08-09-2012 Meeting Minutes for Northern Wisconsin NORML

8-9-12 Meeting Minutes for Northern WI NORML

Rich Martin called the meeting to order at 5:55pm

Roll Call:
Rich Martin – Present
Jay Selthofner – Present
Norml NOX – Present
Jessica Franke – Present
Brian Halsley – Not Present

Rich opened the floor for public comments.

Linda and Dani discussed the Moms for Marijuana Quilt and a Northern WI NORML entry for Wisconsin. Jay, the Treasurer, stated that we can have $30 set aside for the fabric and materials. Linda will chair the project, and has already filled out the form online. Jay also filled out the form. Yet the Wisconsin slot on their website is not filled – Linda will follow through with that. Linda, Dani, Elizabeth, Jessica will work on the project.

Elizabeth also discussed the Big Green Sustainable Music Fest and the Big Green Market. She wants to chair the project herself, but she would like someone to help her with it and to come down with her that day. She is still working out the details. Rich and Nox can provide her with tents and other materials needed. She got 2 volunteers, new members, who she will coordinate with.

Jay Selthofner gave the Treasurer’s Report

We only had 4 new members for the month of July. 2 of them came from the last meeting. All donations came through one source. We need to drum up new members and donations.

Rich moved on to Merchandise. We discussed Dana Beal briefly. Before Dana left, Jay had him autograph some of his T-shirts. Jay wants to use them for fundraising, where we would split the profits with him 50/50. Dana is really hurting for money right now, needs to fly in experts for his trial and other things, so Jay thinks we should do some kind of fundraising project to help in any way that we can. All present agreed.

Rubber Bracelets – we had discussed at the last meeting that we needed to get more rubber bracelets before Harvest Fest. No one took over that project. This time, Linda has volunteered to take over the project. Suggestions for slogans are needed.

Next item on the agenda is the Introductory Activist Guide, created by Selthofner Consulting, which we will post on the website when it is complete. Jay gave a brief overview of the guide for newcomers. It is a very professional looking trifold design.

Steering Committee: we need members to join our steering committee. Jay discussed the benefits of joining the steering committees of not only our own chapter, but other chapters as well. We can be inspired by what the other chapters are doing and try some of their ideas ourselves.

New Business: Rich informed the group that Rich and Jessie attended the Madison planning meeting for Harvest Fest a few weeks ago. The Madison NORML and other crews there last year told us that we had the best booth. However that doesn’t mean we can’t be EVEN BETTER this year! We want to disseminate information, but we also want people to come over and see what we’re doing. Rich wanted to have a game or some kind of attention-grabbing event at our booth this year. He asked for ideas. Elizabeth had an idea that she described, a game that gets people to answer questions about the uses of hemp. We will continue to ask for ideas and at the next meeting, hopefully we can get our plan finalized by then. Jay pointed out that we need many more volunteers this year. We need people to walk in the crowd and call people over, etc. Rich pointed out that now is the time to make posters. Start thinking about ideas now! We need volunteers to help make signs that we can hand out at Harvest Fest before the march to the capital.

There will be a Pre Harvest Fest Disc Golf fundraiser to pay for the insurance for Harvest Fest. We had a discussion regarding the fundraiser. Do we, as a chapter, spend our donation towards the fundraiser, or towards the insurance directly? We can only afford to do one. We were just about unanimous saying that we would prefer to support the insurance, not the disc golf event, with our cash for the best impact.

At 6:30, Penny Bernard Schaber came upstairs and spoke to us briefly regarding medical marijuana. She is well informed and supportive of our cause. In her opinion, the biggest obstacle right now is that, because cannabis is a schedule 1 drug, it cannot be studied adequately in order to prove the medical effectiveness of it for so many conditions. Jay asked her a couple of questions and will send her some additional information to follow up. She stressed that WE, as NORML, need to educate the public because the general perception of doctors, educators, parents and others are that Marijuana is a “gateway drug”. They are completely unaware that the Gateway Theory was officially disproven and is not correct – the public needs to be educated so that they will understand why MMJ is effective rather than harmful. We need to show them that it’s not addictive and that it’s not a gateway to other drugs. She spent about 20 minutes speaking to us and invited us down to her listening sessions any time.

Rich discussed meeting the Kottonmouth Kings (famous cannabis band) in Milwaukee a couple of days ago. There is a picture of him with them up on facebook. We ask all members that if they are aware of any 420 friendly bands that are coming to the area, they let us know so we can try to meet them if any of our members want to go and represent NORML at their concerts.

Elizabeth has volunteered to be a contact (chair?) for the Big Green Sustainable Music Festival on August 18th. They had asked Jay to speak but that date doesn’t work for him. However having a NORML booth there is a great idea. She is meeting with these people tomorrow. Linda and Dani volunteered to help her with this. So did the two new members.

Rich briefly discussed the Wisconsin Drug Law Planning meeting that Rich and Jessie attended in Madison last weekend. We had discussed removing the felony status for a 2nd offense. We also discussed the DUID laws. Rich brought up that the current drugged driving tests, only test for metabolites (which are the leftovers after cannabis has been metabolized). However Active Delta 9’s, which show whether you are actually high at the moment of testing, are the only valid way of telling whether you are guilty of Drugged Driving. We need to make sure that this is part of the legislation.

Jay discussed that we have 33 senators, 99 assembly reps. We have 99 areas of Wisconsin that we need to cover. He thinks someone needs to head a project to make up an info sheet about each district so that residents of each district can easily print their own flyers with tear-off tabs with the phone numbers of the reps on each sheet. This way we can look at Google Analytics and see which districts have lots of clicks, which districts have no clicks, and figure out where our time and effort needs to be spent on education and events. We need someone to take over this project and create 99 documents and then just add the name / picture / phone number… this should not be started until immediately after the elections in November. Please let us know if you want to volunteer for this project.

August 30th (thursday) there is a controlled substances board meeting in Madison. The meeting will be a couple hours long, very boring, has to do with ALL drugs not just cannabis, and then at the end, each citizen who wants to will get 60 seconds of public comment time. We have tried to have a cannabis activist at every meeting to make sure they know we are paying attention. If you plan on speaking, please wear professional suit/tie clothing. If not speaking, then wearing your cannabis activist shirts is fine.

There was a last call for comments or chapter business. There were no comments.
Jay adjourned the meeting at 7:22pm.