Category: News

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A ‘Magical Night’ with Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem on Zoom 12-21-2024

The evening of December 21, 2024 was a mag­i­cal night and I don’t even believe in mag­ic. My group the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie held our first Winter Solstice event at the Yeager Center at Swan Creek Metropark. When plan­ning the event I did want to have some­thing spe­cial like a spe­cial speak­er but our group is still pret­ty small. Our co-founder Shawn sug­gest­ed invit­ing Gloria Steinem to speak over Zoom. Gloria is a fem­i­nist icon, 2012 Humanist of the Year, and grew-up in Toledo. I did­n’t believe it would hap­pen. This is Gloria Steinem, one of the most famous activists in the world and we are a low­ly Humanist group in the Black Swamp of Northwest Ohio. But we tracked down her speak­ing con­tact and I sent an email.

The day I got the response was emo­tion­al — her peo­ple said she was con­sid­er­ing our request. Holy S*it!!!! It might hap­pen. I was so excit­ed and then got more excit­ed when we agreed on a speak­ing fee and signed the con­tract — It was going to hap­pen.

25 peo­ple joined us on December 21. Several of them had donat­ed to Gloria’s speak­ing fee and many more joined us to hear from Gloria. The food spread was so gen­er­ous that we had to break out anoth­er table to hold it all. There were some adult bev­er­ages drank and cof­fee made and we were all hav­ing a good time.

As it came time for Gloria’s vis­it my 10 year old lap top decid­ed to be dif­fi­cult and it was­n’t going to boot up and be ready to go in time. Oh did I tell you the Yeager Center does­n’t have WI-FI?? I was prepar­ing for a huge melt down because of tech issues. Shawn saved the day because in try­ing to play a music playlist from their phone to the TV we dis­cov­ered they could screen­cast to the TV. When I could­n’t get my lap­top ful­ly boot­ed up I used my phone to start the Zoom ses­sion and Shawn joined the meet­ing and host­ed as orig­i­nal­ly planned. Then once we fig­ured out to make it full screen the tech issue was gone and we enjoyed our short time talk­ing to Gloria *Freaking* Steinem as she sat at her desk in her brown­stone in New York City.

We had some ques­tions pre­pared and took a few from the audi­ence. One per­son asked if there were any younger polit­i­cal women she admired and she men­tioned Amy Richards but what she did next blew my mind. She asked us who the up and com­ing polit­i­cal women in Toledo were and we called out some like Dr. Michelle Grim, Erika White, and Katie Moline and Gloria WROTE their names down. I hope she reach­es out to them in some fash­ion. I wish we had some more names ready. Gloria still cares about her home­town even though she left before she grad­u­at­ed from high school.

As we closed she wished us well and hoped to stay in touch and Shawn told her if she was ever in the Toledo area to let us know and we would set­up and event or some­thing for her.

Shortly after the call, the potluck for­mal­ly end­ed as we held the draw­ing for a large gift bas­ket donat­ed for the occa­sion. It was won by our mem­ber Colette C.

And I was able to make in home in time to catch the Ohio State foot­ball game against Tennessee which turned out great as the Buckeyes won.

Like I said it was a mag­i­cal night and we are already talk­ing about hav­ing a Summer Solstice event in the com­ing year.

Thanks to all our mem­bers and friends who attend­ed and donat­ed toward this potluck and made it a great suc­cess and I want­ed to thank again the mem­bers of the Potluck com­mit­tee for this six month odyssey — Shawn and Anne E. and our set­up and clean up helpers Bev and her friend Anne B.

If you attend­ed please feel free to send us feed back by email or use our con­tact form — let us know what you liked or did­n’t like the event.

This post was writ­ten by SHoWLE President Douglas Berger

Here is a mon­tage of the night:

Although due to the con­tract we signed, we were not able to record or livestream the vis­it, Zoom did pro­vide a sum­ma­ry cre­at­ed by AI. After some light edit­ing here is the sum­ma­ry:

gloriavisitsummary12212024Download
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Our President will host a webinar on speaking out publicly

Our President, Douglas Berger, will be host­ing a work­shop about speak­ing up for Humanism in pub­lic — from print to invo­ca­tions. There will be three con­nect­ed ses­sions start­ing on January 16, 2025 via Zoom.

The work­shop is being put on by the American Humanists Association’s Center for Education

Seats are lim­it­ed. To reg­is­ter and for more infor­ma­tion vis­it

https://bit.ly/SpeakUpHumanists

This is not an offi­cial SHoWLE pro­gram.

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Help Us Sponsor A Family This Year

One of our com­mu­ni­ty out­reach­es we’ve done, real­ly since SHoWLE was found­ed, is spon­sor­ing a fam­i­ly through the Lucas County Children’s Services. They match us with a fam­i­ly and we donate gifts to help make their hol­i­day sea­son a mer­ry one. Now through December 8th we are col­lect­ing gifts. Check out the details below.

Thank you to all the donors for anoth­er excel­lent gift dri­ve. Here is the result of our work:

We intend to par­tic­i­pate in 2025.

