Subject: CnbsCL> **OCTA Update**Help needed**
Dear activists:
Please help us restore hemp!
We are organizing an Oregon petition drive to put the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act (OCTA) on the November 2, 1998 ballot in Oregon and win the election.
OCTA will license farmers to cultivate and process the commercial production of marijuana and sell it at cost through pharmacies to medical patients with doctor's prescriptions, regulate and tax the recreational sale of marijuana through Oregon's state liquor stores, allow adults to grow cannabis for their own noncommercial, personal use and allow industrial hemp to be cultivated for paper, cloth, cordage, building materials, food, oil and energy.
We now have over 17,000 signatures held in Portland by our treasurer, chief petitioner and attorney, Paul Loney; we need 73,261 registered Oregon voters' signatures by July 1998 to qualify OCTA for a state vote, which means we need over 100,000 raw Oregonians' signatures to ensure qualification.
What we're working on now:
Within the next two months our political group, Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp (CRRH,) will again be organizing paid petitioning for the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act , mailing out over 4,000 pieces of mail, printing 30,000 petitions and other things on printing presses located at our office, selling more ads for our next Hemp News newspaper (the oldest electronic magazine on the web too/ since 1992,) laying out our next Hemp News newspaper, inserting 20,000 petitions into our next issue of Hemp News, designing state-of-the-art video streaming web pages with a wide assortment of TV programs available on demand (have you seen the videos at www.crrh.org now?), video taping our own current cable TV series (Cannabis Common Sense) in Portland, shipping our cable TV tapes to other cable systems in Oregon, putting all of our financial data except contributors' names on the internet for all to inspect (with weekly updates,) paying our bills and carrying on our current activities.
Our current activities include volunteers staffing our office daily from 10 AM-3 PM, databasing names and numbers, calling people, clerical tasks, stuffing envelopes, taping our cable TV series, and, of course, earning enough money somewhere else to finance our lives and our volunteer political activism.
Over the last six months CRRH has:
1. Mounted a lobbying campaign against the recriminalization of possession of small amounts of cannabis in our legislature that was the largest pro-cannabis lobbying effort in Oregon in over 20 years. The legislature's and governor's offices said our phone calls, letters and faxes were running 20 to one over those from the anti-cannabis ilk.
2. Invited national funders to Oregon to help stop the recriminalization of small amounts of cannabis. They came and, working together, funded polling in the closing days of the legislature, lobbying of the governor and a successful referendum that stopped the implementation of the recriminalization of under an ounce of marijuana. We met with them and provided their lobbyists, strategists and other activists with key data and assistance throughout the state legislative session and in setting up the successful referendum drive.
3. Gathered over a thousand referendum signatures that we donated on the first unsuccessful referendum, tried to get the two referendum groups to work together at the last moment after things between them had fallen apart, then gathered more signatures that we donated on the new successful referendum. Hurray! We stopped the recriminalization of marijuana by forcing it to the ballot on November 2, 1998 and we won the first real victory for our side in Oregon since we put OMI on the ballot in 1985. We finally sent these Republican drug warriors and corrupt police lobbyists a message that we, the people, aren't going to take any more of this misguided civil war on our civil liberties!
4. Collected over 12,000 signatures on OCTA. We have over 17,000 OCTA signatures turned into our office now. We need 105,000 to qualify OCTA by next July for a vote November 2, 1998.
5. Received pledges to pay OCTA petitioners.
6. Been donated use of a powerful Unix workstation (Sun Sparc 10 with Solaris,) video digitizing equipment, three printing presses and a plate maker at our office and a T3 connection to the internet at a state university through our student group (and eternal kudos to our other current web donor: Steve at TerraCore Communications .)7. Put out two new issues of Hemp News publications on the world-wide web, printed one 20,000 issue run of Hemp News newspaper (with another printed newspaper and e-mag out soon,) added some video clips to our web site already, made our volunteer petitions downloadable and printable from the web at homes, schools and libraries, had the world's leading activist web site, Web Active, list our web site and had our Hemp News archives mirrored on the web in the Netherlands at Drug Text.
8. Recruited the largest student group, the Student Hemp Advocacy Group (60 registered members,) at the second largest university in the state, Portland State University.
9. Helped the American Anti-Prohibition League with their booth at the Portland Saturday Market and helped them print and gather signatures for the Oregon Drugs Control Amendment (ODCA.)
10. Produced and aired 22 episodes of Cannabis Common Sense, our 30 minute weekly cable access TV show with Paul Loney and D. Paul Stanford, as hosts. And much more.
Within the last two weeks CRRH has:
1. Databased over a thousand names.
2. Staffed our office for most working hours and welcomed Bruce House, who is staffing the office daily from 10 AM to 3 PM.
