Author: Linn Washington

The spirited protest outside the front door of the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton, where nearly 150 demonstrators bashed NJ Governor Chris Christie for scandalous obstruction of the state’s medical marijuana law, featured the presence and participation of the youngest offspring of two of the most legendary stars in reggae music history.

That 4/20 demonstration against Christie’s restrictive implementation of NJ’s medical marijuana law and against the governor’s opposition to legalization or even decriminalization of marijuana, included remarks by Makeda Marley, the youngest daughter of reggae legend Bob Marley and by Jawara McIntosh, youngest son of reggae luminary Peter Tosh.

Marley and Tosh, members of the immortal ‘Wailers’ reggae band, were both vocal advocates for marijuana. Both men integrated their support for marijuana into their song lyrics, as in Tosh’s 1976 hit, “Legalize it!’ Marley and Tosh practiced the Rastafarian religion, which embraces the spiritual use of marijuana.

Jawara McIntosh, Makeda Marley and Ed ‘NJ Weedman’ Forchion, at a 4/20 marijuana legalization protest in Trenton, NJ (photo by Washington)
 

“It’s time to stop the hypocrisy,” Jawara McIntosh said after singing a few verses of his father’s still popular “Legalize It.”

“It’s Ok to smoke cigarettes that can kill you but you can’t smoke marijuana that can heal your body and spirit,” McIntosh said, adding, “Keep speaking word to power. My father was a great believer in the power of the word.”

They partied in mile-high Denver Sunday, but there would be no legal observances marking the special April 20 holiday in Pennsylvania and much of the country still mired in a pot-fearing ‘Dark Ages’ of the expensive, ineffective War on Weed.

There were, nonetheless, 4/20 ‘happenings’ around the nation on April 20 and/or at 4:20pm. And, this year those ‘happenings’ have a heightened interest due to major changes on marijuana from full legalization in Colorado and Washington State to public opinion polls consistently showing overwhelming support for ending the expensive and ineffective War on Weed.

Give us liberty…and legal weed: 4/20 marijuana legalization protester photographs police on the lookout for drug users at Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell protest
 

Disgraced former U.S. President Richard Nixon, forced to resign from office for serious misdeeds, launched the War on Weed months before the 1972 release of the report from his presidential commission that studied the drug. One major conclusion of that commission was to decriminalize marijuana. The Schafer Commission was chaired Raymond Schafer, an ex-governor of Pennsylvania whose credentials included being a former federal prosecutor, a conservative and a Republican. Members of that Schafer Commission included two U.S. Senators and one Congressman – persons who were not ‘stoners’ in tie-dye tee shirts.

TCBH takes a 4/20 look at marijuana, particularly examining developments in the state Ray Schafer once governed. This special package includes articles by Abigail Ferenczy, Olivia La Bianca and Michelle Kapusta.

A big reason why Philadelphia State Representative Mark Cohen keeps pushing for the legalization of medical marijuana in Pennsylvania is reality: many people need the substance for treatment of their illnesses and other states have already approved medical use of marijuana.

“Right now, marijuana is readily available to the vast majority of Pennsylvanians, but it’s illegal. This bill sets up a statutory framework which legalizes the use of marijuana for medical purposes,” Cohen said about his legislation (House Bill 1181) introduced on April 15, 2013 that would legalize the use of medical marijuana in the state.

Medical marijuana is already legal in 20 states including two states adjacent to Pennsylvania: New Jersey and Delaware. Maryland, another adjacent state – recently approved medical marijuana legislation and similar approval is pending New York state, located north of Pennsylvania.

California, in 1996, became the first state to approve the medical use of the substance that was once one of the most widely prescribed medications in the United States until the early decades of the 20th Century. Illinois and New Hampshire legalized medical marijuana in 2013. Medical marijuana is also legal in America’s capital, the District of Columbia, with one dispensary for medical marijuana located blocks from Capitol Hill.
Pot can be inhaled or ingested.
 

State Senator Daylin Leach knows he is fighting an uphill battle to win legalization of marijuana for adult use in Pennsylvania. But Leach is confident that the need for new state revenue will convince his colleagues in the state legislature that the time is ripe to change Pennsylvania’s position on marijuana prohibition.

“I think revenue from taxing legal and medical marijuana will drive this issue just like revenue drove approval for gambling,” Leach said.

“Remember, 40 years ago only one state had gambling. Now 48 states including Pennsylvania have gambling. What drove approvals of gambling was the money to be made by the states.”

