Atheist

Tom Smith, known as the World's Fastest Filker, has been making and sharing music at science fiction and fantasy conventions since 1985. He's written in many musical genres, including folk, rock, jazz, gospel, and showtunes; and can write incredibly funny political commentary just as easily as heart-felt eulogy. Today Tom shares with us a few of the songs that mean the most to him.

Ryan Summers started making music with a garage band in Chippewa Falls, WI, moved into DJ-ing and producing rave-style music under the name Plastic Portal.

Extinction Rebellion has a take on addressing the climate crisis that is refreshing, since their plan is to step pass the log-jam of the political process in the US, and taking the power right back to the people. And instead of talking about things like carbon neutrality by 2050 or the like, their plan is to do it by 2025.

After 20 years in the Navy, Leah Bolger retired into full-time work as a peace activist. Leah is active almost everywhere, is the first female president of the national Veterans for Peace, works on the World Beyond War project, acts as Secretary of Defense for the Green Shadow Cabinet, coordinates the Drones Quilt Project, and chairs the VFP Drones Working Group.

Dan Nerhaugen's Daily Progressive is a great source of inspiration & knowledge, highlighting change-makers and events which have tilted the world in a progressive direction, and promise more in the future. Succinct, rich, and diverse, there are tidbits, with links to those interested in going deeper, for some really transformative people and events.

Reese Erlich is an award winning journalist and author, and a frequent visitor to the Middle East over the past 10+ years. We start with a talk he gave at FNVW about Libya & Syria and the Arab Spring, and continue on to an visit with Reese addressing his goals in seeking out truth, starting from his organizing against Vietnam.

When building relationship with Earth, the best advice may be "don't just do something, sit there!", and 3 participants of a weeklong workshop did something like that, sharing their process, experience, and fruits in this program. eric maya joy, Mary Jo Klingel, and Mary Conrow Coelho speak of roots & fruits of a Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) experiment.

Jennifer Kavanagh is an author, organizer, and spiritual activist. She's worked on and written about diverse topics including micro-credit finance, simplicity, and her recent book, The World is our Cloister: A Guide to the Modern Religious Life. Based in England, her work on the struggling East Side of London and in developing nations around the globe, has tied her spiritual center in transformation of the world.

Sandy Bishop & Rhea Miller were the 2012 Lopez Spirit Award winners for many of their works, including very notably their work with the Lopez Community Land Trust which nurtures the island in myriad ways, like producing net-zero-energy housing developments and the Seed Library. Rhea hosts a home church, drawing on, and continuing beyond, her training in Episcopal seminary.

Marjorie Heins is the author of Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge, examining the roots of free speech by teachers as a special concern of the US constitution, and the lessons we can learn from the way these rights were compromised badly during the McCarthy Era. Through decades of work as a civil rights lawyer, Marjorie carries a passion and deep insight into the ways our rights are, or are not, protected by our government.