Monday, May 30, 2005
Smithsonian Protest Building Steam
This news has broken around the web over the Memorial Day weekend when many are on vacation and away from their computers. Red State Rabble is asking members of list-serves, bloggers, and web site administrators to redouble their efforts to build a strong protest beginning tomorrow when many people will become aware of the issue for the first time. Readers can help by calling or e-mailing the Smithsonian, and by sending personal e-mail notes to at least five of their friends, relatives, or colleagues asking them to do the same.On the James Randi Educational Foundation site:
We need to be alarmed and militant about this situation. The "Discovery Institute" is the center of the Intelligent Design movement, which is only a semantically-disguised support group for creationism. By donating a mere $16,000, it has purchased the use of the Smithsonian facilities along with their implied co-sponsorship of the film, "The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe."
Readers, do something about this. Please send an e-mail to giving@si.edu addressed to Mr. Randall Kremer, Public Affairs. Tell him of your concern over this situation. And, you might add that the JREF is willing to donate $20,000 to the Smithsonian Institution if they agree to give back the "Discovery Institute" $16,000 and decline to sponsor the showing of the film. And the JREF will not require the Smithsonian to run any films or propaganda that favor our point of view...
We often observe how the right uses the power of the internet to further their own aims. This is an opportunity for science and reason to flex its very powerful, if perhaps not quite ripped, muscles to deliver a powerful blow to the ambitions of the Discovery Institute and their antiscience followers.
