• ESWoW Community Call - Starting 2013 Together
• From The Leader - 50 Years since the March on Washington
• Around the Movement - Bart Worden, How Our Commitments Bring Ethics to Life
• Ethical Action - What are you doing for the MLK Day of Service?

ESWoW Community Call, Sunday, January 13, 2013
5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, and 8pm Eastern
866-744-1260 access code 5766842#

Please join our community call to share your thoughts, plans, hopes, and dreams for the new year.  

Have you made resolutions for the new year?  

Are there things you want to accomplish?

What are your thoughts on working to make the world a better place this year?

I enjoyed reading Michael Moore's New Year's Resolutions.  They start with 1. Learn the names of the people two doors down from me and invite them over for dinner.  2.  Learn how to make dinner. And they end with 10. Keep walking, dude!  Here's the rest - 

I'd pretty much given up making resolutions, but I like the spirit of Michael Moore's and hope to have some to share with you on the 13th. And of course, this can be another year of living ethically.

And the website Why Evolution is True shared New Year's Illustrations as Illustrated by Cats made me smile; I expect you will too.

Please join us to share your thoughts and dreams with us on Sunday, January 13 and ask someone to join us.

From The Leader Read more »

All of America was shocked by the shooting at Sandy Hill Elementary School in Newtown, CT on December 14, 2012. Many are profoundly saddened, others angry. No doubt members of Ethical Culture communities feel either or both emotions.

As we work through the pain, here is are some thoughts from the New York Society:

Leaders Anne Klaeysen and Joe Chuman reflect on the Connecticut Shooting

Also please consider participating:

ESWoW Community Call
Sunday, December 16, 2012
5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, 8pm ET.
866-740-1260 access code 5766842#

Reflecting on the Killings in Connecticut
An opportunity for people to share thoughts and feelings in a community of support. The killings in Newtown, CT on Friday, Dec. 14 were horrific. How do we respond? What do we do? How do we make changes so that these repeated mass killings do not continue to occur? What factors in our society contribute to these shootings?

Please join on us on this call to share your responses and possible plans for action.

Yours in ethical friendship,
Susan Rose
Leader, ESWoW.org

To the members and friends of ESWoW:

Some seven years ago, ESWoW was begun with the hope of building an on-line community of Ethical Culture participants which would have an organization and a structure patterned after those of the traditional Ethical Culture Societies that exist around the country.  It was hoped that this new Society would serve members who reside outside the range of an existing, physical, Ethical Society, but would nevertheless offer comparable services - - over long distances to be sure, but the traditional format was our guide.

Obviously, we all had a lot to learn about how an on-line venue has strengths and weaknesses that are unique to its own medium.  In judging it by the same standards of the traditional Societies, those with street addresses and pot luck dinners, some people were too critical of its uneven growth; while at the same time, some people were unappreciative of the many  unique possibilities that the new format allowed.

A lot was learned over the last seven years and now we are undertaking a major overhaul of the ESWoW structure in order to capture these new capabilities.  Presently we are in the design phase and I would like to share with you some of the plans we would like to pursue.  I would also like to hear from those of you who have followed ESWoW to gather your suggestions as to how its functionality can be improved. Read more »

• From the Leader - Motherhood and Why Evolution is True
• ESWoW Community Call - MONDAY, May 7, 2012 - Motherhood
• AEU Assembly Registration

From the Leader

Susan Rose writes about motherhood, and attending a lecture by evolutionary biologist, Dr. Jerry Coyne.

ESWoW Community Call
MONDAY May 7, 2012  
Prior to Mother's Day, let's share our experiences of mothers and motherhood, either as mothers ourselves, as the child of a mother, or in society in general. 

The call is at 5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, and 8pm ET.

The number to join the call is 866-740-1260, access code 5766842#.

AEU Assembly

Our Assembly is an important point in our lives as Ethical Culturists. It is an opportunity to immerse ourselves in what it really means to belong to Ethical Culture. The annual Assembly gives us an opportunity to experience the Ethical Movement in a larger context.

This year, there is especially exciting programming.  I am most excited about the social justice programming happening on Saturday, June 16, 2012.  The social justice theme is Criminal Justice, and there is a stellar line-up of speakers both from within the Ethical Movement and people working in the criminal justice field.

There will be a special meeting time for ESWoW members to get to meet with each other in person and we are able to renew and make new acquaintances with members of societies from across the country. It is an exciting opportunity to learn from each other, not only through the many workshops but by strengthening communication Rose know if you are planning to attend the Assembly and interested in being an ESWoW delegate.

• Around the Ethical Movement - Anne Klaeysen,  Bart Worden
• Community Call - SUNDAY, April 22, 2012 - with Bart Worden
• American Ethical Union Assembly -  June 14- 17 

Around the Ethical Movement:  

Two colleagues have had articles published recently and I share them both with you.

Anne Klaeysen, Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and a recent presenter for an ESWoW Community Call, was published in the NY Times Room for Debate Forum.  Her article, "The Founders Preferred E Pluribus Unum,"  addresses the language found on all US currency.   Here's part of what Anne wrote:

The cost is only part of the problem with U.S. currency. As a religious humanist, I am more concerned with the words imprinted on every coin and bill in the United States: “In God We Trust,” a motto that the House of Representatives recently saw fit to reaffirm in a resolution that cited “a crisis of national identity.” A far more inclusive motto, “E pluribus unum,” proposed for the first Great Seal of the United States by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in 1776, also appears on all of our coins and some of our bills.

Please take a look at the full article and add a comment if you'd like. Read more »

• From the Leader - Keep Your Laws Off My Body
• Community Call - Monday, April 2, 2012 -  Womb Raiders

From the Leader
Keep Your Laws Off My Body
Susan Rose writes about women's reproductive rights, a subject that is surprisingly prominent in the news these days.

ESWoW Community Call with Catherine Bordeau
Catherine Bordeau joins our ESWoW Community Call to share her knowledge and expertise about women's reproductive rights.

"First, an understanding of reproductive rights includes that women should have the right to her own reproductive decision-making, including voluntary choice in marriage, family formation and determination of the number, timing and spacing of her children and the right to have access to the information and means needed to exercise voluntary choice.

Second, a more specific priority includes the right to sexual and reproductive security, including freedom from sexual violence and coercion, and the right to privacy. Read more »