 At one o’clock, on Sunday afternoon, November 1st, we Greater Boston Humanists will host a seminar at Phillips Brooks House, Harvard Yard, inaugurating an expansion of free-thought unity. We are about to witness a bold experiment which will light forward a cooperative spirit among all reasonable and fair-minded human beings The United Coalition of Reason is a national organization created to raise the visibility of and cooperation between local groups in the larger community of reason. Our longtime friend and leader of the seminar, Fred Edwords, former editor of the AHA’s magazine, The Humanist, now heads up this well-funded, well-designed umbrella organization. In cities across the nation, a number of atheist, free-thought, Humanist, skeptic, secular Jewish, Ethical Culture, and other non-theist groups exist in one city. These groups, no matter if they are large or small, all have unique ways of organizing -- some meet in libraries or community centers, others are congregationally focused, and some use meetup.com. However, no matter what they call themselves or how they meet, the problem is that the groups either don’t know about each other or don’t communicate. But we've seen time and time again, across the US, that cooperation between secular groups brings greater success for all-- the whole is greater than the sum of all our parts.
To remedy this situation, United CoR offers the following:
- The initial work to establish a local Coalition of Reason to serve as an informal forum for group leaders and a clearinghouse for public information on local groups.
- Free Web hosting and a design template for the local CoR website. For example, see PhillyCOR's site: http://phillycor.org/
- Free public relations and media training of local group leaders so they may improve the public profile and outreach of their groups.
- Funding for a local publicity campaign aimed at bringing traffic to the CoR website, where the local groups will be listed. The publicity campaign in Boston will feature a high-visibility T ad campai
In Boston, United CoR will launch these advertisements to coincide with an appearance by Harvard Humanist Chaplain, Greg Epstein, on his book tour, along with leaders of the United CoR. The advertisements will tie in with Greg's book "Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe" (which will be released on October 27th). His book tour will bring him to Boston Nov 1-2. Here is where we local Boston Humanists come in. To have a local connection, the advertisements will highlight the website of the Boston CoR. United CoR thinks this will give the groups in Boston an amazing publicity boost.
The most important point -- perhaps your biggest concern: United CoR is a new national organization, but its focus is local. As such, it doesn’t compete with other national organizations. And its local work is geared toward fostering the success of existing groups, not changing their nature or adding a new group. A central goal is to help unaffiliated non-theists in a given geographic area learn about local activities and, ideally, get involved.
Across the country, United CoR is arranging visits by Fred Edwords, communications director, of United CoR. Fred's visit will include a joint lunch or dinner with one leader from each group in the Boston area.
Fred will provide a two-to-four-hour seminar for those interested in learning how to do publicity. For all of this, there is never any obligation, financial or otherwise, to United CoR from any local CoR or the groups within it! Once the media training has been provided and the advertising campaign has been launched, the rest is totally up to the groups involved as to what direction the CoR will take next. With our full support, Fred Edwords, along with Jende Andrew Huang, National Coordinator United Coalition of Reason look forward to changing the future of non-theism in greater Boston. www.unitedcor.org // 866.897.7248
This is truly big! We will keep you abreast of developments through the weeks ahead.
|
