 And I'm a professional geologist, but I work in the environmental regulatory field where I interact with the public on policy and laws. So I have experience in working with groups of very diverse interests. So what we're talking about today is finding common ground and using that common ground as a foundation for making changes. So where you can achieve some consensus and build on that. And that means maybe growing your audience for whatever you have an organization or a website or skeptics in the pub or a free thought group and reaching out to other audiences who might be interested in what you have to say and dealing with people of opposing viewpoints. So those are some of the things that we'll be talking about today. And I'll give you a start rundown of what we'll be doing in this session. And I guarantee you will find some new things to take away to think about and try. And we'll have our workshop leaders talk a bit. I'll ask you the audience some questions so I can get an idea of what sort of activism you do or what sort of audiences you have. And we'll do a group exercise and come back around to see if we can get some conclusions or some consensus on how to treat a situation that is a little bit contrived. But it may illuminate some of the points that we're trying to make here on building audiences and coalitions. So let's see. Good. All right. Around the room, Brian Thompson will go. Where is he? He's in the back. I have some note cards. Any time during the... This is interactive. Any time during this workshop I want you to write down questions, comments, stories. If you want your email address so I could contact you later on, what we're going to do is make this interactive. I don't... We should have time for audience questions, but I'm going to have a website putting some references and some comments that we get on this workshop. So I want your feedback. And if you could give it to me today, that would be great. If you don't have a pen, you don't want to write it down. You could email me at this address and the cards can be dropped off, either give to me or they can be dropped off in a little box. There's a paper lid in the back before you leave, before you walk out the door, you can drop it in there. I'd really appreciate anything you can think of. Maybe you have an experience that your group has encountered. You invited maybe a paranormal investigator in or you've had interaction with other community groups for your organization. Those are the kind of things we would like to hear and have those examples available on the website. If you need any more cards, just please write as many things as you want. I'll go through them. And also email is available there with the subject, Tam Workshop, that'll help me sort through them. Okay, so let's get started. I could follow on Twitter and you could follow me for updates on that webpage, if you would like. So, activism. Activism is about effecting change, which means we want to see some action started or stopped. And the activism we're talking about today can be applied from small to large. And we have representatives here of large organizations and we have people who write blogs for the public. And we all try to enact change at the times when we're talking to our friends, families, and plant family and coworkers. And the concepts we talk about here can be applied to those wide range of interactions, I think, so keep that in mind. Now this workshop is focused on scientific skepticism as a uniting force. Now our workshop leaders represent unique audiences. We have skeptics, self-identified skeptics, self-identified atheists, humanists, people who are unlabeled, and of course the public. So we may not agree on all things, but I think we can agree on. The scientific method is the best means we have to approximate truth about natural things opposed to revelation or personal experience or mysticism or intuition as alternatives. And consequently, we promote the scientific method to learn and as the basis to set laws and to make policy and to make decisions for ourselves and our families. So the common ground we're talking about here is the use of scientific skepticism, reason, rationality to make those types of decisions. So I want to ask our panel how they feel about that. But meanwhile, audience members, keep that in mind, think about that. Let's meet our workshop leaders and they can tell you a bit about themselves. And I would like you to tell us the main ways that you communicate and with whom, and that is are you mostly speaking to people who agree or disagree with your view, who is your audience? So we'll start with David Niosi, correct? Thank you. I'm president of the American Humanist Association. So I come into this workshop from that angle, the angle of organized humanism. And one way of viewing humanism is the place where the progressive movement and the secular movement overlap. We aren't only interested in secular issues, we're also interested in progressive issues such as reproductive rights and the rights of women, equality, things like that, LGBT rights. So with that in mind, there's a lot of opportunities for coalition work in humanism because it does go in so many different directions. And in all of those directions, there are groups that focus on those particular things. There are groups that focus just on LGBT rights, for example, there are groups that focus on reproductive rights. And of course, there are plenty of secular groups out there. And we work in coalition with all of them. Now, as far as the question about how we communicate with the public, well, like most major nonprofits nowadays, we tend to emphasize a lot of social media. We're very active on Facebook. We have almost 60,000 followers on Facebook right now. And that number continues to climb. And we issue action alerts. And we also have more traditional media such as magazine every other month and newsletters and things like that. We issue press releases when an issue of importance is happening and we want to have our voice heard on it. And we also do a lot of blogging. I blog on psychology today. The executive director of the AHA Roy Speckhardt blogs on Pathios and Huffington Post. So we have no problem getting our voice out there. And was there another part of your question? Are you mostly speaking to people who agree or disagree with you? Well, we do both. We do a lot of it. We do preach to the choir, that's for sure. On Facebook, our followers are very much behind us. They get excited about the issues that are important to the secular community, the humanist community. When there's a culture war issue that's really hot and we post on it, boy, they jump all over it and they're very much interested in what we're doing. And that sort of thing. We do hear from our opponents as well though, definitely. When we blog on issues, if the blog gets it all viral, it's not too long before the other side, so to speak, discovers the blog article. And they, as blog commenters are well known for being, are not shy about getting their opinions heard either. And they often don't use very tactful language in getting their voices heard. So they let us know. In the news, we tend to run into a lot of opposition from interviewers who just don't understand skepticism and scientific integrity. They don't understand humanism and religious skepticism at all. So we find that we will discuss with the media a particular issue and we'll be hopeful that it will be a high level of dialogue. But instead, we run into a stone wall where the most rudimentary concepts just are not understood and that can be very frustrating. So. Dave Silverman. Hi, everybody. I'm David Silverman. I'm the president of American Atheists. American Atheists is the marines of the free thought movement. We're hardcore atheists. We do not cross over into any other markets. We specifically stay in the atheist ages, separation in church and state, critical thinking, and keep your mythology out of my schools. We are strong atheists. We're the ones who fight the fights that need to be fought but that are unpopular, like the World Trade Center lawsuit, the World Trade Center cross lawsuit and the Kentucky Homeland Security lawsuit. We speak via billboard and social media, but the billboards lead us to a lot of press coverage, a lot of television, radio, newspaper. Our billboards are not Chris Steadman's favorite thing on the world, but they do work and we get a lot of press and a lot of conversation as a result. Do you want to add Dave? Yeah. So I'm familiar with the billboard issue? Yeah, yeah, the billboards, that was an interesting one. That was an interesting one. We communicate mainly to the hardcore atheist all the way up to the doubting believer. Our target market in all of our communications is the people, are the church pew atheists and the closeted atheists. The hardcore atheists hear us and