My current goals as an Atheist and political activist

[politicat]

Feel free to add your own....

--> The Non-religious are 16% of the total population of the United States. There are about 50,000 people in the various freethought organizations around the country. That's 1% of the possible non-religious. How do we identify them, appeal to them and motivate them to support our causes?
--> How do we partner with religious organizations that support Separation and freedom of conscience and religion?
--> How do we fund our Political Action Committees, 527s and 501(c)3 not-for-profits so that we can be better positioned to get out message out to our elected leaders and our target population?
--> How can we work to promote positive atheism in the public mind?
--> How do we get Secular Caucuses implemented in all of our national political parties so that we can make sure we have a seat at the table when the party platforms are drawn up?


From GAM-Org yahoo group.

[phantom power]

1. Citizens United for Separation of Church and State

This organization represents both secular and religeous members. So that is one possible already-existing answer to your question about partnering with religious organizations.

[politicat]

2. The problem with Americans United - that's their name -

is that they have to be very careful not to offend their religious members. My actual goal for Colorado is to get a seat at the table on the Interfaith Alliance. We've worked some with Americans United. They're a great organization, but they can only accept so much outreach from us, especially since Separation issues end up being perceived as Atheist issues anyway.

I do know who the players are in the Freethought community; I'm on the Board of Directors for one of the Nationals and do freelance work for them. This is definitely a tactical year, not a strategic one.

Pcat

[phantom power]

4. What is the Interfaith Alliance? Do they influence something?

[politicat]

5. Interfaith Alliance ends up being a lobbying power with state legislature.

It brings together a significant part of the entire religious community and works rather like collective bargaining with politicians. If IA leadership goes to the Senate Majority leader with an opinion, it's like the Teamsters' leadership going in (but more respected as this is a Red state with little union acceptance.). They know that IA has a substantial backing.

In the past, they've been pretty good on separation and equal opportunity issues, but have forgotten atheism as a valid belief system. They need to stop doing that.

Pcat

[phantom power]

6. That sounds like a good strategy.

[fshrink]

3. To agree with Phantom, somewhat,

I think that the key issue is political. It is the clear and firm separation of church and state. And that issue is, I think, only reachable if there is a clear and firm progressive stance in general. Remember the Gore/Bush debate? It was almost impossible to distinguish them on nearly all topics. End result, they were almost indistinguishable in terms of votes... And theft was made possible. If progressives have the nuts to push a clear progressive stance, results might even be very surprising precisely because all the people who feel that the political discourse does not refer to their lives will more likely get involve and vote. At that point a debate about the separation will have some chances to be accepted. The voters we have now, are massively a bunch of half-asses, the 30% of "un-decided" (!!!!!). By fostering a really progressive movement, with the real issues all lined up, a large number of people will turn up and in, and, I would guess, the non-believers you seek to attract will be among those. Re-framing is the exact opposite of what should be done. But who has the balls to call a spade a spade?

[politicat]

7. Separation can be framed as a very conservative issue, as well.

It has to be spun as individual faith group protectionism. The problem I see with the fundies not understanding the need for absolute separation is that they don't realize that they are likely to be harmed by an absence of separation. They think that a Christian nation means their version of Christianity, which it won't. There's no majority in any denomination, and even the pluralities are rather small. When you get down to the sects that are just barely recognized, they'd be smashed under the foot of the Catholics, Baptists and Episcopalians.

The reason the conservative side doesn't scream about it is they have ignored it, and the separationists in the conservative ranks are far outnumbered.

As far as Bush/Gore goes, I watched the debates, but debates are rarely useful for me. Action is far more clear. Bush LIED in the 2000 debates, and most of us who had looked at his record knew it. The problem was that the media was in Special Olympics mode, and every time anyone brought up the fact that Bush had an abysmal record that contradicted his statements, they started calling "mudslinging" and "dirty campaign." There was just no opportunity to get the information out there effectively. That's the problem with a corporate, for profit media.

And honestly, I'm not concerned with the vast majority at this point. I know that there are 16% of the population out there that we can mobilize. That would make us the third largest voting block in the nation, if we can just do it - larger than the Jewish vote, the Black vote or the Gay vote, and equal to the Hispanic vote, the Catholic vote and the Baptist vote. We don't need to march in lockstep, just all amble in the same general direction.

Pcat

[fshrink]

8. I think that most of your 16% are

not voting at this time. Of course this is just an hypothesis, albeit a reasonable one. Problem would then become in large part what I outlined. Because as far as large blocks go, the largest, by far here is non-voters! And I can't say I blame them... As to the plurality of sects, I'm not worried: we've seen religious groups get together, time and again, here or in Europe, when their common cause (believe in whatever but believe) was threatened. The "Holy Alliance" would gather its power at the first sign of threat against the gigantic advertisement that the presence of the non-denominational word "god" in all public places, and banknotes, gives them. For free.
Further, when we look at French history, for example, we see that the achievement of the separation (1901) *followed* about 50 years of social unrest and critique, of education of the people (free and mandatory education until age 16 from 1881) and of pressure from the streets. Separation was carried to pass by the people and on this momentum.