mill avenue resistance

Apologies that this took so long to post.

Mill Ave. wasn’t quite crawling with preachers this Saturday, which isn’t to say there weren’t any. Since it’s usually pretty devoid of them on Saturday nights now, there seemed to be a comparatively large amount. Al and his cronies were handing out their “I.Q. Test” tracts by the Light Rail, and we kept an eye on them for a while. Then word came that the dreaded Jeremiah was on on the corner of 5th St.

A cameraman was out to document Jeremiah’s incredible preaching abilities, and we set up our equipment nearby. Joe and Kyle were already there, and Rocco turned up a while after. We were bothered for a while by the adversarial cameraman, who intimated that we were cowards for not “preaching” our beliefs on our own, instead of merely reacting to the street preachers. He didn’t seem to understand when we tried to explain to him that we aren’t really fond of annoying people without cause.

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Filed under: Mill Avenue Resistance by Gadfly
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We’ve been getting lax lately, and the Mill Avenue preacher scene is heating up again. Not only are some new (and very unpleasant) ones coming out, but some of the old ones who had stopped showing up are back for more. For the moment it appears that we can expect to find one or more groups of preachers out most if not all Friday and Saturday nights, and some of them are horribly obnoxious.

With the previously dwindling preacher population, it is easy to see why many of us felt our weekends were better spent on other activities, but those of you who have been involved and still believe that what we’re doing is worthwhile should seriously consider coming back.

In the interest of balance and sanity, I would encourage people not to show up to every event, but to find the ones that will fit into their schedules and come out when they can. We don’t need an overwhelming mass of people every time, but we do need to consistently have enough people to counter preachers, present our message, and deter violence.

This last issue has not been a big problem in the past, but recently an angry Christian hobo decided it would be a good idea to walk up to one of our female members, rip up her sign and hit her in the face with it. She was (perhaps unwisely) out alone before anyone else showed up, but incidents like this did not happen when we regularly had enough people to make thugs like him think twice.

Even as recently as last Saturday one of our long-time members was pushed and repeatedly threatened by another belligerent believer who claimed to be coming back with friends to beat him up. It was most likely an empty threat, but we can’t afford to take chances with things like this.

We need to rejuvenate the resistance. We have to show these people that they can’t push us around, and we should be showing the preachers that they still cannot renew their assault on Tempe’s citizens and visitors with impunity.

If you want to coordinate with us, send a message through the contact form or talk to us in the forum. Otherwise you can just show up on your own or with your own group and join in any time you want!

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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The usual preachers still seem to be attempting to bore us to death, but this month we saw some of the younger ones trying to organize their own groups and a few others coming in from other areas and even other cities.

These guys were a mixed bag. Some of them were nice and relatively reasonable people who were willing to have civil discussions with us, and others were attempting to overpower us with their insufferable preaching at high volumes with as little interaction as possible. Apparently they haven’t learned yet that they can not hope to win this way, and the people who they want to convert appreciate it even less than we do.

So if any of you guys are reading this right now, come out and preach if you must, but remember that the more annoying you are, the stronger your opposition becomes.

Brief February 27th-28th report:

I was out on Saturday, and the preachers we saw were relatively sedate, but a couple of them…

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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Last month was a crazy one. We had a preacher here from New York with his teenage son, one from South Africa, an American preacher who lives in Scotland, and even the infamous Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas, all here to tell us how horrible and worthless we are and how we need their god to save us (which he may or may not decide to do, even if we want it).

Last Saturday though, it was back down to the local preachers again, and they went back to what they had been doing recently…

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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The Mill Avenue Resistance is still going strong, but lately the preaching on Mill has been even more pathetic than usual. The last two weeks in November, Al (who is usually reliable for a laugh) refused to haul his god and pony show out for ridicule, but late last Saturday night there was a spark of hope for the preachers in Al’s surrogate Brant, until he opened his mouth.

If you thought you had heard nonsense from a street preacher before, you should really talk to this guy. He did have the same basic street preaching template that the others had to work from, but he seemed to have little or no knowledge of anything outside of that. It was pathetic.

So preachers, if you’re listening, step up your game and bring on someone who can at least give a half-assed attempt at defending your (admittedly indefensible) fairy tale god, or take a cue from the rest of your dwindling crew and just pack it in.

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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Last Saturday’s event was the most lively we’ve seen in a while, due in large part to the great turnout we had on our side (including our new friend Lizard Man and his band), and in even larger part to the comical antics of our belligerent preacher friend Jeremiah.

Seeming even more agitated than usual, Jeremiah continually moved his soap box and speaker around the corner in a vain attempt to avoid us between bursts of frustrated and angry preaching. I guess he’s lucky he had us though, because Al (the other preacher with a mic that night) couldn’t seem to get people to listen to him at all where he was.

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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October is shaping up to be a good month. Not only do we expect an infusion of new blood through the Secular Free Thought Society’s recent recruitment drive, but we should also have some fun new projects and events coming to fruition this month.

If you’re interested in participating in any of our events, or the Secular Free Thought Society’s, keep an eye out and we’ll post them here for you.

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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This should be an exciting month for the Resistance! We will have new people coming in, familiar faces coming back from a summer out of town, and we will begin implementing some of our new ideas that haven’t been publicly announced yet. It should be fun though, so show up if you can, or keep an eye on the site and we’ll post more about how it’s going!

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What is the Mill Resistance?

If you’ve been on Mill this summer, you probably know that it’s been a bit slow, and often less fun and interesting than it was in the spring, but that is going to change shortly.

Late August is when ASU’s classes start again, so in a few weeks we should be back to full strength, and beyond as we gain more new recruits!

That is not to say that we shouldn’t bother until then. The times when things are a little less crazy give us a good chance to hone our skills and make plans for the future! If you haven’t been coming out and you’re considering it, now would be a good time to start.

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Filed under: Events by Kazz
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