DdC

Below are the stories covering the Boston Freedom Rally as presented by the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. One would have a hard time believing that the reporters were at the same event. Let's look at the differences and what it represents, at least in my opinion.
- Richard Lake, Sr. Editor, DrugNews, http://www.mapinc.org September 21, 2003

RALLY URGES RELAXATION OF POT LAWS

There may have been a haze in the air, but organizers of the annual Freedom Rally on the Boston Common clearly saw their goal, to decriminalize marijuana and allow medicinal use.

As the smell of pot mixed with incense, and the band onstage competed with numerous bongo players and guitar strummers, organizers from the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition spoke of their confidence that marijuana will be decriminalized in the state. They cited the non-binding results of votes last November in 20 districts where citizens, by an average of 2-to-1, instructed their state representatives to decriminalize pot. No bills have made it out of committee, but that has not discouraged MassCann president Bill Downing .

"We expect very soon to see Massachusetts decriminalize marijuana," Downing said. "It will probably have to be done through the initiative process, because legislators are reluctant to pursue it unless they are forced to do so."

About 45,000 attended the festival, Boston police said. At least 45 arrests were made on drug-related charges, police said. An organizer said attendance appeared to be down from last year.

Canada's decision to decriminalize possession of less than two-thirds of an ounce of marijuana also encourages MassCann, Downing said, along with the case of Ed Rosenthal , a Californian who was deputized by the city of Oakland to grow marijuana for medicinal use and convicted in January in federal court of cultivation and conspiracy to grow more than 1,000 marijuana plants, after a raid on his home.

A judge sentenced Rosenthal to a one-day prison term and said he had already served it after he was arrested. The activist has since become a symbol of the movement and spoke twice at yesterday's Freedom Rally.

"The government did in six months what I've been trying to do for 35 years," said Rosenthal, coauthor of "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal" and author of 12 other books about marijuana. "The whole legal situation has catapulted me into being a spokesman for the movement, and I really appreciate their help."

Rosenthal is appealing his conviction, while federal prosecutors are appealing his sentence.

Rachel, a 34-year-old government worker in Rhode Island who did not want her last name used, called Rosenthal "courageous" after buying two of his books.

"I'm glad to see people getting together on the issue," she said. "Most people walk around and don't express an opinion, because they're afraid of persecution. But the numbers here speak for themselves, when you look at everyone who's come here."

Pubdate: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Contact: letter@globe.com * Website * Details
Author: Ron DePasquale
Cited: Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition
____________________ _____________

Good reporting by the Boston Globe. Covered what happened well.
But what did the Boston Herald write?

UP IN SMOKE: POTHEADS UNITE: 45 ARRESTED AT ANNUAL PROTEST

Police arrested 45 pot smokers on Boston Common yesterday as protesting hempheads called for an end to the war on drugs and a diversion of billions of anti-drug dollars to the war on terrorism.

"Fight terrorism! End prohibition," yelled Joe Bonni of MASS CANN/NORML, the pro-weed lobby that organized the event. Citing the transfer of narcotic agents to terrorism duty after 9/11, Bonni said, "Imagine how safe we'd be if they had been on home security in the first place. We need to make the nation a safer place, and one of the ways to do that is to end the war on drugs."

Thousands of cannabis enthusiasts along with anti-reefer activists descended on the Common for the 14th annual Freedom Rally, where pot, politics, tie-dye styles, head-banging punk rock, Christian evangelism and fried dough converged in a big, sweaty, sun-baked mass yesterday.

Clouds of marijuana smoke wafted across the green, and by 5 p.m., undercover officers had arrested 45 people for possession or distribution of marijuana.

A reporter's approach made one 50-year-old pot smoker jump.

"I'd have some explaining to do," said the Waltham man, who identified himself only as "Joe." He estimated that he had been smoking pot for at least 32 years, and said he considered it a crime that it is still illegal.

"The penalties people get for smoking pot are ridiculous," Joe said.

Where two main paths crossed, a series of activists with placards angled for the attention of passersby. They ranged from an evangelist beseeching sinners to change their ways, to a pot proponent protesting NORML for proposing legislation rather than fighting a court battle on constitutional grounds.

An earnest young law student clutching a hefty tome argued the issue with him. Another man nearby simply held up a store-bought utility sign that said, "Keep Off the Grass."

A blue-haired, black-clad youth said he came because he thought the Freedom Rally would be a patriotic event featuring punk rock bands like Scissorfight.

