ADCNJ:

"Empowering The Community"

Our Goals for 2004-2005

1- Significant  Membership Increase:

    Now that there is no monetary excuse for not joining ADC. We should be in a position to reach our goal of attracting a large number of individuals to join our organization. We remain cognizant that, while numbers do matter, ultimately, our goal is to seek committed and qualified people to make ADC strong and well-respected. Consequently, we request that all current members begin to sell ADC to all their family members, friends and associates. Student dues are a mere $5.00 and regular membership dues are $10.00. Unless one does not believe in ADC's mission, there exists no good reason no to join.

2- Build Alliances with Like-Minded Organizations: Our fight for equality before the law is a fight that many other American organizations have championed. We should seek them out, work with them for the common good. Specifically, we intend to expand our fruitful relations with the NJ office of the ACLU, The American Civil Liberties Union and the NJ Civil Action Organization.

 3- Unite The Arab Family: Initiate social and political gatherings between religious leaders of our community. While we have often focused on interfaith dialogue with American Christians and Jews, we have overlooked the pivotal importance of interfamily dialogue between American Arab Christian and Muslim leaders in our community.

4- Repeal The PATRIOT Act:  While more than 255 cities nationwide have adopted resolutions to repeal all or portions of  the USA patriot Act, there is not one large NJ City that has done so.  Noticeably, Arab and Muslim Americans have played a minimal role in promoting such proactive and important grassroots initiatives.  We intend to introduce a resolution to repeal  all or portions of the USA Patriot Act in the City of Paterson. Your help will be greatly appreciated especially if you live in Paterson.

5- Initiate Dialogue: By sponsoring Teach-Ins, seminars and other gatherings to promote our many causes thru lectures, film-showings, art exhibits and demonstrations.

6- Voter Registration: Work with other organizations to sponsor voter registration drives in Arab area, in mosques and churches. Our votes will count if we all register-and when the elections time comes- we exercise our right to vote. Let's be counted.

7- Market Our Story: Whether it is fighting the stereotyping or the highlighting our accomplishments, wither it is the plight of our Iraqi or Palestinian brethren, we must do our part to speak up for what is right.  To do so we must initiate contacts with the media and persistently write about community's problems, issues, history and achievements. We have opened up several possibilities for us to reach out to important media personalities who actually have welcomed our contributions. We intend on providing a guide for you to engage the media as relates to letter writing, Op-Ed articles and a specific lexicon to use when writing to the media.

8- Being Fully Represented: Our government officials need to hear from. We have started a solid agenda of relevant issues to raise with all elected officials. We plan to expand our relationships with local and federal officials apprising them of the need to consider our concerns and to project to them our emerging political clout.  

9- Reaching The Young at Heart: The most important work of ADC is in creating a favorable image of our community in the minds and hearts of high school students. We have done a commendable job of responding to requests to speak at schools and places of employment. . We need to go to the next step of initiating such a program. Correcting historical facts and fighting stereotyping must start in the schools.

10- Getting to Know You:  we plan to have at least three social events. TBA