FREE THE WEED 20
A Column by John Sinclair
Highest greetings from sunny Healdsburg, California, where I’m visiting this week to work on a film documentary of the great bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson before returning to Detroit for Halloween with my granddaughter Beyonce and a trip to the voting booth on November 6 to cast my ballot for my president and for full legalization of marijuana in the City of Detroit.
Since I left Michigan in early September my travels have taken me from one side of the United States to the other. In my last column I reported on the Hempstalk Festival in Portland OR and the legalization initiative in Oregon, the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup in Seattle, and my two weeks in New Orleans where medical marijuana is not recognized but I was able to secure an ample dosage of my medicine through the help of friends in the old school way.
I carried a supply of my medicine with me on the train from New Orleans to Atlanta GA, where I visited my daughter Chonita, her companion Eric and my granddaughter Zoe, and then from Atlanta to New Haven CT to visit my sister Kathy and her family, including her daughter Kashala’s brilliant little girl of two years called Jaya. No medical marijuana in Georgia, of course, and not that I could tell in Connecticut, but the tokes brought from the Southland carried me through to Lowell MA where I spent a weekend as the Poet in Residence at the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival, honoring Lowell’s native son Jack Kerouac and playing two concerts with the legendary musician and Kerouac collaborator David Amram, now nearly 82 and still kicking with both feet.
I even made it as far as Portsmouth NH to see my pal and fellow disc jockey Bruce Pingree, whose splendid blues programs for WUNH-FM may also be heard on my internet radio station, RadioFreeAmsterdam.com, every week in November, and to play one night for him at the Press Room in Portsmouth before heading north to complete my magic circle in Portland ME, directly across the continent from where I’d started out in Portland OR.
Now Maine is a medical marijuana state—and it’s up for a vote in Massachusetts this month as well—but when I presented my Michigan Medical Marijuana patient’s card at a compassion center in Portland they had no legal basis to recognize it and I had to renew my prescription the old-fashioned way, through the intercession of a friend of a friend. My last joint of the New Orleans prescription got me through the screening of my movie TWENTY TO LIFE at a downtown arts venue and my gig for the Port Veritas poetry series with a stellar group of young jazz players led by Kyle Hardy.
While we recorded a few tunes the next afternoon at my friend and fellow poet Gil Helmick’s basement studio I received a welcome visit from a local unlicensed care-giver and got enough medicine to carry me into my next destination, New York City, and my gigs at Otto’s Shrunken Head Lounge with Dee Pop & his band and our special guest Daniel Carter, and a beautiful duet performance with bassist Doug Lunn—in town from Los Angeles—at the Yippie Museum Café on Bleecker Street.
I spent my final night in New York City at the home of Don & Leela Fiorino in Queens, where I enjoyed a fantastic dinner, great conversation & companionship, my final joints rolled up & mixed with Don’s home-grown tobacco, a short night’s sleep, and a ride to JFK Airport at 5:00 am to catch my flight to California, where I KNOW they’ve got medical marijuana—and plenty of it.
But once again my prescription was renewed through the intercession of a friend of a friend of a friend who brought over and gifted me with a bag of weed he’d just harvested from his own crop of Blueberry Cheese, and that’s what I’m smoking as I write this column on a brisk but sunny Wednesday afternoon in Healdsburg. I’ve got just enough to get through the week and then it’s back to the Motor City, where I’m fully licensed and it’s no problem to obtain the proper medicine. Whew! What a relief that will be!
I’m not confident enough of my understanding of the American electorate to predict the outcome of the marijuana legalization initiatives in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, although things seem to be looking pretty good in all three battleground states. The Associated Press reported recently that a number of mainstream politicians, both Democrats & Republicans, have come out in favor of the several citizens’ initiatives. Oregon’s Democratic governor ha snot taken a stand, while Repulican state Senate candidate Cliff Hutchison says the legalization measure would “cut wasteful government spending on corrections and reduce drug gang violence” (!) In Colorado the Democratic governor opposes legalization, but GOP state Senator Steve King isn’t any better, speaking out against even medical marijuana and proclaiming, “We have a next generation to protect.”
In Washington state, the Democratic governor stands with President Obama against legalization, while US Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner favors legalization as “a different approach to a very expensive drug war, and potentially a better approach.” Former Colorado Republican congressman Tom Tancredo is vigorously supporting the legalization initiative, comparing marijuana prohibition to alcohol prohibition as another “failed government program…that steers Colorado money to criminals in Mexico.”
Of course, there’s no telling what the voters will do until the ballots are counted after the 6th of November, but that’s why it’s so important for each and every one of us to cast our votes for legalization of marijuana in any form wherever and whenever we are given the opportunity. In Flint and Detroit we can vote to legalize within our own municipalities, and in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids important liberalization initiatives are also on the ballot this month, so we’ve got a good chance to counteract the criminally oppositional policies of the Tough Nerd and his Attorney General to block the citizens’will with respect to medical marijuana use and availability.
Me, I’ve always believed that all marijuana use is medicinal in the context of our sick social order and I’ll close with the old-time slogan that titles this column every month: FREE THE WEED!
—Healdsburg CA
October 24, 2012
© 2012 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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