they learn about us and they join us and that's great. But really what we're aiming for is to get atheists to come out of the closet. There are so many atheists in this country, about 40 to 50 million atheists in this country, but only 40 to 50,000 are involved in the movement. If we actually got all the atheists in this country to say that they were atheists, in fact, if we got a tenth of the atheists in this country to say that they were atheists, we'd have a substantially different country with a substantially better outlook. So that's our target market, what else am I supposed to answer? That was it, I was going to ask you. So you're mainly trying to grow your audience to reach those people who should be. Right, you can't convert a believer to a non-believer with a billboard or with an article or even with a blog entry. But you can raise the awareness of atheists to those people. You can also use the believers as a communications medium. They see you on a Riley or Hannity and they go back to their kitchen table and they start complaining about it to the closeted atheists in their family. When we put up the, you know it's a myth billboard, my favorite part of the, you know it's a myth billboard was that preachers were preaching about it in their sermons, which is just fantastic. Thank you very much. As far as coalitions are concerned, American Atheists is a proud member of the second coalition for America. But also, we were a founding sponsor of the reason rally of which I was a chair. Elizabeth, would you care to model the pretty shirt? Elizabeth is modeling the reason rally sweatshirt. Well, actually, I have a question about coalitions in a little while. So I would be great if you could talk about that. I'll talk about it later. Let's go to Kitty and tell us about you and your audience. Well, hi, I'm Kitty Mervine and the person who's responsible for me running Bat Alien, which is a website for people that think they've been abducted by aliens is Tim Farley, who's sitting in the back of this room. He got me interested in sort of a very narrow focus for my skepticism and my skeptic work and I had been interested in UFOs and the UFO community. I started Bat Alien because I'd been answering a lot of questions, not about UFOs, but about people who had been abducted by aliens and had their lives transformed much for the worse. And so I have a whole support system of therapists, doctors, people around the country, it grows all the time and I'm a facilitator to these people. And so I am knee-deep in the Wu Paranormal camp. I have to go to UFO conferences where I'm frequently spit upon. I have to sometimes be the only voice for these people online. And when they go to seek help, they're going to go, the only thing online for them is someone saying, yeah, that was an alien abduction. And not that could be a medical event, that could be a sleep disorder. That could be, you started taking sleeping pills recently. All they're gonna get is bad advice and sometimes that means I have to put on a suit of armor and wait out there, sort of among the enemy. And yet also work with the UFO community to get help to these people. And so it's a very delicate balance, I walk. My main way to reach people is, of course, online, going to UFO conferences. Skeptic groups have me come talk and they're actually very shocked that the number of people that attend double or triple because the interest in aliens and UFOs is quite big. So they have many people come to their meetings that are just from the general public and it's great because it's a chance for me to really educate them in a skeptical way about something they have questions about. So preaching to the choir, I met very few skeptics that think they've been abducted by aliens. So I really have to learn how to walk a fine line and take a lot of abuse. Kitty, when you go to these UFO conferences, are you as a speaker or? I am sometimes invited as a speaker. I sometimes hire a table or booth. And I've made some good friendships and the main people who hate me are therapists that treat people that are alien abductees or have been abducted by aliens, they think, because I cost them a lot of money. Because there's often a very simple, quick cure. So they don't like me because I cost them money. So it's a very rewarding and yet sometimes lonely position to be in because I'm frequently not preaching to the choir and around my very safe skeptic group. So something like this is a wonderful opportunity for me to be around. No one's going to spit on me here. It's so nice. Thanks. I mean, maybe Chris is going to spit at some point, but that's okay. We're just so any. I think that they're covered it. Yes, and Chris Steadman. Hi, my name is Chris Steadman. This is my first TAM, so I'm really excited to be here. And I just want to thank Sharon for putting this together and for inviting me to participate. I work for the humanist community at Harvard University as the assistant humanist chaplain and the coordinator of our values and action program, which is an interfaith and community service initiative where we organize programs several times a month that bring people of faith and the non-religious together for dialogue events and to give them an opportunity to act on shared values. We call the program values and action because the acronym is VIA, which means by way of or through. And we believe that through these programs we accomplish multiple aims. The first is that we're able to sort of just do something substantive in the world that has a positive impact and improves the conditions of people's lives. So for example, this last fall, we did a series of meal packing events where we packaged 30,000 meals for food insecure children in Boston, where we mobilized multiple religious and non-religious communities to come together and do that. We're being a little bit more ambitious this next year and we're going to, we're striving to eliminate child food insecurity in Middlesex County by mobilizing nine colleges and universities in Boston to package 20,000 meals, which will meet the food needs for children in Middlesex County. So that's just sort of a preview or a little bit of what we do in terms of actually trying to have a tangible impact on the ground. The second thing that we think this program accomplishes is that it brings together people of diverse religious and non-religious beliefs so that they can have a conversation where they're starting by trying to identify shared values rather than having the starting point and the entry point with our conversation be what their differences are. We try to give them an opportunity to recognize similarity and common humanity in one another. And we do this to try to challenge and break down some of the walls that exist between these communities. And the third thing that we think it accomplishes is that because these programs are initiated by the non-religious, we see them as an opportunity to challenge the misconception that the non-religious are unengaged, that they are not concerned with social welfare and those kinds of things. There was a book that came out in 2010 by Robert Putnam called American Grace. It was the biggest study of the lives of religious Americans and non-religious Americans in the history of that field. And it found that religious Americans are far more civically engaged than non-religious Americans. They vote more. They give more to charity, both religious and secular charity. They are more likely to run for leadership positions on city council and those kinds of things but that the intensity of their civic engagement was linked up with their intensity of participation in their communities, not with the intensity of their beliefs. So we think that it's important for there to be social structures in place that give people opportunities to be civically engaged and so that's something that we try to do with this program. Can I just interrupt you for one minute? It's funny that the way you said the non-religious people were less engaged. I think, Dave, that goes to your point saying that there's a lot of atheists out there who are not engaged. Way too many. Yeah, so you're seeing that common thread there. Yes, and I mean, just to speak from personal experience, I was, when I stopped being a Christian, I was sort of just religiously unaffiliated for some time which is, as I think probably most people in this room know, my generation, the millennial generation is increasingly religiously unaffiliated but I was very reluctant to getting involved with the organized atheists or humanist movements because I didn't necessarily see them as reflective of the values that I held. I saw them as being sort of more interested in criticizing others' actions rather than promoting a sort of positive alternative to religion so we think that it's important to present people with that option because I know for me