Good *Without* God? "Reason Rally" Draws Thousands of Atheists to DC
Penn Jillette, Bill Nye, and other non-believers gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to show their rising numbers and political strength
HD DownloadThousands of atheists, humanists, and secularists—including high-profile libertarian Penn Jillette—rallied at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on Saturday, June 4th, 2016.
"We're expecting 30,000 people. This is the largest gathering of non-religious Americans in history," said Lyz Liddell, director of the annual "Reason Rally." (Note: this event is not affiliated with this website or our publisher, the nonprofit Reason Foundation.)
The aim this year was to show lawmakers and politicians that non-believers are quickly becoming a large voting bloc. Between 2007 and 2014, the number of Americans unaffiliated with any religion rose from 16 percent to 23 percent, the biggest growth spurt in both relative and absolute terms.
Larry Decker, executive director of Secular Coalition of America, met with more than 300 members in the Senate and House of Representatives. "We are going to promote secular values—values like freedom, equality, and inclusion," says Decker, "and we hope to take those values and translate that into a strong voting bloc going forward."
Produced by Joshua Swain. Music by Podington Bear.
About 1 minute long.
Scroll down for HD, iPod and audio versions of this video and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.
Hide Comments (0)
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post commentsMute this user?
Ban this user?
Un-ban this user?
Nuke this user?
Un-nuke this user?
Flag this comment?
Un-flag this comment?