Have a happy and solemn Memorial Day Weekend and remember the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who gave their lives to protect our rights to free speech, free association, and to petition our government for a redress of grievances. Please also remember the Drug War POWs, our brothers and sisters locked away for refusing to accept the government’s claim to sovereignty over our minds, bodies and nature’s plants.
Call President Obama at 202-456-1111 and demand a commutation or a pardon for Eddy Lepp!
The comments section on this post is reserved for your thoughts and support of Drug War POWs. If you have a friend or relative serving time who’d appreciate words of encouragement from the Stash, feel free to post their mailing address here, and Stashers, send them a letter or a postcard. They need contact with the outside world and to know that we’re fighting for them and for the day when we can all share a joint in freedom and remembrance the next Memorial Day Weekend!
Wow indeed Russ! I would bet any amount of money that this guy is from the 40′s or 50′s – or at least his intellect is. If only common sense would prevail over ignorance. [HUGE sigh]
Wow. You ask for nothing less than quintupling the US prison population and global eradication of a plant species. Never mind the idiocy, how are you going to pay for all of this?
(By the way, marijuana does not kill brain cells, and if I have to join the ranks of brain-dead marijuana users like the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, just tell me where to form the line.)
Marijuana kills brain cells, smells terrible, and infringes upon the dignity of the human station. The war on terror should be extended to completely eradicate marijuana usage. Marijuana possession should carry a mandatory prison sentence, and adverts need to appear on television to discourage people from joining the ranks of the brain-dead (i.e. marijuana users). Peace.
My brother is one I remember. One of the prisoners for life as his troubles continue.
Yes. The mystery of the real motivation of prohibitionists is one that will have scholars digging for decades. Is the criminalization of productive citizens soley a cover for the pretext of reaping black-market dollars on both sides of the equation? Or is it more?
Does a government that still continues to stretch malign tentacles into every non-capitalist country (witness our current destabilization of Bolivia) need to have a good leash on its own dissidents? Is that leash marijuana prohibition? At the risk of being considered a conspiracy theorist, in this era of Total Information Awareness, is it possible the government has a list of almost all marijuana consumers? — It must be nice for the thugs who hijacked our government to know they can arrest half the population if the rabble begin to stand up against the oppression and imperialism.
Hopefully, President Obama is about dismantling the oppression, and not just putting a new face on it. He has been very careful in his wording putting off marijuana reform. Is he stringing us along, or does he have freeing us on his agenda at some future date?
A Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.”
Well said. The prohibitionists will often cite only 0.7% of state and federal prisoners incarcerated for marijuana possession (as if 15,000 imprisoned for weed isn’t unjust) as a distraction from the real issue: the criminalization of productive non-violent law-abiding citizens.
Forgive me if I stretch this topic further than it was perhaps intended, but there is another group of Drug War POWs that needs to be considered. Those 20 million innocent Americans who, due to an all-pervasive “criminal records” system, are effectively under a form of house arrest for the rest of their lives.
A “conviction” of marijuana possession strips so many rights and avenues of progress from honorable Americans, they will forever be prisoners grudgingly allowed to walk among the “clean” population.
The Scarlet Letter of “marijuana criminal” has destroyed millions of promising careers, denied government assistance to students, locked away many social services (such as housing, food programs, health care and financial assistance) destroyed the efforts of reformed criminals trying to rebuild their lives (by causing their paroles to be “violated,” and even stripped children away from their parents.
Further, these persecutions and denial of rights of full citizenship have had huge ripple effects, tearing families apart, while devastating them economically.
Yes, let’s remember the Prisoners of the War On Marijuana Consumers. But let’s remember ALL of them. Most are not behind bars.