We had just passed a 1,000 volunteers and were just shy of 25% of the number of signatures needed with an excellent ramp up to completion when the pandemic hit the state of California.
Originally this campaign was built off of in person meetings, cultivation classes, collecting signatures at farmers markets, music events, comedy shows, colleges, as well as brick and mortars.
Obviously that's not going to work anymore and we are drastically altering our campaign strategy to adapt.
Two weeks ago we canceled all in person meetings, events, classes, and switched to online meetings via Zoom.
Originally there was going to be one for every county but now that people know how it works we will condense them all into a single Volunteer meeting every Wednesday night from 8-9 PM(link available in Slack on the #general channel).
The primary focus is now pushing the campaign store since every piece of merchandise shipped to a residence in California gets a petition sheet packet included.
We also took an extra precaution and split the sending and receiving locations so the store items are now being shipped from San Diego and the signed petition sheets go to Los Angeles.
The secondary focus is lobbying the State of California to allow a one time digital petition for not only our initiative but all the initiatives that still require more signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Last week we successfully reached out to multiple initiatives and got the Cannabis Hemp Heritage Act (19-0011), and the the California Initiative, Referendum and Recall Act (19-0009) to join us in drafting the COVID-19 Letter to State.
The odds of this getting signed off by the state allowing us enough time to get the digital signatures needed is rough especially considering all the madness the state is dealing with and when government employees start getting sick it's going to get even crazier.
IF we are lucky enough to get this one time allowance we are going to need all the help we can get promoting it so do us favor now and share our FB page by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner of our page and invite your friends.
It is a surreal world out here right now and a lot of people are afraid so be smart, stay safe, and talk to you soon.
Peace,
-Ryan Munevar
P.S. And now a message from Jay and Silent Bob about CHHA 2020 and digital petitions.
