Orange County Atheists

Let's get the ball rolling!

With "In God We Trust" falling by the wayside, we've kinda lost focus on the other things that city councils are doing - namely, invocations. As we've discussed before, some cities are worse than others in terms of their offenses, but it's my firm belief that we could get a lot done with just a few people willing to going to their city's meetings and meet with officials (together with others in OC Atheists). Click "Continue Reading" to find out how you can do your part!

To get us started, this link goes to an Excel spreadsheet with information I gathered via the web last year regarding what OC cities do invocations. It's complete to the best of my knowledge, but there may have been changes in the last year.

It's important to remember that most invocations are totally legal, and a lot of cities do them out of habit or tradition. That said, we can still make a convincing case to cities to stop them, and make them as rare as possible in the county.

How to, you ask?

Step one is to go to a city council meeting, or if that's not possible, get the recorded meetings from the local city library or the city's clerk. Ask me for details about your specific city if you can't figure it out.

Next, we determine if they're a) breaking the law (with too much Jesus talk) or b) following the law. Either way, we want to set up a time to talk with either a councilmember or the city manager (or someone else high up) about the issue. This meeting can be used to determine how the council/city feels about invocations, how they choose who does invocations, and what it would take to get them to stop. From there, we have several options:

1. Tell them that invocations are bad for the city, and they should stop.
2. If they won't stop, tell them that if other groups do invocations, we want in on the action, along with our jewish/muslim/pagan/satanist friends.
3. If they don't go for that, threaten a lawsuit.

I'm currently researching the law in California in regards to open access to performing invocations. Other states have said that all groups have the right to do so if any outside group does, but I'm not sure if there'd been such a case here. Either way, a lot of cities don't want the trouble (Santa Ana told me they'd likely just stop instead of trying to work all that out - a winning situation).

What I need from the community (Both members of OC Atheists and our likeminded friends) is some commitment to research your city's invocations, get a recording from the city if possible, and report back. From there, we set up times to meet up with the city.

Finally, and this is important: We need city residents involved! I could go to every city on my own, but they'd see me as just some guy with an agenda. As a city resident, you have much more power than you realize, and as a city resident sitting next to a guy with agenda, I'm pretty sure we could get this done.

Share and discuss!

Posted by mikebdoss at June 18, 2009 04:36 PM