Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

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!

Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

Many group members also meet at the El Torito across from the IHOP at 6:30pm for drinks and appetizers. If you can make one or both events, please RSVP here!

Thursday Feb 19th
7-10pm in SSH 100
Map can be found here and the room is building 200 on the map: http://today.uci.edu/pdf/UCI_08_map_campus_core.pdf

The event will be broken into three sections of about an hour each: Speech, Q&A, and mixing.

We're also going to have copies of Dan Barker's new book on sale and available for signing afterwords as well in addition to our own t-shirts.