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New ideas for the Metro Detroit area from todays meeting.

Michigander

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Well, it was a good and productive meeting we had today. Thanks to all who came out or showed interest.

The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm ways to expand in Detroit and the surrounding counties. Certainly we're not detaching ourselves from the rest of the state (in fact we're not setting up any specific boundaries) only establishing that we are going to have increased activity in our locality, in addition to all other state wide activities we're already involved in. The reasons are that this is where most people live in Michigan, and this is also where the most anti gun sentiment exists, so we who live around here need to step up our efforts.

The consensus we reached is that we will be doing meetings every 3 weeks, always on Sunday. That way we can avoid doing things on the same weekend as the radio show, and meet on the day almost everyone is available.

We talked about many key points, and I took notes, so here are the highlights of our ideas for the future:

We could do litter clean ups, perhaps even through the adopt a highway program. Also maybe graffiti clean ups, but that is a bit more complicated.

I missed the initial thread on this, but someone here has a billboard on their front lawn that we could either paint, or get a banner to cover.

We talked about standing meetings, that is once every month or so having at least a few people come out to a certain location, so that if anyone new to OCing would like to speak to someone about the details in person, it could be done there.

We could go to car shows and cruises like the Telegraph and Woodward cruises, and any others in the area.

We could try to get permission to march in parades, carrying a banner while having people on either side passing out fliers.

Other events like Arts Beats and Eats, or the freedom fest are easy to go to.

Also discussed were having future meetings in the following locations: At a park behind the Plymouth Canton PD, Addison Oaks, Garden City Park, and the Fire and Ice Cafe in Westland.

Lastly, we decided it might be a good idea to compile a list of businesses that go out of their way to welcome OCers. Imagine how nice it would be to have a list of places that invited OCers, and we could even go as far as to put on fliers that business owners can join the site and post on a business thread that they welcome us. That system could benefit everyone.



The idea here is not that me, or anyone else specifically from the group will be organizing all of this, but that each of us needs to step up to the plate and pick one or more of these activities to go set up.

What I'm going to do is check my calendar, and make a list of every third sunday for the next 6+ months, and post that either here or elsewhere to use as an easy to edit and quickly referable to event schedule for the upcoming events we are planning. This will be a rather crude/simplistic system, and we discussed web programs that exist to shedule things in a nicer maner, so if someone else wants to figure that out, please do.

Any ideas, criticism, offers of help arrange some of these things, or points from the meeting I forgot to bring up, are much appreciated. If you see something from this list of ideas that you like, or if you can think of another idea, PLEASE go ahead and set it up!
 

Michigander

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Here we go. Obviously some of these won't end up working because of various conflicting events and things, but sticking to every 3rd sunday as much as possible could give us a pretty good schedule.

March 1st

March 22

April 12

May 3

May 24

June 14

July 5

July 26

August 16

September 6

September 27

October 18

November 8

November 29

December 20


I sort of like this system because it's easy to put details on, and to copy and paste as needed. It gives a solid and instant look at what's going on. But like I said, please feel free and encouraged to arrange a nicer system if desired.
 

Michigander

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Well, if you guys can get that going, sweet. :)

I've been doing some research about graffiti clean ups. It appears that painting is usually what has to be done, but sometimes power washing is needed too.

It seems pretty simple. Get permission from cities or property owners to clean up graffiti, get donations of paint or have property owners pay for it, then show up and take care of it. The thing I'd like to know is if it would be tax deductible for stores to donate paint. Trying to get media attention is of course also a goal. In any case, I like the idea, and I'm going to be further looking into it, and probably trying to schedule some graffiti cleanings coming up in the warmer months.
 

taxwhat

Regular Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2008
Messages
800
Location
S E Michgan all mine, Michigan, USA
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Michigander wrote:
Well, it was a good and productive meeting we had today. Thanks to all who came out or showed interest.

