Roll-up For Cannabis Equity
By Terrie Best
The year was 2010. For medical cannabis patients in California it was a time of raids, confusion and painful interruptions to cannabis access. Activists were very organized and engaged in fighting for patients in courts; showing up to raids and badgering San Diego district attorney Bonnie Dumanis to clarify the laws meant to protect sick and dying patients. Dumanis would not stop her raids, she led a fierce fight and victimization against us. But she and other anti-cannabis DAs in California inadvertently mobilized an oppositional force that has political implications to this day.
Meanwhile in 2010 Los Angeles, Steve Cooley, their district attorney, was a complete disaster too. He had raided medical collectives and added support for implementing proposition 8 (anti equality) to his arsenal of hate. If you care to look up any of his “tough on crime” rhetoric in the form of his braying press conferences, they are likely still on the internet. BTW, where is Cooley now? Not on stage with the winners this week.
Then there was Kamala Harris, district attorney in San Francisco who came out early for marriage equality. She wasn’t horrible on cannabis and was tagged as a liberal during a time when Democratic DAs were being pulled to the right by the harmful drug war nonsense that almost broke us.
Those two candidates, under the backdrop of vastly different opinions on what made California safe, fought out a 2010 Attorney General race. This was the year of the Tea Party and the midterm “shellacking” Dems got for daring to put a Black man in the Whitehouse.
Many long-term activists will remember the California AG race as a referendum on cannabis raids, even though Kamala was never a champion of cannabis (as a DA she did support safe access and collectives). Still, the cannabis movement knew that Cooley would ruin everything. We had a chance to elect an AG who had said such things as “It is my duty to protect the vulnerable and that includes patients who seek medical marijuana” while Cooley vowed to shut down all sales of cannabis – him, with his narrow Bonnie-style interpretation of Prop 215, the Compassionate Use act of 1996. Not Cool.
Hoping to help Kamala but not able to endorse, the cannabis advocacy organization I volunteer for, Americans for Safe Access, hoisted a Not Cooley campaign. California ASA produced a series of opposition ads and Executive Director Steph Sherer had this to say “The Attorney General’s race is, without a doubt, the most important race for medical marijuana patients in California.” The fight was on.
I like to think the Not Cooley campaign won Kamala the California AG spot. She won that race by less than 0.85%. That was fewer than 75,000 votes out of almost 10 million cast. It took three weeks to announce her victory. It is one of the closest statewide votes in modern CA history. But, she won LA county, Cooley-town, by 14 points. Proving, if there was any doubt, LA likes weed.
Here’s the Not Cooley ad that Americans for Safe Access produced for patients. It features a cartoon granny in her wheelchair outside a cannabis outlet with Cooley directing his cartoon Narcotic Task Force agents to tackle her. Then grandma runs over him with her wheelchair.
ASA’s ads might have saved our democracy because winning the AG spot solidified Kamala’s career. And she was expected to lose. Cooley was ahead in October 2010 but Kamala would eventually win, possibly by the number of voters who saw those ads and said “Not Cooley” at the ballot box. Here is ASA’s opposition ad on Cooley’s marriage equality stance and the environmental ad. Here’s a news brief our ASA chapter did after Kamala won. Activism works and has far reaching tentacles. Keep going!
This is such a great story — about how cannabis advocates in San Diego helped in Kamala Harris’ first state-wide election. Thank you Terrie for sparking our memories.
Thanks, Frank! I got to be honest with you, though this was helped quite a bit by the San Diego chapter, it was the brainchild of our CA leaders in Oakland and Sacramento. We loved it though, believe me! We did not want Steve Cooley.
Hmmmm. It’s sad to see that 14 years ago “she wasn’t horrible on cannabis” is the best one could say about Harris on the plant, though. My guess is that she probably won’t legalize any more than Obama did, or Biden, but then that’s been the state of our elections for a long time. Vote ‘lesser evil’ seems to be what we are stuck with and Harris, like Obama (in my opinion), will turn out to just be another lesser evil in a long line of them.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think Trump is a much greater danger but the ‘pie in the sky’ about her is rather off-putting at times as it was during Obama’s elections. She’s a moderate Republican in my view, likely very much as Obama turned out to be in both foreign & domestic policy making, though I do think she is not nearly as right-wing as ‘the Goldwater Girl’ Hillary Clinton has always been that would have turned out much worse (harder right) as a president than Harris will be.
Feet firmly planted in reality, ya know? Harris IS essentially a cop which is inherently nowhere near being a ‘leftie’ though if one listens to the screaming GOP you’d think she was Jerry Rubin reincarnated mixed with a little Wavy Gravy!!!
