Got plans for this weekend? Well, cancel 'em. Have I got a party for you!
It's time, once again, for the Global Marijuana March, a worldwide event held the first Saturday in May since 2005. I'll be there, and so should you!
Sure, mainstream media might give you the impression that grassroots (see what I did there?) street activism of the sort represented by the Marijuana March is a thing of the past. But the marijuana legalization movement is stronger than ever. A solid majority of people on the West Coast now support removing all criminal penalties for the herb, and cannabis activists have momentum on our side according to almost any knowledgeable observer of the scene.
If you've ever attended a pot rally, I don't have to tell you what a positive rush such a gathering of the kind tribes can bring. There's nothing like a group of like-minded hempsters united by a common purpose to put a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and a buzz in your brain. If this will be your first time, don't worry -- you won't find a gentler, friendlier, more mellow crowd anywhere.
The Details For Seattle
Join us while we march and rally for equality and justice for cannabis supporters and medical marijuana patients everywhere.
We will meet at noon at Volunteer Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle.
We will have a volunteer peace-keeper meeting at 11:15 at the left side of the amphitheater.
We will march at 1 pm and arrive at Westlake Center at around 2 pm for a rally with guest speakers and musical performance.
This march is in solidarity with coordinated marches in over 300 cities world wide.
Marijuana is non-toxic, not physically addictive, therapeutic, cost effective, and beneficial for society when the criminality is removed (and abuse is dealt with as a public health issue).
Medical patients should have access to safe, pure, affordable medicine.
In Seattle, all the high roads lead to Vivian McPeak.
It sometimes seems Vivian knows everyone connected to the marijuana movement in the Emerald City, and everyone knows Vivian. The members of this diverse community of medical marijuana activists, pot legalization advocates, and industrial hemp boosters don't always agree on strategy and tactics, but one thing they do almost all agree on is that McPeak is a good guy.
When you meet Vivian in person, it's impossible not to notice his crackling intelligence, his sense of humor, his passion and his commitment. His dynamic energy and chronic charisma have placed him at the center of Seattle's marijuana community, and as director of the annual Seattle Hempfest (the biggest -- and quite likely the best -- marijuana rally in the world), McPeak wears that mantle well.
Vivian was a rock musician in the 1980s. When his Los Angeles-based band disbanded in in 1986, he landed in Seattle, where he performed in the band Stickerbush (music at http://www.myspace.com/vivianmcpeak). Soon he began forming the Seattle Peace Heathens Action Group, a community volunteer group.
In 1991 McPeak, then known as an emcee for local leftwing political rallies, was asked by a friend if he'd be interested in working on something called a Hempfest, and “hempstory” was made. McPeak went on to become the event’s director and guiding light. His influence, leadership and focus on personal responsibility has taken Seattle Hempfest to the distinction of being known as the largest and most successful annual political rally, and the largest pot rally on Earth.
McPeak was High Times Magazine’s 2001 Freedom Fighter of the Year (which brought him celebrity judge status at the annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam). McPeak has also been Heads Magazine Activist of the Year, Eat The State Magazine’s Local Hero, and Real Change Magazine’s monthly “Change Agent.” He has worked regionally with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
Vivian has appeared on numerous local radio stations and in print magazines, advocating sensible, rational and compassionate alternatives to the misguided and failed drug and cannabis policies of today.
Where: King Cat Theater, 2130 6th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121 When: Friday, October 3, 2008 - Doors Open 8 pm $10 Music by The Café Authors, The Herbivores, The Super Sonic Soul Pimps, Upwell, and special guests
What better way to celebrate and commemorate 50 years of life and 20 years of activism than by throwing a party?
“I have assembled my favorite local bands all in one show, this is the cream of the crop of Seattle as far as I am concerned,” said McPeak, who added he wants to be called “Half-A-Cent” for reaching half a century old. “This proves there is life after sex, drugs and rock and roll,” McPeak grumbled as he sipped his yerba mate. “I’m a premature geezer at 50!”
