Many atheists care deeply about maintaining the separation of church and state, promoting atheist equality, correcting popular misconceptions about atheists, and all sorts of other important goals. The number of worthy causes may even seem overwhelming at times. How can one person with limited time and resources hope to make a meaningful difference? Fortunately, one can be an effective atheist activist by investing merely 30 minutes a week.

Preparation

Maximizing the impact of a limited time investment requires a little preparation. After all, one must know where best to direct one's efforts. Therefore, I recommend using your first 30 minute period to do the following, each of which will make future efforts even easier:

1. Install an RSS reader if you do not already have one. I use FeedDemon on PCs and NetNewsWire on Macs. Both are free and quite powerful.
   
2. Add each of the following RSS feeds to your reader: Internet Infidels News Wire, Atheist Defense Network, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and of course, Atheist Revolution.
   
3. Bookmark the following webpages for information of relevant legislative issues and other action alerts: Americans United - Legislative Alerts, Freedom From Religion Foundation - Action Alerts, and Secular Coalition for America - Activism. Of course, I also regularly spread the word about action alerts here at Atheist Revolution.
   
4. Join Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
   

The 30-Minute Activist

Now that you are set up, it is time to figure out how best to use your 30 minutes a week for the good of atheists everywhere. In no particular order, here are several things you can do on a regular basis to benefit the atheist movement:

• Vote up good atheist-related material on Digg, Reddit, and/or StumbleUpon. This helps others find it.
  
• Take action on relevant action alerts you receive. This is typically as simply as making a phone call, signing an on-line petition, or sending a letter to an elected official.
  
• Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper.
• Learn about the Pledge Project and why it is so important to remove "under god" from the pledge and "in god we trust" from U.S. currency.
  
• Learn who your elected officials are, how they vote on issues of importance to atheists, and how to contact them.
  
• Find out if there is a local atheist group in your area, or if you would rather connect with other atheists online, check out Atheist Nexus.
• Give blood.
• Learn how to work toward ending anti-atheist bigotry.
• Look for opportunities to make a difference in your community.
  

Just imagine what could happen if even 25% of atheists wrote one letter to the editor of their local newspaper once a month! We would be impossible to ignore. Atheist activism does not have to be arduous. Together, we can do amazing things in only 30 minutes a week.

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Tags: atheist, atheism, activism, atheist activism, atheists, RSS, Atheist Nexus, anti-atheist bigotry, atheist movement