Suetaz

Marijuana rights group uniting behind Kerry

Bush administration's drug policies fuel Hempfest stance

By Sandeep Kaushik| Boston Globe Correspondent | August 20, 2004

SEATTLE -- More than 150,000 denizens of the Northwest will gather this weekend in a waterfront park for Hempfest, billed as the largest pro-marijuana gathering in the country, to listen to speeches from the biggest names in the national drug-law reform movement between band sets and bong hits.

But this year, attendees will hear an explicitly partisan message, too: Organizers are pushing pot smokers to help elect Senator John F. Kerry president.

The size of Hempfest indicates the potential power of the pro-pot vote, particularly in the Northwest, reformers said. Organizers think that registering even a few thousand Hempfest attendees could make the difference in a close election. ''It is essential for our crowd to understand that there is nothing more important they can do for drug policy reform than to go out and cast their ballots in the Democratic box in November," said Dominic Holden, 27, a spokesman for the festival.

The decision to break with the tradition of nonpartisanship that has guided the festival in its 12 previous incarnations was born out of the Bush administration's aggressive policies against marijuana, Hempfest organizers said. While many of the 1,200 volunteers working on the festival personally adhere to political views more in line with the Green Party or of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, this year they think the stakes are too high for their constituency to vote for third-party candidates and risk throwing the election to President Bush.

''When you look at what's happening on the front lines of the drug war under the Bush administration, the federal government has waged war against sick and dying people who use medical marijuana and those compassionate enough to help them," Holden said. ''We need to unite and get George Bush out of office. We need to vote for John Kerry."

Holden cited federal drug raids in recent years against medical marijuana collectives in California that operated in accordance with state law and the support of local officials as a motivating factor in the festival's decision to push an anti-Bush message, as well as White House drug czar John Walters's personal lobbying efforts last year against I-75, a Seattle voter initiative that called for authorities to make enforcement of marijuana laws their lowest priority. Despite Walters's opposition, I-75 passed last September with 58 percent support.

More than 20 outside groups have signed up to do voter outreach at the event, either staffing international booths or sending more than 100 canvassers through the crowd to promote voter registration. These include environmental, antiwar, and other activist groups, ranging from small groups to better-known entities such as the League of Women Voters.

The Kerry campaign also will have a presence at the event, with campaign volunteers staffing a booth and circulating among the crowd, organizers said.

Sam Rodriguez, director of Kerry's Washington state campaign, said there is nothing surprising about the fact that the Democratic coalition includes a broad range of ideological viewpoints, from very liberal to conservative. ''Members of one-issue organizations -- that's part of our democracy. We look at all Americans as potential John Kerry-John Edwards voters," he said. ''We are all united to defeat George W. Bush."

The festival has always had a political, conscious-raising component complementing the entertainment that helps draw crowds to the event. In between pot-friendly musical acts performing on multiple stages -- the headliners are the Kottonmouth Kings, Los Marijuanos, and Sir Mix-A-Lot -- every year Hempfest speakers urge attendees to register to vote to have more influence on efforts to liberalize drug laws. Tying that effort to the fortunes of a particular presidential candidate, however, is new.

Some national advocates of liberalizing drug laws slated to speak at Hempfest said they were supportive of Kerry over Bush but were wary of explicitly supporting the Democratic Party. While they agreed with organizers that the Bush administration has to be ousted, they also cited the support they have received from prominent libertarian-leaning Republicans.

''When it comes to the drug war, the Bush administration is a disaster," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes harm reduction and treatment as alternatives to the current punitive approach to drug use. While Kerry seems more sympathetic on topics like medical marijuana, needle exchange, and reforming mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, ''we know going in he will disappoint us," Nadelmann said.

Keith Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that, ''all of us recognize that there is no question that marijuana reform policies would be better served with someone else in office other than George Bush."

But he added that the movement is committed to reaching out to all political parties. ''It would be a terrible mistake to let the [marijuana reform] issue be perceived as a Democratic issue," he said.

The Kerry campaign and the festival organizers seemed wary of possibly tainting the campaign with countercultural associations that could turn off mainstream voters. The presence of Kerry volunteers at Hempfest, or the push by organizers to get smokers to the polls in November, should not be seen as an implicit endorsement of the Hempfest agenda by the Kerry campaign, Holden said.

''I wouldn't want to say that their agenda is our agenda," he said. ''With 150,000 politically aware people here, they would be fools not to come out and do voter registration."

[Suetaznote: Have you registered yet? Rock The Vote.com

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