On March 24, Rachel and I attended the Reason Rally on the National Mall. It was a cold, rainy day, but 20,000 people came out to rally in support of rationality, secularism, freethought and, yes, atheism, and to make our voices heard.
The Rally featured many interesting speakers and performers, some nearly household names. Comedian Paul Provenza was a funny and effective master of ceremonies and Rachel and I really enjoyed Mythbuster Adam Savage and high school student Jessica Ahlquist (among others). Tim Minchin was great and I was thrilled to see my personal hero, The Amazing Randi. Rachel needed to return to go to work that evening and the rain and the cold took their toll, so we sadly left before seeing Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers.
I was amused at the occasional attempts to rally the crowd through chants or group responses. Freethinkers tend to be an individualistic lot and there seems to be an innate resistance to the exercises that work at rallies for other, should I say, less rational, folk.
The best part of all, my favorite thing of the whole day, was that Rachel went with me.
I took along my camera and put together the video below. It's short and not particularly comprehensive, but it will give you a good sense of what it was like at the Rally.
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