2007 Activist Workshop

Stages Repertory Theatre, D’Amico at Rosine

Registration and Refreshments at 9:30 a.m.

Workshop 10:00 a.m. to noon

These will be six short presentations.  All participants will be able to attend all sessions.

• First Freedom First video: a joint project of AU and the Interfaith Alliance Foundation

• Tracking Proposed Legislation

Presenter: Nancy Friedman.  Nancy is a practicing lawyer.  She monitored bills being considered in the Texas legislature in her role as chair of Let Freedom Ring and publisher of its monthly newsletter for over ten years.  She gave this presentation at AU’s 2004 workshop

• Writing Op-eds and Letters to the Editor

Presenter: Sue Null.  Sue is a teacher of English as a Second Language and an activist for PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).  She has had letters, op-eds, and articles published in the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Voice, the Texas Triangle and the Wall Street Journal.

• Lobbying Elected Officials

Presenter: Charlotte Coffelt.  Since retiring as a public school educator and administrator, Charlotte has worked to raise the level of understanding of church/state separation.  She has attended every Houston AU Lobby Day, has attended many Texas Women’s Legislative Days, and has lobbied members of Congress in Washington, D.C.

• Lobbying From the Perspective of the Elected Official 

Presenter: State Representative Jessica Farrar. She has represented District 148 in the Texas Legislature for 12 years.

• Testifying Before Boards and Committees 

Presenter: William Geoghegan.  Bill was a medical researcher for about 20 years and now teaches biology, microbiology and biotechnology at Montgomery College (NHMCCD). He testified at State Board of Education hearings in 2005 regarding the presentation of evolution in biology textbooks.

The workshop is free and open to the public, but we will need RSVPs to be sure we have enough workshop packets.

RSVP to HoustonAU@flash.net or to James Sells at (713) 782-8962

The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil policy, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.        

James Madison, from a letter sent  to F.L. Schaeffer, Dec 3, 1821