8-10-2010 Meeting Minutes for Northern Wisconsin NORML

Meeting Minutes taken by Jessica Franke.  Regular meetings are currently being held at the Berlin Public Library in Berlin, Wisconsin.

Northern Wisconsin NORML Weekly Meeting – 8-10-2010 – 6:30pm

Jay opened the meeting talking about T-shirts. Someone ordered a shirt to see how they turn out and it looked fine so we are going to do a group order, ordering by next friday. So get your orders in, look at the website to see the different options. Should have them back by the 24th.

We need to find out who the guy in the picture from the 27th is.

Waushara Argus – discussed problems with the letters to editor

Discussed Cannabis Agenda podcast.

Madison NORML has no itinerary yet for the Harvest Fest – no idea who will be speaking when or when Jay will be speaking so stay tuned for that info.

40th Annual Harvest Fest – great lineup of speakers and candidates. Willie Nelson may even be persuaded to come play. Rumor has it he was supposed to play at Harvest Fest 17 years ago and will be in Milwaukee for Farm Aid that weekend so they are trying to see what they can do – help spread the word and get Willie’s attention!

This weekend – Augustfest – Wautoma – Jay will be in the Dunk the Politician booth so stop down and support him. There is no space for a vendor booth but we will come and hold the banner and pass out flyers. It will be Jay, Millheiser, and the two sheriff candidates in the dunk tank. Augustfest runs the whole day and there are other events. After that we are heading to Markesan’s city-wide Rummage Sale and Republican Meet & Greet.

There are many other events going on and anyone who would like to attend any events and promote us would be much appreciated.

Waushara County Fair – they are not getting back to us – if anyone can get in touch with them and confirm the booth

May be a special meeting the 24th with guest speakers.

Redgranite labor day festival

Fighting Bob Fest – Wisconsin NORML booth – we should try to go help / network / etc

Harvest Fest – we should be promoting it – the first weekend of october – if we can raise awareness and mobilize the state’s marijuana activists who normally might not realize this is going on.

Farm Aid is the same weekend as Harvest Fest so again, try to promote the rumor and try to get willie’s attention about speaking or singing at harvest fest.

Ripon fundraising concert September 18th (likely, but tentative)

Trying to bring LEAP back to speak at some point before the election. Mid-october weekend sometime. Where, still to be decided.

Wisconsin’s True Cost / Potential Revenue – probation costs – incarceration – etc etc etc – we need people to do some research and compile some data about this that we can reference.

Justice Department Statistics, etc. should provide this information but it would be nice to have the information, but we have limited people / time / resources so perhaps when people ask for those numbers we should be asking them to bring us their numbers instead?

Jay is wondering if there is truly any way to even get the true cost of the drug war – there are so many facets to the problem.

Members said that they did feel that the numbers are important to some degree – even if they’re outdated or vague, it gets people’s attention. Jay says he prefers to use the big nationwide numbers instead.

Another member suggested using ratios rather than numbers.

Jay told us about a story he found about farmers in 1917 using a hemp diesel generators. Alot of farmers do the same today with corn and don’t realize hemp could be used instead.

It was pointed out that the problem is that no one ever asks us in a direct manner – as voters / taxpayers they don’t give us a chance to weigh the facts and vote with all of the information on these topics.

A member pointed out that prisons, etc employ a lot of people who would be out of work in the event that we changed the marijuana laws and reduced our prison population.

We discussed the idea of getting a volunteer to contact universities in WI to ask if any sociology or other departments would have that data or be able to get it for us.

Thursday afternoon Jim Langer is going to come down (independent governor candidate) and go door to door and campaign with Jay. Jay gave an overview of his contact with Jim Langer.