3. Begun to catch up on a huge back-log of grunt work.
4. Sold ads for our newspaper, Hemp News.
5. Updated our web pages and had Hemp News linked to by the Electronic Newstand, Link Exchange and more.
6. Been editing the next issue of Hemp News.
7. Printed and prepared over 2,500 OCTA petitions and over 2,500 ODCA petitions.
8. Prepared to mail 1,400 pieces and more.
Within the next two weeks CRRH will:
1. Mail out 1,400 pieces of mail.
2. Work to implement systems to pay petitioners from pledges.
3. Print 25,000 OCTA petitions and some other things.
4. Sell more advertising for our newspaper and maybe start selling advertising for our web sites. Do you want to advertise?
5. Finish editing, put up the next issue of Hemp News on the internet and print 20,000 Hemp News newspapers.
6. Buy a new little, cheap $10 cable for our Sun workstation server so we can fix it and begin streaming our cable TV program on the web on demand, along with other innovative programming at .7. Telephone to organize volunteers and try to raise money.
8. Staff our office daily, at least from 10 AM to 3 PM.
9. Prepare to do another 3,000 piece mailing.
10. Begin paying our bills with contributions and advertising profits.
CRRH is thinking about further organizing:
1. A state-wide Oregon medical marijuana and industrial hemp initiative.
What do you think?
2. Another bi-monthly live call-in TV show, in addition to Cannabis Common Sense, our current pre-recorded weekly thirty minute TV show.
3. To raise money to pay our bills and petitioners. Can you help?
4. To pay people when we have money in the bank and pay commissions to those that raise funds.
5. To pay to broadcast commercials and infomercials.
6. More grandiose and progressive plans.
7. To sort all this stuff out and build the best political movement we ever saw.
To use our fellow activist Bill D's line that he used while tabling this summer, "WE NEED YOUR BODIES AND WE NEED YOUR MONEY!" We need your time. We need your money. We need your heads and your hearts. We need a small fortune to put this on the ballot and win. We need you to help.
Gee, with all this neat stuff going on, surely you can find some way that you can help OCTA change the world. Maybe your into learning about printing presses, or you could do data basing and data entry, do financial stuff in nifty spreadsheet programs, bookkeeping and accounting, call up people and ask them for their time and/or money, sell advertising, organize volunteer(s) and/or paid petitioners, digitize videos, design web pages, help around the Portland office, raise money, stuff envelopes, help produce and tape our TV shows, design graphics, edit stuff, lay out newspapers, set up your own community gig, help us at our annual traditional New Year's Eve party/ Earth Day event and other fund raisers, put up posters, set up and staff a booth, or a phone tree or anything else you can think of. If you sell advertising or raise money, you can earn a commission. When we have everything ready, we'll be hiring paid petitioners too. Please help! Please?
"WE NEED YOUR BODIES AND WE NEED YOUR MONEY!" But hey, we'll be happy if you do anything! We aren't picky. We're always grateful for anything and glad to do what we can. Help us carry on this vital work!
We need your help.
We are in debt. CRRH owes about $1,500 to a half dozen different people and the phone company. CRRH is owed $500+ by an ex-landlord who continued to debit his rent from our checking account for several months after we moved out of his building. CRRH has some pledges, but, of course, we need more.
Maybe you can only give some money. That is just what we need. If so, please just do it. We NEED it! We'll use it to pay our petitioners and pay our bills. Make a pledge and we'll send you an envelope to mail it back right away. Or just send it in. Please, just do it. Don't delay because we need it right away.
Maybe you really want to see one or more of the projects listed above done, or that seems like something you might enjoy and you just want to work on that. Great! Let's do it.
Maybe you have some other ideas. Maybe we can help. Let's talk.
Our main focus, out of necessity, is to raise money to pay our bills and pay petitioners. Please give. Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?
"WE NEED YOUR BODIES AND WE NEED YOUR MONEY!" We want the people of our state to vote on the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act.
We've done a lot. We've won a few battles at last. After the long winter of struggle against the financial clout and propaganda of the pro-war, drug abuse industrial complex, a thaw has begun: our referendum qualified and stopped the drug pro-warriors dead in their tracks, medical initiatives have passed in California and Arizona, a vote this November 4th on medical use in Washington State; peristroika American style. Add your contribution to the light, toward the Spring, and let's walk together into a bright future of freedom and justice. Join in and help us fully turn the tide against the drug war machine.
Freedom isn't free. Add your voice to the struggle for rights. Donate! Help us!
As the anthropologist Margaret Meade once said, "Don't think that a small group of dedicated people can't change the world because it is the only thing that ever has."
In solidarity for a better future, please help the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp!
Restore Hemp!
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Please support the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act (OCTA)!
OCTA would regulate cannabis sales in Oregon's state package stores, allow doctors to prescribe cannabis and allow farmers to grow hemp for industrial production of thousands of products, from cloth and paper to food and energy.
OCTA will raise hundreds of millions of dollars in state revenue.
OCTA is a initiative petition, sponsored by our political committee,
"Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp."
CRRH; P.O. Box 86741;
Portland, OR 97286
Phone:(503) 235-4606
Fax:(503) 235-0120
Web: http://www.crrh.org/
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