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Who We Are

Preamble to the Constitution
of the American Legion

For god and country we associate ourselves together for the following purposes:

To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism; to preserve the memories and incidents of our associations in the great wars; to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state and nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the master of might; to promote peace and goodwill on earth; to safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy; to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness.

The American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic, mutual-help war-time veteran’s organization. The American Legion is a community-service organization which now numbers nearly 3 million members – men and woman – nearly 15,000 American Legion Posts worldwide. These Posts are organized into 55 Departments – one each for the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, France, Mexico and the Philippines.

The American Legion’s national headquarters is in Indianapolis, Indiana, with additional offices in Washington, DC. In addition thousands of volunteers serving in leadership and program implementation capacities in local communities to the Legion’s standing national commissions and committees, the national organization has a regular full-time staff of about 300 employees.

On the Department level (California) located in San Francisco. The Department of California has a full time staff of about a half dozen people along with the Department Commander and Adjutant. The next level down would be Area level; we are part of the 6^th Area, which encompasses just about all of southern California population south of Bakersfield.

The 6^th Area is headed up by Department Vice-Commander, which is elected during the annual Department convention. The next level would be District of which we here at Post 283 are part of the 24^th District, which takes in most of the Los Angeles county. This segment of the Legion is headed up by a Commander elected by the Posts (13) that make up the District.

There are 13 American Legion Posts in the 24^th District including Post 283.

The 6^th Area is made up of four Districts 24^th, 20^th, 18^th & 16^th;
which in turn is made up of 82 Posts.

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