6-28-10 Meeting Minutes for Northern WI NORML

6-28-2010 Northern WI NORML Meeting Minutes

2 new members attended the meeting today.

Treasurer’s account: $300

Jay suggested that we consider a classified ad or other type of advertising for the meetings. Jan suggested that instead of paying for an ad, we should add our meeting event times to free calendars of events.

We took a moment to discuss meeting times and dates and Jay pointed out that we need to add our meeting dates/times to our flyers. He handed out a copy to each member and asked us to look them over and discuss changes so that we can make our revisions. Jan suggested that we change our meeting dates/times so that the 1st/3rd week of the month we meet in the daytime, and the 2nd/4th week of the month, we meet in the evening. That way we can make a universal flyer that never “expires”. We discussed the flyer should have the library phone number on it as well. Also, strike “brand new”. Also, we need to define “NORML” on the flyer as “National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for those who don’t know what NORML is. Gail thinks that the headline on the flyer should be something along the lines of “Educate yourself – learn the truth about hemp and cannabis”.

Jessica suggested that we start to differentiate more between medical marijuana, industrial hemp, and recreational cannabis, in order to better educate the public. We had a discussion about this and about what the distinctions between the three are. This led to a discussion of “smoking” and how many people are opposed to smoking ANY substance, and don’t realize that you can eat and drink marijuana rather than smoking it. Jay educated us about some of the history of government studies and proposed bills.

Rich is going to try to get Jay up in front of the Rotary club in appleton. We also discussed the possibility of either inviting other groups to visit our meetings, or visiting the meetings of other groups. Jay pointed out that we don’t want to “invade” another group but maybe come in as a speaker. We also discussed maybe senior centers, other rotary clubs, organic gardening clubs, open mic nights, bars, and other types of venues. The Ripon Rotary club has about 6 months worth of stuff scheduled already, and some organizations only give their presentation time to members and not outsiders. So if we can find any members of these organizations who can give us an “in” maybe it could help. Jay also mentioned a brat fry at Pick N Save.

July 3rd, Mt. Morris parade – 11am. Laura has it covered. She is volunteering there and is not an official entry in the parade but they did state she was allowed to hand out flyers for NORML while she is volunteering.

Jay told us about some of the supporters that we have found in Markesan after the parade, and we discussed how to try and get people to come – offer “high rewards” like shirts, necklaces, etc.

Jan mentioned we should not give out solid numbers about how much per acre corn, hemp, and other crops cost. Farmers know better than we do what they stand to make on their land and their crops. We just want to show them how versatile hemp and cannabis are, and they can figure out which way(s) they want to use it. We should focus on how fast it grows, etc.

Jay said that our T-shirt vendors backed out on us – first, they only do one color, second, the designs they came up with were not very good and were kind of expensive. Laura volunteered to find another printer around fond du lac somewhere.

Fox River Days in Berlin – they have not returned Jay’s offer of help although they are still advertising that they need volunteers – we can assume they don’t care for our help.

Laura is still prepping her car for the demo derby at the end of august. We discussed auctioning off the privilege of driving the car in the demo derby. We need to work on that.

Jay will, in the future, be traveling to wautoma, to try and help them start their own chapter.

Jay is willing to travel to the city hall with anyone who wants to start a referendum in their city.

Jay would like to ask everyone to write to the Berlin Journal – send in Sound Offs about hemp, cannabis, marijuana, etc.

He also discussed talking to new people about these topics – when you are out getting your hair done, or running errands, shopping, etc., whenever you have an opportunity to discuss it, do try to educate others and invite them to our meetings to learn more.

Meeting Adjourned 7:34pm