Emily is a business owner and member of the city council in Owosso, Mich., and she received a special “Nothing Fails Like Prayer” Award for attempting to persuade the council to discontinue prayer.
>> Buzz Kemper: >> Buzz Kemper: Thanks for the walkup music. That is awesome. Oh, my gosh. Good morning, I’m Buzz Kemper. Every year I get to have the privilege of opening the convention, welcoming all of you, and I want to start by doing that I want to thank all of you for being with us, not just here this weekend, but with us in the bigger picture, with us in maintaining the much-battered-at wall between state and church, and with us when we need to remind politicians sometimes that there’s an amendment that comes before the second one. [laughter] [applause] >> Buzz: OK, and by the way, I love this organization, been working with them a long time, and thanks to Dan, I’ve had the privilege of having — I’m the only person I know who’s ever actually been the voice of God for an atheist group. It’s — it’s like all my friends envy me. All of you — all the people here, are making this work and keeping this thing going. Thank you so much, and now what I would like you to do is join me in welcoming, the co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation here at the 46th annual convention. Please welcome my friends, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker. [applause] >> Dan: Thanks. That was great. So let’s not start with a prayer today! [laughter] Let’s start with a land acknowledgment. The Monona Terrace occupies ancestral Ho-Chunk land. In 1832, the Ho-Chunk were forced to vacate. Decades when the federal and state governments repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought to forcibly remove the Ho-Chunk people from the nation. Let’s continue to honor the inherent sovereignty of the nation Annie Laurie: And can we all say amen to that. And as everybody gets in, we are going to lower the lights a little bit, but we’re going to wait until everybody is safely in your seats so you will be able to see the PowerPoint better. I want to welcome you to the 46th annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Dan: And happy Friday the 13th! Let’s banish triskaidekaphobia! Annie Laurie: We have started every convention with a rendition of the 15th Century song written by German freethinkers, Die Gedanken Sind Frei, and Dan is going to sing it now. Dan (singing) Die Gedanken sind frei — my thoughts freely flower. Die Gedanken sind frei — My thoughts give me power. No scholar can map them, No hunter can trap them. No person can deny — Die Gedanken sind frei. I think as I please, and this gives me pleasure. My conscience decrees this right I must treasure. My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator. No person can deny — Die Gedanken sind frei. And should tyrants take me and throw me in prison, My thoughts will burst free, like blossoms in season. Foundations will crumble, and structures will tumble, And free people shall cry, “Die Gedanken sind frei.” And free people shall cry, “Die Gedanken sind frei.” [applause] Annie Laurie: And now to properly — is my mic on? Now to properly welcome you are our very hardworking convention planners, Lisa Strand and Sadie Pattinson, and they deserve a special round of applause because there have been too many hours leading up to the conference. Thank you, Lisa and Sadie. [applause] >> Lisa: Well, I know Annie Laurie and Dan have been there with me plenty leading up to the convention. As Sadie will tell you, it is a team effort! >> Sadie: Hello, everyone and thank you for coming. I want to give a big thank you to all of the staff helping with this year’s convention. Thank you to the audio visual team in the back here, the Monona Terrace staff that are assisting them, and the FFRF staff. I want to give a special shoutout to the administrative team for their extra hard work in the weeks leading up to the convention. Eleanor, Katina, Lisa C and of course, Lisa Strand. We truly could not do it without all of your help, and this convention would not happen without all of the staff and of course, without the beautiful audience that I see in front of me. And now Lisa will do the state roll call. >> Lisa: All right, many of you know about this tradition. We have people from 45 states here, preregistered, and Canada. We had 226 preregistered guests. So some of you have come in and I haven’t gotten the onsite registrations, so some of those are still coming in. So here we will, Alabama — give a shout. Alaska. Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawai’i, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, — any Utah? Vermont? Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. All right, thank you all for coming. [applause] Annie Laurie: So I think we can dim those lights a little bit now that everyone’s seated before we start this PowerPoint. We want to be safe. And I wanted to say there are 530 people at the convention. [applause] >> Dan: So today is Friday the 13th, and it’s propitious start. The conference was well timed, because yesterday was Freethought Day. FFRF declared October 12th as Freethought Day, starting in 1992, which was the 300th anniversary of the cessation of the Salem witch trials. Annie Laurie: And this year FFRF marked the occasion with a full-page ad in USA Today. Dan: And the ad reads: Commemorate Freethought Day. Annie Laurie: Today we commemorate reason, freethought, and the imperative need to separate religion from government. There may be no single day of more significance of tracing the history of human enlightenment and the adoption of the scientific method than October 12th, 1692. Dan: Governor Phipps, his declaration was the first of his kind requiring that evidence must be observable by the ordinary senses, imagine that. It must be measurable and replicable. This ended the infamous Salem witch trials that had already claimed 20 innocent lives, but he spared 52 other individuals who were charged with witchcraft. Annie Laurie: And then the ad concludes: Theocratic forces are mustering a latter day witch hunt once more in our land, in the name of puritanical Christian nationalist beliefs, they’re imposing their religious dogma on the rest of us. They’ve overturned Roe vs. Wade and now they’re targeting vulnerable LGBTQ+ Americans — is there feedback? Can we do something about that? Now they’re targeting vulnerable LGBTQ+ Americans, banning books and dismantling our secular education system. They’ve captured much of our federal judiciary which is increasing using religious liberty as a weapon instead of a shield. We intended this ad to run in the New York Times. They refused it because of the graphic. Dan: And if you flew into the convention, we hope that you’ll look for this billboard on your right on East Johnson as you’re heading to the airport, and it’s very prominent, it says “Resist Christian Nationalism.” Annie Laurie: But we wanted to say “Christian nationalism is unAmerican,” and the billboard company rejected it. So you can see there’s a theme. Dan: We want to thank all our staff by the way that marquee up there is embracing the comments of an extremist named Todd Starns, who insulted us by calling us Gaylor’s gang of godless thugs. [applause] Annie Laurie: Yes, we were very complimented, actually. And just to give you an idea of the behind the scenes, here’s a photo of our shop manager with the mountains of boxes she got ready to transport here for the sales tables. >> And here’s Lily Potts on the right, who are getting ready the registration materials. >> And we want to introduce and thank our executive board members who oversee FFRF. They’re also here today. Dan: Now for a commercial break, please look for our clean money volunteers, in the back of the room. Board members, Todd Pisec and Eric Lawrence, this is your chance to win free, pre-In God We Trust money. Annie Laurie: Books at the break tables, most of them are available at a discount. And we want to call your attention to the used books over there on my left and there are a lot of free tschotskes over here. There’s a lot of books on our topics, so please help yourself. Dan: And we have a silent auction for the increasingly rare 12-volume Dresden edition of the writings of Robert G. Ingersoll, who’s the 1900s freethinker, and this set is in very, very good condition. FFRF membership is larger than it’s ever been. When I first started as an employee in 1987, we had 19,801, today we have 40,376. [applause] Dan: That means we have more than doubled in ten years. Annie Laurie: You’ll be hearing more about book banning and other threats to our secular democracy, but here is a billboard that was not censored. Thanks to our Denver chapter, this billboard appeared in Denver this summer and it quotes Isaac Asimov. Says any book worth banning is a book worth reading. Dan: Abort theocracy, keep abortion safe and legal, to weigh in on some critical referenda in that state. Annie Laurie: We’re so pleased that a year after the Dobbs decision closed the doors of every abortion clinic here in Wisconsin, reason has prevailed. There was a lower-court ruling invalidating our 1849 ban, and just a couple of weeks ago, two Planned