Search Results: yippies (6)

Freedom of Medicine and Diet
Dana Beal: “I’m not a run-of-the-mill drug runner. I’m a medical advocate. I had to do it.”

A Nebraska judge this week rejected an effort by one of the original Yippies from the 1960s to get marijuana delivery charges against him dropped because he says he was hauling marijuana across the country to help AIDS and cancer patients on the East Coast.

Dana Beal, 65, is looking at up to five years in the clinker after his arrest near Ashland, Neb., in 2009 in a van carrying 150 pounds of marijuana, reports Paul Hammel at the Omaha World-Herald.
Beal, a resident of New York City, said he was hauling the load of weed to a club of buyers from New York and Washington, D.C., who use cannabis for medicinal purposes. Medical marijuana is still illegal in New York, but has been legalized in D.C.; however, all cannabis sold to patients in D.C. is required to be grown within the District by licensed cultivators.

Free Dana Beal
Dana Beal: “I’m not a run-of-the-mill drug runner. I’m a medical advocate. I had to do it.”

Dana Beal was one of the original Yippies back in the late 1960s, helping organize the radical counterculture group which disrupted the 1968 and 1972 Democratic conventions, advocating a society powered by people rather than profit. Years later, Beal organized marches in New York City calling for the legalization of marijuana, and helped open a clinic which dispenses cannabis to AIDS patients in the Big Apple.

But Beal, 65, says he’s now fighting for his life from a Nebraska jail, reports Paul Hammel at the Omaha World-Herald. Just nine months after a serious heart attack, he faces up to five years in prison after a 2009 arrest near Ashland, Neb., riding in a van holding 150 pounds of marijuana.

Medical marijuana patients and supporters will converge on Wednesday, July 4, in the nation’s capitol for the Rally to Reschedule Marijuana as Medicine and 43rd Annual Smoke-In. Oddly, given the fact that the event continues to be labeled a “Smoke-In” after four decades, attendees are being asked not to smoke cannabis.
The event will begin at noon across from the White House at Lafayette Park (located at 16th Street and H Street). Scheduled to appear are medical marijuana pioneer Dennis Peron, Richard Eastman, Kim Quiggle, John Pylka, Miguel Lopez, Julia (curator of petermcwilliams.org) and Wayward Bill at a rally to educate elected officials and voters, march and demonstrate for First Amendment rights, and the right to choose marijuana as medicine.
Demonstrators will tell President Obama, “Keep your promise,” asking him to end the federal raids against state-legalized medical marijuana dispensaries.
The U.S. Marijuana Party, chaired by Wayward Bill, will be holding it’s first annual political convention at the Smoke-In.

Free Dana Beal
Dana Beal to Toke of the Town: “They had to let me go, ’cause I up and died on them”

​Exclusive Interview: Dana Beal

Longtime marijuana activist Dana Beal has had a rough year. Back on January 6, he was charged with possessing 169 pounds of marijuana after being pulled over in Dodgeville, Wisconsin for a broken taillight and missing bumper — and he was already facing charges involving 150 pounds the previous year in Nebraska. On September 20, he got a five-year prison sentence for the newer charges.

It seemed a foregone conclusion. Beal — with an ancestor who signed the Declaration of Independence, Beal, a founding member of the Youth International Party (Yippies) along with the legendary Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Beal, who’d been involved in every major social justice movement since the early 1960s — was going to be spending some time in the Big House. His sentence was a “half and half,” where he’d have to serve the first 2.5 years and be paroled for the second half.
But Dana’s life has never been, and probably never will be, a boring one, from the 1960s to being in his 60s. In 1967 he was charged with trying to sell acid to an undercover cop; he went on the run but eventually ended up serving a year on that rap. In 1972 he founded, then edited, the Yipster Times (later to become Overthrow) which published until 1979. His efforts to promote the use of ibogaine to cure addiction to heroin, cocaine and alcohol through the organization Cures Not Wars have resulted in thousands of people being able to walk away from hard drugs.

Photo: StoptheDrugWar.org

By Michael Bachara

Lifelong activist Ben Masel died on Saturday after a battle with lung cancer. As the hemp and cannabis community and many others mourn this great loss, we must also remember what Masel spent most of his life fighting for, and continue on the path he helped to blaze.
Over the course of his life, Masel traveled countless miles and spent innumerable hours voicing his ideas and fighting for the rights of his fellows. Even in the face of opposition, he continued to speak out in favor of hemp and cannabis legalization, freedom of speech and the ability of people who take a stand to make a difference.
Masel’s lifelong passion, the Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival in Madison, Wisconsin, began as a marijuana smoke-in in 1971. The Harvest Festival, now marking its 41st year, has a long history of promoting cannabis/hemp legalization and free speech while providing an annual celebration for like-minded people.

Photo: NORML Blog

​More than a dozen people on Monday asked the Nebraska Board of Pharmacy to reclassify marijuana so it can be authorized as medicine.

Those testifying included a medical doctor, a lawyer, one of the original Yippies from the 1960s and an Iowa trucker wearing a “Reverend Reefer” t-shirt, reports Paul Hammel at the Omaha World-Herald.
They urged the board to help Nebraska join 14 other states the allow medicinal cannabis to relieve pain and ease the symptoms of diseases such as cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis.