11-09-2010 Northern NORML Wisconsin Meeting Minutes

11-9-2010 Northern Wisconsin NORML Meeting Minutes

We opened the meeting with a discussion about the elections and the Marijuana positive candidates.

Jay brought up the point that 4 monthly meetings sound daunting to some people. It may give the impression that we are too work oriented or too serious – meeting weekly at the library is not drawing the attentiont from the community that we need in order to draw new members in.

He thinks that we should come up with social gatherings and other community events to get new members to come

Our call to action over the next month or two is to write, call, email your legislators and make them take notice of important issues. Lame Duck Session.

We discussed several possibilities, for example Jay suggested that we could tell people to spend an hour talking to strangers about Marijuana on Tuesdays instead of weekly meetings

Jody and I expressed our extreme unlikelyness of approaching strangers. We decided to keep the meetings for now and use them to brainstorm and role-play about how to talk about these issues without fear or at least with less fear.

We discussed the possibility of booking the Four Corners for a concert or dinner in the near future.

Business Cards – we will order some very generic business cards that any member can give out.

Merchandise: we are going to order gold leaf pins and NORML lighters to use for fundraising.

Jennifer asked if we could get green lighters instead of white – we will look into the different options before making a final decision and see if it’s cost effective.

Jay discussed the Dane County and River Falls medical marijuana referendums.

We don’t want to turn the Republicans off to the issue since they are now the majority. In some places they are taking the approach that we have to slide the bills through in the lame duck session before the republicans get in …. instead we should take the stance that these are bipartisan issues and even Republican issues at core in some ways.

Midwest Cultivator – they sent them to the wrong address but will have them soon. Richard Martin had an interview with them that went well, and Jay of course was in the Voter guide.

We closed the meeting with Jay discussing new members – with the number of Jay supporers who voted in the election, we know that there are many supporters of the issue in the local areas. We need to find and engage them.

We also need donations. Note to Jessie – make a button with auto-donations (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc).

Jay brought up a very good point – why isn’t someone suing the federal gov’t over the loss of income, loss of business, loss of freedom, etc that occurs when the gov’t prohibits Marijuana and Hemp from being cultivated, used, etc.

Jennifer asked about making a fact sheet & script with legislator information – Jay will work on it.

Jay handed out the Bucky Badger logo – find out if people want shirts so we can order them and what size etc. There is a bin of them of all different sizes – going fast!