Parenthood clinics resumed offering abortion care here. [applause] Dan: And the FFRF grants more than $100,000 a year to scholarships to freethinking essayists and tuition relief. Here’s the top winners of the 2023 for college-bound high school students. We awarded scholarships to 12. Annie Laurie: To offer special — FFRF has a contest for BIPOC students and the other contests are eligible to all — are open to all eligible students and this year FFRF awarded more than $17,000 to 11 top winners and 11 honorable mentions. Dan: And FFRF has bestowed a total of $17,000 to ten top winners and 7 honorable mentions in the ongoing college student essay contests. Annie Laurie: And we’ve given out more than $18,000. Dan: And $9,000 to winners of the 2023 law student essay contests judged by our staff attorneys. [applause] Annie Laurie: Three of our undergrad essay winners will be reading their essays later today. Dan: FFRF works with Black Skeptics of Los Angeles. Annie Laurie: And FFRF through our forward freethought tuition program awarded a total of $30,000 this year to first in their family college students, also working with Black Skeptics Los Angeles, the scholarships went to 7 students, most receiving $5,000 and this has been funded almost exclusively by FFRF member Lance Bredvold who’s here at this convention. If you’re here, can you please stand up? [applause] Dan: Maybe he’s shy. Annie Laurie: Lance has contributed the bulk of $175,000+, so far given out to freethinking students. Thank you, Lance. Dan: And FFRF awards student activists — an octogenarian funds the Strong Backbone Award split between two young children who found themselves being proselytized by their school bus driver and they spoke out. Annie Laurie: The $2,000 activist award endowed by an Oregon couple went to Eli Frost who helped his high school from graduating in a conservative evangelical megachurch and tomorrow morning you’ll meet two more student activists. Dan: And here’s the legal team, some of them overseen by our legal director, Rebecca Markert, who by the way just celebrated 15 years with us. And they will be giving an impressive report later today. But our other attorneys are also here so look for them. By the way, one of our attorneys is Chris Line who is a very talented photographer and is one of our two convention photographers here today. [applause] you will hear later today how FFRF finally has bested Texas governor Greg Abbott after he censored our bill of rights nativity display, celebrating December 15th, 1791, when the bill of rights was born. Annie Laurie: And by the way, we’re looking for members who live near state capital cities to help us place these around the country, so see me later. Dan: Speaking of Texas, we were ready and we are ready to sue, if the Texas legislature passes a bill to post the 10 Commandments to be posted in every classroom. This cartoon says, thou shalt not place these on public property. And we have sued, with a coalition, over the truly egregious decision in Oklahoma to give public funds to a Catholic virtual school. Annie Laurie: And we just filed a federal lawsuit in New Jersey to end a religious test to run for office, if you can believe it, and this is our plaintiff, James Fosoni. You’ll be hearing about the fallout about Coach Kennedy from Bremerton Washington, when he returned for one game, it made the NBC nightly news, but so did the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
>> What an awesome way to come back after an 8-year battle. This is what it’s all about. >> Joe Kennedy back to being an assistant coach after being fired in 2015 for refusing to decline to pray with players on the field. >> We kept the faith the whole entire time, and it was absolutely 100% worth it. >> While there are supporters in the stands for Coach Kennedy, there were those protesting his return. Less than a mile from the stadium, the FFRF put up this billboard, wishing students a safe and secular school year. Dan: And the legal team will tell you more about our complaint about Baptisms of athletes at Auburn University in Alabama, and why Governor Ivey and Senator Ted Cruz are mad at us. When you mix religion and sports, you really get a combustible mixture, don’t you? Our office received many angry crank calls about that complaint. Annie Laurie: And our receptionist grabbed some of our messages from our phone system and our IT director created some AI-generated avatars to embody these callers, and the videos you’re about to see are all fake, but these are their actual messages and voices — and children, you might want to cover your ears.
