Keeping life in action: associations in the resistance and in the fight for democracy and freedom

Abstract

To live in Brazil in the first years of the second decade of the 21st century is to seek, by all possible means, to drive death away. Mobilized by this imperative, these writings affirm our collective and historical power to address some barren lands - our colonial, authoritarian, slave-owning, asylum-owning past -, transmuting them into fertile soil for the planting of life. The purpose of this experience report is to give voice to the cultivators, who strengthen themselves by weaving complex networks, calling and gathering diverse actors (such as solidarity economy collectives, cultural collectives, civil society movements, universities and service networks) organized in Associations of users, families and Mental Health workers, resembling the janitors of the Garden of Life in Freedom. Associação Vida em Ação (AVA) was founded in 2004, within the field of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform and the Anti-asylum Movement. As a strategy to stimulate lives in action, it is based on three pillars: support and follow-up of real experiences of social inclusion through work and culture; contributions to improve emancipatory public policies through successful practical experiences; and training, teaching and research activities in the fields of mental health and solidarity economy. The Nuclei and Productive Units supported by AVA provide the possibility of accompanying diverse forms of management and organization. In our storyline, there have been, there are, and there will always be strong and attentive cultivators caring for our gardens, here summoned to present their experiences of work, struggles, and dreams for Brazilian freedom and democracy.