Pagan Relief is the brainchild of the members of the Worldwide Pagan Network. It is currently a two part supplemental system that will serve to assist pagans in times of need. Our planned expansions over the next decade will carry us (hopefully) out to a six part inclusive system that will not only be supplemental but developmental as well. While some of our goals may seem delusional, they are all noble goals worthy of shooting for. We know that it will take at least a decade just to set the foundations of what we discuss here, but we have many hardworking individuals in our membership rolls and if the gods will that we should succeed, then they might even lend a hand.
In
its sixth year of operation, the Pagan Pride Project's organized celebrations of
Pagan Pride Day set new records for total attendance and charitable collections.
A formal count of 39,535 people attended 136 Pagan Pride Day events in nine
countries, and 34,897 lbs of food and goods were collected for charitable
institutions in local communities. This is an increase of over 8000 from 2002's
attendance, and an increase of over 10,000 lbs of food and goods collected for
charity.
In addition to the material collections, Pride events also collected $17,186 for
local and regional charitable causes.
Firsts this year included New York City being the first event with over 5,000
attendance; our first events in Wyoming, Newfoundland, Arkansas, and Nebraska;
and four local Pagan communities opening their hearts and purses for over $1000
in individual charitable contributions. Charities supported included numerous
local homeless shelters, women's shelters, interfaith food banks, no-kill animal
shelters, the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross, AIDS support
agencies and shelters, and local blood banks. Additional monetary collections
were set up for one Pagan charitable cause, that of Witchvox (http://www.witchvox.com).
For the second straight year, protestor activity increased, including isolated
acts of minor vandalism. One event had to clean up broken glass scattered
throughout their scheduled area; another event had to have the local sheriff's
department evict Christian squatters in their reserved park shelter. However,
any removal of protestors by police or event security remained peaceable. 16
events had protestor activity in 2003, ranging from confrontational preaching to
sign removal to unauthorized photography.
Goals for next year include a Pagan Pride event in all 50 US states and total
attendance of over 40,000. As such, Pride will be recruiting actively in our
missing states; Idaho, Vermont, the Dakotas, and Mississippi. If you are
interested in getting involved in Pagan Pride 2004, please check out our website
at http://www.paganpride.org
Beige Allen has joined with members of Pagan Unity Campaign
and Wintergrove.Net in the creation of the Alliance Of Pagan voters, a
non-partisan political information group devoted to all facets of laws and the
process that creates them as they apply to the Pagan community. This national
alliance of pagan and pagan-friendly persons is dedicated to working toward the
continuing separation of church and state, ethical use of our resources,
community service, and unification of the pagan voters to enable us to have a
voice in local, state and national government. This is a very new group and
anyone looking to contribute to Pagan political unity, come visit us at
Alliance Of Pagan Voters
This button will take you to the Members Center that we are now using as a sounding and planning board for WWPN. This is the first stage or free membership for WWPN and we ask that you not join the group unless you wish to be part of the active membership of WWPN.
Come visit us at WorldWide Pagan Network Members Center
