Scheduling a Private Meeting

By Chuck Armsbury, editor and program development for November Coalition; regular Journey for Justice participant

You may want a private meeting with us, and perhaps as part of a series of meetings while we're in your area. This may mean you'll be inviting some close friends to your house, or meeting at a restaurant, maybe a park if the weather is agreeable.

In other fashion, you might also want to have us meet privately with public officials for an off-the-record discussion about drug policy and the drug war. It might be a society of treatment professionals, or a small ladies' club. The public isn't invited.

Last winter, a middle-aged couple with a son in prison invited us into their home to meet and talk with two friends, people they've known since childhood. We helped them explain the issue of the drug war and mass imprisonment to these people, varied in background, in attendance mostly because they cared about the couple we knew, too.

A private meeting has distinct advantages for everyone. Unlike a public discussion, private meetings won't include media representatives and publicity. In the comfort of a living room it is often easier to ask questions one would hesitate to ask in public. Likewise, as in one small town, a private meeting of public officials guaranteed that we heard some honest, if sometimes critical, comments about the Journey for Justice mission. Where we go, people don't always agree with us.

Intimate meetings do provide a quality of learning for everyone not always attainable in large, public gatherings -- a truth well known in the teaching profession.

Another example of a successful private meeting is a dinner party where local activists can meet and visit with us. At another private meeting spring of 2003, our hosts invited various to dinner -- young activists who feed hungry families in an urban southern town, a labor organizer, a feminist, and a physician. Each of us had ample opportunity to share stories and experience with each other. It's during such times that everyone gains in understanding about how issues are linked and interact.

At another private meeting our hosts had invited sentencing reform activists from other groups whose missions overlap or harmonize with ours.

If you think you want to have a private meeting with us, remember that we're meeting with you about the issue of failed drug policy and the destructive drug war. We're hoping, of course, that from this first private meeting you will gain in confidence and interest in putting together a public discussion when we visit your area again.