Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie
Building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.
November 8 @ 10:00 am — 12:00 pm
Toledo Persists is another progressive group in Toledo that takes direct action to inform the public and protect our democracy. They co-hosted the recent No Kings Rally on October 18th. They will be talking about the group, what it does, and how you can help save democracy.
October 11 @ 10:00 am — 12:00 pm
We will be joined by Jake Via, the new organizer for the American Humanist Association. He will be talking about the new initiatives and other activities the AHA is doing to empower humanists across the country.
You can watch the meeting on our YouTube channel starting at 10 AM
The speaker will be joining us via Zoom and we will try to livestream it on our YouTube Channel. Questions and comments will be from those who attend in-person.
Also this is a change from our usual meeting place — we will be meeting at the Heatherdowns Branch Library Community Room B
Our Speaker
As the Organizing Director for the American Humanist Association, Jake Via is dedicated to building and mobilizing a strong grassroots network to advance humanist values across the country. With nearly two decades of experience in community engagement, program development, and leadership at the YMCA and Playworks, Jake has a deep understanding of how to bring people together around shared values.
A firm believer in the power of connection, Jake specializes in empowering individuals and local groups to take meaningful action, whether through community building, advocacy, or acts of service. He is currently leading efforts to expand and activate AHA’s membership base, ensuring humanists have a strong network and voice in their local communities and on the national level.
Jake holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Thomas Edison State University. He is passionate about the power of play, believing that shared play experiences foster empathy, strengthen communities, and break down barriers. Throughout his career, he has championed play as a tool for engagement, inclusion, and personal growth.
Jake lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife, Anabel, and their three dogs. When he’s not working to organize humanists, you can find him exploring new ideas, writing, or dreaming about sailing.
If you are a SHoWLE member and logged in on this website the Zoom link should be seen below:
We will be joined by Jake Via, the new organizer for the American Humanist Association. He will be talking about the new initiatives and other activities the AHA is doing to empower humanists across the country …
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For In-person, in-door meetings and events, feel free to wear a mask. Speakers can wear them if they choose while speaking. Click more information about our In-person Meeting Policy. SHoWLE has a No Weapons policy. Unless you notify us in advance, attendance at one of our meetings or events gives us permission to take photos of you to use to promote our group. We will ask to use your name if needed.
September 23 @ 7:00 pm — 8:30 pm
Join us for a Screening of The Last Class at Cinemark Franklin Park 16 and XD: The Last Class is a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich teaching his final course and reflecting on a period of immense transformation, personally and globally. It is a love letter to education. The former Secretary of Labor might be famous for his public service, best-selling books, and viral social media posts, but he always considered teaching his true calling. Now, after over 40 years and an extraordinary 40,000 students, Reich is preparing for his last class.
Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality, and his own aging, with increasing candor, introspection, and, ultimately, emotion. He displays a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class, “Wealth and Poverty,” to offer us all a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society.
One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, the last class to receive Reich’s wisdom and exhortations not to accept that the world has to stay the way it is. His belief in the next generation’s ability to take on the fight is inspiring.
Humanists support education based on the truth, facts, and data. We also support social justice issues that Robert Reich talks about and we are also concerned about income inequalities.
Even if you can’t attend, you can buy a ticket for someone who wants to attend but can’t afford it. Feel free to share this event with your friends, family, and social circle. Being a member of SHoWLE or a Humanist is not required. The film is open to all who buy a ticket.
To purchase tickets, visit our screening webpage
https://bit.ly/lastclass-toledo2025
We also plan to meetup after the movie at a nearby Applebee’s for a late evening drink or nosh. Feel free to stop by around 8:30 PM or so.
Applebee’s Grill + Bar
4702 Monroe St, Toledo, OH 43623
(near the corner of Monroe and Sylvania)
Join us for a Screening of The Last Class at Cinemark Franklin Park 16 and XD: The Last Class is a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich teaching his final course and reflecting on a period of immense transformation, personally and globally. It is a love letter to education. The former Secretary of Labor might be famous for his public service, best-selling books, and viral social media posts, but he always considered teaching his true calling. Now, after over 40 years and an extraordinary 40,000 students, Reich is preparing for his last class.
Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality, and his own aging, with increasing candor, introspection, and, ultimately, emotion. He displays a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class, “Wealth and Poverty,” to offer us all a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society.
One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, the last class to receive Reich’s wisdom and exhortations not to accept that the world has to stay the way it is. His belief in the next generation’s ability to take on the fight is inspiring.
Humanists support education based on the truth, facts, and data. We also support social justice issues that Robert Reich talks about and we are also concerned about income inequalities.
Even if you can’t attend, you can buy a ticket for someone who wants to attend but can’t afford it. Feel free to share this event with your friends, family, and social circle. Being a member of SHoWLE or a Humanist is not required. The film is open to all who buy a ticket.
For tickets, visit our screening webpage
https://bit.ly/lastclass-toledo2025
We met our minimum ticket sales on August 15th. Tickets are still available. We can have 100 people.
Petitions to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 1 have started to be distributed. SB 1 as it is known that was quickly passed at the start of the year, over the objection of many universities and protests by students, would censor university classes and is anti-union. It is also known as the higher education destruction act and many of the points in the law scratch conservative biases about colleges such as the power of unions, not teaching how great capitalism is, and hate towards diversity, equality, and inclusion.
For a break down of what is in SB 1 check out this explainer sheet from AAUP Ohio and Honesty for Ohio Education:
Substitute Ohio Senate Bill 1 — Bill Breakdown
Upcoming Signing events:
Our friends at Toledo Troublemakers is hosting a petition signing event on May 14th from 5:30 to 7 :30 PM at Earnest Brew Works Westgate 3134 W. Central , Toledo.
