Search Results: racism (12)

Photo: Polaris
Lamb and Lynx Gaede, formerly of the white supremacist rock group Prussian Blue.

​It’s only mid-afternoon, but I’m confident this is the strangest story that’s going to cross my desk all day. A pair of twins who caused a media frenzy a few years ago by presenting themselves as the cute faces of white supremacist racism have renounced their former hatred, saying that medical marijuana has helped them see the error of their ways.

Lamb and Lynx Gaede, whose band Prussian Blue was popular back in 2005 among those inclined to like such things, ascribed their unsavory past to having been “home schooled country bumpkins” heavily influenced by their domineering white supremacist mother, reports Neurobonkers.

The industry is worried.

Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek

President-elect Donald Trump nominated anti-pot hardliner Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama (R) for Attorney General. At a Senate hearing in April 2016, Sessions said that ‘we need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger.’

“I think one of [Obama’s] great failures, it’s obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana,” Sessions said at the hearing. “It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started ‘Just Say No.’ ”

Lawmakers, he said, have to “send that message with clarity that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
USNews calls Sessions an “ Existential threat” to state-legal cannabis. Industry leaders are very nervous.

Reason points out that Sessions has an “aversion to civil rights” and gay rights. The U.S. Senate failed to confirm him for a federal judgeship in 1986, amid allegations of what late Senator Ted Kennedy called “racial insensitivity” and “lack of commitment to equal justice under the law.” The New York Times editorializes that the nomination is an “ insult to justice.”

What does a Trump presidency mean for the industry? The transition team isn’t talking. NBC speculates.So does CBS.

The Sessions nomination needs to be approved by the Senate. Have a view you want to share?  Contact your Senator.

Before the Sessions pick, the Washington Post’s Radley Balko said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would also be “ terrifying.”

Before the Sessions pick, anti-legalization activist Kevin Sabet said, “A Trump administration throws everything up in the air… “Is it going to be ‘ states’ rights Trump’ or ‘law-and-order Trump’?”

Marijuana.com’s Tom Angell has launched a petition for Trump to keep his “marijuana pledge” to respect state laws.  Even if he doesn’t go after the industry, The Stranger says President Trump will  make the industry whiter.

It’s official, Denver will be the first U.S. city to license social use businesses.

After the Massachusetts REC vote, Rhode Island could legalize REC through the legislature. Alaska is setting up a  drop box system  to collect taxes in cash.

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery (R), said looser cannabis regulations in Memphis and Nashville can’t stand.

Due to a glitch, it appears that MED in California will be tax-free until the state’s REC program begins in 2018.

Some conservatives don’t like that MED patients can’t buy guns.

The Utopianist

By Anthony Martinelli
Communications Director
In a recent article published on our website, we explain the key reasons for ending our failed prohibition on cannabis. Doing so would bring untold benefits, and deal a huge blow to our failed war on drugs. However, even if cannabis were legalized, our nation would still be waging the widespread and devastating humans rights violation that our drug war has become.
Even if you don’t condone the use of any drugs, it is difficult to argue that throwing someone into prison alongside murderers and other violent criminals — for simple drug possession, spending taxpayer money along the way — is anything other than bad policy.

Caravan For Peace
Poet-turned-activist Javier Sicilia galvanized the Caravan For Peace, Justice and Dignity movement to end the Drug War in Mexico after his son was killed last year

Unprecedented Coalition of NY Organizations to Welcome Caravan September 6-7 with Vigil-March, Press Conference at City Hall, Action at HSBC Bank, and More
Poet Javier Sicilia and Other Drug War Survivors Will Honor 60,000+ Lives Lost in Mexico and Demand Accountability for Wall Street’s Money Laundering for Drug Traffickers
The “Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity” will arrive in New York City Thursday, September 6, on its voyage across the United States calling for an end to the failed Drug War that has left more than 60,000 dead in Mexico in the last five years. 
Poet and movement leader Javier Sicilia and other people from Mexico who have lost loved ones in the Drug War have joined with Americans impacted by the War On Drugs to travel more than 6,000 miles together through more than 25 cities — including Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago — before arriving in Washington, D.C., on September 10th.
Several New York-based organizations, including the Drug Policy Alliance, YoSoy132NY, New Sanctuary Movement-NY, CUNY Institute of Mexican Studies, Make the Road New York, Occupy Wall Street, Women on the Rise Telling HerStory, VOCAL-NY and others will welcome the Caravan when it arrives on Thursday by holding a candlelight vigil to commemorate drug war victims in both countries.



Hip hop artist Prince Ea has released an epic new 8-minute song, “Smoking Weed With The President,” which is both cannabis history lesson and a personal plea for President Barack Obama to end the insane War On Marijuana and its users.

