This year, the Arizona American Legion Convention was held in the Tucson area at the El Conquistador. This is an annual event that moves from city to city within Arizona. Post 103 hosted the event and the Convention of States’ Veteran’s Coalition Division (VCD) was represented by Paul Charette, James Curry, Kirk Davis, Beth Outtrim, and William Reid.
During the annual convention, legionnaires vote for the positions for the state-wide organization: State Commander, District Commander or Adjutant, Area Vice Commander, and Membership Director, etc. Approximately 1,000 participants chose which of the role-based break-out sessions, chaplains, health care, security, etc. they would attend over the course of the convention. Additionally, there were activities for auxiliaries.
Using the key phrase “We’re working to take the power back from Washington and give it back to the people,” we spoke with 74 legionnaires as they came by the booth. The proposed amendment most agreed with was term limitations! We garnered 15 petitions signatures onsite and many more took the double-sided card to access our website.
The resources that we had on hand were the “We Took an Oath…” card, “We’re Only One Vote Away…” card, the double-sided business card with easy ways to connect to the COS website, petition forms, of course, and the COS Core Values that the national Tuesday District Captain call provided. Another tip – we had homemade cookies the first day and chocolate candies the second. People always want goodies.
We came up with some other good ideas:
· Name tags for the COS staffers
· Several laptops on the table for people to sign the petition online while at the booth
· “I Signed” stickers for those that come to the booth and signed a petition
· Command Strips to hang the COS banner
· A projector to show the rolling PowerPoint presentation on the wall