McPeak plans to commemorate the celebration and kick it into high gear by getting a new tattoo on stage.
“When I was young I’d take two hits of acid and start the party. Now I take two antacids and start the heating pad,” he said as he took a long puff on a finely rolled marijuana cigarette. “When I was a kid it was all snap, crackle, and pop. Now it is just pop, Snapple, and crack. What happened?”
Imagine you just got home from work. You see a package addressed to your wife on the front porch, and bring it inside, putting it on a table.
Suddenly, police with guns drawn kick you door down and storm in, shooting to death your two dogs and seizing the unopened package.
In the package the cops find 32 pounds of marijuana. But you have no idea why the package was delivered to you.
Mayor Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, doesn't have to imagine how that feels. Now he knows.
And after a lot of initial belligerence and bullshit, befuddled cops now say the couple appear to be innocent victims of a scheme by two men to smuggle millions of dollars worth of marijuana by having it delivered to about a half-dozen unsuspecting recipients.
Local police have actually known of the scheme for some time. Just why they went ahead with the ill-advised, militaristic raid anyway is currently under investigation.
The two men under arrest include a FedEx deliveryman; investigators said the deliveryman would drop off a package outside a home, and the other man would come by a short time later and pick it up.
The outrageous conduct and painfully obvious ineptitude of the county police force has now attracted the attention of federal authorities. The FBI is looking into how local law enforcement handled the July 29 raid. Agent Rich Wolf on Thursday said the bureau had opened a civil rights investigation into the case.
A furious Calvo said earlier Thursday that he and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, had asked the government to investigate.
"Trinity was an innocent victim and random victim," Calvo told reporters outside his two-story, red-brick house in this middle-class Washington suburb of about 3,000 people. "We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us."
"It was a horrible, horrible incident," Calvo told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith Friday, "but I think it's also the kind of thing that happens, and I don't think we would have realized that until it happened to us."
"What's really troubling," Calvo continued, "is they didn't have a proper warrant to do what they did. They actually didn't give us a warrant at all until 71 hours after it happened. And that's really what's disturbing -- despite all the mistakes that were made, they're holding to their guns, saying they did nothing wrong.
"This happened to us. We can't get our dogs back, and we know that. But the reason we asked for federal authorities to investigate this is because this is a systemic problem, and we want to make sure that, while it happened to us and that's a tragedy, we don't want it to happen to anyone else."
Calvo insisted the couple's two black Labradors were gentle creatures and said police apparently killed the pets "for sport," actually gunning down one of them as it was running away.
"Our dogs were our children," said the 37-year-old Calvo. "They were the reason we bought this house because it had a big yard for them to run in."
The mayor, who was changing his clothes when police burst in, also complained that he was handcuffed in his boxer shorts for about two hours along with his mother-in-law, and said the officers didn't believe him when he told them he was the mayor. No charges were brought against Calvo or his wife, who came home in the middle of the raid.
Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he's still not ruling out their involvement, and he actually defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened. We all know how scary dogs can be while they're running away from you.
The FBI will monitor how "effective, fair and professional" the law enforcement agency's conduct was during the incident, Wolf said. A police spokesman declined comment Thursday on the FBI investigation.
Police announced Wednesday they had arrested two men suspected in a plot to smuggle 417 pounds of marijuana, and seized a total of $3.6 million in pot. Investigators said the package that arrived on Calvo's porch had been sent from Los Angeles via FedEx, and they had been tracking it ever since it drew the attention of a drug-sniffing dog in Arizona.
Police intercepted it in Maryland, and an undercover detective posing as a deliveryman took it to the Calvo home.
Calvo's defenders - including the Berwyn Heights police chief, who said his department should have been alerted ahead of time - said police had no right to enter the home without knocking.
But officials insisted they acted within the law, saying the operation was compromised when Calvo's mother-in-law saw officers approaching the house and screamed. That could have given someone time to grab a gun or destroy evidence, authorities said.