that when I found that in the humanist community, both at Harvard and on a national level, that really sort of inspired me to link up my humanist identity and my humanist values with my social action that I was already engaged in as someone who is religiously unaffiliated. So a lot of my organizing is very grassroots. You know, it's not as splashy as a billboard. It's not gonna get necessarily as many headlines but I think that it makes a really positive difference. I've done a lot of work with the Muslim community and with evangelical Christian communities and have found there to be great dividends that have come out of that work. Great. So right off the bat, you can see we're dealing with, actually I should say, my audience for the website is mostly skeptics because that's the way it's been marketed is through the three skeptical orgs and also through my Twitter feed and my friends who are mostly skeptical but my goal would be to reach out to the people who believe in these paranormal or pseudoscience beliefs or just enjoy maybe weird news and try to get them to take a more critical view of it and ask some more questions of it instead of just uncritically accepting what the media has out there to deliver because what I do is I put the media story out there and then frame it in a context about critical thinking and maybe what questions we should be asking to make this more understandable and see what's actually true and what's not. So my audience is skeptics but I would like to reach out to people who believe in these paranormal and pseudoscience things. So we have a really diverse audience. Our various projects have very diverse audiences. We have very different goals I see and we have sometimes this problem of not getting along with each other which I would not like to go into today very much but I would like us to focus on the things that we have in common and I think that there are various things that we have in common and what we can do together because I think we can give some examples of things that we have in common that we could all get behind and work towards because as an individual that's important but individuals together make the bigger voice and we can make some positive change in that for some things that we all feel are beneficial to do. So thanks everyone. Right now I just like to ask the audience a question. Just raise your hand. Many of you are activists in your own ways promoting rational discussion and scientific skepticism as advocates for science and reason-based decision-making policy-making regulations. So this means engaging with people who do not share your views or are strongly opposed to your views. So can I get an idea by hands? How many of people do this? It's not in person. That means you write articles on these topics for magazines, journals, blogs, yours or somebody else's. So things that you do that you're not directly enacting with somebody. Blogs, websites, okay. So maybe about a quarter of people. And how many of you do speaking presentations or run a skeptical or free thought group or otherwise engage in audiences in person? More, a little bit more, that's great. So okay, regarding the topics that I have up here, raise your hand. In either of those situations, do you participate in these topics, these particular subject areas? Even panelists, raise your hand if you do this. Anti-vax, right? Okay. Alt-Med, about the same. Religion, about the same but a different crowd. I noticed, different hands went up. Paranormal, not too many, a couple of us. How about conspiracy theories? Not too many people are brave enough to go there, I see. But a couple of you. But what I did notice is that there is definitely a split between the people who wanna talk about religion and the people who wanna talk about everything else. Which is okay because our blog, we don't talk about religion. We do a little bit when it comes to scientific claims that they make. Miracles or evolution in schools, biblical creationism, stuff like that. We will talk about that. And we actually have gotten people on the blog comments who are very religious and take us to task for that. But we try to stick to just the facts and tell people whatever you believe is fine. We're talking about this topic today and we're talking about science. So that's what we're going to stick to. So we're gonna talk about coalitions now. Like I said, one voice is great but more is better. So in many cases, you as an individual is better served by joining forces with others to make an impact. And I think building bridges is a good thing. And if I know anything about getting things done, it's all about your network. And who you know and who can help you out. So we all wanna grow our audiences for our group, our web presence or our organization. We wanna reach out to people who may already have some common ground, as we mentioned. And that would be like shared value of science and reason. And that's the core, promote rational inquiry and fighting nonsense that could hurt a society. So like I said, my audience is of a skeptical bent but I wanna reach that out to a network of diverse people. So that was supposed to be that slide. So I wanna ask the panel how they feel about that. No, we'll go here. Coalitions. And meanwhile, I want you audience members to think about your own reach. Who are you speaking to and who would you like to reach? And let's go backwards, starting with Chris. Is common ground of rational inquiry, fighting nonsense? Is that enough of a foundation to build a consensus between the audience circles that we have here? And how do you think coalition building is important? What ways can we reach out? Sure. Well, I think it's always contextual. It depends on what your goal is in any given situation. So depending on what the issue is that we're trying to address with our work on the ground in Boston or if I'm trying to promote a larger discussion through a blog or through social media, I will reach out to certain organizations, individuals, networks that I have built positive relationships with if I know that it will be of benefit for me to have some access to their community depending on whatever the issue is. Over the last few years of doing the work that I do, before I ended up at the organization I work for now, I worked for an interfaith organization in Chicago called the Interfaith Youth Corps that works to mobilize college and university students toward advancing the goal of interfaith cooperation that specifically includes the non-religious. And so that's sort of where my background comes from is a grassroots community organizing approach. And so over the last few years, I've been very intentional about building relationships with people who can access communities that I as a queer person, as an atheist, as someone who is very sort of outspoken about these aspects of my identity may not necessarily have immediate access to by having these relationships with these organizations, with these individuals, I know that I can work with them depending on what the goal is. So I think that it depends on the situation, but having that foundation of a shared value in terms of critical thinking, promoting critical thinking, promoting pluralism or the idea that people should be free to live their lives as they choose, those are, I think, having those as foundation are sort of necessary in terms of promoting those goals. They may not always be enough depending on the situation, but they can be enough, I think. I realize I didn't really touch so much on my audience in the last question. I may have sort of briefly mentioned, but I find that the majority of my audience are religious believers, and this is purely anecdotal, but almost every single time I go to speak to a religious audience, they, most of the people that I encounter say that this is the first time that they've met somebody who speaks as an atheist and that their prior encounters with people who maintain that identity have been sort of largely negative. And so I find that a lot of the people that I encounter think that those shared values are not there. They may recognize that they're there between different religious communities, but they may not think that they're there between religious communities and the non-religious. So I think it's essential to have people who are doing intentional outreach to those communities to make sure that they are aware that those values are there so that we are included in coalition that we need to be a part of in order to advance goals that we all share like the separation of church and state or promoting reason and science and critical thinking. I think the one thing you also touched on was the need for networking. I think for me especially I could not do what I do without the skeptic network that I have supporting me since I work with the paranormal community so very much. So what, like I