Secretary's Report of well-attended Annual Meeting at 1st VP Rev. Don Swerdfeger's condo in Hilo last week:   Following a lively discussion, here are the major decisions of the Board:

1. Present Board & Officers will continue to serve in their respective posts (see main Web page for details)   2. AU-Hawaii will continue its current "passive" mode, subject to Oahu members stepping forward to take over the organization. By "passive," we mean that we maintain an AU presence in Hawaii, do our usual letters-to-the-editors, keep alert to Right-wing shenanigans to subvert our constitution, send in testimony to the legislature as suggested by AU-national professional staff, encourage folks to join AU and support our national agenda to protect the Constitution of the United States.  3. "Under God" discussion: The Hawaii Board took no action to support a suggestion by national AU to take legal action to remove the "Under God" reference to the Pledge of Allegiance. The Hawaii Board understands that there are ample Supreme Court findings to the effect that the reference is not necessarily a proselytizing effort to compell all Americans to adhere to a belief of a monotheistic religion or any religion.   4. Treasurer Bob Akamine reported that we have about $500 in our treasury, sufficient to pay for postage and printing of our occasional hardcopy newsletter which is mailed to paid-up members. An additional $100 from long-time supporter and Patriot, Alice Fisher, is forthcoming.

We considered sending back half of our treasury to AU-national, but after discussion, decided to hold any surplus, for now.

Attention: paid-up members: The deadline for articles for our next hardcopy newsletter is Feb. 15. Send items to the usual address (see last newsletter for details). Our main Oahu contact remains board member Jim Brill.   Respectfully submitted,

Anson, your humble secretaryPosted Jan. 31, 2004