bahmani

After a solid thrashing by a reader KABRIAT on one of my many pieces railing against NIAC should do this, and NIAC isn't that, and so on, I finally decided to Take K's "advice" and do as I was told, and go find out for myself, so I joined NIAC. $50 level.

The process was quite simple. You fill out a registration form, and pay with a credit card. After that you are taken to a survey in which you are asked what you think NIAC's top priorities ought to be. The choices were stacked based on what NIAC is doing already, so things like, stopping war, sanctions and so on. Each choice did have a "other" field which I filled in as I would like.

Since I don't want to be accused of trying to convince you, I will keep what I want NIAC to do private. Join yourself if you want.

The system was secure, but I have no idea what happened to my survey and feedback form. I assume they got it and will look at it as part of their new member process.

Within a refresh of Gmail, my automatic welcome message from Nobar Elmi, the Director of Community Outreach & Programming, was in my inbox. Here's what it said;

"Dear Bruce,

Welcome to NIAC! Thank you for making an investment in the wellbeing of the Iranian-American community. By becoming a member, you are joining the largest Iranian-American grassroots organization and will have access to important members-only events and activities, such as our annual membership survey and our Leadership Day in Washington, DC. More importantly, by joining NIAC you’re helping us in our efforts to empower the Iranian-American community.

Thank you again for your support. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

Nobar Elmi
Director of Community Outreach & Programming"

Not bad. Nothing wrong with that at all.

After I signed in, I was able to update my profile and make any changes, and also to see a members-only section of the website called "The NIAC Dish". The docket of events, actions, and activities that NIAC was working on or had accomplished. None of the items had dates, so it was hard to see if these were old or new or what. I did not have a problem with any of the items on it really.

Most of the items on the Dish were old and it looked like the page had not ben updated in a while. Possibly as old as 2010. It is 2012 now.

They had a comment section, so I left this one;

"Are there plans to engage Iran in the same way as we engage the US politicians and lawmakers? Are we unable to say, contact Khamenei and sway him for Iran's bad foreign policy positions that have caused the US and the world to react by imposing these sanctions, just as we attempt to sway president Obama?"

No answer yet.

Today I got an invitation to a NIAC members-only event in California, where I live. But I am in DC now, on a work project, so I changed my address to DC, to see if they pick up on that, and start to send me DC events. I would really like to go to one of those and see how things really work up close at HQ.

Later, B