said, Tim Farley, I'm personal friends of the whole family's personal friends with James Randy who has been being the most incredible support and kicked me in the butt and made me do things person. I also have Phil Plate, a whole lot of people who encouraged me to go into this so that when I have a question or a problem or I don't know because being a skeptic, of course, we don't know sometimes. I have people that have influence in the skeptic community that I trust their answers and that they've also been able to say, yeah, there's this person, she's a school teacher, but really, she knows her stuff. You should have her come speak and has helped me out and also helped me out somewhat that I use people like Joe Nickel, who's also a friend, as sort of a role model. He works, his way he works with the paranormal community is to listen and listen and listen and look at all their evidence and then out of politeness, nine times out of 10, then they listen to you. And as he put it, you meet an awful lot of very interesting people that you normally wouldn't meet and even if you don't agree with them at the end of the day, you've seen all their evidence and you've gathered a lot of information for the skeptic movement that normally they wouldn't have opened up to. Usually they shut off to a skeptic. So like I said, Joe Nickel is definitely a very good role model and a supporter of mine just sort of helped me get my word out there to the community and also the UFO community begins to trust me more and more because they now recommend, unfortunately, they used to call abductees nutcases and I've trained most of them to now say they're confused people or have a problem or whatever. So they know they can call me up or recommend them to my website and then I will make sure that they get that therapy to kill they need so that I don't, it's been good for me. I no longer see every person that believes in UFOs and as a nutcase of their own. I can see that this is a very safe, happy community that they've made for themselves and for them to sort of step out of that safety zone. They're actually more willing to do that because they see me stepping out of my skeptic safety zone. When you only speak to the choir and when you only stay in your comfort zone, how can you expect someone else to give up something that's very much part of their personal identity unless you prove that you're willing to do so also. And I would also at this point like to pimp my book. $10 forward by James Randy. The atheist will enjoy it. It's the first preschool book that has an atheist hero in it and 100% of the profits to J.R.A. So just to, and that you said is a very tall James Randy on the cover because the illustrator had never met Randy. So Randy's thrilled to be six foot tall. Sorry to put that in there but this is like the tonight show. Kitty, is that a good example, your book of all audiences could enjoy that? I would say. All audiences here? All audiences here. My first skeptic book was Propaganda. You could give it to anybody and it would sneak in critical thinking skills. This is the one that you give to your relatives that are fundees that you don't want to speak to you again. Because there is an atheist hero and Rapunzel is a lesbian. I was asked by the skeptic community, Ziggy and Lisa, my first book was fine but they wanted something they could read to their children. So this is dedicated to my children who are very slow about giving me grandchildren. But what morals and beliefs do I want them to have? Which goes to show that as much as I'm involved in alien abductees, I can write it, we all have little side projects. My side project is stories for the grandchildren I will have one day, including ones that say, hey, you're an atheist and that's a pretty cool thing to be. Or if you're gay, that's a really good thing to be too. So thank you for leading me. Promote that and I'll proceed to the J-Roc. Actually it's a good example. Thanks for sharing. David, David number one. David S. David S. Yes, that's what I'll call you then. Do I get to talk about the reason really now? That would be good, yeah. Okay. Because we're gonna talk about coalitions. Yeah, so talk. I should just point out, we work together in the secular coalition and we have to be referred to a lot there and he's the bad Dave and I'm the good Dave. Bad is such a relative term. It's such a bell. The horns are coming up and you look at the tail of me. I got the devil beard going on now too. Good day, good day. Good day. So the atheist movement is a really broad movement, okay? Atheism is simply the absence of a belief in God and there's lots of people like that. And of those people, we differ greatly. Republicans, Democrats, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, everything, liberal and conservative, we all frankly disagree on a lot of things. And that has been one of our problems. That has been one of our problems. If you get a bunch of, and I'm just gonna just pull Catholics out of the room, okay, let's say if you get a bunch of Catholics together and they're all religious Catholics, you can say a lot of things about those Catholic people that would probably, probably be common, but this is not the case for atheists. So when we're building a coalition, there's a lot to look past. But I wanna just take a moment to talk, before I talk about the Reeds and Rally, I wanna talk about the Gamow, the Godless Americans March on Washington. Now that was the first atheist march on Washington back in 19, I'm sorry, 2002. And it was really an American atheist event and other people could come to, other groups could come to. Did you invite other groups? Yeah, they were invited. And, but it was really an American atheist event. American atheist was running it and it was really their event, our event. And we got 2,500 people. Now in the next 10 years, a lot changed. So I'm not going to tell you this and tell you that it's all about coalition building, this massive change that we had, a lot has changed in the past 10 years. However, the reason rally was not an American atheist event even though I'm president of American atheists, I was the elected president of the Reason Rally Coalition and everybody on the Reason Rally Coalition was an equal partner with an equal say. Could you tell us all the groups that were involved? Well, there were 19 groups. There were two classes of sponsors. The major sponsors included all the major groups that you've heard of, the AHA, the CSH, FFRF, Secular Student Alliance. Also James Randi, the JREF Foundation was a sponsor. And we all had an equal vote in this thing. And we all disagreed on a bunch of things. All right, I'll sit here and I'll say to a skeptics audience, if you're a good skeptic, you're an atheist. And if you're a theist, you're a bad skeptic. I'll say this. And we can disagree with that. Yes, and we disagree with that. No, that's my point. That's my point, okay? I disagree with a lot of atheists. They disagree with me on a lot of things. And one of the things that we had to do for the Reason Rally Coalition is put all of that to the side. And the one thing that I want you to take away from this is that it worked, okay? We did do that. We did put all that baggage between us to the side because in the real world, the difference between the people who are in this movement who differ from me the most, that difference, that widest difference is nothing. It's not significant. We're all good guys here. We're all on the same side. We're all doing the same thing. And if anybody in this movement totally takes over the world, it'll be all right, okay? And we all have to realize that. And we all have to understand that, and we did. And as a result, what happened with the Reason Rally was that we, everybody had an equal say. Everybody put an equal money. Everybody put aside their crap. And we got 30,000 atheists in the rain in Washington, D.C. That's 10 times larger than the one 10 years before when it was only really an American atheist event. And that's the magic of a coalition, for lack of a better word. That's the impact of a coalition. When everybody can get past their shtick, their differences, and realize that their differences really don't mean much at all. Really, they don't mean much at all. I mean, we can disagree on whether you can be a skeptical theist, but in the real world, skepticism is good. Yeah, we have basically the same larger goals. Yeah, and so we're all good guys. We're all on the same side. And once you get past that little stuff and look at the big stuff, coalition building is actually quite easy. And not only from an individual perspective, but from a group perspective, everybody finds it quite easy to build a coalition when everybody realizes that in the end, you're on the same side. It's a great example, thanks. And I don't like people who always think that all atheists go to the church of atheists every Sunday, and that they all take a vote, and I actually poll my alien abductees. 