[Noisebridge-discuss] Bay Area Renter's Federation @ Noisebridge

[yar]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 9:09 AM, subbes <subbes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would hosting a rent/housing/construction policy teach-in and debate - with
> representation from multiple viewpoints - at NB fall afoul of the "political
> events jeopardize our 503(c)" issue?
>
> Law experts pls weigh in.

It won't. Most of us are used to a broad understanding of politics -
"the personal is political" - but the government defines politics very
narrowly, to mean advocating for a specific political candidate, party
or ballot measure. Almost everything that we call politics, the
government calls "educational", which is one of the catch-all
categories that nonprofit law is specifically meant to include. So I
wouldn't worry about that.

I personally hate SFBARF with a passion. There are some smart people I
respect in SFBARF, and they're the ones pushing to focus on fighting
NIMBYs for dense market-rate housing only in very wealthy
neighborhoods (Hillsborough, Atherton, Cupertino, Orinda) while
leaving poor neighborhoods alone. But they will never succeed. SFBARF
will continue pulling its sleight of hand by taking policies which
should be limited to rich peoples' neighborhoods, insisting they be
applied in everybody's neighborhood, and then fighting for it in a way
that will only ever succeed in poor peoples' neighborhoods, leading to
actual displacement, no significant change in the supply-demand
equation, no dent in the power or land-use patterns of the biggest
NIMBYs, and accelerating rich-straight-white-dude-ification of the
whole Bay Area, whether they like it or not.

But no, I don't think it will threaten your 501c3 status.