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Help Us Fund Our Kid’s Movie Event

Donate to our Kid's Movie fund image

Our cur­rent ser­vice project is to host a free movie and piz­za for kids at the West Toledo Branch Library each month. We have had good turn out each time, aver­ag­ing about 20 kids and some care­givers. We would like to con­tin­ue this project into 2025. If you can help fund the project please do.

Here is mes­sage from our President Douglas Berger:

The first place I lived when I moved to Toledo 8 years ago was on Lewis Avenue in the Five Points neigh­bor­hood. The near­est library branch was West Toledo in Library Village. This is a clas­sic Tudor style build­ing and is busy much of the time.

Our co-founder Shawn grew up in the Library Village area and want­ed to do a ser­vice project that was focused on the kids in the area. This area is mod­er­ate to low income area and with that peo­ple have mon­ey at the begin­ning of the month and by the end of the month not so much. Shawn hatched the idea of show­ing a movie and offer­ing free piz­za and oth­er snacks for the kids at the end of the month.

We show movies from the Disney library and pro­vide Marco’s Pizza and oth­er snacks like baby car­rots and bananas. We don’t talk about Humanism or our group since that is what church­es tend to do when hav­ing free kid activ­i­ties — pros­e­ly­tize. We just want the kids to come to the base­ment audi­to­ri­um, sit back, and have fun for a cou­ple of hours.

Shawn and sev­er­al of us have fund­ed the project through September but now we need your help. It can cost up to $100 for each event and we would like to con­tin­ue the project for a year. We would need at least $300 to fin­ish 2024 and $1200 to cov­er the whole of 2025. We will be look­ing for addi­tion­al sources of fund­ing but we hope you can help now.

To Donate, use the link below:

https://humanistswle.org/donations/kidsmovie

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Time to Renew Your Membership

Three people jumping in the air with Renew above them

It is that time of year for mem­ber­ship renewals. All mem­ber­ships pur­chased a year ago expire on 09/30/2024. We hope that those who mem­ber­ships need to be renewed will do so.

You can start the process on our Members page on the web­site. Login and on the Account overview page click on the renew box. Not sure how to login to our web­site? We made a handy dandy tuto­r­i­al linked below:

You can renew or upgrade your mem­ber­ship from the Account Overview page. We also ask that if you can, check the Auto Renew box so it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly renew your mem­ber­ship next year giv­ing you the peace of mind that it will be renewed with­out miss­ing a beat.

Here is a list of mem­bers who need to renew. If you feel you should­n’t be on the list, login and check your sta­tus and if you are still con­cerned reach out to President Doug and he will ver­i­fy your expi­ra­tion date.

  • Michaelene G. RENEWED
  • David L.
  • Tim R. RENEWED
  • Bruce G. RENEWED
  • Brian T.
  • Michael K.
  • jules r.
  • Rob W.
  • Debbie P. RENEWED
  • Peggy C. RENEWED
  • Margarette W.
  • Mallori T. RENEWED
  • Derrick S.
  • Jerry P RENEWED
  • Derek W. RENEWED
  • Louis F
  • David S. RENEWED
  • Robyn P.
  • TK B. RENEWED

You can also update your con­tact infor­ma­tion and pref­er­ences on the Edit your pro­file page.

Any ques­tions feel free to reach out.

Photo by Zachary Nelson on Unsplash
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Now Available: Toledo Humanists You Should Know

Logo for the Toledo Humanists Page

When we do pre­sen­ta­tions to oth­er groups about SHoWLE, we talk about three well known Toledo natives who are or were human­ists. Until today we did­n’t pro­mote them on our web­site. That over­sight is fixed.

Starting today you can find short bios about the three human­ists from the Toledo area we talk about: Gloria Steinem, Edward Lamb, and Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Each page gives a short biog­ra­phy, their con­nec­tion to Humanism and we tried to add a quote that fits the Humanist phi­los­o­phy.

We hope this is just a start of a big­ger project so if you know of Toledo human­ists who should be added, let us know through our con­tact form.

Click on the image to go to the page:

Logo for the Toledo Humanists Page
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Winter Solstice Potluck with Gloria Steinem

One of the big events I’ve want­ed to have for the mem­bers and friends of SHoWLE was a win­ter sol­stice gath­er­ing. Many Humanist groups around the coun­try have one and my for­mer group in Columbus had a catered ban­quet each year in December. I would like to announce we will be hav­ing a Winter Solstice Potluck on Saturday December 21, 2024.

I ini­tial­ly had plans for a Winter Solstice Potluck to hap­pen in 2020 and we know why we did­n’t have one. Then after the pan­dem­ic sub­sided SHoWLE did strug­gle to get its feet back under it. I am con­fi­dent that in 2024 we are at least at the place we were at the start of 2020.

The catered ban­quet was used as a fundrais­er for my Columbus group but through the years the costs of the ban­quet wiped out any “prof­it” from sell­ing tick­ets to the event and peo­ple had a cer­tain expec­ta­tion when the event is catered. You buy a tick­et to a din­ner and you expect table ser­vice and bev­er­ages etc….

I like a potluck set­up bet­ter espe­cial­ly for a Humanist group who gath­er as a com­mu­ni­ty to observe the sol­stice.

