Political Actions Group First Meeting

We had a good first meeting for the Political Action Group.  I’m going to post notes from the meeting so that those who couldn’t make it but want to take part can still know what our current goals are.

We have determined that in order for outsiders to take our group seriously we need to formalize our group and make it official.  We know that not every memeber of the meetup group wants to be politically active so this group will be seperate but affiliated with FVAAF.  In short if you’re not interested in taking part in this part of the group you don’t have to.  The main goal of FVAAF has and will continue to be providing a local community for Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers.

In addition to becomming offical we are going to design a letter head for press releases, letters to Congress and other oganizations.   I will work on incorporating our logo and contact information into the letter head.  It will need to wait until after we have filled out the necessary paper work to become formalized.

I am also going to add a mailing list to the site for people who want to take part in the political action group.  This way we have a seperate list and contact method for people who want to take part.  By registering on the mailing list for the group you will be considered an active member of the political action group.  This list will be the one we use for the offical organization and for things like head count and so on.

The biggest homework assignment is the research involved on the tax exempt status lists.  We decided that each member is going to reaserach way to obtain a list of local tax exempt organizations and discover which ones on the list are exempt from filling 990 Tax forms with the IRS.  This course of action was the one recomended by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  After we gather the list, we provide it to the FRFF and use it to contact (via mail) them with a request to fill out the form that they are exempt from filing.  The goal is to point out to these organizations that they are priviledged and it violates the 1st Amendment of the Constitution.

Last but not least a new member brought a new oganzation to our attention.  Americans United is a lobbying group that is fighting some of the same battles that we are.  I am adding them to the list of organizations that we will attempt to affiliate with.

In sumary if you want to help out your homework for the next meeting of the Political Action Group is:

• Bring in your research on making our group offical (with paper work if possible)
• Bring in your list of local organizations that are tax exempt and don’t fill out 990 tax forms (Churches) with addresses.

See you at the next meeting!

-Joe