California, for example, generates annual sales tax revenues of up to $105-million from medical use of marijuana, according to the California State Board of Equalization. That Board estimated that California could gain $1.4-billion in new revenue annually from the legalization of marijuana.

Colorado, which began sales of marijuana for non-medical adult use on New Year’s Day this year, collected $6.17-million in tax revenue during January and February alone. Officials in Washington State, which beings adult use marijuana sales in July, project receipt of $190-million in taxes and fees annually.

State Senator Daylin Leach

State Sen. Daylin Leach is leading the fight to legalize marijuana in Pennsylvania.

But will the reward outweigh the risk if he succeeds and cannabis is legalized in the state?

Senator Leach clearly thinks the rewards from increased state revenues and decreased enforcement costs outweigh the risks. His legalization bill, introduced in April, would tax and regulate marijuana for adult use like alcohol in the state.

“It is time for Pennsylvania to be a leader in jettisoning this modern-day prohibition, and ending a policy that has been destructive, costly and anti-scientific,” said Leach, who has also introduced a bill that would allow people with certain serious illnesses in Pennsylvania to purchase and possess marijuana. This bill is commonly known as the medical marijuana bill.

Currently 20 states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana. Two states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized marijuana for adult recreational use.

While some agree with Sen. Leach and believe this is the time for Pennsylvania to change its marijuana laws, opponents point to health problems and other concerns with legalization.

Shenid Bhayroo was one of the thousand-plus journalists that traveled to South Africa in December 2013 to cover the death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela, the former political prisoner and first black president of the southern-most nation on the African continent.

Most of those journalists representing nations worldwide covering the memorial activities for Mandela, reporting on the ‘mood’ in that country, missed the mood Bhayroo saw among many South Africans.

Bhayroo saw a strong public dissatisfaction with the deep poverty rampant across South Africa, poverty many South Africans increasingly blame on failures of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the organization Mandela once led. Many studies list income inequality in South Africa as highest in the world, citing such figures as the poorest ten percent averaging $427 in annual income compared to $80,800 for the richest ten percent.

“What I saw was a greater sense of criticism of the short-comings of the ruling party, even from staunch ANC supporters,” Bhayroo said referencing rising objections including criticisms of corruption and nepotism among ANC officials, particularly South African President Jacob Zuma. “There’s been little improvement in the lives of the working poor.”
Shenid Bhayroo (r) and Rose Thamae at Thamae’s anti-AIDS/anti-poverty organization in the impoverished township of Orange Farm outside Johannesburg. (WashingtonPhoto)

Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Rufus Seth Williams, the first African-American in Pennsylvania to hold a powerful top prosecutor post, persistently projects himself as an expert on racism.

Commendably Williams has acknowledged the corrosive impact of racism within the criminal justice system.

Curiously though, when Williams usually asserts his professed expertise on racism he is defending improprieties by police and prosecutors.

Williams, for example, indignantly rejects all allegations of race-related improprieties in the controversial conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, arguably the most racism-stained murder case in the 300-plus-year history of Philadelphia.

Earlier this year Williams participated in the ‘political lynching’ of an Obama Administration nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. During that assault on nominee Debo Adegible, a former NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer, DA Williams allied himself with Philadelphia’s police union, an organization with a sordid record of supporting racism within police department ranks and vicious brutality by police officers.

Recently, Williams attacked Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, blasting the fellow Democrat for her comments about racism.

Philadelphia DA Seth Williams with his buddies in the ever-racist Fraternal Order of Police, which hasn't met a police abuse case against a minority victim where it hasn’t supported the cop

Members of the U.S. Senate, who now of late are blasting Russia for violating “the rule of law’ in the Ukraine, trashed that same fundamental legal precept during a vote to reject the man President Obama recently nominated to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department.

Senate Republicans, with the support of a handful of Democrats, including Pennsylvania’s two Senators, rejected the nomination of Debo Adegbile, followed a venomous, falsehood-filled campaign against him launched by the National Fraternal Order of Police and exploited by conservative opponents of Obama (see the article below by my colleague Dave Lindorff).

