we are left with only on choice.

Imagine when the apartheid began. If we had businesses already established that we knew were freedom loving and were happy to employ people who were not vaccinated, how many people would have just quit their job the moment they were mandated to vaccinate?

How many people would have had the courage to just go, "You know what? No, I'll just go to this guy because they have an option, but many were left without an option. Therefore, the importance of these connect communities cannot be underestimated.

What TPR does is set up the groundwork and the framework for these communities and these alternative infrastructures. But we cannot do anything with that if the people themselves do not step in and take part. And so today I will besit you every single one of you if you know that you are committed, if you know the importance or appreciate the importance of having our own communities so that we can have a place where we can connect, where we can build networks, where we can have people we can depend on when things go wrong because guess what?

Yes, it's calm right now, but it's coming. And I'm sure every one of us know that. And when it comes, we need to be ready. So if you understand that and you are of the man that you can help, please put your hand up. We need coordinators.

We cannot hold these groups without coordinators, without leaders in the community stepping up and manning these events.

You will have the support you need. So please, if you can put your hand up, step up and go lead. If you want to put your hand up to be a coordinator, we're holding trainings basically every month and keep an eye out on the TPR Facebook page and especially in your emails.

And please look in the spam emails and in your other areas of your emails, because what they're doing is they're shadow banning us and most people are not receiving our correspondence. So we have to take the initiative and we have to actually go out of our way to seek these things out. So please keep an eye out for these events and when they pop up, please come.

You need to participate. We cannot do this without you.

Obviously, as you can tell, this was not a rehearsed speech. I have not written it, so I forgot to even present myself to begin with. So I am Rayna Drake, obviously I said that at the beginning. I have a background in law. I studied a Bachelor's of Law and a Bachelor of Government and International Relations. And so I'm pretty familiar with how these systems of power function and it's not pretty.

And let me just put it this way. It is not set up for us. It's set up for them. However, no matter, there are more of us than there are of them and together we can do anything. And I am of course the TPR Connect manager and would love to see you step up and come in and put your hand up to be a coordinator. Thank you.