We also don’t have to sell you tick­ets to attend and that way we can have some­thing else to fundraise off of like door prizes or a raf­fle. And I can assure you there will be plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties.

A potluck also keeps the event open and inclu­sive to the com­mu­ni­ty at large. That way you don’t need to spend $30 a plate for din­ner. It also helps us “cater” to peo­ple with spe­cial diets either they have a med­ical issue or they choose to be veg­an for exam­ple, a potluck is a bet­ter way to have food for every type of diet.

The Winter Solstice Potluck is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for December 21 at the Yager Center at Swan Creek Metropark. In the fall we will have more details and dish sign-up list to try to avoid too much dupli­ca­tion. Other details will fol­low soon after.

I am excit­ed to have this event even I was sweat in the heat and humid­i­ty of June.

Mark this on your cal­en­dar. You can keep up on details as we add them on the event page on our web­site

*UPDATE*

Humanist and fem­i­nist Gloria Steinem will be our keynote speak­er. She will appear via Zoom to say a few words. SHoWLE is thrilled she agreed to speak

https://humanistswle.org/event/winter-solstice-potluck-2024

Thanks to our donors we have raised Gloria’s speak­ing fee

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Find SHoWLE on Discord

Starting today you can find a SHoWLE com­mu­ni­ty serv­er on the Discord plat­form. Participation is free and open to any­one who wants to par­tic­i­pate but it does require an invi­ta­tion.

You need to cre­ate an account on Discord. You will need to install the Discord app or use the brows­er ver­sion to access the group.

The good news the invites are free. A lim­it­ed time one is with this post. If it is expired feel free to reach out to us and ask for an invite. If you are a mem­ber of SHoWLE you get a spe­cial invite and get a spe­cial role on the serv­er.

This is just anoth­er social media plat­form to have some dis­cus­sions and fun out­side for­mal meet­ings. It is mod­er­at­ed and there are some rules for the group.

https://discord.gg/PTJTP8b6 (this link will expire after April 4, 2024. Just reach out to us for anoth­er if it is expired or check the social media links menu.

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Judge Rules Against Catholic Families in Sylvania Bus Dispute

Images of Sylvania school bus

On Tuesday 3/19, Lucas coun­ty Judge Stacy Cook ruled that the Sylvania City School District bus trans­porta­tion plan for stu­dents of non-public schools does­n’t vio­late Ohio law or con­sti­tu­tion.

Back in 2022, a cou­ple of fam­i­lies that send their chil­dren to a catholic school in Sylvania, filed a law­suit because their chil­dren had to be picked up hours before their school start­ed, trans­port­ed with old­er stu­dents, then dropped off at a high school to trans­fer to anoth­er bus, to arrive at their catholic school. The par­ents thought it was unlaw­ful and vio­lat­ed the equal pro­tec­tion and reli­gious free­dom claus­es of the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion.

From the rul­ing:

“The evi­dence sub­mit­ted by plain­tiffs con­sist of sev­er­al affi­davits by the par­ties and a non­par­ty spouse. These affi­davits recite that they choose Catholic edu­ca­tion because of their per­son­al Catholic faith. The affi­davits also recite the var­i­ous incon­ve­niences the Plaintiffs and their chil­dren face because of the District’s trans­porta­tion scheme. However, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have offered no evi­dence of any coer­cive effects on their reli­gious prac­tice: there is no evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled Plaintiffs to do any­thing for­bid­den by their reli­gion or that it has caused them to refrain from doing some­thing required by their reli­gion. Plaintiffs have also not offered any evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled them to affirm or dis­avow a belief for­bid­den or required by their reli­gion. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to demon­strate any coer­cive effect upon their reli­gious prac­tice. The Plaintiffs have there­fore failed to show that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution.

The Court finds against Plaintiffs as to their claim that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution. Again, the pre­sump­tion that a leg­isla­tive act is con­sti­tu­tion­al applies to the Board’s trans­porta­tion plan. With this pre­sump­tion the Court finds in favor of Defendants as to Plaintiffs’ free exer­cise claim.”

JENNIFER A SWIECH, et. al., v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE SYLVANIA CITY SCHOOL DIST., et. al.,

Both par­ties had asked for a sum­ma­ry judge­ment since the facts in the case weren’t in dis­pute. In the orig­i­nal law­suit the fam­i­lies asked the court for an injunc­tion to order the school dis­trict to “fix” the trans­porta­tion plan. Judge Cook said the court could­n’t do that, it could only rule if the dis­tric­t’s act was law­ful and not uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The orig­i­nal law­suit was dis­missed by the par­ents on August 30, 2022. Parents refiled on September 16, 2022 and asked for class action sta­tus and removed all ref­er­ences to the 1st amend­ment to keep it out of Federal court. The class action was nev­er cer­ti­fied.

A lawyer for the fam­i­lies, who was one of the plain­tiffs when the law­suit had been filed in August 2022 but dropped out in September of 2022, stat­ed they were prob­a­bly going to appeal the rul­ing.

Additional infor­ma­tion on this sto­ry is in the Toledo Blade behind a pay­wall. Images of the arti­cle is below.