The flashpoint Adegbile opponents used to frame their opposition to him was this highly qualified lawyer’s indirect and very remote involvement in appeals filed on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia journalist who was convicted for the 1981 slaying of a Philadelphia policeman. Abu-Jamal’s contentious conviction has been condemned by entities as diverse as Nelson Mandela,, the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus and Amnesty International, a widely admired legal organization that produced a lengthy analysis back in 2000 declaring his trial and appeals process “deeply flawed” and saying it “clearly failed to meet the minimum international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings.”

Adegbile worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an organization that officially entered the Abu-Jamal case in January 2011, more than nine years after a federal district declared Abu-Jamal’s controversial death sentence unconstitutional. That federal court action, upheld by a federal appeals court panel and ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court, led to Abu-Jamal’s sentence being automatically converted to life in prison much, to the chagrin of police unions in Philadelphia and beyond, who had for years been campaigning for the former Black Panther Party member’s execution. Adegbile, a voting rights law expert for the LDF, was not the lead (or even backup) LDF lawyer on the Abu-Jamal case.

Protest outside federal courthouse in downtown Philadelphia demanding the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is widely considered a ‘political prisoner’ in America (Linn Washington photo)

Philadelphia — Back in 1978, a respected newspaper columnist in in this city blasted local black elected officials for their failure to criticize police brutality – the scourge that ravaged blacks for decades, often with the sanction of white elected officials like then Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former city police commissioner.

“Those black elected officials lack courage,” respected journalist Chuck Stone wrote three-decades ago, slamming Philadelphia’s four top black officials as servile, betraying their constituents.

During the weeks before publication of Stone’s July 18, 1978 news commentary, Philadelphia police had killed two unarmed black men and viciously beat scores of people including a group of black teens attending a party at the home of a Methodist minister.

Now, 36 years later in 2014, Philadelphia black elected officials again face harsh criticism for their failures both to publicly condemn continued police brutality and to utilize their electoral clout to end that festering scourge.

Once again, black officials are being disparaged as servile and betraying the people who elected them. And once again, the trigger for this latest volley of criticism against Philadelphia’s black elected officials is their collective failure to publicly condemn a high-profile incident of alleged police abuse. That incident in question was a vicious January 7 police assault on a teenage honor-roll student that left the 16-year-old needing emergency surgery for a damaged testicle.

In Philadelphia, the election of blacks to top posts as mayor, city council president and DA, and having a black as police chief, has done little or nothing to end police brutality and abuse against blacks and other minorities

Philadelphia — A January 7, 2014 police assault on Darrin Manning that resulted in the 16-year-old honor student’s needing emergency surgery to repair a ruptured testicle, is outrageous but hardly unusual in this city.
That sidewalk assault on Manning began with a physical attack by a Philadelphia policeman with a record of citizen complaints. It was followed by separate abuse to his testicle by a policewoman. Doctors fear the damage to Manning’s testicle may leave the teen permanently sterile.

That double assault is consistent with an infamous history of brutality by police in Philadelphia. As far back as 1998, a report by Human Rights Watch said the Philly cops “have earned one of the worst reputations of big city police departments in the United States.” Things haven’t changed much in the intervening years.

And, consistent with incidents of police brutality here, cops in Philadelphia routinely charge their victims with assault on police and resisting arrest – two of the criminal charges police slapped on Darrin Manning.

Fatal shootings and vicious beatings by Philadelphia police during the 1970s prompted an unusual 1979 federal lawsuit, the first-ever filed by the U.S. Justice Department charging a mayor and top city officials with openly aiding police abuse. Philadelphia police fatally shot 162 persons during the nine years before that federal lawsuit. Between 2007-2012 Philadelphia police fatally shot 65 people, with 15 of those fatalities coming in 2012.

Perhaps the worse brutality incident occurred in 1985 when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb from a helicopter on a house that they had under siege. That attack on a home known to have children in it at the time, killed five children, six adults and burned down 61 surrounding homes.

This legacy of police brutality in Philadelphia, spanning over a century, routinely includes high-profile assaults on teens, primarily blacks and Latinos. In January 2010, for example, a police assault on a teenaged student left that concert violinist beaten and missing dreadlocks which were torn from his head by officers. Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner defended a June 2012 vicious assault on a teen stopped for a minor traffic violation. That assault, Commissioner Charles Ramsey said, was as an appropriate use of force because that 18-year-old suspect had allegedly resisted arrest. In the Manning matter, Ramsey belatedly launched an investigation into the assault but only after news coverage of the incident and public complaints.

Police abuse victim Darrin Manning and his principal, Veronica Joyner, who says police lied about the reason for stopping Manning