Presidential Contender Jill Stein issues Major Statement on Marijuana (to Mark 4/20) — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein’s campaign just issued a bold statement on Marijuana and hemp policy, released today, to mark the 4/20 Marijuana-smoking holiday. Here’s her statement in its entirety, followed by my supplemental information.

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Stein challenges Obama on marijuana policy

In a speech to tens of thousands of marijuana reform advocates at the 420 rally in Denver, Colorado, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein took the Obama administration to task for its continuing assault on medical marijuana clinics in California, Colorado and other states.

Dr. Stein, a physician and public health advocate, noted that hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from chronic pain and cancers are benefiting from the availability of medical marijuana under state laws. She said that one of her first actions as President would be to “order the DEA and the Justice Department to cease and desist all attempts to harass or prosecute medical marijuana clinics or other legitimate marijuana-related businesses that are operating under state laws.”

Stein advocates regulating marijuana in a similar way to alcohol, and has long supported legalization of that drug. According to Stein, this would prevent billions of dollars in profits from pouring into the black market, and would greatly reduce the violence associated with illegal marijuana sales. She feels it would also reduce underage marijuana use, as well as allowing the commercial operations to pay appropriate taxes, thus helping to balance budgets and fund programs to reduce drug abuse.

Stein noted that the DEA has placed marijuana in the most dangerous category of drugs (Schedule 1) along with heroin and LSD. Stein said that she would direct DEA to remove marijuana from Schedule 1 and place it in a more appropriate category as determined by medical science.

According to Stein, “President Obama promised to use a science-based approach to public policy. But when it comes to marijuana, he has continued the unscientific policies of George Bush, and has even gone far beyond Bush in his attacks upon medical marijuana clinics. He supports the irrational classification of marijuana in the most dangerous drug category, and he supports the ban on commercial hemp growing. This is mania-based policy, not science-based policy.”

Stein criticized President Obama for promoting a George W. Bush appointee, Michele Leonhart, to be head of the Drug Enforcement Agency. According to Stein, Leonhart has a history of “overzealous” attacks on legitimate drug use, and has been behind the attacks on medical marijuana. “The President promised us change, but in promoting Michele Leonhart he gave us more of the same. One of the first things I would do as President would be to fire Michele Leonhart.”

Stein has toured the country calling for a Green New Deal that would create 25 million sustainable jobs to end unemployment in America, and shift to a new, more democratic economy and politics. “As part of this, I want to see a thriving commercial hemp industry providing food, fiber, and other products from the hemp plant. This will be good for the environment and good for our economy. A win/win solution is within reach if we can just shake off the Bush/Obama past and embrace a rational, effective drug policy for the 21st century.”

http://www.jillstein.org/stein_calls_for_legalization_at_420_rally

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In December, when Jill Stein’s Presidential candidacy had just begun, here at FireDogLake.com, I wrote and published a similar, even more detailed statement on Marijuana from her campaign. It was withdrawn 10 hours later for logistical reasons, but that information’s dissemination may have (partially?) triggered one very important national development:

A plank of that December Marijuana platform called for the release of Marijuana/hemp Political Prisoners, including longtime Medical Rights activist Dana Beal of the Youth International Party. Hours after Presidential candidate Jill Stein demanded Dana Beal’s release [through my words in this column], a judge ordered him released. While the article and its demand were still posted, Dana was brought before a judge. He was prepared. He made an impassioned self-defense. Then he had a heart attack.

Beal was rushed to the hospital for a multiple-bypass operation. Soon, the judge ordered his release. Here are some things that the judge may have considered in making that decision:

~ Jill Stein, at the time President Obama’s only actual clear opponent, had apparently demanded his release;

~ Billionaire activist/philanthropist George Soros [according to Beal's defense] now intended to financially support Beal’s efforts to end people’s addictions to Heroin and other drugs with Ibogaine (Many addicts find that their physical cravings are gone after one Ibogaine experience, and that mental reliance on their substance of choice has been ‘restructured’ away as well);

~ Dana made a damn good speech – it’s out there on the net;

~ It was cheaper for the state to have the newly-operated-on Dana Beal out of custody while he was still recuperating from the surgery and in need of so much medical help.

This is my own independent opinion now, not from the Stein campaign: Dana Beal is a true hero. Millions of people are going to die from Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS, ALS, Skin Cancer, and many other maladies over the next few years. Many or most of those deaths could be long delayed and the patients’ suffering relieved with medical Cannabis. These Americans do not deserve to die simply because our President and others in our Government discriminate against them and lie about the safety of Marijuana, while accepting money from the herb’s competitors: Oil, Natural Gas, Plastics, Pipe Lines, Fracking, Pharmaceuticals, Tobacco, financiers, and so on.

Dana Beal acted to defend these unfortunate medical patients that our Government is trying to kill by withholding their medicine. We can all see by now that in this case, Dana Beal is correct and truthful, while Barack Obama’s Government is lying for money in order to hurt American citizens. As I type this, Showtime is showing the documentary Square Grouper, informing us that 80% of the citizens of Everglades City, Florida, were sent to Federal Prison for Marijuana. This is Madness.

Dana Beal is now scheduled to be sentenced for carrying medical Marijuana on December 29. When trials or sentencing are scheduled between Christmas and New Years, it’s because the Government is trying to Cover Up what it’s doing in the trial. In this case, it looks like the Obama Administration’s DEA intends to make an example of Heroic Political Prisoner Dana Beal!

