Tag Archives: NORML

Passive Aggressive Activism

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Reverend Ryan Posted in Call to Action, Cannabis Education, Medical Marijuana, Other World News, Pothead Parenting, xCann News 3 Comments

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I have participated in all kinds of approaches to activism over the years. Mostly anything to do with giving freedom and liberty to people. I started out with the “it’s my body, I’ll do what I want” as a teenager. Which got me two cannabis charges that stuck, and one that was expunged when I was a teenager (17). I served 8 months in jail, mostly because I didn’t understand the laws and the legal system at the time. Later after watching my father pass away from cancer, I protested in every way that I could. I approached it with many protests, youtube videos, support for many different cannabis organizations like NORML (and their many different branches). We started a Causes.com page for “Cannabis Cures Cancer” @ http://cancer.xcannabis.com

We have held an annual vigil for family and friends who have passed away from cancer, at the end of December we hold a “Cannabis Cures Cancer Awareness Week”. http://www.causes.com/actions/1710962-cannabis-cures-cancer-awareness-week

After my dad passed away in 2008, I traveled from Washington to Utah and Idaho regularly to protest. I tried the “tax and regulate” approach. I tried the “no victim no crime approach”, and I got arrested for pushing too far with a protest and violating a “use of streets without a permit” law and I was arrested and put in a detention cell for a few hours. After getting out, I hired a lawyer and a month later I got that law changed in July of 2010.

This was one of my South Eastern Idaho demonstrations in 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXWGyXMJrVw

This was another demonstration in SE Idhao in 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IMG6xJT1MbY

I have continued to do what I can to change the laws, and after all of these years. If we are counting from the first time that I was arrested for marijuana (but not deterred), it has been 19 years. I have learned over these years, that passively trying to effect or change these laws doesn’t do a lot of good. If you change a law, the system of prohibition just adjusts itself, and makes the laws more strict even after relaxing them at first. We saw this with prop215 in California, where they saw a 3x increase in possession arrests from 1990 to 2010. People think that cannabis prohibition is so relaxed in California, but the fact is in 2010, sixty thousand (60,000) people were arrested for cannabis possesion (simply possesion!) in California. Proof that prop215 did not relieve prohibition in California. Hopefully SB 1449 passing will relieve prohibition a little, I am hopeful it will. But Prop215 did the opposite of help in my opinion.

As I have watched President Obama fail to keep his promises, I have watched the liberal spectrum of the political system and I have become more and more disenchanted with that wing. George W. Bush (I do not like him, nor did I vote for him) only had one Federal MMJ indictment under his belt as president in both terms. Barack Obama has over 80 under his belt. So the president who has made it so well known that he believes that the drug war has failed, and that he feels strongly about decriminalizing cannabis, has 8000% more federal cannabis indictments under his belt, than his conservative predecessor. That blows me away!

This is my video to President Obama from 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DwGdwItpCE

This video is from a top economist/professor, Jeffery Miron:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcRMRuS-J-U

But as I have watched liberal friends on facebook approach this, they seem to do the same passive aggressive law reform approach. Like “ya prohibition is the worst thing that has plagued this country, but we’ll just relax the laws a little rather than nullify them”. I recently wrote a few posts about Jared Allaway, because he has been leading a few of these law reform campaigns. I wrote recently about I-584 “real legalization” in Washington and how it really doesn’t legalize anything. It just puts another bandaid on the problem, rather than simply nullifying the harmful and illogical law completely. It doesn’t even take cannabis off of the Washington State Unified Controlled Substances Act.

I also addressed Jared Allaway in a recent post that I made about “Socialism vs. Capitalism”. Jared seems very passive aggressive in his comments, rather than saying exactly what he has to say, he kind of beats around the bush. So I tried to light a fire, and I did yesterday, when I brought the same conversation up, where Jared was like “the federal government keeps persecuting cannabis people” and I said “Ya and we condone it by giving them endless tax monies”. This comes after many conversations with Jared about how he is in agreement with Obama on “more taxes more taxes!”.
But my point is, the more taxes we give them, the more they spend on this obscene drug war, and wars over seas.
Yesterday he deleted my posts about it, and then I deleted him from my friends list.

All hail socialism or be censored

I hate to delete people, and I usually don’t But after I go way out of my way and I even make a video to illustrate my points (no I don’t make a dime off my videos, no adwords or anything), and all of the time that I work on these points gets deleted, because someone demands to be in control. Well, I just don’t have time for that shit.

This is the video that I made:

But I think it was good to draw the line in the sand. Im tired of the passive aggressive activism, where no one wants to directly solve any problems, they just want to be responsible for some kind of “change”. Pretty much ANY kind of change. Socialism is really easy to push, because someone is rescuing someone else by giving them freebies from the government. But socialism just doesn’t work, based on the reasons that I proposed in this blog post: http://xcannabis.com/2013/07/socialism-or-capitalism-for-the-next-election/

I guess if push comes to shove, and it will for sure some day in this road we are headed down. I think it’s better to push before the economy and the civilization deteriorate completely. What happened when the USSR fell apart is the last thing that I want to see happen to our country, or for my children. So if someone is going to propose running for governor, and Jared has. I feel like I have the right to interject my opinion about his BS policies.

One thing that I can not be accused of, is passive aggressive action, or passive aggressive activism. If I enlist myself in an endeavor, I go all in, or I don’t go at all. I have to really believe in something to put myself in there. So many people have ambition to be involved, but then they don’t get much done. They either get rich, or they get famous, but they typically don’t get the job done. I wouldn’t even propose putting myself in for a political campaign, unless I was willing to give it 100% and get stuff done once I get there.

A few days ago Eric Holder released his BIG NEWS about drug reform. Rather than decriminalizing cannabis, like Obama campaigned on 6-7 years ago. Holder says “we are going to change the mandatory minimum requirements”. What? That’s it! That’s the big victory that everyone is so happy about?

Ref; http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/14/eric-holders-prison-break

If you are an activist, it’s time to take inventory. What have you done? What positive change have you effected? Have you accomplished ANY of the goals that you set out to do? What’s the next step? If you don’t know, it’s time to shit or get off the pot!

On that note, practicing medical physician and TV personality Sanjay Gupta came out and gave his new analysis on his old position on marijuana, and comes out decidedly in favor of ending cannabis prohibition!

http://www.businessinsider.com/sanjay-gupta-cnn-weed-thc-cbd-2013-8