The Right Kind Of Brownies
Prince Ea’s new song “Smoking Weed With The President” is both a history lesson and a call to action

In the amazingly adroit lyrics, Prince Ea delves into the history of how marijuana became illegal in the first place, with the lies, racism and political opportunism of Harry J. Anslinger, the infamous head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the architect of cannabis prohibition. The Marijuana Tax Act, effectively the beginning of cannabis prohibition in the United States, was approved by Congress at Anslinger’s urging in 1937.

The song outlines the harms of drug prohibition — violence, cartel profits and mass incarceration — and the benefits of legalization.
“In just this one song, Prince Ea summarizes a book’s worth of information into a clear and powerful argument against marijuana prohibition,” said Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance.

AP

Survivors of the Drug War, community leaders from United States and Mexico to walk across historic Edmund Pettus Bridge to call for an end to Drug War that has devastated black & latino communities and killed more than 60,000 in Mexico
In act of solidarity, U.S.-Mexico Caravan for Peace joins local leaders to condemn rampant violence and mass incarceration caused by failed War on Drugs.
The Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity — made up of Mexican survivors of the Drug War and activists from both Mexico and the United States — on Wednesday will join local civil rights leaders to travel over the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in order to draw attention to the more than 60,000 people killed in drug-war-related violence in Mexico since 2006, as well as the devastating and systemic racism caused by the failed war on drugs in the U.S.

The World Through My Specs
Peter Reynolds of CLEAR is engaged in a tug-of-war with ex-members of the organization’s Executive Committee

By Denzil White
Special to Toke of the Town
In suit and tie, Peter Reynolds looks more like an extra from the set of Mad Men than like the hairy-headed hippie stereotype of a cannabis activist. He’s definitely not hairy-headed, but when he promised to clean up the image of cannabis campaigning in the UK, few people expected the makeover to result in a beauty only skin deep.
Claiming a background in advertising and public relations, Peter Reynolds won leadership of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance, a small, single-issue political party, then set about changing the name of the party to CLEAR (Cannabis Law Reform) and brought on help to spruce up the party’s website and logo.
Reynolds wrote at the time, “We will build a new and effective brand and campaign. We are reasonable, responsible, respectable members of society from all walks of life and professions.” 
Things were looking good; MPs hit Reynolds’ “Friend” button on Facebook and the CLEAR “Comment Warriors” plagued the popular press with pro-cannabis comments on any article reporting a factory raid or medicinal marijuana critique.

Kyndra Miller
NORML Women’s Alliance West Coast Coordinator Kyndra Miller: “We need help everywhere”

​By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
The NORML Women’s Alliance is looking for many good women.
According to most every poll, cannabis use by mainstream America is on the rise, except for women — their numbers are stagnant. Men are 10 to 16 percent “higher” in their support of legalization and medical marijuana.
The Women’s Alliance is a on a quest to change that. 
This coming weekend I have the pleasure of tagging along with NORML Women’s Alliance as they bring their message to the High Times 2012 Medical Cannabis Cup in Los Angeles. Since its inception a few years ago, from New Jersey to the West Coast, the Women’s Alliance has been reaching out to women via networking groups, parties, movie screenings, conferences and where I first met them, in the streets of San Francisco, marching and protesting. 
When Obama last visited San Francisco, there was a huge demonstration organized by the medical marijuana community to protest the federal crackdown, a complete about-face by the administration, forcing the closure of California dispensaries and blocking safe access to medicine.

VH1

​Twenty-five years after crack cocaine ravaged American cities, a new VH1 Rock Doc explores how the drug also transformed popular culture, especially hip-hop. The latest addition to the Emmy-winning franchise, “Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation” premieres Sunday, September 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on VH1.

Narrated and executive produced by Ice-T, “Planet Rock” is the first documentary to focus specifically on the connections between crack and hip-hop. Based primarily on the first-person accounts of four famous dealers turned rappers, the film also widens its lens at times to show how crack changed America culturally, socially and politically.

Photo: Smoking Music
Ras Matthew is a reggae singer from Sacramento, California.

​​Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’. Today’s lesson is solidly on the chillin’ portion of the curriculum.


Worth Repeating
By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)
Beer is to baseball as marijuana is to music.
It’s always set and setting that puts me in the zone. My nights would not be complete without the music of Ras Matthew.
Ras Matthew is a reggae singer from Sacramento, California. His songs embrace the spiritual healing experience of the herb. You don’t have to be a Rasta to understand his universal message of peace, healing and brotherhood through the ingestion of the sacrament of cannabis.
In the 1930s cannabis was rebranded as “marijuana” to help demonize this substance with racism aimed at Mexicans and black musicians playing their “Satanic” jazz music.  Unfortunately, this misinformation worked, and we are living in a world where cannabis is still seen by some as an evil drug. This is our mission to fix.
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