We get a lot of emails at NORML with very enthusiastic suggestions about what we oughtta be doing. As we sit and count the gold bars at our secret island fortress, we read these suggestions and admire the creative thinking and dedicated activism of the cannabis community. Unfortunately, most of the ideas require the kind of logistics and money that are way beyond our capabilities.
One popular idea is the “Million Man March on Washington DC”. Now, I love the idea of a million stoners descending on our nation’s capital to demand an end to prohibition, but I also know that a million butts mean a few hundred thousand porta-potties, thousands of hotel rooms, hundreds of staff, permits, insurance, media, stagecraft, and so on. It’s fun to get an email around April 1st thinking we can just whip up such a march.
The other point would be the idea of picking your battles. Even if we could raise the funds to pull something like this off, would it be a wise use of money and effort? How would a million dollars be best spent? I’d rather give $10,000 to 100 highly motivated local NORML chapters; that distributed type of grassroots support would have a much bigger impact.
But here’s an idea from a certain Hippy from Missippi (that’s how it’s pronounced, I believe) that I think could be fun, cheap, and easy. Who knows if we would ever get to 1,000,000 postcards, but it only costs a 27¢ stamp and a postcard to try:
Imagine … just for a minute … you are President Obama and you are sitting in the Oval Office going over some things for the people and the mail arrives. The date is April 20th and millions of postcards start arriving. All with a similar message. Each postcard is a scene from a different place in America, not the post office variety, but the tourist type, from folks like me and you and millions of others with just one message:
Legalize Marijuana.
Some suggestions for messages on these cards could be as follows:
- “Yes we can … legalize, regulate and tax marijuana.”
- “This is no laughing matter. Please legalize marijuana.”
- “I support the end of prohibition for adult use of marijuana.”
This list could go on and on, but you get the idea.
If only 100,000 cards reached the president and another 100,000 reached our legislators, it would be a lot more effective, I believe, than the questions that Mr. Obama scoffed at.
This could be repeated each year, with the mailing date timed so that the cards could be arriving in DC on the 20th of April. For instance, this year the postcards could be mailed on Friday, April 17th and a great majority will arrive on the 20th.
How about April 15th? You’re already sending in your federal taxes, you already have to go to the post office. What do you think, Stashers?
You can use this link to get addresses and email addresses.
http://capwiz.com/norml2/home/
Letters and postcards are better than emails because letters and postcards can be held in the hand. Emails are too often ignored.
Is there any way normal could set up something on their website , so we flood them with emails too?