A Message from Executive Director Fish Stark

(April 17, 2026) — Hello from a rental car shuttle on the way to Denver International Airport. I started my week in San Antonio and headed to Phoenix, then Denver. Next is Florida: Sarasota, The Villages, Orlando.

Some people ask if seeing seven cities in ten days is grueling. I wouldn’t say that. Sure, there’s an upper bound on the quality of food you can get in an airport. There is real variability in the comfort of Hampton Inn duvet covers. But this is my favorite part of the job, because wherever I go, I’m in conversation – in person, not on a screen! – with the leaders of our movement.

The chapter leader who spends long hours tabling at festivals and wrangling event signups to create a space where people belong. The donor giving a thousand bucks of hard-earned money out of their IRA so we don’t have to depend on billionaire funders. The policymakers sticking their neck out, at great cost, to support our agenda against the Christian nationalists.

Everywhere I go, I try to eat and do something I could only do in the city I’m in. I took walks along the San Antonio Riverwalk and in Chautauqua Park in Boulder, visited a great empanada restaurant in Phoenix, and in Florida, who knows? Maybe I’ll try to pet an alligator. (No, I will not try to pet an alligator.)

I got into a debate on this with some colleagues recently, but I truly believe you can have a fascinating weekend in any city in America. There is so much variance in climate and culture and cuisine that there are surprises everywhere, if you’re willing to look. (For instance, it’s snowing in Denver right now. Yes, in April.)

When I met with one of our supporters in Boulder, he said something interesting to me – and I’m paraphrasing here – “I think humanism is a philosophy of worshipping your ignorance.”

I liked that. Rather than reaching for simple answers, we embrace the fact that the world holds many mysteries – and we’d rather sit with ambiguous truths over comforting, pat stories. We try to greet the world – and especially people – with inquiry rather than certainty, recognizing that there is so much yet to know, so much of what we think we know yet to be proven wrong, and that this is where so much of the magic in life is found. “Skepticism” is just another way of saying “openness.”

So much of life rewards the performance of certainty. I think it’s probably the thing I find most challenging, honestly, as I work to be a better humanist. That’s why those words struck me so much – that ignorance isn’t just something I should get better at accepting, but something, actually, to worship.

But the best days I’ve had in those far-flung cities are the ones I started with no plan and an open mind. And the best conversations I have are often the ones I come to without an agenda.

The thing about truths written in stone is that they can never surprise you. Wandering feet and a wondering mind invite a little chaos. And I’m someone who has always tried to deal with discomfort by making sense of the world, organizing it into systems and categories and processes, trying to bend entropy to my will by planning ahead.

But I’m trying to be a little more reverent towards that ignorance. It’s one of the gifts humanism gives me. Hope you’ll wonder at something incomprehensible this weekend. And if you’re in Florida, come see me. We can do it together.

For humanity,
Fish