Rob
Sherman Advocacy
Click on either picture for larger image and picture description.
Rob
Sherman Advocacy
Click on either picture for larger image and picture description.
"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
Atheist Rob Sherman will be giving the invocation at the next Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Board of Trustees meeting. The meeting will take place at 8:00 p.m. this coming Tuesday, January 14, 2003, in the Council Chambers at the Elk Grove Village village hall.
Supporters
bring you Rob Sherman Advocacy.
Click here to join them.
Village President Craig Johnson was a guest on the August, 2002, edition of the Rob Sherman Television Show to discuss his David-versus-Goliath battle to save his community from being devastated by plans to expand O'Hare Airport. The plan also included a proposal to build a western bypass for the Tri-State Tollway (Interstate 294) through the center of Elk Grove Village's most important industrial park, which would cause the demolition of hundreds of businesses and the destruction of thousands of jobs.
After taping the television show, the subject of invocations at government meetings came up. President Johnson (the city equivalent is Mayor) said that Elk Grove Village does do invocations before their Village Board meetings, but they don't discriminate against anybody. To prove it, he extended an invitation to me to present the invocation at an upcoming Village Board meeting. I accepted his invitation.
Elk Grove Village President Craig Johnson (seated) and Trustees
I was told that the schedule of presenters was set up by the office of the Village Manager. That office informed me that the schedule was set up on an annual basis, so I would be contacted around November, 2002, to set up a date for me to be the presenter.
Two months ago, just as they had promised, I was notified that the date for my presentation of the invocation would be January 14, 2003. I accepted that date, and look forward to making the presentation.
I assured President Johnson, in case he was concerned, that the presentation which I will make will be respectful and appropriate. He assured me that he trusted me to do so or he would never have extended the invitation.
This will be the first time in American history that an atheist will be giving the invocation at a government meeting. News of the historic occasion was carried in the Chicago suburbs' leading newspaper, the Daily Herald. The story was not included in the electronic edition of today's Daily Herald, so I've inserted a copy of the newsprint edition of the story, below.
This copy of the story ran on Page 3 of Section 1 of the Elk Grove Village edition of today's Daily Herald. A different, longer version appeared on Page 8 of Section 1 in editions of the Daily Herald that ran in other communities.
At the end of the Daily Herald story, there is a mention of the fact that the official agenda for the meeting lists me as "Reverend Rob Sherman." As somebody who does an extensive amount of word processing, I understand how that kind of an error can inadvertently occur.
In "template" word processing, you have a skeleton form that you use repeatedly. Liberal News & Commentary is done off of a template. Click here to view the Liberal News & Commentary shell edition. When I prepare an edition of LN&C, I open the shell, insert the rest of the name of the day, insert a number for the date, replace the word, "Title," with the title for the day and replace the word, "Text," with the text for that day's edition. I don't even look at the rest of the shell. I then save the new page under a unique URL for that day's edition.
Many other pages of this web site are prepared off of similar shells.
When the clerk prepares the text of the agenda for an upcoming Village Board meeting, she (or he) likely just inserts the name of the Invocation presenter in the usual spot, without wasting time to read all of the rest of the shell, each and every time. I'm sure the preparer of the agenda never even noticed that the word, "Reverend," was in there. She just focused on the spot where the name insertion goes, put the name in and went on to her next task. The oversight of leaving in the word, "Reverend," is no big deal if you understand how professional wordsmiths do template word processing.
Elk Grove Village is located just west of O'Hare Airport. If you'd like to attend the village board meeting when I present the invocation, Village Hall is located on the south side of Biesterfield Road / John F. Kennedy Boulevard, one block west of Arlington Heights Road and about a mile east of Illinois Route 53 / Interstate 290. Biesterfield / Kennedy is located a half mile north of Devon Avenue and a mile-and-a-half south of Oakton Street.
Come watch history be made on Tuesday, January 14th at 8:00 p.m.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
7410
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089-7410
A post office box is used
because
the street address uses a curb mail box,
which is not secure.
Telephone: (847) 870-0700
Fax: (847) 870-1156
E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com