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Activists oppose raid of dispensary
05-06-07|The Bakersfield Californian

Calling themselves a "grass" roots organization, more than 150 people met at Beach Park Saturday and marched to City Hall in support of marijuana reform and in opposition to what they see as federal harassment of patients' rights including the raid on Nature's Medicinal Cooperative in Oildale last week.

Fifty pounds of marijuana was seized during the raid, as well as about $50,000 in cash, Drug Enforcement Agency agents said. Both the store and Chavez's house in Stockdale Estates were raided. The store reopened the next day. David Chavez Jr., the son of the dispensary owner, was arrested on suspicion of possession of a small amount of cocaine.

Saturday's march, scheduled for noon, was slow to build and noon became around 12:30 p.m.

"They're a bunch of stoners," joked Douglas McAfee, local president for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "They take a while to get here."

"They" were a colorful group -- tie-dye, tattoos and mohawks -- and the color extended to the smell of marijuana wafting through the air as several marchers put their mouths where their money was.

"I smoked some right before the rally," said Melissa Pease "I'm feeling totally relaxed."

A sense of relaxed activism permeated the crowd at Beach Park prior to the march. The marchers, some of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches, were more concerned about whether they could make the mile and a half walk to City Hall, and if they did, if they could walk back. Protesters attested to the benefit of medical marijuana and its ability to reduce pain.

"When I got stabbed in the neck, Vicodin did not not work but marijuana took away the pain," said 28-year-old Levi McLean. "Then, after my girlfriend made me mad and I slugged the (solid oak wood) cabinet, smoking marijuana made that pain in my hand go away, too