Challenge that the prayers should represent a rotating list of religions, and then put an Islamic prayer into the cycle; that should take care of the problem pronto.
I agree with you. This is not a place for prayer, no less a specific religion’s prayer. If I attended the Central CAC as a member, I wouldn’t be able to keep my mouth shut about it. They’d probably hate me.
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Why would they do a prayer at a CAC meeting? Maybe they are praying for tall buildings that don’t cast shadows? And roof top bars that don’t make noise.
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Presuming that a prayer (especially a particular prayer) is okay, exerts a certain arrogance that the followers of that prayer hold an elevated position in the culture, and that sets an undertone of validity to the particular viewpoints held by such individuals.
Someone who doesn’t want to hear a prayer before a non-religious public meeting shouldn’t have to leave the room to avoid it; it’s those who want to pray that should leave the room to do so in private, and not in the public realm where it doesn’t belong.
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Just keep talking and ignore the prayers. Then when they protest ask “excuse me but I did not think this was a religious service”
It’s was a joke. I didn’t see the sarcastic font.
I still think that, if someone chimed in with an Islamic prayer, it would shut down the prayer routine pretty quickly.
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For those of you coming to the kickoff tonight, we’ve had to make a last minute change of venue and will now be at North Street Beer Station a block down North Street from Little City. Even if you aren’t coming, if you can like our FB page and retweet, that’d be super helpful!
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I haven’t contacted the city about it because the Supreme Court upholds his nonsense.
The case Town of Greece v. Galloway addressed the issue of prayer at government meetings. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled not only that municipal or county bodies may host prayers at meetings, but that such prayers can be pervasively sectarian (e.g., Christian in nature).
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I asked once why it was included but because I hadn’t petitioned to be on the agenda no response was allowed. Regardless of the prayer issue, it’s not worth my time to attend these neighborhood meetings (with 20 or less people) if there’s no room for discussion of any topic not placed on an agenda a month prior.
Granted I haven’t been in well over a year so maybe the new Central CAC leadership is better.
DTR CAC September social is on the books.
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Please use the respective links for sharing for our September Social!
Facebook: http://rlgh.life/social925
MeetUp: http://rlgh.life/social925mu
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Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council talking about us:
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At what point in the video please?
It’s VERY interesting that comments are disabled on YouTube.
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At work, can’t watch. What are they saying? I hope it’s about me and my fabulous hair.
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“If zoning cases are bordeline, both CACs get involved”
Is that both true in theory and practice? Are 4 different CACs being engaged with issues in, say, Smoky Hollow? Did this happen with a vote offered to each regarding the phase 3 rezoning?
The are clearly triggered by us using the CAC moniker. I do appreciate that there is a reasonable voice that welcomes citizen participation, and I am glad that we aren’t the only people who are challenging the current boundaries associated with city’s the CACs. They are able to tie us back to a grievance from a Midtown CAC adjacent resident who wants to weigh in on Midtown stuff.
The chairwoman seems perfectly reasonable and open. I appreciate that she’s in a difficult position with some CAC leaders reacting way more hostile than she is.
As for the CACs, the problem still exists that there’s a dilution of votes among the CACs that represent downtown because each of them have an outsized representation of non-downtown voters that dilute our voices. Essentially, it’s like CAC gerrymandering. Even if all 4 CACs were equally represented in Smoky Hollow issues, it could still be dominated by non-DT voices.
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Bottom line, they’re doing a horrible job activating citizens, regardless of where they live in the district. Hopefully we can be more successful (in helping them).
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Are we opposed to changing our name? Olive branch? Am I too easy?
Ordinarily, I would say let’s just change the name and make them happy. But I think that the name is what got our group on their radar in the first place. Of course I will support any decision by the group, but we clearly got their attention.
Let me kind of sum up where we are here so far. The group is still working on meetups and ways to engage. We want to grow our followers (the socials) and subscribers (the newsletter) as well as think of a way to catch more attention as a way to get people to be aware of the CACs and then get more attendance.
As we ramped up, I kept Christina Jones, current chair of the RCAC, in the loop but made the decision to just launch it out there when it was ready as the energy was high and we were ready to start making things public.
The initial feedback was initially very positive from the public, even from some of the folks that are in CAC leadership positions. However, a majority of the RCAC members have an issue with our name as it could be perceived as a city-backed function. We are not and want to make that clear. We are instead all grassroots.
I was attracted to this project because of the potential that that name brought. Changing it devalues the marketing and brand we want to build here, IMO, and how we want to get people’s attention. I’m open to ideas for a new, equal way of accomplishing our goals but at this time, I can’t see a way we get that by using another name. The planning team feels the same.
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