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"Let's get Marijuana out of the closets and into the coffeeshops!"
Million Marijuana March
Saturday, May 1, 1999 - Worldwide!
Join us in marching for the rights of millions of marijuana users!
"Let's get Marijuana out of the closets and into the coffeeshops!"
The 1999 Medical Marijuana Bill
On March 2, 1999, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) introduced H.R. 912 which -- if enacted -- would allow states to determine their own medicinal marijuana policies without federal interference. This bill is nearly identical to the medicinal marijuana bill that Rep. Frank introduced in the 1997-98 Congress, which the Marijuana Policy Project helped draft.
MPP is encouraging its members and other allies to do the following:
1. Please write to your U.S. representative, asking him or her to co-sponsor H.R. 912. (For the name of your U.S. representative, please see http://www.mpp.org/projects.html#contactinfo.) For help with the letter, please see http://www.mpp.org/912ltrs.html.
2. Please submit a supportive letter-to-the-editor to your local newspapers. If you need help writing this letter, please go to http://www.mpp.org/912lte.html.
3. Please distribute this e-mail message widely to your friends, family, and colleagues -- or direct them to the Web version of this action alert at http://www.mpp.org/912alert.html.
4. If you have extra time, please write a letter to each of your two U.S. senators asking them to "introduce legislation similar to H.R. 912, the medicinal marijuana bill."
H.R. 912 is currently pending in the House Commerce Committee. In the short run, MPP has two goals: (1) persuade the U.S. representatives who sit on this committee to voice their support for holding a hearing on medicinal marijuana; and (2) persuade as many U.S. representatives as possible -- whether or not they sit on this committee -- to co-sponsor H.R. 912.
Visit the Activists Workshop for contact information.
OTHER RESOURCES:
list of U.S. representatives who have supported medicinal marijuana http://www.mpp.org/mmj-supp.html
how House members voted on the anti-medicinal marijuana resolution http://www.mpp.org/117votes.html
list of U.S. representatives on the House Commerce Committee http://www.mpp.org/hcomsub.html
full text of H.R. 912
http://www.mpp.org/hr912.html
1998'S BILL
H.R. 1782
Last year there was a bill pending in the House of Representatives that would have lower marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II. A Marijuana Policy Project spokesman commented:
"H.R. 1782 has ten co-sponsors and will probably not make it out of committee during this session, but it is still important for people to ask their representatives to co-sponsor it and their senators to introduce companion legislation in the U.S. Senate."
Since MPP will be fighting for similar legislation this year, please or write your Representative and Senators to suggest they sponsor legislation like HR 1782.
A brief respectful letter is the best way to influence your legislators! For addresses, go to the Activists' Workshop.
10 July 01
Words of Wisdom
A friend recently told me a rhyme her mother made up for school children, but it has a lot to tell us all - old and young:
Life is like a mirror
reflecting what you do
and if you face it smiling
it will smile right back at you.
- Virginia Donovan
Jesse Jackson, Jr. - Congressman Second District of Illinois
http://www.jessejacksonjr.org
Email message: July 4th and the Dream of Democracy
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 18:29:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.
The 4th of July is fast approaching-the day our nation pauses to consider what it means to be an American. July 4, 1776 the Founding Fathers declared independence from England. The "land of the free and the home of the brave" was born.
Yet in 1852, Frederick Douglass observed the holiday in Rochester, and was troubled by its paradox: "What to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he isthe constant victim." Douglass went on to say, "Go where you may, search where you will....and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."
Nine years later, a great quake began shaking our nation. It was the Civil War, and an opportunity to rid the land of its hypocrisy. Halfway through the war, on July 3, 1863, Union forces won a decisive and emotionally significant victory near a small Pennsylvania community: Gettysburg. The next day, a similar battle was fought in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Both battles were celebrated July 4, 1863, and represented the turning point in the war.
President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg November 19th for a special dedication. At Gettysburg in 1863, he redefined what it meant to be an American. "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us," Mr. Lincoln said. "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln reached past the Constitution, which allowed the hypocrisy Douglass spoke of, to the unalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. We must pick up the baton Lincoln tossed to us, and breathe new life into the dream of democracy. I believe the greatest democracy in the world CAN guarantee a high quality of life and equal opportunity for each of its citizens. I believe the Declaration of Independence charges us-and the Constitution allows us - to do nothing less.
In my upcoming book, A MORE PERFECT UNION: Advancing New American Rights, I take up that charge and propose eight constitutional amendments. Among them: rights to public education of high quality, health care and affordable housing. You may order advance copies via http://www.jessejacksonjr.org.
Friends, have a safe and enjoyable 4th of July. Then with a renewed spirit of independence, let's work to guarantee that every American enjoys the blessings of "a more perfect union."
July 4th, Energy Independence Day: "Exploding" the Death Star
by Jon Sherman
The Death Star, in Star Wars mythology, with all its planet destroying ability, did have a weakness, exploited successfully by the victorious strategy of the Rebel Forces. Though impenetrable to a large scale assault, a single person fighter was able to direct a proton torpedo (using the "force" of course) into the two meter wide thermal exhaust port of the Empire's monstrous weapon of galactic colonialism and from the resultant chain reaction explode it from the inside out. One obvious teaching from this George Lucas sci-fi fantasy, for those of us struggling against the too real world of corporate globalization, is that oft repeated phrase of Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Another teaching is that when battling the machine, look for it's weakness and strategize around that weakness.
Hello AES, "The Global Power Company", got your ears on? Then know that I and many more like me have discovered the weakness in your transnational power... those dinoasaurian, centralized fossil burning power plants you own, such as the one we'll be marching to on July 4th, the Alamitos Power Plant... those engines of Death Star culture whose exhaust, as the single greatest cause of global warming, is currently creating an earth environment uninhabitable to life as we know it. The strategic weakness of these power obscenities (I hesitate to use the word "plants" to describe something so deadly to plants and other living things) besides the fact that they are ultimately self destructive, is the fact that they are obsolete. The very ingenuity of the industrial age they powered passed them by long ago. Have you failed to notice, AES? We have entered the solar age of decentralized, clean, renewable power. Actually, we never left it. Every other community on this earth is powered by the Sun and has been since the dawn of life, except this current human culture you and others of your transnational corporate ilk get paid so well to keep chained to consumerism. On July 4th, Independence Day, we the people break free of those consumer chains to rejoin the rest of the solar-powered natural community as co- creators with the web of life, leaving the cancerous concept of "consumer" to more accurately describe those still caught up in the gold-rush mentality of planetary manifest destiny.
Hello Long Beach Organized Crime Task Force, have I got your attention with that word "exploding" in the title of this article? Then know that on July 4th the only military strategy People For Community Empowerment, the organizers for this event, will be practicing is a paradigm shift, directed straight into the smokestacks, the exhaust port, of the Alamitos Power Plant currently poisoning the air and water of your fair community like the Death Star it really is. We will come armed on that day only with a shift in self-awareness from "we the consumers" to "we the people". These will be our Points of Unity:
We will use no violence, physical or verbal, towards any person.
We consider speech or acts that are racist, homophobic, or sexist to be violent.
We will carry no weapons.
We will not bring or use any alcohol or illegal drugs.
We will not destroy property.
On July 4th, in El Dorado Park West, we will celebrate the spirit of interdependence possible when we the people have rediscovered true energy independence. We are confident that once people begin to realize the clean, renewable, alternative energy sources available to them, a non-violent chain reaction will result, powerful enough to creatively explode and transform centralized energy Death Stars into the solar age. Organizations such as Long Beach Solar will be there to teach us how, through the creation of neighborhood co-ops, we can all buy into alternative, clean power in a cost effective way. Imagine each household creating its own electricity. Imagine an America truly independent and sustainable. Imagine the job market that would bloom to realize such a vision. Join us then, all people concerned about their future, for energy independence and imagine a future worth living for the next seven generations. Join us in Long Beach, at El Dorado Park West, by the duck pond at 11am, to help build a broad, united coalition that strives for an American evolution: from dominance to partnership; from fragmentation to connection; from insecurity to interdependence. We look forward to giving Independence Day the meaning it deserves.
* Posted from a solar powered computer.
