The first Athens Pagan Pride Day was put on by Christian Avalon with the help of the UGA Pagan Student Association in 2008. They did an excellent job of it.
They were unable to continue doing it, so Christian asked AAP if we wanted to take it over. We weren’t sure we had the time and energy, but we decided to do it. AAP has produced an APPD event every year since 2009.
We have decided that we cannot keep doing APPD, at least not in the current way. Here is a brief list of the reasons for this:
- APPD takes all our spare time and energy
- We spend the better part of 9 months of the year working on APPD.
- We have a hard time doing anything else in that time.
- If we had more people working on it, it would still take 9 months, but we would be able to do other things.
- APPD doesn’t bring in any appreciable amount of money.
- This year, it came close to being self-sustaining, for the first time ever.
- Some outreach is happening, but it seems like not much.
- Getting protesters from local churches is a sure sign that someone is paying attention.
- But, we still have too many folks say “I’ve been here for years and never knew y’all were here”.
- The work is keeping us from doing more for the Pagan Community.
- The biggest project that is languishing is AllWays.
- But, we could do other things if we had more time/energy, such as:
- Teach more classes & even put them online
- Have a presence at other local festivals
- Be more available as a religious resource for the local community
- Most of us who do the work are just exhausted
- Many of us are caregivers now or have health issues
- Although we get a decent number of volunteers the day of, we have not been seeing an increase in the number of people helping throughout the rest of the year.
At the annual meeting, Feb 17th, 5 PM at Rabbit Hole Studios, we will be deciding what to do, at least during 2024. We welcome community feedback. We have made a survey for your convenience, but you can contact us in any other way that is convenient to you.
Survey about the future of APPD
Our email address: appd@athensareapagans.org
If you want to have a say in this decision, you will need to be an AAP member and you will need to be at the annual meeting. Per our By-Laws, non-members can attend and observe the meeting, but are not allowed to speak.