Yes, I saw your Auburn University, suck my cock, you fucking pieces of shit! Fuck you! >> It’s a shame that I’m not — because I’d like to come and find you. >> You people are an absolute joke, you’re all going to hell! To slam what happened at the Alabama University is effing ridiculous, you need to get your act together and stop sending transsexuals and transdressers into schools. You’d rather have that than religion. You all make me sick. >> You sonsabitches. You sent a warning letter to Auburn University about baptisms. You rot in hell, motherfuckers, you gonna hide behind the Constitution, you stupid motherfuckers, just like all the queers and fags, the Proud Boys are fed up with your shit and we’re gonna come after you, motherfucker. >> Hey, good morning, you know, the Constitution says that Congress will make no laws with respect to the establishment of religion, nor interfere with the free exercise thereof. (Bird chirps) that second part pretty much makes you unconstitutional, doesn’t it? Huuuuuuh huh, pretty simple, isn’t it? You’re basically engaging in an unconstitutional activity when you try to silence the free exercise thereof. Wow! What a concept, huh? Have a great day. Fascists! (bird chirps) >> Unfortunately, some people on the Supreme Court agree with him. >> And those were fake images, but the voices were real. And thank you Scott for doing that for us. Annie Laurie: Now, this next part is also going to look fake but it’s true, and there’s a tweet or an X, whatever you want to call it. We wrote a letter to Brandon Pritchard which says he should resign when he said that every conservative state should put into — Jesus Christ is king and: Dan: And this is what Representative Pritchard tweeted. I will not listen to a godless out-of-state interest group like FFRF. I’ll say it again, Christ is king and Lord, let’s dedicate our government to him, his moral teachings and his mercy. Annie Laurie: And you’ll be hearing a lot more about Christian nationalism at this conference. Dan: FFRF staff have been on the road a lot speaking at events, including chapter events. During the legal report you’ll hear about the events that our legal staff did. But the longest journey I’ve ever taken for FFRF was to India at the beginning of the year, accompanied by Director of Communications. The two-week trip involved ten events in five different states. There’s Mumbai, and there’s New Delhi, and there’s the atheist center in Vijiawati, and here’s the first project in British Columbia, and here’s — Annie Laurie: And by the way, Dan, aren’t you doing a debate in Oxford? Dan: Next month I’ll be doing a debate in Oxford, England: Is God an Illusion? Here’s Stockholm, with the humanists of Sweden, here’s in Helsinki, Finland, for a rationalist international conference. In Los Angeles for the Atheist Street Pirates Day. That’s Atheists United. And here I am in Washington, D.C. and Annie Laurie and I spoke at BAHACON in Canada. Annie Laurie: And then to turn to some other topics, the FFRF has given $27,000 stipends to help atheists who find themselves in danger. Dan: And later today you’ll hear more about the “We Dissent” podcast. Annie Laurie: FFRF’s Freethought Radio has been continuously airing once a week since the spring of 2006, and this spring we broadcast our 911th show and it airs on various stations across the country. The podcast has had 1.5 million downloads. We also have the weekly Ask an Atheist show on Facebook Live, and Bruce — he’s the video director — can you play this quick look at all the programming, utilizing our talented staff?
freedom … freedom from religion … Freedom … Freedom from religion … freedom … Freedom from religion … Free … Freedom from religion. Freedom … Freedom from religion. … Dan: Most Wednesdays at 12 noon, Central. Annie Laurie: Repeated at 7 p.m., and then it goes on our YouTube channel. Dan: And here we’re going to look at some of the many guests and shows featured this year on FFRF’s TV special interest showed called Freethought Matters, which airs in 13 cities on Sundays, the non-sermon, we call it. And it can be found on FFRF’s YouTube channel.