Neighbors in Berwyn Heights, which Calvo described as "Mayberry inside the Capital Beltway," have rallied around the couple. On Sunday night, supporters gathered on a ballfield to pay tribute to the family and the dogs. A banner on the wooden fence around Calvo's yard read, "Cheye and Trinity, We support you, Friends and Citizens of Berwyn Heights." Around it were dozens of handwritten messages from supporters.
In addition to being the part-time mayor, Calvo works at a nonprofit foundation that runs boarding schools. His wife is a state finance officer.
"When all of this happened I was flabbergasted," said next-door neighbor Edward Alexander. "I was completely stunned because those dogs didn't hurt anybody. They barely bark."
The case is just the latest in a scandalous series of embarrassments for Prince George's County officials. A former police officer was sentenced in May to 45 years in prison for shooting two furniture deliverymen at his home last year, one of them fatally. He claimed that they attacked him. In June, a suspect jailed in the death of a police officer was found strangled in his cell.
Calvo said he was astonished that police have not only failed to apologize, but declined to clear the couple's names.
His wife spoke through tears as she described an encounter with a girl who used to see the couple walking their dogs.
"She gave me a big hug and she said, `If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?'" Tomsic said. "I don't want people to feel like that. I just want them to be proud of our police and proud to live in Prince George's County."
You'd have to be really, really determined to stay proud of the police if you can still convince yourself to feel proud of these homicidal clowns.
The Seattle Liberate Marijuana March was quite a success, especially considering the rainy weather, with an initial turnout estimated at around 400 people at Volunteer Park, which grew all along the march route, and the Westlake Park crowd estimated at between 700 and 1,000 people for the finale. Big kudos to Joanna McKee, Martin Martinez, and Vivian McPeak for helping to make this thing happen.
The day began at noon in Volunteer Park, with the assembled throng marching and chanting through downtown Seattle (to the delighted thumbs-up, smiles and honking car horns of many passersby), and ended up at Westlake Park for speeches and musical performances.
Among the highlights of the day for me were rousing addresses by the first man who ever mounted a successful medical necessity marijuana defense in Washington, Martin Martinez of CannabisMD.org, and famed Seattle attorney and activist Douglas Hiatt, who may well be the hardest working man in the medical marijuana movement.
A recurring theme throughout the day was the memory of musician Tim Garon and his brave fight for life after being denied a liver transplant due to his legal, physician-approved use of medical marijuana. Tim's presence was felt most acutely when Hiatt, who represented him, gave one of the most moving and impassioned speeches of the day centering on Garon's struggle against the forces of ignorance and anti-marijuana prejudice.
Hiatt said Garon made him promise that he'd do all he could to prevent such a thing from happening to anyone else -- and he exhorted the crowd: "Help me keep my promise to Tim Garon."
Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna says I can't have my legal medicine until I'm off probation or he'll put me in a cage, but lemme tell ya: it sure smelled good in Volunteer Park, along the entire march route, and at Westlake for the finale. You can bet I'm looking forward to October when I can finally do something effective about this constant nausea.
Marijuana patients are leading the protests on May 3.
See you at: Seattle's Volunteer Park, Noon, Saturday, May 3, 2008.
March: 1:00 PM Broadway to Pine Street, and on to Westlake Park Downtown.
Rally: Westlake Center Park from 2:00 to 3:30 PM... Hear true stories from patients and legal authorities most affected by the sometimes arbitrary enforcement of law... City Councilman Nick Licata, King County Councilman Larry Gossett, and a message from a sponsor of medical marijuana legislation, Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles.
Marijuana patients are promoting a benefit concert on May 3. Panda Conspiracy and Galaxy Machine will donate their time and positive vibrations to help raise funds for legal defense casework in Washington State.
Cascadia NORML and CannabisMD present: Panda Conspiracy and Galaxy Machine Sodo Pop dance club 2424 1st Avenue South, Seattle 7 p.m., May 3, 2008
This is a benefit to Liberate Marijuana and raise money and awareness to help medical marijuana patients reform the unjust laws.
This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the U.S. Copyright law. This material is distributed without profit.
Posts
