Eddy Lepp & Charles Lynch: Felons or Freedom Fighters?

Charles Lynch and Eddy Lepp pose near the road to prison (from FriendsofCCL.com)

Sometimes I feel like I’m suffering from outrage fatigue.  Day after day after day, I interview the Charles Lynches, Eddy Lepps, Corina Amatos, Eugene Davidoviches, the decent, beautiful, and courageous fellow citizens, brothers and sisters of this movement who are the front-line casualties of this war on marijuana.  To a person, each one I’ve talked to, and met in person like Eddy, are the kind of people you’d want babysitting your kids, inviting you to a neighborhood BBQ, or smoking a bowl with (and have.)

This picture just made me cry.  There’s Charles, on the left, yet to go to prison, standing with Eddy, right, on his way to serving 10 years in prison as a man in his later 50s.  All for being gardeners.

And yet there is that mischievous smile on Eddy’s face and determined look on Charles’ that give me hope.

We don’t face the lynchings that African-Americans faced.  We don’t face the bashings that gay and lesbian Americans face.  Our oppression is more sanitary, codified into laws that don’t directly consider us 3/5ths human or “sodomites“, but indirectly demean and imprison a set of American free-thinkers who dare to challenge the orthodoxy of synthesizing nature into a nice little pill so middlemen can get rich.  People who make the sensible and rational decision to forgo SSRIs, NSAIDs, opiates, and alcohol in favor of the safest therapeutically active substance known to man are dangerous to the ruling elite, not for their actions caused by marijuana, but for the action of thinking outside the box.

The war on marijuana is not about the eradication of a plant species, it’s about the eradication of those who question authority.

Please visit the Friends of Charles Lynch blog and Eddy Lepp’s page and show your support, both in comments and in dollars.  We R.E.M.F.’s* in the drug war need to be sure our front line soldiers are cared for.

*Ask a vet.