COIR Generating Strong Interest In Colorado
By Tim Anderson
COIR, the Coalition of Independent Riders, is making progress in Colorado. Not only has the new motorcycle rights organization met with positive results in the first two issues it challenged, but membership is also increasing faster than expected.
Deb “Tiger” Chandler, COIR-Colorado Undersecretary, said it is tough to say for sure how many members COIR has at this point, but the number is higher than organizer expected.
“”We won’t know our numbers for sure for a little while,” Chandler explained. “All our initial membership forms had The address for the national chapter in Texas on them, so a lot of applications have been sent to Texas, which is OK, it will just take us a little longer to figure out exactly where we stand. We’ve fixed that problem though, and have a Colorado address now.”
Despite the mailing address oversight, COIR membership has grown faster than anticipated.
“We knew there would be interest,” chandler said, “but the response has been a little surprising. We’re pretty happy about how things are going.”
US Defenders Colorado Commander, Bandido Wiz, agreed.
“In the past four to six weeks we’ve developed a good membership base,” he said. “Really, the response we’ve had has been more than we expected. It tells me there is a need for this in Colorado, and that Colorado riders support it and want to be a part of it. I’m spending a lot of time talking to people about this, and we’re all getting a lot of calls and interest.”
Membership is not limited to individuals.
“I was out hanging up flyers for COIR and had interest from Sharps Roadhouse in Commerce City while I was there,” Chandler said. “So I signed them up. It’s part of what we want to accomplish—involving everyone in our community in what we’re doing, and having business involved is part of that goal.”
Right now, we need to get the word out and build up the organization,” Wiz said. We’re off to a good start, but we want to see as many people as possible involved in COIR. That’s where our strength is—in our numbers.”
Becoming a member of COIR is easy. Simply fill out an application from a COIR representative and pay a one-time fee of $25, which pays for the patches and other identifiers members get, with the remainder of the money evenly split between the state and national COIR/US Defenders organizations, which is then used to protect biker interests.
“Every cent goes to the cause,” Wiz said. “Unlike most MRO’s, COIR is all volunteer. No one is getting paid to do what we should do as citizens anyway.”
COIR representatives will be at numerous events throughout the summer, Wiz said.
“We’ll be at as many events as we reasonably can be to answer questions, provide information, and hopefully sign people up,” he said. “We’re all in this together, so we should probably all be working together. This is one way to do that.”
For more information on COIR and US Defenders, e-mail Deb “Tiger Chandler at dac-dsc@comcast.net, or visit www.usdefenders.org