"I think pot should not be legalized. I'm a born-again Christian. Why do you think I wear this stuff?" he said about his "Abortion is Homicide" T-shirt.

But Joyce Walsh, 73, a former Beacon Hill resident now retired in Savannah, Ga., said,
"I think it's way overdue to legalize it.'

Pubdate: Sun, 21 Sep 2003
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Contact: letterstoeditor@bost onherald.com * Website * Details
Author: Jules Crittenden
Cited: MASS CANN/NORML

Related Articles & Web Sites

NORML

Pothead With a Purpose - Metrowest Daily News

Pot Shots: The Faces of Marijuana in Boston

Ed Rosenthal's Pictures & Articles

Potheads Unite: 45 Arrested at Annual Protest
____________________ ____________

What kind of reporting is this?

Arrests are the most important, lead paragraph?

"POTHEADS" "hempheads" "pro-weed lobby" ???

Only "thousands" - not 45,000?

Where is the coverage of what happened on the stage, the messages from well known activists? Instead we get "Where two main paths crossed...."

Well, you can all see the differences. Thankfully the Boston Globe is the far larger newspaper, with a strong Sunday readership throughout the New England states.

The clear bias exhibited by the Boston Herald is well known. Reporter Jules Crittenden was told the kind of story he had to write. Where does a Boston Herald reporter go to advance his career? The supermarket tabloids?
Richard lake

DdC

Are we ready to use the "F" word? Fascist!
Peace, Love and Liberty or Treason and DEAth
DdC



STATE OF THE UNION: CORRUPT

From Whom Did the Fascists Get Support?

Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism.



The Media Foundation
1243 West 7th Ave
Vancouver BC V6H 1B7
Web: http://www.adbusters.org

MediaWatch
204-517 Wellington St. W.
Toronto ON M5V 1G1
Web: http://www.mediawatch.ca

Media Education Foundation
Web: http://www.igc.org/mef

PR Watch
Center for Media & Democracy
3318 Gregory St.
Madison, WI 53711
Web: http://www.prwatch.org

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
130 25th St.
New York NY 10001
Web: http://www.fair.org

Multinational Monitor
Web: http://www.essential.org/monitor



"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.
Continued... http://www.sumeria.net/politics/invpro.html

Shadow of the Swastika

U.S. law enforcement spends $7.5 to $10 billion annually enforcing marijuana laws. According to the FBI, 720,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2001.
Keith Stroup,(NORML)

In 2000, there were 1,579,566 drug arrests in the US. Of those, 46.5 percent -- 734,497 arrests -- were for marijuana. There were 646,042 arrests for simple possession of marijuana in 2000.
http://www.drugwarfacts.org

Rainbow Farm Massacre

The Ganjawar is a Product Sold by D.E.A.th to Profit Fascist ... DdC



Nazism or WoD?

SCAPEGOATING - Blaming social problems on a cultural, racial, or behaviorial group.

PREJUDICE - Selling the public on the idea that all members of the targeted group are 'bad' people.

LIES - 'Facts', which cannot be verified, and pseudo-scientific studies are used as propaganda against the targeted group. History is rewritten.

NO PUBLIC DEBATE - "These people have no right to have their viewpoiunt aired." and " Anyone who disagrees or questions us must be one of them!"

DEHUMANIZATION - Characterizing all members of a targeted group as subhuman and typically capable of monstrous deeds and/or crimes.

PROTECT OUR CHILDREN - "They corrupt, seduce and/or destroy our children."

CIVIL LIBERTIES SACRIFICED - "We must give up some of our freedoms, liberties, and rights in order to combat this menace to society."

LEGAL DESCRIMINATION - Laws criminalize members of targeted group and they may be denied jobs, the right to own property and/or be restricted as to where they may live or go.

INFORMERS - Citizens are urged to 'turn in' friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members.

SECRET POLICE - Non-uniformed police squads set up to wage war on targeted groups utilizing deception, infiltration, espionage and entrapment.

CONFISCATION OF PROPERTY - Property and assets are seized from people who are members of targeted group. Property may be divided between the informer and the state.

REMOVAL FROM SOCIETY - Prisons, rehabilitation camps, 'hospitals', executions and genocide
("Kill them All" "Zero Tolerance")

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."
Benito Mussolini

Just Say No!
Nancy Reagan 1980

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?
Richard Nixon missing tapes

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.
Harry Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics, testifying to Congress on
why marijuana should be made illegal, 1937.
(Marijuana Tax Act, signed Aug. 2, 1937; effective Oct. 1, 1937.)