Findlay Forward Together will be holding a SB1 Repeal Petition Signing Drive-Thru Thursday May 15th from 5 to 7 PM at 111 3rd St in Findlay.
When we hear about other signing events we will share them on social media accounts.
The conservatives will be very picky about signatures so here are some basic rules:
“With the title and summary language approval, petitioners can now start gathering signatures. About 248,092 signatures are needed — 6% of the total vote cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. The signatures must be from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. The signatures would likely be due at the end of June. ”
For more information check out this website:
*Update 06/30/2025* - Even with a strong effort, the petition drive fell short by 50,000 signatures. The group behind the effort ran a truly grassroots drive and didn’t use paid petition signature collectors. SB 1 is a very unpopular law so hopefully those opposed to it will try again soon.
The International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference, which is put on by the University of Toledo, Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute, recently reached out to us to ask if we could sponsor this years conference that will be held virtually in September. This is a great opportunity for SHoWLE to have our name out publicly in support of an event that fits in with our values.
They have sponsorship levels with the lowest package being $500 which would have our name and logo in the program and website and would provide three one day tickets we could give out to donors.
Our goal is to raise $500 by June 30th for our sponsorship. If you donate and want to attend we will have the tickets available on a first come first serve basis. The largest sponsorship package is $5000 and each package comes with more free tickets but our goal for now is $500.
We will donate any funds we raise to help with the conference.
To donate for our sponsorship follow the link below:
Here is information about the conference from their website:
“Human trafficking is one of the most prevalent and active criminal enterprises affecting our local, national, and international community. Responses to combat trafficking include prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnership. The International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference is proud to be the host of the oldest and largest academic conference on human trafficking in the world. As the world’s leading academic conference on this topic, we serve as the hub through which practitioners, policy makers, researchers, criminal justice professionals, businesses, healthcare professionals, social workers, and more become educated and equipped to provide the best local and global responses possible. We remain committed to educating the community and we need your help!
The 22nd Annual International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference will be hosted virtually on September 17–19, 2025 and will highlight a variety of skilled presenters at the forefront of both human trafficking and social justice issues. This year’s conference will feature over 100 presentations and thousands of attendees tuning in from all corners of the world. Attendees will learn how to identify risk factors, improve responses for victims, and learn how we can collectively move forward with an agenda for change.”
SHoWLE recently created a new resource page that has links to tools and sources to help us support democracy.
These links include links to liked minded groups and news sources that actually cover the real news and not the corporate white-washed version we see most often.
The title of the new page is Supporting Democracy and can be found under our Resources menu on the website.
Also included is links to new videos created by President Doug Berger that helps the viewer setup and use the My Ohio Legislature and GovTrack.us legislation tracking websites.
If you have any suggestions or corrections for this new resource please let us know.
The SHoWLE Board of Directors adopted the following statement in support of the LGBTQ+ community and to oppose bigotry. This statement can be found in our Policies and Resolution page of the website.
The Board of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie voted on January 21, 2025, to “sign on” to a statement issued by a majority of the secular, Humanist, and freethought groups in the country affirming our commitment to support and protect the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in this country.
In a statement titled “Statement from American Atheist, Humanist, Freethought, and Secular Groups Affirming Commitment to Protecting LGBTQ+ Rights” 16 national secular groups affirmed:
“We will not permit religious extremists to foment a moral panic, encourage harassment or violence, and enact dangerous policies that seek to force LGBTQ+ Americans generally—and trans Americans in particular—out of public life and out of existence. Nor will we sit silently or ignore when the talking points, misinformation, and outright fabrications of anti-LGBTQ+ extremists are laundered and given a veneer of legitimacy or acceptability by those who hold themselves out as voices of reason or science.”
The SHoWLE Board agrees 100% with the statement and we intend that our group will continue to be a welcoming place for all people no matter who you are or who you love. Our Humanist values demand it.
We need more compassion and understanding and much less irrational hysteria. We need laws and policies based on data and actual reality and not biases, religious indoctrination, or tabloid anecdotes.
SHoWLE also will not tolerate bigotry from our state legislature, general community, or our membership. We will call out that bigotry when needed. We will not support or work with any group that supports bigotry of any kind especially toward the LGBTQ+ community.
Some people have said that recent attacks on the Trans community have been only about discussing science and biology and that by not allowing that discussion we are censoring science. We reject that argument.
Free speech arguments should never be used to justify hurting people and whether a group should have basic dignity, and worth should never be debated.
No one should live in fear for simply existing.
Starting on February 1st, 2025, SHoWLE will reduce our use of Facebook. We will put in a static post pointing visitors to our website but we will not update our public page, boost any posts, or create any new events.
We don’t make this decision easily but the change in political views of the CEO and other actions taken by Meta, the owner of Facebook, make our continued use of the platform problematic. If you are not aware of these issues check out the links at the end of this post for some details. In general:
The fact-checking moderation was put into place a decade ago because Facebook was used to facilitate ethnic cleansing in a couple of countries. Not to mention now there will be more irrational posts about the harm of vaccines and other promotion of woo.
We will keep our private group page for now but we intend to promote a more open community forum in the future off Facebook.
We recommend that our members also move away from Facebook but that decision should be left up to each individual. In the links below is an article from EFF.org that shows how to block use of your data for profit making by Meta.
If you have any questions about this new policy, feel free to reach out to Doug or other Board members.
Meta ends its DEI programs as Zuckerberg blasts Biden on Joe Rogan
Mark Zuckerberg Preps for More Ethnic Cleansing
Mad at Meta? Don’t Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data
You can also find us on Bluesky as Toledo Humanist Community
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.