Reports from the Global Marijuana March

What a non-stop weekend I’ve had!  Thursday night I was up until 5am producing a video for Oregon NORML.  That was critical because on Friday, May 1, Oregon NORML was at the Capitol rotunda all day presenting for the 10th Anniversary of our medical marijuana program.  I would’ve been there except I was attending an Edward Tufte seminar on visual information (best advice: “There’s no such thing as ‘information overload’; just ‘poor design’.”)  Following the seminar it was back home to load up gear for Saturday morning.

Friday night there was the Cannabis Common Sense TVshow.  I was way too tired to go on camera, but my friend Chief Greenbud from Nashville was playing on the show, so I had to go.  Of course, after the show there’s the after-party and who would miss the after-party when we’ve got a local bar/restaurant that locks up Friday night for our private party, serving food and drinks alongside the Medicine Man’s multi-strain vaporizer bar?

Then Saturday morning I arise at 5am for the Global Cannabis March.  I had three hours to prepare another video for the Oregon NORML booth and my two speeches for the afternoon.  I’m at the square by 9am, setting up the booth and readying our mobile march PA, which is a speaker, an amp, a car battery, and a power inverter loaded on a wagon.  By 10am the festivities begin underneath a typically gray Portland day with extremely high humidity (or what some non-PacNWers might call “light rain”).

We had probably over 1,000 people for our march.  Just as we began to leave, the clouds parted and gave us the only hour of sunshine we had all day.  I led the way, pulling that heavy wagon behind me as I barked out march chants over the loudspeaker:

• “I smoke pot and I like it a lot!”
• “Hey hey, Obama – Legalize Marijuana!”
• (And my latest) “If you like smokin’ pot, clap your hands.  If you like smokin’ pot, clap your hands.  If you like smokin’ pot and you smoke the weed a lot, if you like smokin’ pot clap your hands.”  (with variations of “If you like smokin’ weed then you are a friend indeed.” and “if you like smokin’ doobies more than Dolly Parton’s boobies.”)

We returned to the square and enjoyed the day’s speeches and performers, including Chief Greenbud, Human & The Human Revolution, Franco & The Stingers, and Marquee.  The heavy humidity returned but not enough to keep Portlanders away from the square and our vendors.  At one point, however, around 3:30pm, we had a massive thunderstorm roll over us with a torrential downpour.  That lasted about ten minutes, but did wash away most of our crowd.  We began packing things up and were out of the square after 5pm.

For me it was then off to the grocery store for munchies, chili, and soda pop, because the after-march-party was at my house.  The Oregon NORML board was there and some of my other friends.  Chief Greenbud and his girlfriend were there, too.  I broke out my collection of Starfish Designs pipes so everyone sould smoke out of their own and not pass around any H1N1 (not that I’m seriously worried about that, but why chance it?).  Soon, the guys and gal from Human & The Human Revolution showed up.  They broke out guitars, I got out my bass, and my brother Joshua Belville got out his guitar and we had a good ol’ jam.

Then Sunday I laid around the house all day, alternating between naps and complaining about my sore back from tugging that loudspeaker wagon on a one-mile march.  Between Thursday morning and Sunday morning, I think I got seven hours of sleep, total.  And they say we’re amotivated slackers!

I’ll have pictures and video later in the week.  In the meantime, the rest of this morning I will post pictures and videos from other marches around the globe.  If you’ve got footage you’d like to see on the Stash, just email me at stash@norml.org.