Do you think that Dana Beal didn’t know that he would become a Political Prisoner?! I’m confident his friends, and people he’d just met, warned him every day for decades that he was going to be arrested for his political activities. Many times he was. He’s already locked up again, awaiting sentencing. Does anybody know what has happened to the rest of the Yippies? Here’s a hint: Lots of them became Political Prisoners too, or worse. Dana Beal was doing the right thing, the courageous thing. He did the dangerous thing, in order to help people who are suffering horribly. Don’t let him be locked away for it!

Some MS patients cans still walk today because they smoked medical Marijuana. Our Government’s efforts in cases like this will end their ambulatory days earlier, as well as their lives.

P

Legendary Political Prisoner John Sinclair to Rock IGLO Anti-War-Anti-Drug-War Convention in Massachusetts in April — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Poet, philosopher, music historian, 1960s radical, ex-political prisoner John Sinclair will honor the IGLO dissidents’ political Convention with speeches and performances at several events in Massachusetts in April, his only appearances in the Northeast. Many dissidents who care about freedom, Human Rights, and personal integrity intend to welcome the self-exiled hero John Sinclair as the true legend that he is.

In the late 1960s, Sinclair was sentenced to ten years in prison over two joints — “They gave him ten for two” John Lennon sang of him. Well, obviously, even in 1968, nobody thought two joints deserved ten years. He wasn’t sentenced for his Marijuana, but for his politics. You see, John Sinclair had founded the anti-racist White Panther Party, to endorse racial harmony and support the humanitarian work of the Black Panther Party.

So, John Sinclair was what some people might call “Revolutionary Communist.” Oh, not RC like Nikolai Lenin, as in ‘Let’s shoot the Czar.’ No, more RC like John Lennon, as in ‘Let’s abolish money and distribute goods reasonably.’ And who can say he’s wrong? The people most invested in maintaining the status quo, that’s who.

Sinclair managed the MC5 [band], and arranged a free rock concert at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the one whereat the Daley Machine’s thugs (technically, ‘goons’) tortured protesting dissidents with clubs and teargas. And the Daley Machine is running our current Administration. I guess that’s why they’re already calling next year’s 2012 Democratic Convention in North Carolina, the “Teargas and Taser Torture Convention.”

Sinclair’s free concert was the last straw for the authorities. Charges were quickly trumped up and he was quickly put into cold storage in Michigan. Sentenced to ten years in prison. In a famous misunderstanding at Woodstock, Yippie Abbie Hoffman ran onto the stage during the Who’s performance to urge people to protest against Sinclair’s treatment. Repelling the apparent invader, the Who leader Pete Townsend grabbed Hoffman to throw him off the stage.

John Sinclair served more than two years in prison before the efforts of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton, the Elephant’s Memory band, and many others, finally freed him. Lennon wrote the song below, and recorded an album with the above-listed crew, the cover of which looked like a newspaper, with photos and articles of political prisoners John Sinclair and Angela Davis. The album, Sometime in New York City, contains the songs Angela and John Sinclair.

It was the only non-hit album Lennon ever recorded. It didn’t get much distribution. The album contained a giant-sized postcard petition urging the US Government not to deport John Lennon (who had stopped performing live years earlier because of the constant death threats after he publicly noted that the Beatles’ popularity compared with that of Jesus). Though Sinclair still had more than seven years left on his sentence, two days after the Lennon-Ono-Wonder concert, the Judge ordered Sinclair’s release from prison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZJLInCgem8

In his song above, John Lennon riffs on one of John Sinclair’s poetic styles: Short rhyming couplets of a naïveté like Robert Herrick’s. It’s satisfying when Herrick does it, but when Sinclair or Lennon does it, you’ll want to jump up and move, stomp your feet! John Sinclair does some inspiring performances in the Beat Poetry genre, as a backing band floats haunting tones of jazz or blues or something, to enhance the poet’s words.

Sinclair is back in his home country, back from Amsterdam, heading for “Amherstdam,” as High Times magazine’s Steve Hager called our town, after it passed our state’s first Public Policy Question instructing our legislators to legalize Marijuana. They haven’t done it yet, even though more than 60 other Massachusetts municipalities have followed Amherst in passing the PPQs. But it is decriminalized, so thousands of people will be smoking Marijuana on the Amherst town common without fear of arrest or harassment on Saturday and Sunday April 16 and 17, 2011, when John Sinclair takes the stage to speak and to perform at the 20th annual Extravaganja Marijuana Legalization Rally.

Sinclair’s activism and treatment, and the fallout therefrom, inspired the softening of Marijuana law enforcement in this country. He directly inspired Ann Arbor’s $5 pot fine (it’s by now been raised to at least $25). That eventually led to our Massachusetts decriminalization: If you are ticketed for Marijuana in Massachusetts, you don’t have to give your real name, and you don’t have to pay the $100 fine! That’s our law. Sinclair also inspired Ann Arbor’s annual Hash Bash, which I was lucky enough to perform at a couple of times, booked by Steve Hager.

IGLO stands for Independents, Greens, Libertarians and Others. The IGLO Convention seeks to bring together people and parties who support three simple needs: (1) End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; (2) Fight Marijuana Prohibition; and (3) Restore Civil Rights/Human Rights, including all parts of the Bill of Rights removed by the War on Drugs, including habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions.

Besides Extravaganja on the Amherst town common, John Sinclair will represent his Party in the very first Debate of the new election cycle, Thursday April 14, in Northampton, and he will perform with a band Saturday night April 16, 2011, at 9pm (the evening between the Extravaganja installments), at the Church of the Tree of Life, in the Chapel of First Churches of Northampton, 129 Main St., Northampton, Massachusetts.

The tickets go on sale today. The Chapel is tiny, and probably holds 90 people at the most. His only appearance in the Northeast. Intimate setting. Can’t call anything with John Sinclair in it a sellout, but the tickets may not last long.