Annie Laurie: All of our video production is directed by Bruce Johnson. He’s at the stage over there. Amazingly, Bruce has put together more than 500 shows for FFRF. [applause] >> And Bruce is ably assisted here today in audio by the crew at Audio for the Arts, which is owned by Buzz Kemper who we met earlier. The FFRF will soon be announcing a pioneering professorship in secular studies at a home state university. Only the third such secular studies professorship in the nation it. The Brian F. Fulton and Ann Gaylor — of $500,000 is being set up at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. [applause] Dan: And we can’t end, of course, without seeing the iconic ad that Ron Reagan recorded for us in 2014, which was refreshed in 2021. It’s playing this month on MNSBC on the Rachel Maddow show and All In with Chris Hayes. It will return to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in November, and maybe on 60 Minutes in January. This ad, you can imagine, has been the biggest single source for new members, so take it away, Bruce and Ron. >> Hi, I’m Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist. When I first recorded that commercial, being openly atheist in America was still fairly uncommon. Today, the fastest-growing religious group in the country is the nonreligious, especially among the young. That progress is heartening, but the push-back is fierce and the forces of Christian nationalism are well organized. Unless we work together so that reason and our secular Constitution will prevail is why I’m asking you to join the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Please, join the Freedom From Religion Foundation today. Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell! [applause] Annie Laurie: Finally, we want to thank you for your membership, not only for spending the time and money to make this conference such a success, but for making possible all of our achievements as a membership group working in your name so that reason and our secular Constitution will prevail. As FFRF’s motto puts it: Freedom depends on you. So thank you. [applause] >> And now, I want to introduce one of our board members, Sue Kosher, recently retired and Susan is going to introduce our first awardee. [applause] >> Sue: How about that? How about this? I don’t usually get accused of not being loud enough. OK, FFRF usually reserves our Nothing Fails Like Prayer Award for a person who manages to give equal time, secular invocation in front of their government body, to balance out the usual prayers. And there will be such an awardee at our non-prayer breakfast on Saturday, but we have a special non-prayer — Nothing Fails Like Prayer — Award for our first speaker, Emily Olson. She’s a business owner and a city council member in Owosso, Michigan, my home state. Her refusal to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and her brave motion to discontinue the opening prayers at council meetings unfortunately failed by a vote of 5-2. And, she got a serious death threat for her attempt at reason. FFRF commends Emily for her commitment to secular government, to keeping divisive religion out of government meetings and for her strong backbone, if only she had a lot more Emily Olsons on city councils and boards across our nation. Yes! Please come up, Emily, to accept this award. [applause] >> Emily Olson: OK, I’m a little nervous, not gonna lie. I’m not a public speaker, but I wrote it down, so I can read. Fingers crossed. Good morning. There we go, fail already. Good morning and thank you for inviting me here today to receive this award, I’m going to take you guys on a little journey. So my story begins, like so many more, with optimism and adventure at the forefront. My family and I were living in Arizona during Covid, when we stumbled on a listing for an amazing old home in Michigan, big enough for all of our kids — we have many — and interesting architecturally, so the surrounding city and community, we discovered that this home was in an idyllic neighborhood and a charming little Norman Rockwell town, sold. We packed up all of our stuff, closed our businesses, we moved our four kids, two dogs, one cat, and a very persistent betta fish named Bubbles that would not die, and we struck out on this adventure. As we settled into this small-town living, we reestablished our businesses and began the agonizing task of trying to find our people. We quickly became aware that Michigan was far more conservative than we were accustomed to, however, we would also come to find out that politics was not the only dividing factor that we would struggle with. Because religious zealotry was about to join the stage. So a little pro-tip. This is in the Midwest, so this is probably a little — whatever. A little pro tip, but sexism, chauvinism and an always-ever present dose of patriarchy are pretty much always in action. I have always considered myself a feminist, so when Roe vs. Wade was overturned, it was time to build a tribe. So an organization was born. We named ourselves The Fair Maidens. You should all join. And I got the attention of a bully blogger in town. My shop is aptly named A Woman’s Workshop in big block letters across the front of the building and a four-foot-tall W. So there’s no equivocating our purpose. So the plan was simple and it had nothing to do with religion yet. One of the women that I met during the summit explained that she was the only liberal representative on our city council of 7, and when I asked her how I could support her and her efforts, she replied that I could put myself on the ballot and run for a seat beside her. What made me say, “sure, consider it done” that evening, I’ll never know. This is when the story takes its most dramatic plot twist. I collected the necessary signatures and I got myself on a ballot and then I went to my first city council