25% of them identify themselves as atheists, and as much as 50% of many UFO groups identify themselves as atheists, that they believe the Bible is simply stories of aliens that have visited the earth. So anyone who always, so not only are all, I mean, a good skeptic isn't atheists, but a good atheist. I mean, an atheist is not always a good skeptic. So I always, I started that poll just to show myself that no, they don't all attend the same church of atheism. I would just add that the value of coalition building is something that's not just theoretical, and it's really played itself out in the last few years with the development of the modern secular movement, which in many ways can be attributed to the working together of all the different secular groups. About 10 years ago, when I first started getting involved in organized secularism and organized humanism, the major groups in the movement were not even talking to each other. There was real animosity. CFI did not speak to the AHA, AHA did not speak to American atheists, American atheists didn't speak to either group either, and the other major groups were kind of that way. It was very unfortunate, but what was the reality on the ground as a result of that? Well, the reality was that for 20 years or so, the main opposition to the religious right was not the secular community. Instead, it was politicians who held themselves out by saying that liberals and moderates can be religious too, and that the religious right doesn't have a monopoly on religion, and even the nonprofit groups, very good nonprofit groups like People for the American Way, Americans United, ACLU, they were the main opposition to the religious right, but even they tried to associate themselves with religion to the extent they could. They would put religious leaders on their boards, they would put religious leaders in officer positions, and as a result, the landscape was such that it appeared that the spectrum of opinion was between religious conservatives and religious liberals. The secular community was not even at the table, not even being heard, and I think we can look at the results to determine just how effective that was. The religious right just grew in power with every election cycle. It was very unfortunate. They flexed their muscle in 1980, and they never looked back, just getting stronger and stronger. What has happened over the last few years is really a social phenomenon of some type, and I happen to mention it, I wasn't gonna mention my book, but as long as it's been mentioned, in Non-Believer Nation, The Rise of Secular Americans, I talk about how in the last few years, secular Americans have really emerged as a movement, a new kind of opposition to the religious right that has never been seen before, and it's an identity-oriented movement, and it's happened because the AHA has been able to put aside its differences with American atheists and CFI. These groups have realized, as Dave said, the differences between us are so slight, we need to defend atheist identity even if we prefer to identify as humanists. I'm not gonna hide from the atheist identity as humanists in prior generations tended to do. I think we need to stand together and find our common ground, and there are differences. Humanists tend to be progressive politically, and they tend to focus on a lot of issues that atheism alone doesn't focus on, but when we work together for secularism, that's not important. We can focus on the common ground, and I think the value of that cannot be understated, and to the extent that skeptics and others who are attending this conference can get on board that train, we can really affect change, which, as Sharon said, is the goal of this. Great, we've seen some really good examples of coalitions. I think one of the ones I'm going to put on the website is a failed chance at coalition, and this was shared with me by Tim Farley, and it regarded, I don't have the details with me right now, but it regarded some medical claims that were made, and a chance to maybe enact some policy and legislation, and I think that there were some other parties that were completely non-sceptical that were involved, sports organizations that were involved, and for some reason, the call to do something fell flat, and for us to have a chance to change some legislation that was harming people, we failed to act and failed to do that, and I will add the details of that that Tim had given me to the website, but that's another example of a non-religious situation that arose where we could have come together and done something, and we sort of failed to do that, and one thing I just wanted to mention was, I heard Sean Faircloth say one time when he was serving as a legislator in his state, he said that it only took about, get this, 12 phone calls about an issue for the politicians to pay attention to it in his state, 12 phone calls because that assumes that, I don't know, maybe 10 times, 20 times, 100 times that many people didn't call, didn't speak up, but feel the same way, so those 12 people that made that call about that bill that was in Congress made a difference and made that politician take a closer look at that issue, so you can make a difference just by representing yourself, you can be seen as representing another population or an audience, so I think that's important to keep in mind. So what, the next part where we're gonna try to do is a group exercise, which means that you have to get up and move, so what I did was you have an idea of each of the people that we have appear in the audiences, very diverse, like I said, so we're gonna do this exercise, and what I did was try to come up with this scenario that involved all our ideas, now it's ridiculous, but the point is that you see that there's various forces involved, different parties involved, and you want to try to see what kind of coalitions can be built, so what we're gonna try to do is split up into groups, you gotta help me out here people, let's try to split up between the five of us evenly, we'll do a quick 15 minute discussion, the leaders will come back and relate some of the ideas that you had for them, and maybe we'll have some Q and A at the end, so let's go over this scenario here. All right, a New Age-themed clinic is proposed for your financially troubled city, and their initial proposal for a special funding deal from the city, and in support of their stated mission, they agreed to provide free access via appointment to the city's unemployed and uninsured population, however their care consists of homeopathy, reiki, therapeutic touch, and other mystical treatments. The CEO of their organization is a cult-like guru who has best-selling books on power of positive thinking and tapping into the magic of the universe. I think we can kind of imagine who that might be. They have no medical doctors on staff, but they say they will advise patients with serious medical problems to seek professional care. It is known that as part of their care, they proselytize to their patients about their New Age mystical beliefs in friendly space brothers, universal life forces, and pyramid power. In a previous public meeting on the project, critics of the alternative practice and the religious aspects were openly labeled, closed-minded and faithless, and accused of scientism that has failed humanity, because look at the condition the city is in now, and that it will be inhumane to deny attention to the less fortunate. But the city sees this as an opportunity to address a pressing social problem of depression, drug abuse, violence, and inadequate attention to the plight of the city's poor. And they see it as bringing positive attention to the community, and they're all for the project and ready to pony up a money match to allow it. So the questions are, you have a little time to make an impact and change the course of this approval, assuming that you disagree with it because you don't want your tax dollars spent on something like this, but what do you do? And who can you ally with? I think there's a lot of coalitions that can be built here. What's the goal? And how do you make your case and make it stick? So I gave each of our leaders this scenario, and where is Brian Thompson? He's disappeared. Brian Thompson. See, my theory is he's Peter Parker, and he just became Spiderman. Okay, well, let's see if we could do this. I'm going to, let's pick a corner or pick a spot, and can you please just sort of pick the person nearest to you? We'll gather together and we'll think of some ideas, so we're gonna have to get up and move around. Can you give me 15 minutes so we can do this discussion? So that was 15 minutes or so of discussion and groups. Thank you, everybody. We're very orderly, went into your groups. I think we all