Hi everybody. I’m back. Sorry I haven’t written anything for a while. The world is on fire, both literally and figuratively. And like most of you, I’ve been struggling over the last few months to find the energy and motivation to dive back into this blog. It finally started to sink in that I’ve been teetering on the edge of mild depression for a while. I need to pull myself out of this funk. The election is less than two months away and I need to do my part to make sure that and I need to do my part to make sure our country is a safer, more secure, less potentially violent place.
I can’t tell you who to vote for or against as this blog is officially part of IAF, a 501c3 charitable organization. I have very strong, clear opinions on who should win the elections in November, but I will post all of that elsewhere. However, I can and will opine here on issues that matter to atheists and freethinkers: Separation of church and state, religious privilege, and humanist values.
The Age of Covid has not been kind to Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. We can’t gather in large groups anymore and online meetings via google meet have pretty spectacularly failed to keep us active and engaged at a time when we most need to be. (Racists and Christian nationalists have had no problem finding their motivation.) All of our usual activism activities — the Pride events, the parades, the Family Leader Protests — have fallen by the wayside. Our sense of community has faded. What does our Social Chair have to do when social distancing is about the only thing that keeps us safe from the ravages of Covid?
I only have the vaguest ideas what to do about any of this. One thing I did accomplish a while ago was an opinion article published in the Des Moines Register. That felt good. I’m going to work on another one, along with some Letters to the Editor. I’m going to write a bunch of posts asking all of you to crowdsource activism and community-building ideas. So be thinking about that. I’ll get back to you with specifics.
I have a half-formed idea that we should harken back to one of the founding events of IAF: The bus ad campaign that triggered so much controversy ten years ago. We need a project like that to inspire us, attract attention, show the world where we stand, and that we are here for atheists, freethinkers, and secularists across the state of Iowa. More on that later as well.
I’m hoping this blog will be therapeutic both for me personally and for IAF in general. The clock is ticking. The timer is winding down to zero. What are we going to do about it folks?
By Robert Cook
Activism Chair
Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers