By Leah Dailey, Affiliate Director
Within the party an off year for elections can be a great time to focus on party growth and 2023 was no exception. I was proud and excited to view our calendar, approaching a summer, full of outreach events.
We started the season out strong with an organically grown movement we called, “March to Defend Lives”. This was a counter protest movement to oppose the left-wing led “March to Save Lives”, starring alleged crisis-actor David Hogg. We raised funds, created banners, fliers, and T-shirts. We made protest signs and marched on the capitol. We also erected a stage and had a number of pro 2nd amendment speakers in the local park. It was a great event that engaged some real coalition building as well as local news footage and interviews from our participants. We later had a lot of fun recreating the event in Marquette MI in July.
Our Oakland County affiliate (LPOC) was quite active this summer, they lent a hand at the Royal Oak Memorial Day parade helping RankMiVote with signature collecting for their petition to get rank choice voting on the ballot in the city of Royal Oak.
The LPOC participated once again at their Woodward Dream Cruise, using the World’s Smallest Political Quiz to bring in passerby’s. It did help quite a lot that one of the members had access to an ice cream truck that also had fresh popped popcorn… “Free ice cream when you take the quiz” was how it was advertised. It’s no wonder they had more than a couple new members sign up to join the party that day!
Our affiliate in Livingston County (LPLC) was also ambitious this season. They took advantage of procuring a vendor table at “Food Truck Friday’s” in Pinckney MI. It was a real treat for me. There was a young gal who took the WSPQ and she was surprised where she scored on the chart. I went back through her answers with her and explained why some of her score reflected higher government involvement. After some time, she came back to our table to sign up for LPLC meeting notice! Local engagement does make a difference!
The LPLC also participated in the Cohoctah Township’s 4th of July Parade, they passed out little candy bags with LPLC business cards in them as they literally paraded our Statue of Liberty down main street.
My main take-away: If you think you have enough candy bags for a parade, double it.
Our Huron-Raisin affiliate had a table at the Ann Arbor Art Fair this July. For once it wasn’t the hottest weekend of the year. They had a good turn out with lots of engagement, and plenty of volunteers to man the table. We took the opportunity to make some connections with the other non-profit tables such as the Ann Arbor Anti-War Coalition, Veterans For Peace, NOCIRC of MI (anti-circumcision). Even the communist party (CPUSA) folks were nice and talked with us. I was elated when a group of 6-7 young ladies ran up to our table excited to talk to Libertarians! Turns out they were part of a debate group hosted by University of Michigan (U of M), and their debate topic was the Libertarian position that Taxation Is Theft. I was excited to talk to these cool young ladies and they were just as excited to listen to me explain our principles!
Wayne County once again represented liberty all day at Dally in the Ally, and our Straits Area Affiliate held a table all week long at the Cheboygan County Fair. I wasn’t able to join but I hear it was also a roaring success.
If you want to represent the party in your area and don’t know how, please reach out to me and we can make it work, email me at vcaffiliates@michiganlp.org.
*Article was featured in the October 2023 Michigan Libertarian newsletter.