The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm ways to expand in Detroit and the surrounding counties. Certainly we're not detaching ourselves from the rest of the state (in fact we're not setting up any specific boundaries) only establishing that we are going to have increased activity in our locality, in addition to all other state wide activities we're already involved in. The reasons are that this is where most people live in Michigan, and this is also where the most anti gun sentiment exists, so we who live around here need to step up our efforts.

The consensus we reached is that we will be doing meetings every 3 weeks, always on Sunday. That way we can avoid doing things on the same weekend as the radio show, and meet on the day almost everyone is available.

We talked about many key points, and I took notes, so here are the highlights of our ideas for the future:

We could do litter clean ups, perhaps even through the adopt a highway program. Also maybe graffiti clean ups, but that is a bit more complicated.

I missed the initial thread on this, but someone here has a billboard on their front lawn that we could either paint, or get a banner to cover.

We talked about standing meetings, that is once every month or so having at least a few people come out to a certain location, so that if anyone new to OCing would like to speak to someone about the details in person, it could be done there.

We could go to car shows and cruises like the Telegraph and Woodward cruises, and any others in the area.

We could try to get permission to march in parades, carrying a banner while having people on either side passing out fliers.

Other events like Arts Beats and Eats, or the freedom fest are easy to go to.

Also discussed were having future meetings in the following locations: At a park behind the Plymouth Canton PD, Addison Oaks, Garden City Park, and the Fire and Ice Cafe in Westland.

Lastly, we decided it might be a good idea to compile a list of businesses that go out of their way to welcome OCers. Imagine how nice it would be to have a list of places that invited OCers, and we could even go as far as to put on fliers that business owners can join the site and post on a business thread that they welcome us. That system could benefit everyone.



The idea here is not that me, or anyone else specifically from the group will be organizing all of this, but that each of us needs to step up to the plate and pick one or more of these activities to go set up.

What I'm going to do is check my calendar, and make a list of every third sunday for the next 6+ months, and post that either here or elsewhere to use as an easy to edit and quickly referable to event schedule for the upcoming events we are planning. This will be a rather crude/simplistic system, and we discussed web programs that exist to shedule things in a nicer maner, so if someone else wants to figure that out, please do.

Any ideas, criticism, offers of help arrange some of these things, or points from the meeting I forgot to bring up, are much appreciated. If you see something from this list of ideas that you like, or if you can think of another idea, PLEASE go ahead and set it up!
Great Job ! BJ is busting his chops trying to form non-profit little help for him .The Idea of BIG public Q and A in Wayne County is a must ! help needed ? All must attend and be heard at public meetings . Polite . nice and educated voices firm with knowledge and facts spoken clearly at all times . http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/forum30/20255-1.html
 

viperar15

Regular Member
Joined
Dec 17, 2008
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416
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MOC IT / Midland, Michigan, USA
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ok, so far i have this setup...

http://www.michiganopencarry.org/calendar.php

If you go there, you will see the Feb 14th event and the June event.
If this looks good to you guys for keeping track of events, i can setup access to whoever is willing to help keep it up to date.

The program includes a little html editor, so like when i copied and pasted all the information in from the forums, it actually kept all the formatting so I did not have to redo everything.

Springer? I know you currently work on updating the events thread. Interested in helping with this? maybe converting everything over to this calendar?

let me know what you guys think.
 

SpringerXDacp

New member
Joined
May 12, 2006
Messages
3,341
Location
Burton, Michigan
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viperar15 wrote:
ok, so far i have this setup...

http://www.michiganopencarry.org/calendar.php

If you go there, you will see the Feb 14th event and the June event.
If this looks good to you guys for keeping track of events, i can setup access to whoever is willing to help keep it up to date.

The program includes a little html editor, so like when i copied and pasted all the information in from the forums, it actually kept all the formatting so I did not have to redo everything.

Springer? I know you currently work on updating the events thread. Interested in helping with this? maybe converting everything over to this calendar?

let me know what you guys think.