meeting as a resident. So this poor sequencing choice would set up a chain reaction which brought me here today. Exactly. I failed that part. As I sat in the audience, I waved at my friend and the gavel was knocked and then the craziest thing happened, the mayor stood up and instructed everyone else to, to rise and pray to open the meeting. I sat there dumbfounded, expecting to see other council members shocked, or at a minimum surprised — but nope, I saw 100% compliance. The entire room had risen to their feet and closed their eyes and amen’d to a prayer thanking the Lord and our savior. I can tell you today that I was nothing short of baffled in that room. So no sooner did they conclude the prayer than they instructed everyone to return and recite the pledge of allegiance. Again, I remain seated. I don’t recite the pledge. I take offense that the pledge was tinkered with and became a religious buy-in instead of just an oath to your country and actually, it doesn’t actually — we don’t actually advocate for justice for all, so it’s kind of a lie, so I stayed sitting down. But in that room, at that moment, in Owosso, Michigan, I would quickly find out that some of those closed eyes were actually peeking and taking notice of what I was doing. I left that city council meeting with a deep desire to lose the election. Not only was everything that I valued about separation of church and state, avoiding bias and preventing preferential treatment in government. So at the same time I was regretting my too-easily-gotten signatures. The blogger man I mentioned earlier pushed the community to vote for anyone other than this non-praying, non-pledging, unAmerican that so clearly didn’t represent his community. I’ll just forward. Fast forward of two months of this online nonsense, and guess who won a seat on city council. In a big way. That’s right, me! In our town, the mayor historically decides if there will be an opening prayer, and so I reached out to the council members and made a pitch to ditch the prayer, hoping that one of them would want to err on the side of creating a space in government free from religious bias. They did not. In fact, what ensued over that meeting was the exact opposite. Each of the members, except for the friend that roped me into this mess, told me that I should treat the situation as if I was visiting my friend’s home and if the friend asked me to take my shoes off, you take your shoes off, you show your respect. And another person said that by asking to remove the prayer, I would actually be excluding Christians for their God-given right to pray opening council. Over the course of the next three meetings, we were standing room only, and we were packed with people from in our town and outside of our town, with one common theme. They lined up at the podium for citizen comments to talk about me. They talked about the fact that I didn’t stand during the pledge and that that was disrespectful to veterans. They wanted to repeal my appointment. There are people that are actively collecting signatures to this day, at nail salons and wherever, hoping to get me repealed. By the way, we make $10 per meeting at the city council meeting, so they’re willing to go so far to spend $5,000 or $10,000 to repeal my $10 paycheck. So they wanted to lecture me about my patriotism, compel me to stand for the pledge, whether I wanted to move my body or not, they were perfectly comfortable with me faking it, they told me. Yeah, just stand up, don’t say the words. I found a letter from that local blogger sitting on my desk, I didn’t read it then, because after seeing the first two lines, it said something like God will forgive you, and I said, that’s for another time. So I put it away, and later a dinner with friends I called it and so in good fodder, I pulled it out to read aloud, because I’m a jerk. What comes next is actually still upsetting to me to this day. The man, who claimed to have visions from God, wrote that in spite of his hatred for me, he was now ordained to warn me that I was going to be murdered in the back of my shop. A man which he described in great detail, which matched his own description, in a car, matching the description of his car, was going to shoot me dead on a winter night when I smilingly left my shop. So everyone in town, from the police chief to the city manager, finds the behavior of this particular man to be especially alarming. It goes from jarring to terrifying pretty quick. I tried to get a restraining order, but I was denied, because in our county, you need to be threatened twice for it to count. Yes. And because the meetings are public, I — we can’t exclude him from these meetings, and so every two weeks, when I go in there to do my job for the city, I get to interact with this man every single time and he’s at the podium every single time. And so — let’s see, I’m so sorry. The biggest gift, though, that I gave myself was permission to share his shameful threat with the public. His death threats, intimidations, ran in every paper. [applause] I decided that this man’s zealotry and religious fantasy would do far more harm if kept secret and that any attempt he’s made to coerce me he would do again and again. So no doubt what I’ve spoken of today will sound familiar to many of you here. Thousands of people across the country are actively dealing with or accommodating the active religiosity that is happening in our public meetings. I think it’s so important that each and every one of us continue to take these tiny stands and pressure those who — this is a country in which we are free to practice religion, but not obligated to do so, and I feel that it is time for our government meetings to reflect that. That’s it. [applause] Thank you. Oh, yay, thank you, you’re so sweet. Wow, thank you. You guys are so nice. Thanks. OK. Should I just — OK. Thank you. [applause]
