Hey, Dude, Can Ya Give Me a Lift to Hempfest? (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 19, 2009
If you’re reading this, you likely aren’t at Hempfest.
Yes, in Seattle and in Boston (and a few other locations), today and tomorrow, thousands of people will be attending the biggest pot party in America. Priceless.
From The Sixties: Seattle Hempfest Bigger Than Ever:
Somewhere around 300,000 people converged on the Seattle waterfront Saturday and Sunday to attend the 19th annual Seattle Hempfest, the world’s largest marijuana “protestival,” as organizers like to call it. While organizers and drug reform advocates were out in force to encourage attendees to get involved in changing the marijuana laws, for most of the crowd, Hempfest was one big pot party. And that has some movement critics unhappy…
With hundreds of vendors selling glass pipes, bongs, tie-dyes, and assorted other pot-related paraphernalia, as well as dozens of food vendors, with seven stages alternating musical acts with activist speakers, and with crowds so thick that people literally could not move at some points by mid-afternoon on both days, Hempfest seems more like a dense urban community than a festival. And like any urban community, Hempfest had a police presence, but as far as can be determined, police couldn’t find anyone to arrest despite the ever-present scent of marijuana smoke in the air.
That’s in part because Seattleites voted in 2003 to make adult marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority. But it is also in part because, unlike some other police forces, the Seattle police actually acknowledge and heed the will of the voters. In all of last year, Seattle police arrested only 133 people for marijuana possession — and those were all people who had already been detained on other charges…
From Sterling on Justice & Drugs: Hempfest is huge, but is it good politics?:
…In many towns around the nation, the entirety of the drug policy “debate” is either on the letters to the editor page of the local newspaper or a hemp rally on a campus or in a park. But in larger cities, within the next six weeks, there will be various hemp rally–“harvest festivals,” such as the 20th Annual Boston Freedom Rally on September 19, 2009 and the 39th Annual Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival in Madison, Wisconsin, Oct. 1-4, 2009. The fall semester will probably see a resumption of campus marijuana policy protests packaged as hemp rallies.
Of course, these rallies are not a debate, at all. Even as a “political” rally or protest, the hemp rally is a hodge-podge of bands, speakers, and clouds of smoke. I am deeply troubled that for much of the public the most common face of the politics of drug policy reform is teenager smoking a pipe at a pot rally. Does it need to be said that this is profoundly counter-productive? Well-meaning and passionate, but immature strategies and tactics keep holding back our movement.
Around the nation – indeed around the world – serious analysts and commentators know that our drug policy is a counterproductive failure leading to more crime and little drug abuse prevention. The U.S. government and its political establishment are the linchpin for reform, but until a proper political campaign is executed, the status quo will remain firmly in charge. We are close to a global tipping point for reform, but our reform movement squanders the energy and political force of tens of thousands of our activists on ill-conceived events. Protests are necessary, and large, well-planned demonstrations would be a tremendous asset to the global reform movement. But the hemp rally paradigm is out of date.
Woodstock was a great cultural moment. But it is preposterous to think that two-bit re-enactments of the Woodstock vibe in parks and quads around the nation are a positive political tactic…
2008 Boston Freedom Rally Podcast with Herbal Nation “We Love the Herb” and DJ Slim “Mary Jane”
Seattle Hempfest 2006
Related:
Hempyreumenglish’s Weblog: Pulling The Lid Off Pot
Patterico’s Pontifications: “Denver May Be Pot Capital, U.S.A.”
HighBoldtage: Seattle Hempfest 2008
Denver Post: As dispensaries pop up, Denver may be Pot Capital, U.S.A.
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Ha Ha…VMD…Guess I’m not among the hip! Getting my high watching WV-Auburn game.
Good read, as always.
Ztower