Our speaker for the May 18^th meeting will be Jim Stanbery who has a B.A., UC Berkeley, Phi Beta Kappa, ‘65; M.A., Cal State Long Beach,’67; Peace Corps, Philippines, ‘67-’9; Professor of Political Science, L.A. Harbor College (on staff from 1970; faculty pres., ‘77-’80, 2000-’Ol; chair, college governance council, ‘91-3). Author California 2000 CamPaic7zn (‘74) and two student workbooks in American institutions; ‘76 article "The Fourth World War" in journal of international affairs predicted Cold War end and North-South realignment in United Nations.

At the May 18^th meeting HAOC will hold its annual election of officers and board members. Since the AHA abides by democratic principles any dues paying member can run for any elected office.

The offices to be filled are: president, vice-president, which includes the duties of program director, secretary, treasurer and two member-at-large positions. If you want to run for any of these positions you must be nominated and voted in at the May meeting.

At the April meeting we had an open forum, which was ably moderated by Juan Bernal. I thought it was a good meeting and that we should have an open forum, once in awhile, because members get to actively participate and aren’t limited to a narrow agenda.

Open meetings are somewhat an extension of the roundtable we have at the beginning of meetings, where we pass the microphone are around and everyone gets to share something they think worthwhile. One problem with the roundtable is that people are hesitant to take the time they may feel a subject deserves because they know there’s a program to follow.

Both Juan and Gene Barmore made the point that even if we don’t make major progress in spreading the message of Humanism the act of coming to meetings and discussing interesting ideas with like-minded people is worth doing in and of itself. Again, I hope here I’m accurately paraphrasing their comments. The primary reason I come to meeting is that I like the people and find the programs with the Q&A far more interesting than sitting home watching a football game. This is not to say that whatever small efforts we make to promote humanistic values for the immediate and long-range benefit of mankind are not worthwhile, which brings me to the subject of Humanist Manifesto III.

Although manifesto is a perfectly good word it has some negative connotations with the uninformed who think it has something to do with communism or socialism. Perhaps "Declaration of Principles" would have been more acceptable. The AHA asked for, and received, a lot of input on whether we needed a new manifesto and what changes we should make.

The original manifesto of 1933 was long, but not nearly as long as the 1972 revision. I think Manifesto 1 was seen as openly endorsing socialism and was too long to be easily understood, committed to memory and briefly transmitted to others in simple terms. Manifesto II took the approach that there was a lot more to say about the Humanist position than was detailed in 1933; so it became far longer in an attempt to answer all questions.

In 2000 Paul Kurtz wrote his manifesto for the new millennium, which was about 12 pages long and while very good it suffered from the same problems as its predecessors.

Manifesto III is one page and states its intentions in the first three paragraphs. It then goes on to briefly and concisely tell the reader with Humanism is and what we stand for.

My hope is that this will give Humanism momentum by making it easy for others to understand.