Power Plants to the People
Hello everyone. As you may know already, many of us are planning to roll a blackout across the country protesting irresponsible energy policies that leave our earth desolate and abused. Until we have solar and wind fueling our vehicles, our homes, and our computers, we're toast, ecologically speaking.
In solidarity with the energy activists across this country who see the necessity for transforming the root causes of economic inequality in this country as they are linked to the the corporate globalization of the power industry, I am rolling a permanent black-out until July 4th.
This measure is taken to help generate funds to purchase and install a windmill at the place where I work, I have been rolling a permanent blackout since May 21st and will continue until july 4th. I calculated that this period of the season averages the highest energy use and that I will save upwards of $100 by this measure. I am asking for matching funds of $30 from people in my community to participate in raising $500 for the purchase and installation of the windmill. Designated funds are channeled through our local Credit Union in Syracuse, NY.
As a society, we must take back our social power and the economic basis for our livelihood. We will NOT pay an oil or nuclear corporation for electricity ever again. We will generate this power at our homes, at our workplace and on our farms, the same farms that grow our food without genetically modified organisms and without the pesticides that destroy our childrens' lives. We will not contribute to the industry that drives our need to militarize Colombia, demolish Iraq, invade Chiapas, expand militarized zones through the Balkans, drop depleted uranium (from nuclear plants) on the people of Vieques, Iraq, Somalia, and Yugoslavia.
Every community in this country pays for "power." It's time to transform our communities and take it back.
In solidarity,
Zac Moore
Syruckus, NY
zdmoore@yahoo.com
BEYOND BIODEVASTATION: THE 5TH GRASSROOTS
GATHERING TO CELEBRATE BIODIVERSITY
AND QUESTION GENETIC ENGINEERING
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, JUNE 22-27, 2001
From June 24th to 27th in San Diego, CA, leaders from the same chemical companies that brought us DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange will be meeting for the Biotechnology Industry Conference, (BIO), to discuss how to expand the biotech industry. Those attending BIO will be leaders of multinational biotech and pharmaceutical corporations, bureaucrats, marketers and industry scientists. This promises to be the largest convention ever of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
Be part of the growing global movement to stop genetic engineering and protest BIO 2001.
Buses are being organized from communities throughout California and outside of the state to attend what promises to be the largest teach-in and public protest against the genetic engineering of our food, bodies and environment.
**TEACH-IN**
JUNE 22-23, 2001
San Diego, California
**BIODEVASTATION - DAYS OF ACTION**
JUNE 24-27, 2001
San Diego, California
TEACH-IN DETAILS
Explore the effects of genetic engineering on our health, the environment, our farms, and society as a whole. Consider the future being planned for us without our consent.
If you would like to attend the teach-in and join a bus or carpool in your community, please call 415-981-6205 x 383 or check out http://www.biodev.org.
Panel and workshop topics include:
* patenting of seeds and other life forms/biopiracy
* globalization and biotechnology
* monopolization and commodification of food, agriculture, and biodiversity
* activism and consumer power
* impacts of genetic engineering on farmers
* human genetic engineering
* biotechnology and the environment
* assaults on food security
....and best of all,. . . THE ALTERNATIVES
Confirmed featured speakers and emcees include:
*Jim Hightower, author, radio commentator and former Texas Secretary of Agriculture
*Dr. Vandana Shiva- scientist and anti-GMO activist from India
*Percy Schmeiser, a farmer from Canada who was sued by Monsanto for having his field contaminated with their seed
*Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, Fox TV reporters fired for doing a story about Monsanto's GE milk hormone
*Dr. Doreen Stabinsky, Greenpeace genetic engineering science advisor
*Marcy Darnovsky, a human genetic engineering specialist and many other scientists and activists from around the world
BIODEVASTION - DAYS OF ACTION DETAILS
There will be marches, street theater and protests while the BIO convention is taking place.
Come celebrate the global campaign for a just and sustainable food system and take back our communities and our biodiversity.
You can also check http://www.biodev.org for regular updates!!!
In the Bay Area call (415) 981-6205 x383.
cosponsors include: The Edmonds Institute, Institute for Social Ecology, Organic Consumers Association, The Ecology Center, GE-Free LA, Street Liberation Art Project, Pesticide Action Network, Greenpeace and many, many others.
End the War on Drugs
Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, by James P. Gray
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