Another weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me. The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag - a thing with a soul that could mirror my own.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini together in the heyday of 1930s fascism.

A Roundup of Hearst's Hysterical Headlines

__________________

Governor

This forum would be hard pressed to top your input. Thanks.

__________________
'Marijuana is responsible for evolution itself' Dr. Robert Melamede
"Fuck the monkeys" Ken Gorman
potgov@yahoo.com
420 Medicine

kitch

I went to that. It was really really awful, Ed Rosenthal spoke at 4:20 and the whole crowd booed him and were like 'FUCK YOU AND YOUR EFFORT TO LEGALIZE THE REASON WE'RE ALL HERE!'

that's why we're never gonna get legal bud, cause the people who should care most are fucking assholes who only care about having a good time.

In conclusion FUCK potheads.

__________________

DdC

Pot and politics fueled the 14th Annual Freedom Rally Saturday, where 50,000 people gathered on Boston Common for “Hempfest,” an event sponsored by the Massachusetts Cannibis Reform Coalition and the National Organization for the Reform of the Marijuana Laws.

Event planners wanted to use the event — whose theme was “Fight Terrorism, End Prohibition” — to question the Bush administration’s idea of tying marijuana users to terrorism to justify an expansion of the “War on Drugs,” according to Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Dr. Ethan Nadelmann.

Other topics addressed at the event were the full-out legalization of marijuana, the non-recreational uses of hemp and the medicinal benefits of marijuana.

“We cannot afford to have our terrorism efforts fail as has the war on marijuana consumers,” said Keith Saunders, a MassCann director. “The link between ending marijuana prohibition and fighting terrorism is the money. Police officers’ time spent enforcing prohibition could and should be spent fighting terrorism.”

The afternoon featured non-stop entertainment and speeches. Top Boston bands, including several winners of the 2003 Boston Music Awards, cannabis experts and political activists took to the stage.

Ed Rosenthal, a cannabis expert and member of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, urged attendees to register to vote and change the laws prohibiting marijuana. Several tables were set up on the Common for voter registration.

“We know that marijuana has to be legal,” Rosenthal said.

At one point, Rosenthal, also a member of the Garden Writers Association of America, had audience members chanting “these laws are doomed” at the 60 police officers patrolling the Common. He labeled the “ABC” team of Ashcroft, Bush and Cheney the “axis of evil” and said they were taking away constitutional rights.

“The war on drugs has weakened The Bill of Rights,” said Nancy Murray, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts’ Bill of Rights Education Project, who also spoke at the event.

She spoke out against the USA PATRIOT Act, saying it invades Americans’ right to privacy, and asked people to sign a petition to repeal the act. As of Saturday afternoon, the ACLU had gathered 75,000 of the 150,000 signatures it is hoping to collect during the effort, Murray said.

Others joined in attacking the government for cutting down on civil liberties.

“The prohibition of the hemp plant is depriving people of their freedom and their liberty,” said Jean “Magic” Black-Ferguson, founder of Grammas for Ganja and one of the festival organizers.

Black-Ferguson helped set up the “Hemposium,” where people could learn the many uses of hemp. A display showcased hemp products like food items from Canada and Europe, including hemp ice cream and hemp waffles, hemp clothing, hemp insulation, hemp shampoo and hemp rope. Hemp can also be grinded up and used to absorb oil spills.

Black-Ferguson said hemp is a benign plant that is strong, lightweight, non-toxic and biodegradable. She said she started Grammas for Ganja in Seattle to “bring awareness to women.”

“Women are the ones who are going to change the laws,” she said.

One speaker pushed for the medical uses of marijuana.

“Pot is my Prozac,” said Marcy Duda, an advocate and user of medicinal marijuana. Duda said she uses pot instead of prescription pain-killers for her nerves and to ease the pain of five aneurisms — she was originally prescribed Oxycontin, but became addicted to it and sick from taking it.

David “Captain Joint” Bunn, a Hempfest Board of Directors member and High Times 2003 Freedom Writer of the Month, also said pot is a therapeutic and inexpensive alternative form of medication. Bunn said he uses pot to soothe his arthritis, asthma and anxiety attacks. He said many of his doctors have recommended use of the drug to ease his pain.

Bunn said he was prescribed pain medicine for the four surgeries he has undergone in the last year, but said he only uses pot as a medicine, because the pills prescribed did not work.

But Bunn also said recreational use of marijuana is less harmful than alcohol.

“Drunks are having testosterone battles on one side of a party, and the stoners are laughing at them,” Bunn said. “Potheads are peaceful.”

