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Address by Ellen Johnson at the American Atheists 30th national convention: San Diego, California. April 9, 2004.

Article Excerpt
Thank you Dave Kong. We are very proud of all the work you and all the other Atheist activists are doing here in California.

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Good morning everyone. I'd like to give you a sort of "state of the union" speech today. We are coming up on my ten-year anniversary as president of American Atheists. So how are we doing and where are we going?

As you know, this is our thirtieth annual national convention. When Madalyn Murray O'Hair organized the first Convention of American Atheists, it was held on July 24-26, in 1970 and it was just seven short years after her victory in the hard-fought Murray v. Curlett case that helped to remove mandatory prayer and Bible verse recitation from our taxpayer-supported public schools. She made no bones about the fact that she was an Atheist. Indeed, her blatant, open, and very public position as an Atheist gained her many enemies, including those within the loose network of groups and publications that argued for the separation of church and state. And worse than being an Atheist--she was a woman!

She organized that first convention on behalf of a small, marginalized segment of the American population who had the strength of character, tenacity, and the intellectual fortitude and commitment to principle to identify themselves openly as Atheists. She and those early conventions provided the desperately needed contact, and the camaraderie for those Atheists back then.

All of this came back to me last month during a couple of important events in Washington, DC.

The first was our press conference which was carried on the CSPAN network, to announce the launching of the Godless Americans Political Action Committee (GAMPAC). It was a momentous and significant time. Two years before, we had spearheaded the Godless Americans March On Washington (GAMOW) that brought over 3,000 Atheists and other nonbelievers to our nation's capital. Every other cause group in American culture had marched down that Mall just like we did--the blacks, the gays, and the women--and now it was our turn.

We delivered a message that American Atheists has been emphasizing for years. We told our fellow Atheists, and everyone else listening--that it was time for this movement to take the next step in political activism and organization. It was a long-overdue message.

So last month we fulfilled our promise. Supporters of this message joined with volunteers from American Atheists to launch the Godless Americans Political Action Committee. A bit over a week later nearly 200 of us were rallying on the steps of the United...

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