So, here I am blogging from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., one post every half hour, to benefit the Secular Student Alliance. It’s a sorry few hours, compared to some of my co-bloggers here at FtB, who blogged for 24 hours straight, but it’s all I can manage today.
But the one main point of all this, which hopefully doesn’t take 24 hours to sink in, is: You should donate to SSA. It’s a darned worthwhile organization, aimed at getting more secular clubs on school campuses, so the message of “you don’t have to be religious; there’s this other choice” can penetrate the churchy wall of sound that has commanded our ears for all these thousands of years, and still blasts into schools through every crack in the wall of church-state separation.
The mission of the Secular Student Alliance is to organize, unite, educate, and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human-based ethics. We envision a future in which nontheistic students are respected voices in public discourse and vital partners in the secular movement’s charge against irrationality and dogma.
The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit. We work to organize and empower nonreligious students around the country. Our primary goal is to foster successful grassroots campus groups which provide a welcoming community for secular students to discuss their views and promote their secular values.
So you know one of the many reasons the SSA is important, here’s a story of how one young person — you know, one of those people who will grow up to help run things? — made a difference in the world.
9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians
For the past two months, one of my favorite reads has been Never Seconds, a blog started by 9-year-old Martha Payne of western Scotland to document the unappealing, non-nutritious lunches she was being served in her public primary school. Payne, whose mother is a doctor and father has a small farming property, started blogging in early May and went viral in days. She had a million viewers within a few weeks and 2 million this morning; was written up in Time, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and a number of food blogs; and got support from TV cheflebrity Jamie Oliver, whose series “Jamie’s School Dinners” kicked off school-food reform in England.
Well, goodbye to all that.
This afternoon, Martha (who goes by “Veg” on the blog) posted that she will have to shut down her blog, because she has been forbidden to take a camera into school.
Her local town council shut her down. But read what happened AFTER the tight-asses got involved …
———————————————–
This is post 1 of 12 of Blue Collar Atheist’s Blogathon in support of the Secular Student Alliance. Donate by clicking the “Contribute” link in the SSA ad over in the right column. Or go to the Secular Student Alliance directly.
Or just click this button (It’s the exact color of Pepto-Bismol, isn’t it? Makes me think it’s a way of saying “I’m sick of how powerful religion is in our society, and I want young people to be offered this other choice”) :
