9/8/2014
The event's motto is ideas worth spreading and each year, TEDxABQ welcomes thinkers from all over New Mexico to showcase brief talks about big ideas.
"TEDxABQ is about showcasing New Mexico's biggest ideas. But we don't promote any one idea," said TEDxABQ founder Tim Nisly.
Nisly brings sharp minds together to share ideas and this year's event at Popejoy Hall welcomed 2,000 people.
However, organizers at Saturday night's TED event thought a single word on the backs of some participant's was distracting.
The word was scrawled on the back of t-shirts worn by representatives from Albuquerque homeless shelter Joy Junction. The shirts said "Life is tough -- God is good," but when TED organizers said the shirts had to go, Joy Junction picked up and left instead.
Jenn Munsey from faith-based homeless shelter Joy Junction was invited to set up an educational booth about hunger and homelessness outside the event.
"They knew we were a faith-based ministry," said Munsey.
After a couple hours an organizer told Munsey folks were complaining about a display of that faith.
"The complaint was our shirt has the word God," she said.
Munsey told KOB she was in shock, because organizers of an event about ideas told her Joy Junction could turn their shirts inside out, or have some free TEDxABQ shirts to wear.
Nisly says, yep it happened and joy junction packed up and left voluntarily.
"The major goal for Joy Junction at TEDXABQ was to get the audience involved and engaged. To give them a place to plug-in to help fight homelessness in New Mexico," Nisly said. "The t-shirts were distracting from that."
Nisly says speakers at TEDxABQ are able to introduce ideas about religion -- as long as they're not pushing one religion over another.
Two hours after KOB's interview with Nisly, he e-mailed KOB the TEDx content guidelines. Number 3 forbids religious proselytizing -- No speakers who attempt to "prove of persuade the correctness of a single religion."
But Munsey says, she wasn't speaking and her group did no more than wear the shirts.
"It would have been a betrayal and denial of what we do," she said.
For her, covering up or turning out felt too much like denying her faith, but she says if the organization had told her up front beforehand they would not have worn the shirts for the event.
Nisly and Munsey's interviews overlapped and KOB suggested the two sit down and have a conversation about what happened. Munsey from Joy Junction said she would sit down and talk about it, but Nisly declined.
Nisly did however tell Munsey, he has a lot of respect for Joy Junction and their work in New Mexico.
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