had some good discussions and good contributions from everybody. So let's start with David. Tell us what your group came up with. Well, they came up with a lot. It seemed like everyone agreed that one of the key things to do would be to form some kind of coalition and work with other groups. And we actually came up with quite a few. People mentioned working with the legitimate mental health community and the legitimate medical community to oppose this plan, the legitimate substance abuse community with sympathetic politicians, groups like the American Medical Association. It was even mentioned possibly working with insurance companies that might have an interest in people not treating down this avenue. And religious groups that would be opposed to this quasi-religious remedy that's being suggested here. I've always found it very interesting that religious groups definitely are in favor of church-state separation when you're talking about another religion. So you might even have a focus on the family on our side on this one. So also, of course, secular groups, humanist groups, would be right in there with this fight and groups like the ACLU and Americans United would certainly take an interest in a battle like this. And another group that would be worth tapping would be victims of care such as this. People who have been actually harmed by pursuing their care through an avenue of quasi-medicine, new age medicine like this, they could be very valuable in building sympathy for opposing this. Now let's see, there were some other questions here. How do you make this? Yes. What do you do and how do you make your case and make it stick? We felt that the key issue here and perhaps the strongest issue was the public funding of this entity. I think there are other peripheral issues but certainly the public funding of this is the most egregious aspect of it. If people wanna come in privately and open up a shop such as this, there are still issues certainly. There's issues as to whether they're licensed, whether they should be licensed and whatnot. So those are issues that are on the outskirts but we felt that the central issue was the public funding. And as far as how we make our case, the key issue that we thought should be emphasized was that, let's see, there were some other things here. Can we go back? Okay, sure, yeah. If anybody doesn't cover anybody else's thing. Yeah. So there were a couple of really sort of returning themes that we continue to come back to in our discussion and it was a great discussion, by the way. Good job, everyone. And there were a couple of things and one was that we felt like it was important to use values-based language to appeal to people who were drawn to support this initiative in the first place because they feel that it has good intentions that it will be serving the community. So we feel like it's important to use similar language that will say, that will recognize, affirm the good intentions behind serving the community and appeal to people who want to support that population. And related to that, we felt it was important to propose an alternative. A lot of times, people who are criticized for, or a lot of times, in these situations, when people get painted as, you know, being closed-minded, faithless, inhumane, it's because they're simply sort of standing on the outside and criticizing and they're not proposing a better alternative. So we felt that it was important to bring in doctors and other folks like you were talking about but also to actually propose something concrete that could help meet the needs of that community. And finally, one of the biggest things that we focused on, which was already something you lifted up, David, was the idea of bringing in religious allies. And again, this is related to combating the way in which critics of this project are portrayed as being anti-religious or as being, you know, faithless or whatever, you know, if we can bring in religious allies to say that they also recognize the importance of this, of opposing this initiative that does a lot to undo that, but it also has sort of longer-term benefits. One story that I shared with the group while we were having this conversation was about a friend of mine who works for a labor union in Boston and the labor union he works for represents sanitation workers and janitors in Boston and a significant percentage of those of folks who are in that union are Latino. And so when he's down at the Capitol advocating for the union, he's often on the same side of the aisle as the Catholic Church. In his own time, he's very passionate about reproductive health and reproductive access or access to reproductive health. And so when he's at the Capitol building, lobbying and advocating for that, he's usually on the opposite side of the aisle as the Catholic Church. But because he's been on the same side of the aisle with them for other issues, it makes them a lot harder for them to see his perspective as totally, or to see him and his perspective as being totally alien to themselves because they know that they have shared values in one other area. So bringing in other groups, particularly religious groups in this instant, has a sort of long-term benefit of building relationships that can help advance other issues in other areas. And this is something that has been very true in other movements like the LGBT movement in 2010. There was a Gallup poll that found something that might seem relatively obvious, which is that folks who have a positive relationship with someone who identifies as gay are a lot more likely to support gay marriage. And it's because of that positive relationship that they've had and because they've identified through that relationship shared values that they have. So bringing in other groups in this instance will have long-term benefits when things like this and other issues come up again in the future. I had a terrific group and I would say we covered a lot of the same coalition things, but I think one thing that we sort of thought of was we have limited time here and that was something you mentioned. And so we also thought, of course, about bringing in other churches, doctors, but we also said we gotta get us a lawyer because what are the legal issues of having something that supposedly is treating an illness or treating medical things, but not undergoing, we were saying what's the difference between this in a Catholic hospital? A Catholic hospital has regulation. It has to do inspections. And so that was something that we really wanted to get a lawyer in there for. We also wanted to bring in the labor unions and we wanted to bring in the people that work with the poor in that community already because there's limited money for this we had mentioned and every penny counts. And this money is gonna come from some other group and it's gonna go to this. There's not gonna be more money instantly available and those people want to keep their money covered. We even mentioned bringing in the Tea Party because they don't like tax increases and this is gonna cost money. But I think our main thing was money talks and if it's gonna cost the city more money to open this and face lawsuits and problems, that might be the really quickest way to get them to rethink in a hurry what's going on. And so we were gonna have Katie and Suri come in and tell their story just as an extra jab because we're not talking about Scientology here. And they don't know where I live, so. Okay, are you there? All right, well, you might have had a good group but our group was the best group. I am not a competition. It's not a competition, but if it was a competition, we would win. Woo! All right, so let's see why he's bad, Dave. So a lot of the same things as far as what do you do? We first address the fact that we would make a lot of noise. Okay, it would be a multi-pronged approach. We would talk about the separation of church and state, yes, but also the efficacy of these treatments and the money that was being spent on the treatments. We would follow the money trail to show how many people, how many people were running these practitioners. We're going to make extra money selling crystals and books and that kind of stuff while we would also show the opportunity cost of, you know, we're giving you nothing, but, and that's instead of more cops, that's instead of real services by real doctors, that's instead of more firefighters or better education, we're actually going to pay money to give you nothing and we would make sure that the people understood the unemployed people, the supporters of this would understand that there was a certain element of scam involved here, there was a certain element of con involved here and we would offer, as an alternative, real medicine, real solutions to their real problems. We would threaten the expensive lawsuits because the forced town is going broke, it's