This site includes the postings from the Irish Aires email list. This includes a listing of Irish/Celtic events in the Houston area and other information that the Irish Aires radio program posts.

Monday, January 24, 2005

01/24/05 - Meeting Re: Possible Visit of Martin McGuinness to Houston

Martin McGuinness Martin McGuinness Back to Irish Aires Table of Contents Hello all, I just received a call from Larry Downes of the Friends of Sinn Fein. He called about the possible visit of Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness to Houston. Martin will be in the country between March 11th & March 17th. His possible cities to visit are Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas (I could be wrong about those cities; I wrote it down after I got off the phone). He won’t be going to the east coast. Basically, he said that they would choose which cities he would visit depending upon where they specificakkt confirm events. As you know, they normally raise money in one of three ways: 1) Dinners at $100 to $500 a plate (expecting 100 or more people) 2) Cocktail hours at $20 per head (expecting 300 to 400 people) 3) Well healed private donations at exclusive private parties (thousands of dollars per head type money raising functions) We have the parade on the 12th of March. Larry said that parade days are notoriously bad days for fund raising. Many people already have their own agenda for the day. The Emerald ball is on the 11th. However, the fund raised from that event is already reserved. We would probably need to organize our own events for fund raising. I certainly have mixed emotions about this. I would love to have Martin come here. However, with the criteria for success being fund raising, I am concerned about how well we could do. During Gerry Adams visit here in 1999 we raised about $3,000 at the AOH luncheon at the Houston Club. I don’t know if such an event is again available. However, I want to pursue this opportunity of his visit to Houston. I know that others may have ideas & know people who can make something like this work. I am proposing a brainstorming meeting for this coming weekend. For lack of a better place at the moment, I would suggest we use the lobby at KPFT-FM (I am trying to get a better place, I will let you know if it changes). So let’s say at 4:30PM at 419 Lovett Blvd in the Montrose on Saturday, January 29th. There is a map at: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Irish_Aires/colcanno.htm My cell number is 713-828-8743; the number to the studio is 713-526-5738. I was about to send out an email to call a meeting of people who were interested in forming a local chapter of the Irish American Unity Conference (IAUC). I will still send out that email, but I don’t see why we couldn’t use this meeting for that purpose also. Martin’s visit will be a Friends of Sinn Fein event, but there would be no reason why a newly formed IAUC chapter couldn’t work on this as a first BIG project. I would appreciate you letting me know your thoughts (whether you can attend or not) and also letting me know if you plan to be there on Saturday. Jay Back to Irish Aires Table of Contents
Posted by: Unknown / 4:09 PM
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?