THE GOOD:
I've been giving this a lot of thought since you posted the idea on Sunday and I have to admit that I'm a bit stumped. However, I do think that we should keep the Event Thread as is. As it is now, the Event Thread, seems to be the most convenient way to keep track of upcoming events and previous events, not only for members here at OCDO but the lurkers as well.

The Calendar System, IMO, is a excellent idea for numerous, small group, OC meets that Michigander is suggesting for the Southeast portion of Michigan. The Calendar System should be maintained by an MOC Member (most likely Viper) who will add/update/delete/etc. events and maintains a previous event list like I do in the Events Thread.

THE BAD:
The Calendar System will need to be its own thread (have Mike stickie it). In the Events Thread I need to be able to move events around to keep them in order by date. If the Calender System is incorporated into the Events Thread it will make itnearly impossible to maintain it as such.

& THE UGLY:
For now, I think we should allow enough time for othermembers to chime in with their opinions on how todisplay the events.
 

Michigander

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Frankly, a lot of the existing stickies could be piled into one sticky thread about read this first type info for new comers. The threads could just be linked in one sticky, and all of the basic info threads themselves could get unstickied. That was one thing we discussed that I forgot to post. It's getting a bit cluttered at the top of the page.
 

Michigander

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Mulligan's Valley
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I've been looking into graffiti clean ups, and it should be very easy. Be on the lookout for good spots for us to do cleanups once it gets warmer. :cool:

My brother had an interesting idea, which was that we could get involved in a chamber of commerce.

The last thing I need to mention is that the more I think about it, the more sense being in a parade makes. I've become very interested in us marching in one, but the question I have is, which one? If anyone can think of an ideal parade to try and get into, please say which one. Ideally, it would be away from any schools, because with something that high profile, it's not hard to imagine that dumb federal law being used to hound those of us with no CPL's. The problem is, I'm not especially familiar with the different parades around here.:?
 

viperar15

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here's a quick idea (speaking of parades). not exactly a parade, but get a bunch of OC members with classic cars and find a spot to park all at the Woodward Dreamcruise and setup an OC table :)

If you want to talk about having a lot of people around... hahah... thats the place. :)
 

Venator

Anti-Saldana Freedom Fighter
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Jan 10, 2007
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Lansing area, Michigan, USA
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Michigander wrote:
I've been looking into graffiti clean ups, and it should be very easy. Be on the lookout for good spots for us to do cleanups once it gets warmer. :cool:

My brother had an interesting idea, which was that we could get involved in a chamber of commerce.

The last thing I need to mention is that the more I think about it, the more sense being in a parade makes. I've become very interested in us marching in one, but the question I have is, which one? If anyone can think of an ideal parade to try and get into, please say which one. Ideally, it would be away from any schools, because with something that high profile, it's not hard to imagine that dumb federal law being used to hound those of us with no CPL's. The problem is, I'm not especially familiar with the different parades around here.:?
I mentioned parades months ago. They are a great way to educated. Handout info along the route. Remember Doug and I have banners that could be carried too.
 

Michigander

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Dream Cruise we pretty much gotta go to. I'll be going there even if no one else from here does. :cool:

The banners are exactly what we talked about at the meeting, along with passing out fliers. Just gotta find a good one that will let us be in it.
 

Venator

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Michigander wrote:
Dream Cruise we pretty much gotta go to. I'll be going there even if no one else from here does. :cool:

The banners are exactly what we talked about at the meeting, along with passing out fliers. Just gotta find a good one that will let us be in it.
Why wouldn't they let you be in it? They let the boy/girls scouts we are as dangerous as they are. For god's sake they let in politicians...the most dangerous animal there is.
 

Michigander

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I wouldn't know how opposed to us various parade organizers would be, or what rights they would have to deny us marching. That's why I'm asking you guys and gals. ;)
 
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