not initially strapped, they don't want the expensive lawsuits. The other thing that we would bring in, we talked about allying with doctors, with churches, with the religions, the AMA, hospital administrators and insurance carriers. We would also do a nice little trick that we use in American Atheists a lot and that's bring in other groups that want the same funding, the Wiccans, the Voodoo's, the Scientologists and the other crazies who also want to pray over you and make you better for money from the state. And we would get, by using that kind of stuff you get people to say, well, okay, well, where does this line cross? Where does this line even exist? We would have a plan B to use it as an example if people weren't forward and of course we would pounce on it as soon as somebody got hurt. But the first thing that we would want to do is make sure that everybody knew that there was a loud, strong and substantial opposition to this. There would be billboards, there would be press releases and there would be protests with signs and loud music and sit-ins and that kind of stuff in order to stop this from happening. That's it. Great, so we had basically the same thing. Talking about the medical profession was the number one thing. People would come in and say that they, based on their experience, based on their professional judgment, this would not be that idea. We had an issue about the church groups. I mean, and it brings up a larger issue. Of course, the church groups are going to be opposed to this because you're taking a share away from what they do. They often do the charities in cities and provide food and shelter for people. Of course, they also do the proselytizing on the site as well but their proselytizing is good and they don't want anybody else competing with that. So when the church groups come in, they're gonna have a goal that they want these people out but while protecting their own territory. We're on the other hand, another group may come in and say, we don't want anybody proselytizing with these sort of government funds going in there. So we see that there's a difference in goals there but what you're doing in this coalition is you have a goal. Your goal is to not have this approved. So if that means bringing in people who are going to make the case for the ultimate goal but don't necessarily point out the same things that you do or that you agree with, it helps you win. So, excuse me. That was an important point to make, I thought, is that even though we don't agree with the Catholics who are going to say, we provide these services, the enemy of my enemy is what has that work? But they're going to help you get to the ultimate goal. So I think focusing on the goal would be something that you have to consider for this specific instance. And even though Chris said maybe that leads to further coalitions in the future that you can work together, that's a good thing. We're focusing on this single goal right here is the ultimate thing we have to work on. So also we thought about the various skeptics groups are going to be available to speak in free thought groups they're going to be available to speak. Existing nonprofits, give them a call and say, do you really want these people coming in here where they're stepping on your territory and this is your area and this is your job, maybe just giving them a call and saying show up would be a good thing. Existing social services, I think that was mentioned. Nobody's going to like that because that's money taken away from them that's going to this cause. If you know your local philanthropist, call him up and ask him if he could provide a donation to the city to do this work instead of these people. We talked about different ways to make your case. And one of the ways that we discussed is what do you do? Do you bring in people that show the numbers or do you bring in a spokesperson that can eloquently state your case and maybe a couple key people who make a particular point. And I'm sorry that I singled out Zeke because pregnant woman in the room, I know how impressive it is to people sitting up here making a decision to have a pregnant woman standing there crying about how much she does not like this project. It is an emotional ploy, it works. If it works for you. Unions, like in your hand, have health. And I know some people will have ethical problems with that because it's an anecdote, but this is your goal. And if this is a person that could actually further your goal but is understandable to your cause and speak well, it will work. So it's up to you if you wanted to use that ploy. Marginally, it's in a gray area, but let me tell you, it works. Get her done. And I would say one thing was I felt very much like this was about healthcare and healthcare for poor people. And one thing I grew up mentioning was how insulting this was that, oh, here, this choice for the poor people is gonna be this crap, no good healthcare. And we were sort of really willing to bend the rules more than we would with another coalition. It's tricky, isn't it? Human life's involved, and to us that was, that's why we were like at, Chris, I'm from New Hampshire, you call in the Tea Party, they're bored and they have nothing to do. They're all retired old men, you know, that sort of thing. But yeah, we were willing to sort of go more for groups that we maybe wouldn't have considered for something else. And the one thing we also thought about was local newspapers don't necessarily, they don't have a big circulation as much anymore, letters to the editor. Don't necessarily work, although you are reaching to an older population that may be voters. So wouldn't hurt to do that, to write letters to the editor or to get on your local news station. It might be worth it to call up somebody that you know who has a bigger reach, somebody who can get this onto an AP syndication and get this around the country that could possibly embarrass the city into you know, not approving such a thing. Do you have a comment? There are a lot of communities that also are on listservs and you can start influencing what's going on by using that community list or start a listserv a community listserv. Listserv or Facebook? So okay, so reaching out by a social media, by a Facebook and connecting communities and a petition. Okay, very good. Sorry, if I may. Sure. We've talked a fair amount about social media up here and I think that there's a lot of value in social media. I mean I've used social media for the last several years and I found it to do a lot in terms of who I'm able to reach, but I think that you know, I think our movement does online coalition building and social media stuff very well. I think we need to be a lot better about local grassroots community organizing. So I think that I agree that Facebook and all of that definitely should be something that we're doing, but I think that the biggest impact is going to come from grassroots and I think that's where our movement has been weakest in some ways. So in a way, you're reaching out to the community people, directly the community leaders. Dave Silverman reaching out to the community via billboards that are visibly available just to the people who pass by every day. That's a way of reaching out to the local community. How do you deal with a community that doesn't have a good newspaper or anything like that? How do you get that message out to other people other than social media? I mean that's where I'm at. Yeah, I mean this is where I think having those preexisting networks or if you don't already then start building them now but having those networks of community leaders, people who have their feet planted in communities that you may not have access to. I mean there should be the imam in your community's mosque or one of your community's mosques should be talking about this issue. All the Christian ministers in your community should be talking about this issue. You should have, it should be the people at the hospital should be discussing it. I mean you need to know who are the people in these communities who are influencers, who have access to a larger group of people and it really is I think all about having those or it's not all about but it's largely about having those relationships in place. So you're in there planting the seed. Yeah, so like I actually wanna, if I can share a quote that I really enjoy. I have actually on my right shoulder I have a tattoo of the face of Abraham Lincoln, the people down the street at the local bodega. I think it's a self-portrait which is really strange but I got the tattoo because of this quote I'd like to share it's from a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote. He said, if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart which say what he will is the great high road to his reason and which when once gained you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause. If indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment or to command his action or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart and though your cause be naked truth itself transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel and sharper than steel can be made and though you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision you shall no more be able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rice straw. And I think that one of the reasons why I appreciate that quote so much is you can have, you can get everything else right. You can get your messaging right. You can get, you can have all the facts on your side. You can have, you know, be backed by science and reason but if you don't have those positive relationships in place that people don't see you as a trustworthy person who should be taken seriously who shares some of their values they're not gonna listen to you. So I think that that's the most important thing and since two people have already done it up here I just wanna make a quick vlog for my own bug. Am I the only one without a book to read? No, I don't have a book either but I'm gonna write one so I can sell it a damn. Mine will be out in November, November 6th actually. I have to share my book release day with the presidential election or whatever. We all know what the big event really is gonna be that day, the presidential election. The one thing that I wanted to, are you done? Sorry, I can get rambly. No. The title is Faithiest, How an Atheist Found Common Ground with a Religious and I was just reminded of it because I was reading that quote from the book manuscript. Anyway, Faithiest, How an Atheist Found Common Ground with a Religious, so thank you. Sorry, my publisher will be much happier with me now. Okay, so when we're talking about, back on the subject here, you had mentioned the social networking. If your target market uses the internet, that's great but if your target market is the poor and the unemployed and the undereducated, I would say that the social networking is gonna have less of an impact. Since this is a specific situation where we can use religions as an ally, we really should. And this is a perfect place where we really should engage the churches and the other people who are in the communities who are going to really lose from this. The other thing that I'd like to make sure that we all keep in mind is language. A lot of times people just use English and this is something that's going to affect a lot of people and we would really wanna make sure that this was in a language that was appropriate to the primary languages used who are going to be affected by this, so thank you. So I would say that social networking is a good central place for information because people can go to the library even if they don't have internet connection but really the central vehicle here is going to be free stuff which is they can read a billboard, they can read signs and on a picket sign they can, you've got grocery stores where everybody goes, they go there to get these foods, they should be placards up on those grocery stores by ads on the grocery carts, things that they can see for free and it's right out in front of them and that gives a better alternative than nothing. And I would like to say that the worst thing you can do is write a blog about this, especially after it's happened and you're so pissed off. I know, I'm sorry, but there's too many people and there's nothing wrong with this, who will write a blog and that's it and they'll write their little angry blog post and there's no following through and it's often after the fact, non-reemptive strike and to me I kind of like being in the trenches a little bit too and I do write my own blog, yes. But I think sometimes you've got to get out from behind the computer. One thing we do, because I live in a very small town, is that our local library lets you have rooms for meetings. Okay, we have granite state skeptics which is a small group and we have new people show up all the time and it's a friendly little grassroots thing and Dale and I are like, hey, you know what, laws are coming up. You know, Dale Roy, great credit there. We had some laws coming up and we had our little group and we got them all organized and helped so sometimes please get out from behind that computer. You know, or if you're gonna write that, write that, get the feelings out, but then take those feelings out into the community. All right, if I could just add to what Chris said because I think he made an excellent point and that is that grassroots activism is important and social networks can only get you so far. It's very important to realize how important social networks are to the skeptic secular community though because in years past the ability to build camaraderie and solidarity among skeptics and non-believers just wasn't possible but the social networks really do provide that tool in a way that wasn't around before. He talked about the need for trust and the need to be respected in order to have effective grassroots activism and that's absolutely true but what community is more distrusted and not liked than the atheist community, right? So how do you get there? And one way you do get there is you build respect by showing numbers, by showing that you are true movements and the online social networking really enables that and a great way to highlight that is to look at the difference between a religious dissenter or I should say a secular dissenter back in the 1940s and one in contemporary times. The McCollum family from Illinois brought a Supreme Court case on the establishment clause challenging religion and public schools back in the 1940s and they were absolutely isolated and ostracized, their kid had to leave state to go to school somewhere else because there was no community, there was no camaraderie or anything like that back then. Now look at last year when Jessica Alquist and Cranston Rhode Island objected to religion in her public school, she was ostracized in the community in Cranston her family was put under a lot of pressure just like the McCollums back in the 1940s but the difference was the online social network enabled her to build a coalition if you will of people who were there to tell her by the thousands on Facebook that there's nothing wrong with you Jessica, it's them and that is all the difference and that's how the secular movement today is really making a difference in a way that just wasn't possible even 10 years ago. That brings up an interesting point, a lot of these citizens groups will get together to oppose something that's coming into their community and they just go around on Facebook, they become this little group focused on Facebook or they go around and hang the flyers or knock on their neighbor's doors or meet in common areas like churches which is very common for them to talk about neighborhood things in their churches or the local library and everything so you are dealing with that very small core community if you have an inroad into that community that's very important because that if the issue is representing the community and the community people are against it I mean that's where you have some strength there so I think we found a real wide diverse ways of addressing some of these issues. One thing I just wanted to mention is we were in our little discussion groups and the point about the languages was a good one because you don't want to waste your time doing something that's not going to be effective but you want to not miss things that will be effective so definitely coming out with somebody who can communicate in the language of the community whatever it may be is extremely important but wasting your time maybe doing something that's not going to make an impact is also important to think about so that maybe means the person that's in your group making them not feel so good about their idea well I'm sorry we can't do your idea because I don't feel that to be effective but looking for those high impact items is important so I think this is a great discussion thanks to all the speakers who did a fantastic job of sharing their time and making room for everybody and thanks for your participation again I'm going to remind you of those cards please that's your homework please fill out something on them whether it be feedback or questions that you have or situations that you've encountered that maybe put your email address and I can contact you about or that you'll contact me about so we can add them to the website and sort of build a resource there and reminders and helpful hints for organizations and community groups skeptics groups, free thought groups your own websites so you can share this with others in your group maybe and do a better job at social activism so thanks everybody we are right on time so go for dinner