Buddhist Political Action Committee ???

[J-Bird]

Hello all,
I wanted to get some thoughts from the community here about the prospect of a Buddhist caucus.
I have always been a proponent of "engaged Buddhism" in one form or another, and have felt that if Dharma is to really take root in America, the community should at some point become more politically active.

Thus comes the concept of some type of Buddhist PAC. Consider this...

In 2007 the first Buddhism congressman & women were sworn into office.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007 ... nto-a-bar/

The estimated Buddhist population in the United States is estimated at .7% by the PEW forum on religion & life. That doesn't seem like much, but consider this. It is more than the estimated Muslim population reported by the same study, and is roughly the same as the number of reformed Jews. When you think about the amount of political influence the Jewish community has in the United States, and look at their representative population size, I think it shows that Buddhists could also impact the political process if we were organized well.

Why haven't we as a community gotten more organized? Most Buddhists I know in the US have strong political views, but it seems we are not yet effective in relaying the importance of our values to our representatives ?

[alwayson]

I'm in.

But are you sure there isn't one already?