(...given the amount of time it took me to even begin this first post, I had better just move on to the book itself. This Draft Post has been saved for years. SInce: Mar 18th, 2018 5:38:17am - I finally decided to publish it.)
Hi, welcome to my new blog. This is my personal space to communicate with friends or folks that are interested in how my activism and advocacy affect my everyday life.
There are people in the world that have inspired me to do this like, Amanda-F*cking-Palmer. Sure, it would be real simple to cut off all communication with the outside world, and give up all hope for a professional career, but life doesn’t work that way. Eventually my energy needs to go somewhere.
I was never into Twitter or the social media thing, but still love the old fashioned hand-written letter and the ever accessible blog. I like to spend time finding words, researching facts, and sharing with people that want to use that information for good. However, instead of blogging the last few years, I’ve been working. Working in advocacy is different and not something I went to school for, but it helped change the course of my life while I shared a lot of great moments with wonderful people.
This writing is going to do a couple of things, one, I’ll be able to reach my supporters directly and two, it will make me more vulnerable to others. But there has to be room for me and my voice in this world and I decided it will be here.
Years ago, as a constituent, I set out to find what it would take to change a law. It was the very first question I had about the mystery of “modern politics.” Of course, I could have read a bunch of blogs, and I did. But, I was always more hands on, so I walked up to Beacon Hill myself for a public hearing.
I met a lot of people there; advocates, consumers, patients, people who were filming and taking photos. I also suddenly became more interested in the stories the mainstream media was not talking about and how uninteresting the stories they did cover actually were.
For instance, the fight over Bunker Hill and Evacuation Day will never leave the corner of my mind...
“Gov. Deval L. Patrick has said he supports terminating the holidays. Sen. Michael Knapik, R-Westfield, argued for abolishing the holidays. "This is the 30th anniversary of Pac Man," Knapik said. "The insatiable appetite for things we can't continue to defend continues to eat at the pocketbooks of the public. The special deals have got to stop." Knapik said the state government needs the savings during an ongoing fiscal crisis. The elimination of the two holidays would save about $5 million in overtime paid to transit, police and other state employees who work on the holidays. Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, D-Amherst, was the only senator from Western Massachusetts to vote in favor of keeping the two holidays.”
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/massachusetts_senate_kills_eva.html
The State of Massachusetts was fighting Floating Holidays instead of the expenditures we waste on the criminalization of cannabis commerce. It was such a big deal.
In 2010, I had only just seen the surface of the war on drugs because there was also a media and information war muddying the waters. Word could not get out about the things people were doing in cannabis reform unless it was through independent research.