Attorney Michael Cutler said the United States should have a policy of treatment instead of punishment for marijuana use.

“The death of prohibition is inevitable,” Cutler said. “The government is making crooks rich,” and should legalize pot in order to regulate its sale and distribution.

“If we can tolerate alcohol and tobacco, we can certainly regulate and make safer marijuana,” he said. “The pot distribution process works fine. Anyone can get it without any regulations. We need to legalize it to provide a safer framework for children.”

Many attendees signed cards at ACLU tables supporting a bill to make the “possession of less than one ounce of marijuana a civil infraction, punishable by $100 fine” in the state of Massachusetts.

MassCann’s ‘Hempfest’ Attracts 50,000
Source: Daily Free Press (MA)
Author: Cassandra Miller
Published: September 22, 2003
Contact: letters@dfpress.com
Website

norml.org


masscann.org


Drug Policy Alliance

Boston Freedom Rally High Times Ad full size


to Everyone Who Made Rally 03 Textbook Perfect

14th Annual MassCann/NORML Freedom Rally
September 20th
High Noon
Boston Common

Are you ready? Large crowd pic



In 2000, there were 1,579,566 drug arrests in the US.
Of those, 46.5 percent -- 734,497 arrests -- were for marijuana.
There were 646,042 arrests for simple possession of marijuana in 2000.
drugwarfacts.org

U.S. law enforcement spends $7.5 to $10 billion annually enforcing marijuana laws.
According to the FBI, 720,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2001.
Keith Stroup, (NORML)

kitch

I heard more people chanting "FUCK OFF" than 'these laws are doomed'

honestly trying to politicize the freedom rally is akin to abbie hoffman's efforts at woodstock, no one gives a fuck.

__________________

Real Corona

Ddc are you a mod? Becuase I think you should be.

DdC

Yea kitch,

I can see your point. Politicizing can be a drag at Woodstock. I remember people whining about them at the Vietnam May Day demonstrations. And if it was billed as a party or concert I'd say I totally agree. But as far as I know this was NORML and if they ain't political I don't know who is.

I would say in all probabilities those in attendence don't need "sold" on the benefits of Ganja toking. But I've gotten high with Jack and Ed in Santa Cruz and nothing bothered me about their politicizing or did it bother anyone else I saw there. I enjoyed the conversations and feedback. I swear this info phobia is new to me. Booing Ed is ignorant. Blaming Ed for anything involving legalities or others toking is narktalk insanity.

Many here, and at rallies consist of free riders who bitch about any info and whine about political speeches or making them think is hurting their brains and are the first who want pity when busted. Many also grow and earn a healthy living off of the Ganjawar inflation. Many have "jobs" fighting the war who might not be enthused about legalizing. Not to mention the three factions one upping and back stabbing each other. Hempsters against Medicinal and both against stoners. Their largest support base.

Same with the politically correct enron mentalist saving trees canvasing with plastic covered dead tree fliers while shunning hemp. The farmworkers and Mexicans stigmatized by Ganjas reefer madness are some of the most viscious DEAth mongers. The prisons are filled with minorities but minorities aren't involved in legalizing whats putting them there. Hemp nutrition, clothing, fuel and chemical replacement and the politicops and media act like its all lies from a dozen hippies wanting to smoke legally. As if that mattered. It ain't the hippies getting busted or buying adulterated schwagg or needing buyers clubs. Or laws. Its the middle class and poor who haven't the contacts...

Mod?

As in bell bottoms and pasley wide collar or Naru shirts?

Or moderate politically?

Or moderator? Why? I moderate a half a dozen forums and find no pleasure in it. I see many moderators already and haven't had a problem with them. This seems to be a practicing Free Speech forum and I never had to worry about content being deleted or paranoids worried about non existant copywrites or using alias'. I'm satisfied with the moderators we have and think they do a fine job.

Soooo depending on your definition...

Nix on the modjob or

I wear hemp denum or

I vote common sense and think it does matter locally and the Bushit government is run by true fascist globally and it will take more than status quo voting methods to remove it.
Peace, Love and Liberty or Treason and DEAth
DdC

kitch

I think it was kinda a turn off when Ed said anyone who didn't chant would be thrown out of the park. he went on at 4:20 and the park actually started to empty by 4:25 even though you could smoke out in the open.

bottom line, he should not have gone on at 4:20. the kids have come to expect a big party with free music where they can smoke pot. that's all they really care about and i don't really know how legalizers can get their message accross to this crowd, sad but true.

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