Read a Feb. 21, 2009, Tampa Bay Times story about two wrongful-death lawsuits dealing with Scientology’s stance on psychiatry. One has been settled; the other was just recently filed.

Read a Jan. 30, 2005, Buffalo News article (posted by RickRoss.com) about the Cult Awareness Network. According to the article, the network was sued numerous times by Scientologists. Later, individual Scientologists bought the network after it was driven into bankruptcy; the network no longer considers Scientology a cult, the story says.

Read a March 3, 2009, Los Angeles Times article (posted by RickRoss.com) about a new Riverside County, Calif., law limiting protests outside the Church of Scientology’s Golden Era studio complex. Some say the law violates the First Amendment.

Read a May 11, 2009, Los Angeles Times article about the hacker behind the 2008 cyber-attack on Church of Scientology websites.

The West Coast Poverty Center is based at the University of Washington. Jennifer Romich is director as well as professor of social work and public affairs.

Russell Powell is associate professor of law at Seattle University. His expertise includes comparative religious jurisprudence, with particular interests in Catholic social thought and Islamic legal theory.

Greg Duncan is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine. He has published extensively on welfare and poverty, including (as co-author) Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children and (as co-editor) For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families.

Angela Glover Blackwell is founder and CEO of PolicyLink, a national research institute in Oakland, Calif., that works for economic and social equity. She is a lawyer and well-known advocate on issues of poverty, race and the role of faith.

The Coalition for Compassion and Justice, based in Prescott, Ariz., helps meet the needs of people in poverty. Contact executive director Paul Mitchell.