Maybe she’ll surprise me in that but I won’t hold my breath. In a country founded by genocide and slavery one shouldn’t be too optimistic.
sealintheSelkirks
Jesus Christ! No wonder you live way out in the boonies with no other humans for miles. Your leftwing “standards” are so high, no one else can meet them except …. of course, you’re always welcome here.
Politics and building coalitions in the face of fascism means working with people to your right. Also, don’t forget we in San Diego County were having to deal with DA Bonnie Dumanis who took the Pot laws to the Calif Supreme Court in opposing them.
Ummm, that no other humans for miles is a bit of a stretch there, Frank! I have neighbors and some are even amazingly good & intelligent people like the Irvings on the adjoining property to the north who’s a retired Biologist (US Army during Viet Nam early 60s but was put in war virus labs in Germany) a high school science teacher and school librarian, and was an activist environmentalist fighter of the Forest Service trying to stop the madness of selling off entire forests to be butchered for corporate logging profits in this all-red GOP-run county; to a low-education full-on Trumper MAGAT with a wall full of weapons (according to his uncle who likes me) who hates having a hippy surfer up the hill. And who likes to shoot people’s dogs and wild coyotes after luring them in with garbage. That family already had a reputation with Fish & Game before they bought the property down below and built a pole-barn house…
Not a lot of places are really ‘boonies’ anymore unless you’ve got the money to get waaaay the hell out, buy hundreds of acres, and can afford to have everything delivered. Besides, I didn’t say I wasn’t voting for Harris! I am, and am advising non-voting friends to because I tell them the alternative they really don’t want to experience… Yes, I actually have more than one vote because I get the “I don’t know who or what to vote for” from people, and I explain why they should vote for this or that and send them information they can read/watch for themselves. In the last election I had 6 presidential votes in 4 different states. Advising is not illegal yet I don’t think!
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But yes, due to 20 years of working on this place, the growing in fairly thick western treeline on the county gravel road that goes N/S behind it means I don’t really have to see anybody if I don’t want to. I can walk out to the bank and watch cars going by when I want to I guess, and I can see headlights flashing in places, but the summer growth causes the visibility to be greatly reduced. Winter not so much, cars are more visible, but they don’t throw up giant dust clouds, either, so that’s a bonus in itself. I’m on the downwind side of the road…
But compared to the OB/MB world I grew up in? This 8 acre place IS the freaking boonies, isn’t it? Ahahahaha
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But one thing I am sure of is that the last 40 years since Ronnie Raygun twisted the neck of what could have been a brighter, more intelligent future for at least our country in so many different ways (I mean, solar panels on the White House by Pres. Carter?), it’s been heading generally in the wrong direction.
I don’t think the fundamental behavior of this corporate-owned and operated militarized empire (a TRILLION a yr on war???) is going to change much no matter what talking head is in place as the leader. The wealthy just won’t allow it. Some identity politics perhaps, but Presidents are temporary and a bureaucracy is forever (or it feels like it!!).
sealintheSelkirks
LOL of course!!!!!!!
Perspective is alway interesting and often entertaining. People on the far right are convinced she’s a commie Marxist. People on the far left say she’s a Republican lite. Actually, some even claim she’s a full on pro genocide right winger. Guess she’s whatever people want to claim she is.
Isn’t it though?
From Black Agenda Report:
Kamala Harris in Her Own Words
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
https://blackagendareport.com/kamala-harris-her-own-words
Just where does the term “boonies” come from? Seal, I know you all have issues out there.
Frank, I really have no idea where that term came from. Remember when we were kids and ‘out there’ meant you were from Timbucktoo or however it was spelled? Sometime after that it became ‘the Boonies’ but I vaguely remember that label showed up…during Viet Nam I guess. Boonie-rats was a war term describing jungle solders that were mostly invisible I do believe. I also remember that it meant that they were all somewhat odd and broken in ways that they were not fully human anymore. Strings of ears around their necks broken, it wasn’t an endearing term but one that garnered fear.
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And yes, there are most definitely issues around here. How much it has changed in this area is shown by realizing the 395 from Spokane north into Stevens County has a big sign down there that says it is named the ‘Tom Foley Highway’, a big-time Democrat from back when. I’m surprised that this ‘Georgia on the Canadian Border’ county hasn’t petitioned to have it changed to, oh I don’t know, maybe Stonewall Jackson Hwy? Jesus is Lord Hwy? 2nd Amendment Rules All Hwy? As I’ve said before, there no longer are any candidates on the county ballot that don’t have an R after their name. Most also praise MAGA in their campaign pamphlets…
sealintheSelkirks