- "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it’s that I have greater respect for justice. Where there is a conflict between the law and the higher moral code that we all share, my loyalty is to that higher moral code."
Tim DeChristopher
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Walt Whitman
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Tag Archives: Prison Industrial Complex
Debate over medical marijuana bill proves green’s the only game in NC government.
The following was published today in the Charlotte, NC edition of Creative Loafing, and is republished here because I can’t say it any better. Catherine Lyles, a brain cancer survivor from Raleigh, spoke to the North Carolina House Rules Committee last month about how marijuana had saved her life. It relieved the nausea caused by harsh radiation treatments required to cure her terminal illness and enabled her to eat and nourish her body. This woman, and thousands like her bravely … Continue reading
Cancer research, cannabis prohibition, and the prison industrial complex – it’s all about the money.
I won’t pretend to be educated enough to understand everything in the article excerpted below, but I am smart enough to see the connection between cancer research, cannabis prohibition, and the prison-law enforcement industrial complex. The World Health Organization estimates that the number of women living with breast cancer globally will rise to 15 million by the year 2020 with a significant portion of these patients in advanced stages of the disease. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death … Continue reading
Five entrenched groups with a vested interest in sustaining our draconian prohibition laws, no matter how many lives must be destroyed in the process.
Over 50% of the American public favor some kind of reform of our marijuana laws. Voters in eighteen states and the District of Colombia have voted to legalize medical cannabis, with bills being considered in up to fifteen others. Full legalization for adult recreational use passed popular referendums in Washington and Colorado last year, and legislators, including many conservatives, are sponsoring bills to make it easier for farmers in some states to plant industrial hemp crops. With all these moves … Continue reading
Land of the free?
Please explain to me how the United States of America enjoys the most freedom of any nation on the planet. It doesn’t look that way from here. Tell me again why having our prison system run by private, for-profit corporations is a good thing, and how we’re winning the war on drugs by arresting mostly pot farmers in the process. I’m waiting.
The root cause of all these evils is our culture of separateness.
Wealth erodes through any government regulations, buying off both legislators and enforcers. Wealth twisted the 14th constitutional amendment into a justification for corporate personhood, and it is just as likely to twist into ineffectiveness the amendment to end corporate personhood that is now being proposed by so many reformers. Government and business merge, as in Mussolini’s description of fascism. The only way to avoid rule by the wealthy class is to not have a wealthy class. And once profit has been enshrined as the … Continue reading
